Word: drought
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...trap heat in the Earth's atmosphere, we can expect average global temperatures to rise between 2.7 degrees and 11 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of this century. That kind of increase, scientists contend, means cataclysmic changes in our environment: Think melting of the polar ice caps, flooding and drought...
...Amazon more vulnerable than ever before. Of most concern is the heightened impact of El Nino, the periodic warming of Pacific waters that plays havoc with the world's weather. El Nino helped cause the 1998 Amazon dry spell, and ecologist Nepstad has studied the vicious circle of drought and fire. The first year of drying and burning sucks vital moisture from the soil and leaves the forest littered with tinder. Sheltering leaves that ordinarily prevent the forest floor from baking in the sun are thinned out. The rainy season may provide a brief respite, but during the next...
...Tapajos National Forest and linking the Amazon River with southern Brazil. As has happened throughout the Amazon basin, the completion of the highway will open the forest to settlers, and they will undoubtedly set fires to clear land near the road. This area, however is regularly hit by drought and is perhaps the most vulnerable part of the forest. Fires here could grow into the worst conflagration the Amazon has ever seen. Daniel Nepstad, an ecologist who divides his time between the Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts and the Amazon Institute for Environmental Research in Belem, Brazil, warns that...
...irony is that in the end agribusiness will suffer along with everyone else. The destruction of the rain forest could make drought more common all over Brazil, endangering soybean production. In the face of that peril, the government will have to decide whether short-term profits are worth risking an environmental disaster for Brazil--and the whole planet...
...there has been a commendable news drought during this presidential election and I laud the media for their conscientious neglect of issues concerning the private lives of Vice President Al Gore '69 and Texas Gov. George W. Bush. Granted, there were forays into the personal lives of the two presidential front-runners, such as Bush's alleged stint with cocaine and the public release of Gore's Harvard report card, but for the most part this has been a clean media campaign. Journalists have done their fair share of probing into the pasts of the Democratic and Republican nominees...