Word: direful
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Russian President Vladimir Putin has been traveling around Europe lobbying hard to undermine support for the U.S. antimissile shield--and making dire predictions of a "new arms race." America's European allies are concerned too. Senior European diplomats argue that if the U.S. creates a national missile defense, European reaction will be, "What are we going to do? How are we going to defend ourselves?" It will be badly received in Europe. And though China has only around 20 ICBMs, Beijing has threatened to build more if the U.S. goes ahead with NMD. Last week 45 U.S. experts on China...
...Everybody should just stay calm," says John Dilulio Jr., a University of Pennsylvania political-science professor and co-author of the book Body Count. Dilulio is known for his dire predictions of a new wave of juvenile violent crime, but even he is not moved by the recent glitches in some cities' murder rates. Give it 18 more months, he says, then we'll talk...
...sounded almost like the good old days on Al Gore's presidential campaign, with lots of dire talk about his opponent's risky schemes and secret plans, arrogant approaches and smug assumptions. Last week Gore managed to parlay what was to have been a simple health-care speech to medical reporters in Chicago into a dissertation on George W. Bush's coziness with the National Rifle Association. (A top N.R.A. official had been videotaped saying of Bush, "We'll have a President...where we work out of their office.") Gore also savaged the Texas Governor's Social Security plan with...
...paradox. No one argues that life on Earth would be possible without ecosystems, but the entire march of human progress has occurred against a backdrop of landscapes transformed from their natural state to suit the needs of agriculture and industry. Various societies have degraded huge areas without suffering dire consequences. In the U.S., pioneers plowed up almost the entire prairie on the nation's way to becoming an agricultural and economic colossus, but America lost what may have been the greatest concentration of animal life on the planet. Britain, Japan, Korea and Thailand are among the societies that prospered even...
...laden with noxious chemicals and sewage. Moreover, the building of 40,000 large dams and many more smaller obstructions has converted most of the world's rivers into a series of interconnected lakes. Such a water system, like nothing seen since the end of the last ice age, has dire consequences for thousands of species adapted to free-flowing water. Human alteration of the water cycle also extends underground as farms and cities overtax aquifers, sometimes irretrievably damaging these reservoirs of groundwater as the land subsides and salt water intrudes...