Word: effective
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...found what she was looking for and more. She was soon communicating with her daughter's many friends, sharing memories and even piecing together, through posts her daughter had written, a blueprint of things she had hoped to do. "It makes me feel good that Amy had a positive effect on so many people, and I wouldn't have had a clue if it hadn't been for Facebook," says Weiss...
...pump billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, we're doing more than warming the planet and scrambling the climate. We're also conducting what climatologist James Hansen has called a "vast uncontrolled experiment." In effect, we're on our way to engineering a world very different from the one we were handed. Belatedly, we're trying to turn off the carbon spigot, hoping that by incrementally reducing the emissions we've spent a couple of centuries pouring into the air we can stop the climate slide before it's too late...
...small but growing number of researchers are beginning to say yes. If we geoengineered the earth into a mess with our uncontrolled appetite for fossil fuels, maybe we have to geoengineer our way out of it - in effect, directly cooling the planet via a controlled experiment to counteract our uncontrolled one. Indeed, according to a just-published paper for the Copenhagen Consensus on Climate - a think tank studying inexpensive solutions to climate change - geoengineering might not only be a good way to bring rising temperatures under short-term control while we wait for the longer-term fix of cutting carbon...
...politicians and the public have also distorted People Power, using its catalyzing effect not to overthrow dictators but to dissolve democracies. A second EDSA uprising in 2001 against elected President Joseph Estrada cheapened the impact of its noble forerunner. Similarly in Thailand three years ago, an elected - if divisive - Prime Minister was forced out by massive street rallies that culminated in a military coup. In a perverse reworking of history, the Thai putsch's supporters dubbed it a victory for People Power. Later, in a bid to reclaim the leadership their side lost in another set of elections...
Turns out the terms may have been too rich. Cash for clunkers (the official name is Consumer Assistance to Recycle and Save, a.k.a. CARS, but nobody calls it that) had customers scrambling to car dealerships in droves after it went live on July 27. Despite being in effect for only a few days, the program helped drive July auto sales to an annualized rate of 11.2 million vehicles, from just 9.7 million in June. In reaction, Wall Street economists have ratcheted up forecasts for third-quarter economic growth...