Word: fossils
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Industry figures indicate otherwise. Nuclear plants do cost more than coal-fired ones to build, but they are no less reliable. Most U.S. nukes have operated or have been available about as many days as fossil-fuel plants, which must also undergo periodic shutdowns for maintenance or safety checks. The electricity they produce is often competitive. Over a two-year period, the New England Electric System, operating in a region that is far from fossil-fuel sources, provided consumers with a nuclear-generated kwh. for 1.239?, or less than half the 2.596? for a kwh. generated by fossil fuels...
...most significant factor in the accumulation of CO2 is the burning of fossil fuels. Especially worrisome is the Carter Administration's choice of coal as the U.S.'s great energy hope. Unlike competing nuclear power, which gives off no CO2, coal will inevitably add to a buildup of the gas, as will the increased consumption of other fossil fuels. A National Academy of Sciences study panel warns that if the use of coal proceeds along the Administration's projections, atmospheric concentration of CO2 might reach four to eight times that of the pre-industrial level...
...burning of fossil fuels continues to increase at an annual rate of 3% to 4%, as scientists like Stephen Schneider of the National Center for Atmospheric Research consider likely, then the greenhouse effect may well prevail. In that case, it will be a hot time on earth. And once the warming has taken place, even if all discharges of CO2 into the atmosphere could be abruptly halted, it would take centuries for the excess gas to be absorbed by the oceans and dwindling forests...
...accomplished Fossil Hunter, Richard Leakey wittily probes the remains uncovered near crocodile-infested Lake Turkana. The authors admit that we know little about Ramapithecus, a small apelike fellow who existed some 12 million years ago; all we have are a few teeth and bones. Nor, despite the recently unearthed ribs and vertebrae, is there much more data about Australopithecus, who survived until about a million years ago, then turned down an evolutionary dead-end street and disappeared. But science has learned what happened to habilis. With a brain-half again as big as his neighbors', he not only adapted...
Stone tools, cave paintings and burial sites have provided glimpses of our immediate ancestors. But how did habilis live? The fossil record, notes Leakey, provides a skeleton key. But the lifestyles of primates, and of such modern-day primitives as the Kung and the Eskimos, offer more elaborate clues. For one thing they suggest that the existence of earlier man was not, as previously supposed, nasty, brutish and short. Gatherer-hunters, says Leakey, led a shrewd, uncompetitive life and spent little time on the hunt. What truly separated them from their relatives the chimps and baboons, however, was not their...