Word: ocean
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Branson's operation will start by addressing carbon emissions from a significant but little-known source that is not covered by any national or international regulations: global marine shipping. The massive container ships that ply the ocean lanes are the backbone of globalization, but they are also carbon hogs. Each year, about 100,000 ships contribute some 1.3 billion tons of CO2 to the atmosphere, about 3% of global carbon emissions. In addition, ships spew out huge amounts of traditional air pollutants, like nitrous oxides (NOx) and sulfur oxides (SOx), and emit black carbon soot, a leading contributor to melting...
...part of the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), an island nation in the western Pacific Ocean that was formerly part of a U.N. trust territory administered by the U.S. after World War II. Under an agreement signed in 1986, the islands were granted independence but citizens were given the right to live and work in the U.S. and serve in its military. Initially, few enlisted. But these days, U.S. military recruiters visit local high schools annually and students sign up in droves. For FSM youths, military service means money, adventure and opportunity, a way off tiny islands with few jobs...
...territory (when a sail the size of a tennis court fills with wind, a 1,300-kg carbon-fiber boat feels like it could flip over in a trice). What are described as "close-combat races" are concluded in minutes instead of days, and take place not on empty ocean stretches but on courses close to shore, where thousands of spectators can crowd onto grandstands. Top sailors have joined the circuit, including British double world champion Paul Campbell-James and Austrian double Olympic gold medalists Roman Hagara and Hans Peter Steinacher. Hefty corporates are among the backers, lured, perhaps...
Aceh did exist, of course, but with 166,000 dead or missing it had borne the brunt of the Indian Ocean tsunami, triggered by a 9.15-magnitude earthquake off the Indonesian coast on Dec. 26, 2004. It was a truly international catastrophe: the tsunami struck 13 countries, killing 226,000 people of 40 nationalities. Five years later, a first-time visitor to the worst-affected countries - Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka and Thailand - might find the wave's terrible path hard to detect, thanks to a multinational, multi-billion-dollar reconstruction effort. Across Aceh, thousands of houses were built with foreign...
...flow of 125,000-year-old tides. The bottom line: local effects and faulty assumptions may have led to an underestimate. "It's unclear," says Kopp, "why the Southern Hemisphere would have been warmer than we thought." It may have to do with changes in ocean circulation, but nobody knows at this point...