Word: predicting
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...forever. At the outside limit, the earth will probably last another 4 billion to 5 billion years. By that time, scientists predict, the sun will have burned up so much of its own hydrogen fuel that it will expand and incinerate the surrounding planets, including the earth. A nuclear cataclysm, on the other hand, could destroy the earth tomorrow. Somewhere within those extremes lies the life expectancy of this wondrous, swirling globe. How long it endures and the quality of life it can support do not depend alone on the immutable laws of physics. For man has reached a point...
There are those who believe the worst scenarios are alarmist and ill founded. Some scientists contest the global-warming theory or predict that natural processes will counter its effects. Kenneth E.F. Watt, professor of environmental studies at the University of California at Davis, has gone so far as to call the greenhouse effect "the laugh of the century." S. Fred Singer, a geophysicist working for the U.S. Department of Transportation, predicts that any greenhouse warming will be balanced by an increase in heat- reflecting clouds. The skeptics could be right, but it is far too risky to do nothing while...
...have been better timed to drive his point home. The heat waves, droughts, floods and hurricanes may be previews of what could happen with ever increasing frequency if the atmosphere warms 3 degrees F to 8 degrees F by the middle of the next century, as some scientists predict...
...altered his diet and dropped 50 lbs. If he could overcome his nearly fatal difficulties, Asimov reasons, why can't the world do the same? Solipsistic, perhaps, but plausible. "A hundred years ago," he reminds skeptics, "95% of the labor force was involved in food production or distribution. Experts predicted that once the farms went, the world would be put out of work. If you had told them that in the next century their descendants would be, say, flight attendants or television cameramen, they would have thought you were crazy. The future is full of impossible possibilities. The irony...
...testify about such murders often become targets themselves. Indeed, overburdened police forces have had little success in breaking the power of the drug gangs, even when they have adopted systematic buy-and-bust tactics or resorted to the dragnet-style crackdowns pioneered by Los Angeles police. Homicide experts predict that the havoc will continue until the demand for crack can be brought under control by better education and treatment programs. Says Washington Police Chief Maurice Turner: "Police alone cannot solve the drug problem...