Word: raining
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1980
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...future seems to be closing down, to be darkening? If nature, first an enemy to be subdued and then a resource to be exploited, is now an endangered victim of technology? The classic American salvation (clear the land! build! disembowel the mountains!) threatens to invert to damnation. Acid rain pelts the Adirondacks, destroying their fish. Smog blows east from the Pacific Coast and eats the vegetation off the Sierras. The Love Canal and Three Mile Island and Kepone in the Tidewater all make mothers anxious in their genes. The once almighty dollar shrivels. Productivity dips to zero, and the national...
More than 50 people gathered in the rain Friday before vacation to show their support for the Afro-American Studies Department and to protest the proposed appointment of Lawrence W. Levine, a history professor at the University of California Berkeley, to a tenured professorship in the department...
Last November 35 nations, including the U.S., gathered in Geneva and signed a pact pledging to work together against this skyborne peril. President Carter has authorized a $10 million annual outlay for a ten-year research program on acid rain, which he considers one of the two gravest environmental threats of the decade (the other: increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels...
...lesser extent, nitrogen oxides from car exhausts and industry contribute to the problem. Rising high into the sky and borne hundreds of miles by winds, these chemicals mix and react with water vapor to form sulfuric and nitric acids. The acids then fall to earth in the form of rain or snow that can damage anything from monuments to living organisms. After a number of such rain showers or highly acidic snow melts, a lake's pH* can plunge low enough to impair the egg-producing ability of fish. Decomposition of organic matter slows, probably because of a loss...
...Indians fish for their livelihood, catches are showing high levels of mercury. Reason: the toxic metal, ordinarily concentrated in sediment, changes into an organic form, methyl mercury, in acid water and is then easily absorbed by the fish. While the threat to plants is not as well understood, acid rain can eat away at leaves, leach nutrients from the soil, interfere with photosynthesis, and affect the nitrogen-fixing capabilities of such plants as peas and soybeans. Scandinavian scientists claim the rain has caused a 15% reduction in timber growth. It can also corrode stone statues, limestone buildings and metal rooftops...