Word: palming
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Backed by billions in investment capital, this alarming phenomenon is replicating itself around the world. Indonesia has bulldozed and burned so much wilderness to grow palm oil trees for biodiesel that its ranking among the world's top carbon emitters has surged from 21st to third according to a report by Wetlands International. Malaysia is converting forests into palm oil farms so rapidly that it's running out of uncultivated land. But most of the damage created by biofuels will be less direct and less obvious. In Brazil, for instance, only a tiny portion of the Amazon is being torn...
...that the carbon lost when wilderness is razed overwhelms the gains from cleaner-burning fuels. A study by University of Minnesota ecologist David Tilman concluded that it will take more than 400 years of biodiesel use to "pay back" the carbon emitted by directly clearing peat lands to grow palm oil; clearing grasslands to grow corn for ethanol has a payback period of 93 years. The result is that biofuels increase demand for crops, which boosts prices, which drives agricultural expansion, which eats forests. Searchinger's study concluded that overall, corn ethanol has a payback period of about 167 years...
...went further. In December 1999, FCC chairman William Kennard chastised McCain for writing a letter encouraging the resolution to a licensing matter involving Paxson Communications. The letter was written one day after McCain had been flown on a Paxson jet to a fund raiser on a yacht in West Palm Beach, Fla., and just weeks before Paxson's owner was scheduled to hold a fund raiser for McCain. The appearance problem was so severe that John Weaver, McCain's political adviser at the time, asked one of Alcalde's lobbyists on the Paxson account to keep a distance from...
...WEST PALM BEACH Calder jewelry The first exhibit devoted to Alexander Calder's unique, handcrafted jewelry from the 1930s to the 1970s opens at the Norton Museum...
...potency is probably due to its unusual habitat. "It's unique to the Amazon," notes Alexander Schauss, senior scientist at AIBMR Life Sciences, a contract research organization in Washington. "The palm tree that has the açaí berries is the canopy, the very top of the rain forest. Its berries are strongly exposed to ultraviolet radiation and have had to develop chemical strategies to deal with it." Which makes them an invaluable resource for skin health...