Word: fossils
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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...
Nuclear power did much to help the U.S. get through the storms and coal strike that crippled fossil-fuel plants last winter, providing much of the electricity for hard-hit New England and the battered Midwest. Similarly, nuclear power could save the country from the specter of industrial shutdowns and power blackouts as the oil runs out. Even conservative estimates are that the U.S. will need 390 nukes to provide at least 27% of its electric power by 2000. The time to start building these plants is now. Otherwise, they will not be ready when the nation really needs them...
...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...
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...