Word: weather
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Wirth decided to schedule another hearing in the summer, hoping hot weather would make people pay attention to the greenhouse issue. Sure enough, when the hearing convened last June 23, the thermometer read 99 degrees F, a Washington record for that day. The room was packed when James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, turned global warming into front- page news at last. "It is time to stop waffling so much," he declared. "The evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here...
...most prominent scientist willing to say straight out that the earth-warming effect of excess carbon dioxide (CO2) and other gases generated by industry and agriculture had crossed the line from theory into fact. By itself, Hansen's bold assertion was dramatic enough. But the unusual string of weather-related disasters that struck the world last summer could not 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...
...other hand, the summer's disasters may have had nothing to do with the greenhouse effect. They could have been random events -- all part of the natural year-to-year variations in weather. Many climatologists called Hansen's remarks premature and feared that if this summer happens to be cool, public worries about the greenhouse effect will quickly fade...
...productive corn-growing lands of the U.S. Midwest shifted north across the | border, and the Soviet Union might welcome a warmer, more hospitable Siberia. But while the broad outlines of a hotter world are easy to draw, more specific projections are riddled with uncertainty, since the regional weather patterns that would prevail are largely unpredictable. If Canada becomes much dryer than it is now, for example, higher temperatures will not help much...
...than 12 ft. below sea level for hundreds of years. Its newest bulwark is a 5.6-mile dam made up of 131-ft. steel locks that remain open during normal conditions, to preserve the tidal flow that feeds the rich local sea life, but can be closed when rough weather threatens. Venice is beginning to put into place a 1.2-mile flexible seawall that would protect its treasured landmarks against Adriatic storms without doing ecological damage to the city's lagoon...