Word: dryer
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...across the | border, and the Soviet Union might welcome a warmer, more hospitable Siberia. But while the broad outlines of a hotter world are easy to draw, more specific projections are riddled with uncertainty, since the regional weather patterns that would prevail are largely unpredictable. If Canada becomes much dryer than it is now, for example, higher temperatures will not help much...
West of Del Rio, Texas grows dryer by the mile. Tumbleweed bounces across the road and windmills draw up precious water for cattle. On the horizon, dust-shrouded hills appear, blue and mysterious-looking from afar. Roadrunners, heads down and tails up, sprint across the highway. River and road separate here as the Rio Grande, cutting through deep limestone canyons, makes a wide arc that has given this bulge of Texas the nickname Big Bend. Driving south through Alpine and Marfa, I see the border again at Presidio...
...drown everybody in the store. The toilet, it turns out, does not flush well anyway. Also there's no soap, and the sink has one of those faucets you have to keep pushing down, so there's not much water either. That's just as well, the hand dryer (you thought maybe they'd have paper towels?) being busted. The two of you exit damply, wondering, Can public rest rooms in America really be this...
...least able to fight back; a urinal that projects into the narrow aisle, so everybody has to sidle past; a sink counter that is too spacious -- good at home, but here just someplace to slop up as you go drip-dropping in search of the mislocated hand dryer...
Whether the greenhouse effect has arrived or not, some scientists calculate that global temperatures could increase between 3 degrees and 9 degrees F by the year 2050. If that happens, even hotter, dryer summers are on the way, probably accompanied by a gradual melting of polar ice caps and glaciers that will cause sea levels to rise several feet by mid-century. By then it is probable that more CO2 production, from sources as diverse as industry and rampant deforestation, will play an increasingly important role in heating up the earth. Even Hansen's scientific critics hope his testimony, however...