Word: excess
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Wait, though. That's only the beginning. Estimates are that with no change in current policy Washington over the next 10 years will collect a mind-boggling $2.9 trillion more than it spends--$1.9 trillion in the Social Security trust fund, and $1 trillion as an excess of tax collections over spending for everything else the Feds do. The $1 trillion overage is the size of the entire federal budget in 1987 and, paradoxically, creates a problem for politicians that they have never faced before: How best to channel that torrent of cash...
...August is running away from nothing very much--a boring small-town life and boyfriend--and she's not running toward much either--a dopey dream that life in Beverly Hills is bound to be more exciting. She is one of those irritating people who cover wrongheadedness with eccentric excess. This is supposed to be charming, but it is merely tiresome. Portman pouts prettily at Adele's all too predictable capers--naturally she forgets to pay the utility bills, misreads her daughter's dreams and that handsome orthodontist's intentions. But you can feel these beats coming--thump, thump...
...doesn't seem to work in humans. Researchers are still trying to figure out why not--and how to get around the problem. Another natural substance, called pro-opiomelanocortin (POMC), seems to signal that it's time to stop eating. Mice treated with POMC boosters shed 40% of their excess body weight in just two weeks. Again, it's not clear that this will work in humans, but it's conceivable that POMC therapy--perhaps in shots--could someday be standard...
...Denmark. There, an unusual place called an "eco-industrial park" shows how much can be gained by recycling and resource sharing. Within the park, a power company, a pharmaceuticals firm, a wallboard producer and an oil refinery share in the production and use of steam, gas and cooling water. Excess heat warms nearby homes and agricultural greenhouses. One company's waste becomes another's resource. The power plant, for example, sells the sulfur dioxide it scrubs from its smokestacks to the wallboard company, which uses the compound as a raw material. Dozens of these eco-industrial parks are being developed...
...reason for the spread in the IPCC predictions is uncertainty about how much carbon dioxide will be added to the atmosphere by human activity, because how we will respond to the threat of climate warming is the greatest imponderable of all. We can probably develop technologies to deal with excess carbon--some scientists talk about removing it from smokestacks and stashing it underground--but the most direct way to control carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is not to put it there in the first place. This is the point of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol--signed by 84 nations...