World

Oil Shock (1967, 1973, 1979)

History remembers well the ___ of 1973, when Arab countries cut off oilsupply and created shortages and rising prices around the world. ... The 1967 War marked a turning point in the global oil market, and today's oil market structure was shaped by events that took place in the decade following the war.

Acid Precipitation Act

In United States federal environmental legislation, the National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program (NAPAP) was authorized by Congress under the ___ of 1980 (P.L. 96-294, Title VII) because of concern that acidic deposition might contribute to adverse effects on aquatic systems; agriculture; forests; fish; wildlife and natural ecosystems; materials such as metals, wood, paint and masonry; and public health and welfare.

Neem Tree

In 1994, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and WR Grace received a European patent on methods of controlling fungal infections in plants using a composition that included extracts from the ___ (Azadirachta indica), which grows throughout India and Nepal.[13][14][15] In 2000 the patent was successfully opposed by several groups from EU and India including the EU Green Party, Vandana Shiva, and the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) on the basis that the fungicidal activity of neem extract had long been known in Indian traditional medicine.[15] WR Grace appealed, and lost that appeal in 2005.[16]

Green Politics

___ (also known as ecopolitics) is a political ideology that aims to create an ecologically sustainable society rooted in environmentalism, nonviolence, social justice and grassroots democracy.

Vandana Shiva

___ (born 5 November 1952) is an Indian scholar, environmental activist, food sovereignty advocate, and alter-globalization author.[2] ___, currently based in Delhi, has authored more than twenty books. 2014 entitled "Seeds of Doubt",[10] raised concerns over a number of Shiva's claims regarding GMOs and some of her campaigning methods. He wrote: "Shiva's absolutism about G.M.O.s can lead her in strange directions." Cases of plagiarism have been pointed out against ___.

Gerta Keller

___ (born 7 March 1945) is a paleontologist who contests the Alvarez hypothesis that the impact of the Chicxulub impactor, or another large celestial body, caused the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event. Keller maintains that such an impact predates the mass extinction and that Deccan volcanism and its environmental consequences were the most likely major cause possibly exacerbated by the impact

Acid Rain

___ In 1972, a group of scientists including Gene Likens discovered the rain that was deposited at White Mountains of New Hampshire was acidic. There was a decrease in species diversity, an increase in community dominants, and a decrease in the food web complexity.[19]

(Soviet: Pollution) Lake Baikal

___ Lake Baikal is not only the oldest and largest lake on Earth, but with a depth of over 1,500 metres also the deepest. Although the water in ___ is still largely unpolluted, cadmium is a relatively frequent environmental pollutant whose toxicity makes it extremely problematic to ecosystems. It seems likely that ___ could see increasing heavy metal pollution. The lake's largest tributary, the Selenga River, is increasingly polluted with mining waste water from Mongolia, and via air, pollutants reach the lake from the industrial region around Irkutsk.

Ice Cores

___ are cylinders of ice drilled out of an icesheet or glacier. Most ice core records come from Antarctica and Greenland, and the longest ice coresextend to 3km in depth. The oldest continuous ice core records to date extend 123,000 years in Greenland and 800,000 years in Antarctica.

X-Ray Lasers

___ are devices that use stimulated emission to generate or amplify electromagnetic radiation in the near X-ray or extreme ultraviolet region of the spectrum, that is, usually on the order of several of tens of nanometers wavelength. If deployed in space, each of the thin rods of the X-ray laser weapon would be aimed at an enemy missile

Roger Revelle, Hans Suess

___ discovered that the peculiar chemistry of sea water prevents that from happening. His 1957 paper with 2___ is now widely regarded as the opening shot in the global warming debates. ... One of Revelle's many good ideas was to use part of the money to hire Suess and Craig to pursue carbon-14 studies.

Climate Change

___ is a change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns when that change lasts for an extended period of time

CITES (1973)

___ is a multilateral treaty to protect endangered plants and animals. It was drafted as a result of a resolution adopted in 1963 at a meeting of members of the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The convention was opened for signature in 1973 and ___ entered into force on 1 July 1975.

X-Prize

___ is a nonprofit organization that designs and manages public competitions intended to encourage technological development that could benefit humanity. Their Board of Trustees include James Cameron, Larry Page, Arianna Huffington, Ratan Tata among others.

Nuclear Winter

___ is a period of abnormal cold and darkness predicted to follow a nuclear war, caused by a layer of smoke and dust in the atmosphere blocking the sun's rays.

"Sound Science"

___ is a phrase often used by corporate public relations and government agency spokesmen to describe the scientific research used to justify a claim or position. ___, however, has no specific scientific definition itself, so the phrase is used subjectively. The film (Merchants of Doubt) explores the "playbook" created by tobacco spokespeople that involved denying or minimizing the health concerns, attacking researchers personally and raising questions about how regulations may limit the freedom of Americans. Corporations even established "front groups," nonprofit groups to advance their perspectives. For example, tobacco company Philip Morris created the now-defunct Advancement of Sound Science Coalition in 1993 in response to an Environmental Protection Agency report identifying secondhand smoke as a cancer-causing agent. The lobby group stated its objectives were to discredit the report, fight anti-smoking legislation and pass legislation that favored the tobacco industry, according to SourceWatch, a website of the watchdog Center for Media and Democracy.

Silent Spring

Silent Spring is an environmental science book by Rachel Carson. The book was published on September 27, 1962, documenting the adverse environmental effects caused by the indiscriminate use of pesticides.

Nuclear Renaissance

Since about 2001 the term ___ has been used to refer to a possible nuclear power industry revival, driven by rising fossil fuel prices and new concerns about meeting greenhouse gas emission limits

Clean Air Act

The 1970 ___ launched an ambitious set of federal programs to establish air quality goals and to impose pollution control technology requirements on new and existing stationary sources and on motor vehicles. Major amendments to the ___ enacted in 1977 and 1990 made significant changes to the federal air pollution program, but the core of the program as it existed in 1970 remains the same.

Endangered Species Act (1966, 1969, 1973)

The ___ (ESA; 16 U.S.C. § 1531 et seq.) is one of the few dozens of US environmental laws passed in the 1970s, and serves to protect endangered wildlife from extinction is at risk.

Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, ABMT

The ___ (___) (1972—2002) was an arms control treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union on the limitation of the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) systems used in defending areas against ballistic missile-delivered nuclear weapons.

Union of Concerned Scientists, UCS

The ___ (___) has analyzed the technical and political aspects of missile defense for more than three decades. Though the idea of a missile shield may sound attractive, today's homeland system is hugely expensive, ineffective, and offers no proven capability to protect the United States—and no credible path forward for achieving success.

International Space Station, ISS

The ___ (___) is a space station, or a habitable artificial satellite, in low Earth orbit. Its first component launched into orbit in 1998, with the first long-term residents arriving in November 2000. It has been inhabited continuously since that date

National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA

The ___ (___) is an independent agency of the United States Federal Government responsible for the civilian space program, as well as aeronautics and aerospace research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics

European Atomic Energy Community, EAEC

The ___ (___) is an international organisation established by the Euratom Treaty on 25 March 1957 with the original purpose of creating a specialist market for nuclear power in Europe, by developing nuclear energy and distributing it to its member states while selling the surplus to non-member states. However, over the years its scope has been considerably increased to cover a large variety of areas associated with nuclear power and ionising radiation as diverse as safeguarding of nuclear materials, radiation protection and construction of the International Fusion Reactor ITER.

The Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO)

The ___ (___) was a proposed missile defense system intended to protect the United States from attack by ballistic strategic nuclear weapons. The concept was first announced publicly by President Ronald Reagan on 23 March 1983

Soviet Bloc

The communist nations closely allied with the Soviet Union, including Bulgaria, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania, whose foreign policies depended on those of the former Soviet Union can collectively be called the ___.

Big Five

The labels of the traditional "___" extinction events --> The "___" cannot be so clearly defined, but rather appear to represent the largest (or some of the largest) of a relatively smooth continuum of extinction events.

SO2 and NOx

The main chemicals in air pollution that create acid rain are sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen (NOx). Acid rain usually forms high in the clouds where sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides react with water, oxygen, and oxidants.

International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, ITER

"Headquarters: Saint-Paul-lès-Durance, France. Founded: October 24, 2007" ___, (___) is an international nuclear fusion research and engineering megaproject, which will be the world's largest magnetic confinement plasma physics experiment. The project is funded and run by seven member entities—the European Union, India, Japan, China, Russia, South Korea, and the United States. The EU, as host party for the ITER complex, is contributing about 45 percent of the cost, with the other six parties contributing approximately 9 percent each.

homeostasis

"The notion of the biosphere as an active adaptive control system able to maintain the earth in ___ we are calling the 'Gaia' hypothesis" - (Lovelock and Margulis 1974).

Licensing, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, NRC

"Through the ___ process, the U.S. ___ (___) authorizes an applicant to conduct any or all of the following activities: Construct, operate, and decommission commercial reactors and fuel cycle facilities. Possess, use, process, export and import nuclear materials and waste, and handle certain aspects of their transportation. Site, design, construct, operate, and close waste disposal sites."

Denial

1. CO2 is not increasing. 2. If it is, there is no evidence of warming. 3. If there is warming, it is due to natural causes. 4. If anthropogenic, it is good for us. 5. It is too late to do anything about it.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission, NRC

1975 The ___ (___) is an independent agency of the United States government tasked with protecting public health and safety related to nuclear energy.

GMOs

A GMO (genetically modified organism) is the result of a laboratory process where genes from the DNA of one species are extracted and artificially forced into the genes of an unrelated plant or animal. The foreign genes may come from bacteria, viruses, insects, animals or even humans.

Geosynchronous Orbits

A ___ (sometimes abbreviated GSO) is an orbit around Earth of a satellite with an orbital period that matches Earth's rotation on its axis, which takes one sidereal day (23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4 seconds).

Tokamak

A ___ is a device which uses a powerful magnetic field to confine a hot plasma in the shape of a torus. The ___ is one of several types of magnetic confinement devices being developed to produce controlled thermonuclear fusion power.

Breeder reactor

A ___ is a nuclear reactor that generates more fissile material than it consumes.[1] These devices achieve this because their neutron economy is high enough to create more fissile fuel than they use from fertile material, such as uranium-238 or thorium-232. ____ were at first found attractive because their fuel economy was better than light water reactors, but interest declined after the 1960s as more uranium reserves were found,[2] and new methods of uranium enrichment reduced fuel costs.

Carbon Tax

A ___ is a tax levied on the carbon content of fuels. It is a form of carbon pricing. Carbon is present in every hydrocarbon fuel and converted to carbon dioxide and other products when combusted. Both energy and carbon taxes have been implemented in responses to commitments under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.[24] In most cases where an energy or ___ is implemented, the tax is implemented in combination with various forms of exemptions.

Assumption of Safety

A misguided faith in the complete safety of atomic power was a key factor in Japan's 2011 Fukushima accident, the UN nuclear watchdog said in its most comprehensive report on the disaster.

(Climate Modeling) Radiative Convective Models, RC

A step along from EBMs are ___ (__) which simulate the transfer of energy through the height of the atmosphere - for example, by convection as warm air rises. Radiative Convective Models can calculate the temperature and humidity of different layers of the atmosphere. These models are typically 1D - only considering energy transport up through the atmosphere - but they can also be 2D.

nuclear winter, Carl Sagan

According to the article, it wouldn't take both major nuclear powers firing all their weapons to create a ___. The article was frightening enough. But it was the author who brought authority and seriousness to the doomsday scenario: ___. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/when-carl-sagan-warned-world-about-nuclear-winter-180967198/

(Climate Modeling) Energy Balance Model, EBM

An ___ (__) does not attempt to resolve the dynamics of the climate system, i.e., large-scale wind and atmospheric circulation systems, ocean currents, convective motions in the atmosphere and ocean, or any number of other basic features of the climate system. The earliest and most basic numerical climate models are Energy Balance Models (EBMs). EBMs do not simulate the climate, but instead consider the balance between the energy entering the Earth's atmosphere from the sun and the heat released back out to space.

active protection system, APS

An ___ (___) is a system designed to prevent line-of-sight guided anti-tank missiles/projectiles from acquiring and/or destroying a target

Evaluations: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC

An ___ (___) special report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty.

Endangered Species

An ___ is a species which has been categorized as very likely to become extinct. Endangered, as categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List, is the second most severe conservation status for wild populations in the IUCN's schema after Critically Endangered.

Clean Water Act

As amended in 1972, the law became commonly known as the ___. The 1972amendments: Established the basic structure for regulating pollutant discharges into the waters of the United States. Gave EPA the authority to implement pollution control programs such as setting wastewater standards for industry

Radioactive Plume

BIG. Using data obtained from 435 radiation sampling stations in the Red Forest, 1.5 km W of the Chernobyl Nuclear Complex, we reconstructed the deposition pathway of the first plume released by the accident, Chernobyl's Western Trace. The dimensions and deposition rates of the ___ remain sharply defined 15 years after the accident. Assuming a uniform particle distribution within the original cloud, we derived estimates of ___ dimensions by applying geometric transformations to the coordinates at each sample point. Our derived estimates for the radioactive cloud accounted for 87% of the variation of radioactivity in this region. Results show a highly integrated bell-shaped cross-section of the cloud of radiation, approximately 660 m wide and 290 m high, traveling at a bearing of 264° from reactor IV. Particle sizes within Chernobyl's Western Trace were within the most dangerous range for inhaled aerosols (2-5 μm). Therefore, reconstruction of the dispersion of such particles is critical for understanding the aftermath of nuclear and biological aerosol releases.

High Frontier

BOARD GAME. ___ (3rd edition) is a space exploration game by Phil Eklund. In ___, players are Earth governments which are racing to put together a functioning space program to extract resources and colonize the other planets, moons, and asteroids in our solar system. In the near future, nanofacturing techniques will allow incredible new materials to be built atom by atom. But they can only be built in the zero-gravity and high-vacuum conditions in space. Various private and government enterprises race to establish a buckytube mechanosynthesis factory on a suitable carbonaceous asteroid. To do so, they accumulate tanks of water in orbiting fuel depots, to be used as rocket propellant. Also needed are remote-controlled robonauts to do the grunt work. The key to success is water in LEO (low Earth orbit). At first, water will be expensively supported out of the deep gravity well of Earth. But for a third the fuel and energy, water can be supplied from Luna, the moons of Mars, or other nearby hydrated objects. Extracting resources at the work site is called In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU). Whoever develops ISRU technology able to glean water from space rather than Earth will gain the strategic high ground to make money through exoglobalization.

Bio-Robots

Chernobyl. Radio controlled vehicles were initially used to clear debris, consisting of highly radioactive fuel from the reactor core, thrown on to the roof of reactor 3. However these machines soon failed as the radiation destroyed the electronics within them. The only plan left at the time was for men, sometimes referred to as ___ and the only mechanisms capable of functioning in the extreme conditions, to remove the debris by hand.

Economic Benefits (of Biodiversity)

Economic impact studies document the many and substantial ___ generated by biodiversity.

Cap-and-Trade

Emissions trading, or ___, is a market-based approach to controlling pollution by providing economic incentives for achieving reductions in the emissions of pollutants.

Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, PPPL

Established 1961. ___ (___) is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory for plasma physics and nuclear fusion science. Its primary mission is research into and development of fusion as an energy source. ___ grew out of the top secret Cold War project to control thermonuclear reactions, called Project Matterhorn. In 1961, after declassification, Project Matterhorn was renamed the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory

Gaia

First formulated by Lovelock during the 1960s as a result of work for NASA concerned with detecting life on Mars. First edition ___ by Lovelock published 2003. The theory, put forward by James Lovelock, that living matter on the earth collectively defines and regulates the material conditions necessary for the continuance of life. The planet, or rather the biosphere, is thus likened to a vast self-regulating organism. While the hypothesis was readily accepted by many in the environmentalist community, it has not been widely accepted within the scientific community as a whole. Among its most prominent critics are the evolutionary biologists Richard Dawkins, Ford Doolittle, and Stephen Jay Gould, a convergence of opinion among a trio whose views on other scientific matters often diverge. These (and other) critics have questioned how natural selection operating on individual organisms can lead to the evolution of planetary-scale homeostasis.[27]

Tsunami

Following a major earthquake, a 15-metre ___ disabled the power supply and cooling of three Fukushima Daiichi reactors, causing a nuclear accident on 11 March 2011. All three cores largely melted in the first three days.

Normal Accident Theory, NAT

He [Charles Perrow] argues that for complex systems, accidents are "normal events." This school of thought is now known as ___ (___). Accidents in complex systems are presumed to be unavoidable because innocent and seemingly unrelated events accumulate and align to create major malfunctions that produce disastrous results.

Deep Ecology

In his original 1972/73 ___ paper, Arne Næss claims the deep ecology movement arose from scientists - ecologists - who were out in the field studying the biodiversity and wild ecosystems throughout the world. ___ is an ecological and environmental philosophy promoting the inherent worth of living beings regardless of their instrumental utility to human needs, plus a restructuring of modern human societies in accordance with such ideas. ___'s core principle is the belief that the living environment as a whole should be respected and regarded as having certain inalienable legal rights to live and flourish, independent of its instrumental benefits for human use. It describes itself as "deep" because it regards itself as looking more deeply into the actual reality of humanity's relationship with the natural world arriving at philosophically more profound conclusions than that of the prevailing view of ecology as a branch of biology

Anti-Humanism

In social theory and philosophy, ___ is a theory that is critical of traditional humanism and traditional ideas about humanity and the human condition.[1] Central to antihumanism is the view that concepts of "human nature", "man", or "humanity" should be rejected as historically relative or metaphysical. In the case of the gaia hypothesis, Lovelock is arguing that human actions should be rejected as scientifically (and historically) relative, bc the Earth has an "active adaptive control system able to maintain the earth in homeostasis."

Hydrogen

Just after 6 AM local time on Tuesday in Japan, a sound like an explosion was heard near the suppression pool of reactor No. 2 at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. This followed an explosion March 11 that ripped the roof off reactor No. 1 and another at reactor No. 3 on March 14 that injured 11 workers. The culprit in all three cases is likely a build-up of explosive ___ gas—as occurred at Three Mile Island in the U.S. in 1979 as a result of the meltdown there—caused by nuclear fuel rods experiencing extremely high temperatures stripping the ___ out of the plant's steam.

Challenger

On January 28, 1986, the NASA shuttle orbiter mission STS-51-L and the tenth flight of Space Shuttle ___ broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, killing all seven crew members, which consisted of five NASA astronauts and two payload specialists.

April 26, 1986

On ___, the world's worst nuclear accident happened at the Chernobyl plant near Pripyat, Ukraine, in the Soviet Union. An explosion and fire in the No. 4 reactor sent radioactivity into the atmosphere. The New York Times reported on the accident in its April 29 edition

CFCs (Chlorofluorocarbons)

One of the elements that make up ___ is chlorine. Very little chlorine exists naturally in the atmosphere. But it turns out that ___s are an excellent way of introducing chlorine into the ozone layer. The ultraviolet radiation at this altitude breaks down ___s, freeing the chlorine. ___ (___s) are nontoxic, nonflammable chemicals containing atoms of carbon, chlorine, and fluorine. They are used in the manufacture of aerosol sprays, blowing agents for foams and packing materials, as solvents, and as refrigerants. The 1987 Montreal Protocol that bannedor phased out ozone depleting chemicals, including ___ (___s), once widely used in refrigerators and spray cans, would prevent 2 million cases of skin cancer annually by 2030, according to UNEP.

Ozone Hole

Ozone depletion describes two related events observed since the late 1970s: a steady lowering of about four percent in the total amount of ozone in Earth's atmosphere, and a much larger springtime decrease in stratospheric ozone around Earth's polar regions. The latter phenomenon is referred to as the ___. Ozone depletion and the ozone hole have generated worldwide concern over increased cancer risks and other negative effects. The ozone layer prevents most harmful UVBwavelengths of ultraviolet light (UV light) from passing through the Earth's atmosphere. These wavelengths cause skin cancer, sunburn and cataracts, which were projected to increase dramatically as a result of thinning ozone, as well as harming plants and animals. These concerns led to the adoption of the Montreal Protocol in 1987, which bans the production of CFCs, halons and other ozone-depleting chemicals. --> The ban came into effect in 1989. Ozone levels stabilized by the mid-1990s and began to recover in the 2000s. Recovery is projected to continue over the next century, and the ozone hole is expected to reach pre-1980 levels by around 2075.[4] The Montreal Protocol is considered the most successful international environmental agreement to date.

Press Conference (1983)

Press conference: In his speech on March 23, 1983, President Reagan offered a vision of escape from grim reliance on the threat of retaliation to deter aggression and prevent nuclear war: "What if free people could live secure in the knowledge that their security did not rest upon the threat of instant U.S. retaliation to deter a Soviet attack, that we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our soil or that of our allies?" The way to realize this vision, he said, was to "embark on a program to counter the awesome Soviet missile threat with measures that are defensive. . . . I call upon the scientific community in our country, those who gave us nuclear weapons, to turn their great talents now to the cause of mankind and world peace, to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete."' This vision appeals to powerful moral sentiments. The impulse to look to our weapons and armed forces to defend ourselves rather than threaten others is a natural one, and is not new.

Hill & Knowlton

Review: Merchants of Doubt --> The PR firm ___ was one of those involved in teaching the tobacco industry to divert attention from even the smallest possibility that smoking was injurious by foregrounding how the pleasure of lighting up was beneficial to health and happiness not to mention a thriving economy and a free society. And the folks at ___ aren't the only ones Kenner shows passing down the very strategies that were effective in preventing regulations and fines from being imposed on the tobacco industry to today's climate-change-isn't-happening crowd. Cold War ideologues were also involved, and they are still stoking the fears that government regulation inevitably leads to socialism, martial law, and economic disaster. But, acting on the advice of advertising firm ___, the tobacco firms realized that, to quote one of their own documents, "doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the mind of the general public." As the film notes, every day that action is delayed on one of these issues is another day when money can be made.

Soviet: air pollution

Russia has the dubious distinction of having the world's worst ___, according to international experts. An assessment in 2011 that supported that conclusion noted that only 15 percent of Russian city dwellers breathe unpolluted air.

SpaceX

Space Exploration Technologies Corp., doing business as ___, is a private American aerospace manufacturer and space transportation services company headquartered in Hawthorne, California.

Columbia

Space Shuttle ___ was the first space-rated orbiter in NASA's Space Shuttle fleet. It launched for the first time on mission STS-1 on April 12, 1981, the first flight of the Space Shuttle program. On February 1, 2003, the Space Shuttle ___ disintegrated upon reentering Earth's atmosphere, killing all seven crew members.

Montreal Protocol

The 1987 ___ that banned or phased out ozone depleting chemicals, including chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), once widely used in refrigerators and spray cans, would prevent 2 million cases of skin cancer annually by 2030, according to UNEP. The United States ratified the ___ in 1988 and has joined four subsequent amendments. The United States has been a leader within the Protocol throughout its existence, and has taken strong domestic action to phase out the production and consumption of ODS such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and halons.

Fragments Project

The Biological Dynamics of Forest ___, originally called the Minimum Critical Size of Ecosystems Project[1] is a large-scale ecological experiment looking at the effects of habitat fragmentation on tropical rainforest; it is one of the most expensive biology experiments ever run.[2] The experiment, which was established in 1979 is located near Manaus, in the Brazilian Amazon. The project is jointly managed by the Smithsonian Institution and the Brazilian Institute for Research in the Amazon (INPA) The project was initiated in 1979 by Thomas Lovejoy to investigate the SLOSS debate. Initially named the Minimum Critical Size of Ecosystems Project, the project created forest fragments of sizes 1 hectare (2 acres), 10 hectares (25 acres), and 100 hectares (247 acres). Data were collected prior to the creation of the fragments and studies of the effects of fragmentation now exceed 25 years.

Climategate

The Climatic Research Unit email controversy (also known as "___")[2][3] began in November 2009 with the hacking of a server at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) by an external attacker,[4][5] copying thousands of emails and computer files, the Climatic Research Unit documents, to various internet locations several weeks before the Copenhagen Summit on climate change. The story was first broken by climate change denialists,[6] with columnist James Delingpole popularising the term "___" to describe the controversy.[7] Several climate-change "skeptics" argued that the emails showed that global warming was a scientific conspiracy and that scientists manipulated climate data and attempted to suppress critics.[8][9]The CRU rejected this, saying that the emails had been taken out of context and merely reflected an honest exchange of ideas. Because of the timing, scientists, policy makers and public-relations experts said that the release of emails was a smear campaign intended to undermine the climate conference

K-T Boundary

The Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary, formerly known as the Cretaceous-Tertiary (___) boundary,[a] is a geological signature, usually a thin band of rock. K, the first letter of the German word Kreide (chalk), is the traditional abbreviation for the Cretaceous Period and Pg is the abbreviation for the Paleogene Period. --> What is the ___? K is actually the traditional abbreviation for the Cretaceous period, and T is the abbreviation for the Tertiary period. So the ___ is the point in between the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods. Geologists have dated this period to about 65.5 million years ago. When physicist Luis Alvarez and geologist Walter Alvarez studied the ___ around the world, they found that it had a much higher concentration of iridium than normal - between 30-130 times the amount of iridium you would expect. Iridium is rare on Earth because it sank down into the center of the planet as it formed, but iridium can still be found in large concentrations in asteroids. When they compared the concentrations of iridium in the ___, they found it matched the levels found in meteorites. The researchers were even able to estimate what kind of asteroid must have impacted the Earth 65.5 million years ago to throw up such a consistent layer of debris around the entire planet. They estimated that the impactor must have been about 10 km in diameter, and release the energy equivalent of 100 trillion tons of TNT. When that asteroid struck the Earth 65.5 million years ago, it destroyed a region thousands of kilometers across, but also threw up a dust cloud that obscured sunlight for years.

Kemeny Commission

The President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island aka the ___ — known by the name of its chairman, John Kemeny, who was a former associate of Albert Einstein and at the time of the accident, the president of Dartmouth College—was appointed by President Jimmy Carter in the days following the March 28, 1979, accident. What we did during the spring, summer, and fall of 1979 influenced the safety of nuclear operations after TMI; creation of the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO) was in large part responding to Kemeny Commission recommendations. They didn't want anyone to claim the report had been tainted by the industry. Dr. Kemeny had a very difficult task. The atmosphere was emo- tionally charged. Virtually everyone in the country had a predis- position regarding nuclear power one way or the other. Many agendas were brought to the table, some of which had the poten- tial of having a severe impact on the future of nuclear power. Be- cause of this and the generally poor record of presidential com- missions, there was more than a little self-doubt about what could be accomplished. When I joined the investigation, there seemed to be a general perception that because the accident had been initiated by a stuck- open power-operated relief valve (PORV), if the valve were re- designed, then the cause of the accident would be eliminated. There was little apparent concern for or understanding of the human factor in the accident—that safety of nuclear power depends so much on the knowledge, expertise, and attitudes of the people who operate the plants. Industry response was very positive. Creation of INPO to pro- mote the highest levels of safety and reliability was a key step. Es- tablishment of the National Academy for Nuclear Training was an- other major commitment. Every recommendation in the report was specifically addressed. REPORT WELL IMPLEMENTED, FEEDBACK POSITIVE.

March 28, 1979

The Three Mile Island accident occurred on ___, in reactor number 2 of Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station (TMI-2) in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, near Harrisburg. It was the most significant accident in U.S. commercial nuclear power plant history.

Department of Energy, DOE

The United States ___ (___) is a cabinet-level department of the United States Government concerned with the United States' policies regarding energy and safety in handling nuclear material.

Energy Research and Development Administration, ERDA

The United States ___ (___) was a United States government organization formed from the split of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in 1975. It assumed the functions of the AEC not assumed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Conservation Groups

The Wildlife Conservation Society supports zoos and aquariums, while also promoting environmental education and conservation of wild populations and habitats. Its efforts are focused on a select group of animals, including bears, big cats, elephants, great apes, hoofed mammals, cetaceans, and carnivores. This is an example of ___.

Global Positioning System, GPS

The ___ (___), is a satellite-based radionavigation system owned by the United States government and operated by the United States Air Force.

Trans-Arabian Pipeline, Tapline

The ___ (___), was an oil pipeline from Qaisumah in Saudi Arabia to Sidon in Lebanon. In its heyday, it was an important factor in the global trade of petroleum—helping with the economic development of Lebanon—as well as American and Middle Eastern political relations.

Three-Mile Island

The ___ accident occurred on March 28, 1979, in reactor number 2 of Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, near Harrisburg. It was the most significant accident in U.S. commercial nuclear power plant history.

Soviet Space Program

The ___ comprised several of the rocket and space exploration programs conducted by the Soviet Union from the 1930s until its collapse in 1991. Over its sixty-year history, this primarily classified military program was responsible for a number of pioneering accomplishments in space flight, including the first intercontinental ballistic missile (R-7), first satellite (Sputnik 1), first animal in Earth orbit (the dog Laika on Sputnik 2), first human in space and Earth orbit (cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin on Vostok 1), first woman in space and Earth orbit (cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova on Vostok 6), first spacewalk (cosmonaut Alexey Leonov on Voskhod 2), first Moon impact (Luna 2), first image of the far side of the moon (Luna 3) and unmanned lunar soft landing (Luna 9), first space rover (Lunokhod 1), first sample of lunar soilautomatically extracted and brought to Earth (Luna 16), and first space station (Salyut 1). Unlike its American competitor in the "Space Race", which had NASA as a single coordinating agency, the USSR's program was split among several competing design bureaus led by Korolev, Mikhail Yangel, Valentin Glushko, and Vladimir Chelomei. Because of the program's classified status, and for propaganda value, announcements of the outcomes of missions were delayed until success was certain, and failures were sometimes kept secret. Ultimately, as a result of Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of glasnost in the 1980s, many facts about the space program were declassified. Notable setbacks included the deaths of Korolev, Vladimir Komarov (in the Soyuz 1 crash), and Yuri Gagarin (on a routine fighter jet mission) between 1966 and 1968, and development failure of the huge N-1 rocket intended to power a manned lunar landing, which exploded shortly after lift-off on four unmanned tests. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia and Ukraine inherited the program. Russia created the Russian Aviation and Space Agency, now known as the Roscosmos State Corporation,[5] while Ukraine created the National Space Agency of Ukraine (NSAU).

Chernobyl

The ___ disaster, also referred to as the Chernobyl accident, was a catastrophic nuclear accident. It occurred on 25-26 April 1986 in the No. 4 light water graphite moderated reactor at the ___ Nuclear Power Plant near the now-abandoned town of Pripyat, in northern Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Soviet Union, approximately 104 km (65 mi) north of Kiev.[2]

11 March 2011

The ___ earthquake off the Pacific coast of Tōhoku was a magnitude 9.0-9.1 (Mw) undersea megathrust earthquake off the coast of Japan that occurred at 14:46 JST (05:46 UTC) on Friday 11 March 2011,[5][9][10] with the epicentre approximately 70 kilometres (43 mi) east of the Oshika Peninsula of Tōhoku and the hypocenter at an underwater depth of approximately 29 km (18 mi). The tsunami caused nuclear accidents, primarily the level 7 meltdowns at three reactors in the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant complex, and the associated evacuation zones affecting hundreds of thousands of residents (same day).

The China Syndrome

The ___ is a 1979 American disaster thriller film directed by James Bridges and written by Bridges, Mike Gray, and T. S. Cook. It tells the story of a television reporter and her cameraman who discover safety coverups at a nuclear power plant. It stars Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon, and Michael Douglas, with Douglas also serving as the film's producer. The cast also features Scott Brady, James Hampton, Peter Donat, Richard Herd, and Wilford Brimley.

RBMK, RBMK-1000

The ___ is a class of graphite-moderated nuclear power reactor designed and built by the Soviet Union. The ___ is an early Generation II reactor and the oldest commercial reactor design still in wide operation. The ___ is an early Generation II reactor and the oldest commercial reactor design still in wide operation. Certain aspects of the ___ reactor design, such as the active removal of decay heat, the positive void coefficientproperties, the graphite-tipped control rods and instability at low power levels, contributed to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

Keeling Curve

The ___ is a graph of the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere based on continuous measurements taken at the Mauna Loa Observatory on the island of Hawaii from 1958 to the present day.

Hubble Space Telescope

The ___ is a space telescope that was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990 and remains in operation. Although not the first space telescope, ___ is one of the largest and most versatile and is well known as both a vital research tool and a public relations boon for astronomy.

Environmental Protection Agency, EPA

The ___ is an independent agency of the United States federal government for environmental protection. President Richard Nixon proposed the establishment of EPA on July 9, 1970 and it began operation on December 2, 1970, after Nixon signed an executive order.

Kyoto Protocol

The ___ is an international treaty which extends the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that commits state parties to reduce greenhouse gasemissions, based on the scientific consensus that (part one) global warming is occurring and (part two) it is extremely likely that human-made CO2 emissions have predominantly caused it. The ___ was adopted in Kyoto, Japan on 11 December 1997 and entered into force on 16 February 2005. There are currently 192 parties (Canada withdrew from the protocol, effective December 2012)[4] to the Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol implemented the objective of the UNFCCC to reduce the onset of global warming by reducing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere to "a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system" (Article 2). The Kyoto Protocol applies to the six greenhouse gases listed in Annex A: Carbon dioxide (CO2), Methane (CH4), Nitrous oxide (N2O), Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), Perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and Sulphur hexafluoride (SF6).[6]

Shale Oil Revolution

The ___ is the product of advances in oil and natural gas production technology—notably, a new combination of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. ... The boom in production of oil and natural gas from ___ formations became a significant factor after 2008.

Fukushima Daiichi

The ___ nuclear disaster was an energy accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Ōkuma, Fukushima Prefecture, initiated primarily by the tsunami following the Tōhoku earthquake on 11 March 2011.

Stern Review

The ___ on the Economics of Climate Change is a 700-page report released for the Government of the United Kingdom on 30 October 2006 by economist Nicholas Stern, chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics (LSE) and also chair of the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy (CCCEP) at Leeds University and LSE. The report discusses the effect of global warming on the world economy. Although not the first economic report on climate change, it is significant as the largest and most widely known and discussed report of its kind.

Space Race

The ___ refers to the 20th-century competition between two Cold War rivals, the Soviet Union and the United States, for dominance in spaceflight capability.

L5 Society

The ___ was founded in 1975 by Carolyn Meinel and Keith Henson to promote the space colony ideas of Gerard K. O'Neill. In 1987 the ___ merged with the National Space Institute to form the National Space Society. "The name comes from the L4 and L5 Lagrangian points in the Earth-Moon system proposed as locations for the huge rotating space habitats that O'Neill envisioned. L4 and L5 are points of stable gravitational equilibrium located along the path of the moon's orbit, 60 degrees ahead or behind it.[2] An object placed in orbit around L5 (or L4) will remain there indefinitely without having to expend fuel to keep its position, whereas an object placed at L1, L2 or L3 (all points of unstable equilibrium) may have to expend fuel if it drifts off the point." O'Neill's first published paper on the subject, "The Colonization of Space", appeared in the magazine Physics Today in September 1974. A number of people who later became leaders of the L5 Society got their first exposure to the idea from this article. Among these were a couple from Tucson, Arizona, Carolyn Meinel and Keith Henson. The Hensons corresponded with O'Neill and were invited to present a paper on "Closed Ecosystems of High Agricultural Yield" at the 1975 Princeton Conference on Space Manufacturing Facilities, which was organized by O'Neill

Space Shuttle: Centrality of Cost

The ___ was the fourth human spaceflight program carried out by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which accomplished routine transportation for Earth-to-orbit crew and cargo from 1981 to 2011. Its official name, Space Transportation System (STS), was taken from a 1969 plan for a system of reusable spacecraft of which it was the only item funded for development The stalled plans for a U.S. space station evolved into the International Space Station and were formally initiated in 1983 by President Ronald Reagan, but the ISS suffered from long delays, design changes and cost over-runs[2] and forced the service life of the Space Shuttle to be extended several times until 2011 when it was finally retired—serving twice as long than it was originally designed to do. After some debate between the station and the vehicle, the vehicle was chosen; suitably designed, such a spacecraft could perform some longer-duration missions and thus fill some of the goals of the station, and over the longer run, could help lower the cost of access to space and make the station less expensive.[4]

Green Revolution

The ___, or Third Agricultural Revolution, is a set of research and technology transfer initiatives occurring between 1950 and the late 1960s, that increased agricultural production worldwide, particularly in the developing world, beginning most markedly in the late 1960s.

The Apollo program

The ___, was the third United States human spaceflight program carried out by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which accomplished landing the first humans on the Moon from 1969 to 1972.

Rosy Periwinkle

The best known medical agents from ___ arose from investigation into the plant's use in Jamaican folk medicine. Known as periwinkle tea in Jamaica, the well-known folk use of ___ led researchers to delve into its natural chemical properties in the 1950s. Scientific analysis of ___ led to the discovery of two previously unknown compounds, vincristine and vinblastine, which have been subsequently developed into potent medicines to save lives from leukemia and Hodgkin's lymphoma, respectively. As modern chemotherapeutic medicines, both vincristine and vinblastine have demonstrated profound value. Leukemia, a cancer of the blood and bone marrow, involves the formation of excessive amounts of white blood cells. The name leukemia means "white blood." In the treatment of leukemia, the periwinkle-derived alkaloid vincristine has shown great benefit, especially in pediatric cases. As a result of vincristine use, survival rates in these cases has risen from approximately 10 percent to 90 percent. Marketed initially by Eli Lilly and Co in the early 1960s under the name Oncovin, the drug is both effective and highly toxic. Effects of taking vincristine include hair loss, neuropathy, sodium imbalance and constipation. The drug must be used with great care and in tiny amounts, or its toxic properties will result in death. The periwinkle alkaloid vinblastine was first isolated at the University of Ontario. Used in the treatment of the head, neck, testicles, lungs and breasts, the drug has proven especially effective with Hodgkin's lymphoma. Named after Thomas Hodgkin who discovered the disease in the early 1800s, Hodgkin's lymphoma spreads through the lymphatic system and is characterized by swollen and painful lymph nodes, weight loss, night sweats and a host of other symptoms.

(Climate Modeling) General Circulation Models, GCMs

The next level up are ___ (___), also called Global Climate Models, which simulate the physics of the climate itself. This means they capture the flows of air and water in the atmosphere and/or the oceans, as well as the transfer of heat. Over time, scientists have gradually added in other aspects of the Earth system to GCMs. These would have once been simulated in standalone models, such as land hydrology, sea ice and land ice.

Storage Rings

Though his skeptical colleagues challenged his ideas, O'Neill went on to design a "___" that could store accelerated particles awaiting collision. Today, most subatomic particle accelerators are based on O'Neill's ___ concept.

[1D, 2D, and 3D] climate model simulators

While 1D simulations can be carried out with classical ___, such as NEURON or Genesis, the simulations in 3D are based on systems of partial and ordinary differential equations (PDEs and ODEs) describing distinct intracellular processes.

Gaia: Space Program

___ is a space observatory of the European Space Agency (ESA), launched in 2013 and expected to operate until c.2022. The spacecraft is designed for astrometry: measuring the positions, distances and motions of stars with unprecedented precision.[7][8] The mission aims to construct by far the largest and most precise 3D space catalog ever made, totalling approximately 1 billion astronomical objects, mainly stars, but also planets, comets, asteroids and quasars among others

Virgin Galactic

___ is a spaceflight company within the Virgin Group. It is developing commercial spacecraft and aims to provide suborbital spaceflights to space tourists and suborbital launches for space science missions. ___ plans to provide orbital human spaceflights as well.

Michael Mann

___ is an American climatologist and geophysicist, currently director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, who has contributed to the scientific understanding of historic climate change based on the temperature record of the past thousand years.

Ken Cuccinelli

___ is an American politician and lawyer who served as the 46th attorney general of Virginia from 2010 until 2014. Cuccinelli was the Republican nominee for Governor of Virginia in the 2013 Virginia gubernatorial election.

Mt. Pinatubo

___ is an active stratovolcano in the Zambales Mountains, located on the tripoint boundary of the Philippine provinces of Zambales, Tarlac and Pampanga, all in Central Luzon on the northern island of Luzon.

Charles Perrow

___ is an emeritus professor of sociology at Yale University and visiting professor at Stanford University. He is the author of several books and many articles on organizations, and is primarily concerned with the impact of large organizations on society. ___ is also the author of the book Normal Accidents: Living With High Risk Technologies (ISBN 0-691-00412-9) which explains his theory of normal accidents; catastrophic accidents that are inevitable in tightly coupled and complex systems.[9][10][11] His theory predicts that failures will occur in multiple and unforeseen ways that are virtually impossible to predict.

Alternative Energy

___ is any energy source that is an alternative to fossil fuel. These alternatives are intended to address concerns about fossil fuels, such as its high carbon dioxide emissions, an important factor in global warming.

Space colonization

___ is permanent human habitation off the planet Earth.

Space tourism

___ is space travel for recreational, leisure or business purposes. There are several different types of ___, including orbital, suborbital and lunar. To date, orbital ___ has been performed only by the Russian Space Agency.

Monocultures

___ is the agricultural practice of producing or growing a single crop, plant, or livestock species, variety, or breed in a field or farming system at a time. Polyculture, where more than one crop is grown in the same space at the same time, is the alternative to monoculture

Anthropocene

___ is the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment.

Bioprospecting (Biodiversity prospecting)

___ is the search for plant and animal species from which medicinal drugs and other commercially valuable compounds can be obtained. ___ or bioprospecting is the systematic search for biochemical and genetic information in nature in order to develop commercially-valuable products for pharmaceutical, agricultural, cosmetic and other applications. ___ is defined as a systematic and organized search for useful products derived from bioresources including plants, microorganisms, animals, etc., that can be developed further for commercialization and overall benefits of the society. This is fiercely criticised as 'biopiracy' by those who believe it exploits indigenous knowledge. They point to the fact that companies may attempt to take out a patent on a medicine derived from a traditional cure without recognising the original users. Others argue the huge investment in research and development by pharmaceutical companies gives them this right.

Anti-Nuclear Power

___ speakers from all continents, including indigenous speakers and scientists, testified to the health and environmental problems of uranium mining and processing, nuclear power, nuclear weapons, nucleartests, and radioactive waste disposal.

Seed Banks

___ store seeds to preserve genetic diversity; hence they are a type of gene bank. There are about 6 million accessions, or samples of a particular population, stored as seeds in about 1,300 genebanks throughout the world as of 2006.[10] This amount represents a small fraction of the world's biodiversity, and many regions of the world have not been fully explored. In the early twentieth century, scientists and agriculturalists collected plants in greenhouses, botanical gardens, and fields. Seed collection efforts in the twentieth century coincided with the professionalization of plant breeding. When scientists became concerned over the loss of plant genetic diversity due to the expansion of a few agricultural crops around mid-century, countries and organizations created seed banks for long-term seed storage. Around 1979, environmental groups began to object to what they perceived as limited access to seed banks, and they questioned the ownership of the intellectual property of living organisms. Controversy also ensued over the uneven flow of genetic resources because many of the seed banks were located in the global North, yet plants were collected largely from countries in the global South. The environmental groups' campaigns, which some called the seed wars, and the movement for biodiversity conservation intersected in ways that shaped debates about plant genetic material and seed banking. Several significant shifts in governance occurred in 1994 that led to the creation of the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute in Italy, and to changes in the governance of several international seed banks.

(Acid Rain) Transregional

___ transportation of pollution, as with acid deposition and the long-range transport of air toxic, may threaten human health directly (particularly in the respect to respiratory disorders), and indirectly through effects on terrestrial ecosystems, forests, and agriculture.

Climate Modeling

___ uses quantitative methods to simulate the interactions of the important drivers of climate, including atmosphere, oceans, land surface and ice. They are used for a variety of purposes from study of the dynamics of the climate system to projections of future climate.

Edward Teller

___ was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist who is known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb", although he did not care for the title. He made numerous contributions to nuclear and molecular physics, spectroscopy, and surface physics. In the 1980s, ___ began a strong campaign for what was later called the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), derided by critics as "Star Wars," the concept of using ground and satellite-based lasers, particle beams and missiles to destroy incoming Soviet ICBMs. __ lobbied with government agencies—and got the approval of President Ronald Reagan—for a plan to develop a system using elaborate satellites which used atomic weapons to fire X-ray lasers at incoming missiles—as part of a broader scientific research program into defenses against nuclear weapons. Many prominent scientists argued that the system was futile. Hans Bethe, along with IBM physicist Richard Garwin and Cornell University colleague Kurt Gottfried, wrote an article in Scientific American which analyzed the system and concluded that any putative enemy could disable such a system by the use of suitable decoys that would cost a very small fraction of the SDI program.[100] In 1987 ___ published a book supporting civil defense and active protection systems such as SDI which was titled Better a Shield than a Sword and his views on the role of lasers in SDI were published, and are available, in two 1986-7 laser conference proceedings.

Arne Næss

___ was a Norwegian philosopher who coined the term "deep ecology" and was an important intellectual and inspirational figure within the environmental movement of the late twentieth century.[6] Næss cited Rachel Carson's 1962 book Silent Spring as being a key influence in his vision of deep ecology. Næss combined his ecological vision with Gandhian nonviolence and on several occasions participated in direct action.

Global Cooling

___ was a conjecture during the 1970s of imminent cooling of the Earth's surface and atmosphere culminating in a period of extensive glaciation.

brilliant pebbles

___ was a non-nuclear system of satellite-based interceptors designed to use high-velocity, watermelon-sized, teardrop-shaped projectiles made of tungsten as kinetic warheads. It was designed to operate in conjunction with the Brilliant Eyes sensor system.

Mir

___ was a space station that operated in low Earth orbit from 1986 to 2001, operated by the Soviet Union and later by Russia. ___ was the first modular space station and was assembled in orbit from 1986 to 1996. It had a greater mass than any previous spacecraft.

Sherwood Rowland

___ was an American Nobel laureate and a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Irvine. His research was on atmospheric chemistry and chemical kinetics. His best-known work was the discovery that chlorofluorocarbons contribute to ozone depletion

Karen Silkwood

___ was an American chemical technician and labor union activist known for raising concerns about corporate practices related to health and safety of workers in a nuclear facility. Following her mysterious death, which received extensive coverage, her estate filed a lawsuit against chemical company Kerr-McGee, which was eventually settled for $1.38 million. Her story was chronicled in Mike Nichols's 1983 Academy Award-nominated film Silkwood in which she was portrayed by Meryl Streep. She worked at the Kerr-McGee Cimarron Fuel Fabrication Site plant near Crescent, Oklahoma, United States. Silkwood's job was making plutonium pellets for nuclear reactor fuel rods. This plant experienced theft of plutonium by workers during this era[citation needed]. She joined the union and became an activist on behalf of issues of health and safety at the plant as a member of the union's negotiating team, the first woman to have that position at Kerr-McGee. In the summer of 1974, she testified to the Atomic Energy Commission about her concerns.

Gerard K. O'Neill

___ was an American physicist and space activist. As a faculty member of Princeton University, he invented a device called the particle storage ring for high-energy physics experiments. Later, he invented a magnetic launcher called the mass driver. ___ became interested in the idea of space colonization in 1969 while he was teaching freshman physics at Princeton University.[3][21] His students were growing cynical about the benefits of science to humanity because of the controversy surrounding the Vietnam War.[22][23] To give them something relevant to study, he began using examples from the Apollo program as applications of elementary physics.[3][6] ___ posed the question during an extra seminar he gave to a few of his students: "Is the surface of a planet really the right place for an expanding technological civilization?"[21] His students' research convinced him that the answer was no ___ was inspired by the papers written by his students. He began to work out the details of a program to build self-supporting space habitats in free space.[3][7] Among the details was how to provide the inhabitants of a space colony with an Earth-like environment. His students had designed giant pressurized structures, spun up to approximate Earth gravity by centrifugal force. With the population of the colony living on the inner surface of a sphere or cylinder, these structures resembled "inside-out planets". He found that pairing counter-rotating cylinders would eliminate the need to spin them using rockets.[21] This configuration has since been known as the ___ cylinder.

Project Independence

___ was an initiative announced by U.S. President Richard Nixon on November 7, 1973,[1] in reaction to the OAPEC oil embargo and the resulting 1973 oil crisis.

(Bioprospecting) Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights, TRIPs

___(___): The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights is an international legal agreement between all the member nations of the World Trade Organization. It sets down minimum standards for the regulation by national governments of many forms of intellectual property (IP) as applied to nationals of other WTO member nations.[3] ___ was negotiated at the end of the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1994 and is administered by the WTO. In the context of bioprospecting: Second, policy makers schooled in the Western legal system are apt to suppose that the only IPRs which exist are the ones referred to in ___ and the WIPO-administered conventions. In fact, local and indigenous communities often have very complex custom-based intellectual property systems. Just as local communities can benefit from learning about the western IPR tradition, it behoves lawyers and policy makers also to learn about how traditional communities generate, use, manage and control their own knowledge.

Spotted Owl (controversy)

___: In 1990, the logging industry estimated up to 30,000 of 168,000 jobs would be lost because of the owl's protected status. The controversy pitted individual loggers and small sawmill owners against environmentalists. Bumper stickers reading Kill a Spotted Owl—Save a Logger and I Like Spotted Owls—Fried appeared to support the loggers.

Evaluations: UNITED NATIONS FRAMEWORK CONVENTION ON CLIMATE CHANGE, UNFCC

___, (___) Concerned that human activities have been substantially increasing the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, that these increases enhance the natural greenhouse effect, and that this will result on average in an additional warming of the Earth's surface and atmosphere and may adversely affect natural ecosystems and humankind,

Blue Origin

___, LLC is an American privately funded aerospace manufacturer and spaceflight services company headquartered in Kent, Washington.

Background Extinction (Rate)

___, also known as the normal extinction rate, refers to the standard rate of extinction in earth's geological and biological history before humans became a primary contributor to extinctions. This is primarily the pre-human extinction rates during periods in between major extinction events.

James Lovelock

___, is an independent scientist, environmentalist, and futurist who lives in Dorset, England. He is best known for proposing the Gaia hypothesis, which postulates that the Earth functions as a self-regulating system. With a PhD in medicine, he performed cryopreservation experiments on rodents, including successfully thawing frozen specimens. His methods were influential in the theories of cryonics (the cryopreservation of humans). He invented the electron capture detector, and using it, became the first to detect the widespread presence of CFCs in the atmosphere. While designing scientific instruments for NASA, he developed the Gaia hypothesis. In the 2000s, he proposed a method of climate engineering to restore carbon dioxide-consuming algae. He has been an outspoken member of Environmentalists for Nuclear, citing the effects of carbon dioxide as being more harmful to the environment, and warning of global warming due to the greenhouse effect. He has written several environmental science books based upon the Gaia hypothesis since the late 1970s.

(MANNED) Moon Landing - US

___: (7/16/69)After the early Soviet successes, especially Yuri Gagarin's flight, US President John F. Kennedy looked for a US project that would capture the public imagination. He asked Vice President Lyndon Johnson to make recommendations on a scientific endeavor that would prove US world leadership. The proposals included non-space options such as massive irrigation projects to benefit the Third World. The Soviets, at the time, had more powerful rockets than the United States, which gave them an advantage in some kinds of space mission. By emphasizing the scientific payoff and playing on fears of Soviet space dominance, Kennedy and Johnson managed to swing public opinion: by 1965, 58 percent of Americans favored Apollo, up from 33 percent two years earlier. After Johnson became President in 1963, his continuing defense of the program allowed it to succeed in 1969, as Kennedy planned.

End of Leaded Gasoline

___: 1985: The EPA discussed a total ban on leaded gasoline by 1988. 1990: In amendments to the Clean Air Act, lead was banned from gasoline. The measures would take effect in 1995, giving gasoline companies five more years to completely phase out lead.

Reagan exit (--> Bush) memos and climate

___: A 1987 memo showed Reagan White House officials pushing back against members of Reagan's own Cabinet in arguing for a strong treaty safeguarding the thin band of atmospheric ozone that protects the Earth from harmful radiation from space. "Many regard this issue as the most important priority on the global environmental agenda," John D. Negroponte, then a State Department assistant secretary for the environment, oceans and fisheries, wrote to then-Secretary of State George P. Shultz.

2001 (1968)

___: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 epic science fiction film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick. The screenplay was written by Kubrick and Arthur C.

Nuclear Victimhood (Japan)

___: August 15 approaches, and once again Japan's neighbors are up in arms over the prospect of a prime minister's visit to Yasukuni Shrine. In no other country do efforts to honor the victims of war arouse such controversy. But then, in no other country is such a visit shrouded with so many shades of meaning. If James Orr is right, though, Asian concerns are misplaced: The visits do not honor the deeds of the militarists. Rather, the Yasukuni Shrine ceremonies respond to a vital national psychological need to honor victimhood.

(Exploiting) Local Knowledge

___: Biodiversity prospecting is the exploration, extraction and screening of biological diversity and indigenous knowledge for commercially valuable genetic and biochemical resources. Bilateral bioprospecting agreements are sanctioned by the multilateral Convention on Biological Diversity. In the vast majority of cases, however, commercial bioprospecting agreements cannot be effectively monitored or enforced by source communities, countries, or by the Convention, and amount to little more than "legalized" bio-piracy.

Merchants of Doubt

___: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming is a 2010 non-fiction book by American historians of science Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway. Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming is a 2010 non-fiction book by American historians of science Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway. It identifies parallels between the global warming controversy and earlier controversies over tobacco smoking, acid rain, DDT, and the hole in the ozone layer. Oreskes and Conway write that in each case "keeping the controversy alive" by spreading doubt and confusion after a scientific consensus had been reached, was the basic strategy of those opposing action.[1] In particular, they say that Fred Seitz, Fred Singer, and a few other contrarian scientists joined forces with conservative think tanks and private corporations to challenge the scientific consensus on many contemporary issues.[2]

Atomic-Powered Communism

___: IN each period of its history, the Soviet Union embraced large-scale technologies with an energy that belied its economic backwardness. Its leaders saw technology as a means to convert this largely agrarian, peasant society into a wet-oiled machine of workers dedicated to the construction of Communism. They beloved large-scale technologies would marshal scarce resources efficiently and provide an appropriate form for the political and cultural education of a burgeoning working lass.

Love Canal Accident (1979)

___: In 1953, the Hooker Chemical Company, then the owners and operators of the property, covered the canal with earth and sold it to the city for one dollar. Just months later, Love Canal exploded. Puddles of noxious substances were pointed out to me by the residents. Children returned from play with burns on their hands and faces.

Think-Tank Science

___: It is difficult to pin down the exact political meaning because it is a weasel phrase. It seems to be most often used to mean "some bogus 'research' we just cooked up in a think tank".

Congressional Protection, Endangered Species

___: Leatherback sea turtles are one of 1,274 endangered plants and animals in the United States protected by the Endangered Species Act. A key law protecting endangered wildlife from extinction is at risk. On Dec. 28, 1973, President Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act, or ESA, into law, with bipartisan support. This is an example of ___ of ___.

Supersonic Transport (SST)

___: Research into sonic boom over us and seeing if it will scare cows hurt agriculture is what focused the department of transportation to open a climate research division → when you fund science you don't know what is going to come out of it

Rocket Engines: Russian Influence

___: The RD-180 is a rocket engine designed and built in Russia. It features a dual combustion chamber, dual-nozzle design and is fueled by a kerosene/LOX mixture. Currently, RD-180 engines are used for the first stage of the US Atlas V launch vehicle.

Space shuttle: Over

___: The Space Shuttle program finished with its last mission, STS-135 flown by Atlantis, in July 2011, retiring the final Shuttle in the fleet. The Space Shuttle program formally ended on August 31, 2011. The Space Shuttle program was extended several times beyond its originally envisioned 15-year life span because of the delays in building the United States space station in low Earth orbit—a project which eventually evolved into the International Space Station. It was formally scheduled for mandatory retirement in 2010 in accord with the directives President George W. Bush issued on January 14, 2004 in his Vision for Space Exploration.[33] A$2.5 billion spending provision allowing NASA to fly the Space Shuttle beyond its then-scheduled retirement in 2010 passed the Congress in April 2009, although neither NASA nor the White House requested the one-year extension.

Soviet: Water Pollution

___: The paper contends that discussions about pulp production near Baikal influenced other regions to improve the engineering of water treatment facilities. The development of such facilities became a compromise between supporters and defenders of increasing pulp production, but did not result in solving the problem of water pollution. In analyzing this issue, I consider discussions around the Baikal pulp plant and the first attempts to introduce advanced water treatment in an industrial city of Svetogorsk and beyond.

(Soviet: Pollution) Economic Downturn

___: These early reforms failed to revive the increasingly-stagnant Soviet economy, with productivity growth falling below zero by the early 1980s. This ongoing poor economic performance led to a more radical set of reforms under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev. While attempting to maintain socialist ideals and central control over primary societal goals, Gorbachev aimed to decentralize economic activity and open the economy up to foreign trade. This restructuring, referred to as perestroika, encouraged individual private incentive, creating greater openness. Perestroika was in direct opposition to the previously hierarchical nature of the command economy. But having greater access to information helped foster critiques of Soviet control, not just of the economy, but also of social life. When the Soviet leadership relaxed control in order to save the faltering economic system, they helped create conditions that would lead to the country's dissolution. While perestroika initially appeared to be a success, as Soviet firms took advantage of new freedoms and new investment opportunities, optimism soon faded. A severe economic contraction characterized the late 1980s and early 1990s, which would be the last years of the Soviet Union. Soviet leaders no longer had power to intervene amidst the growing economic chaos. Newly-empowered local leaders demanded greater autonomy from central authority, shaking the foundations of the command economy, while more localized cultural identities and priorities took precedence over national concerns. With its economy and political unity in tatters, the Soviet Union collapsed in late 1991, fragmenting into fifteen separate states. (To read more, see: Pros and Cons of Capitalist vs Socialist Economies). CONSEQUENCES: Health conditions began to deteriorate in the late sixties, and were exacerbated by the collapse of the Soviet Empire in late 1991. These were reflected in increasing mortality and morbidity, decreasing natality, a deteriorating health service, and an environment ruined by the heedless drive toward industrialization and militarization. This resulted in a 'systemic' breakdown of the Soviet system, not only its health care structure. The situation of the former Soviet Union is that of a country that has suffered a humiliating national defeat with all the consequences of a 'post-war' situation, including inflation, anomie and social polarization.

Mainstream: James Edward Hansen

____ is an American adjunct professor directing the Program on Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. In 2000, Hansen advanced an alternative view of global warming over the last 100 years, arguing that during that time frame the negative forcing via aerosols and the positive forcing via carbon dioxide (CO2) largely balanced each other out, and that the 0.74±0.18 °C net rise in average global temperatures could mostly be explained by greenhouse gases other than carbon dioxide, such as methane and chlorofluorocarbons. However, even then he wrote "the future balance of forcings is likely to shift toward dominance of CO2 over aerosols".[43] In 2003, ___ wrote a paper called "Can We Defuse the Global Warming Time Bomb?" in which he argued that human-caused forces on the climate are now greater than natural ones, and that this, over a long time period, can cause large climate changes.[44] He further states that a lower limit on "dangerous anthropogenic interference" is set by the stability of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. His view on actions to mitigate climate change is that "halting global warming requires urgent, unprecedented international cooperation, but the needed actions are feasible and have additional benefits for human health, agriculture and the environment."

Anthropocentrism vs. Biocentrism

___—literally meaning "human centered"—is the view that all environmental responsibility is derived from human interests alone. By contrast, 2___ is the view that we have direct moral obligations to things in the environment for their own sake, irrespective of their impact on human interests.

(Bioprospecting) Profit-Sharing

___—the search for valuable chemical products in natural biological resources1—is an important potential source of novel chemical and biological products for medicine, agriculture, and other industries.2 But a great deal of the world's "biodiversity" is found in developing countries, which often lack the research capacity to make use of it. ___ in such environments therefore generally requires outside bio-prospectors and sponsors from the developed world. There is considerable concern about such bio-prospectors taking what is valuable without compensating the community from which their biological samples come or whose knowledge led to the valuable discovery. Such "bio-piracy" seems exploitative.

Geoengineering

climate intervention, commonly referred to as ___, is the deliberate and large-scale intervention in the Earth's climate system, usually with the aim of mitigating the adverse effects of global warming. Climate engineering is an umbrella term for measures that mainly fall into two categories: greenhouse gas removal and solar radiation management. Greenhouse gas removal approaches, of which carbon dioxide removal represents the most prominent subcategory addresses the cause of global warming by removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Solar radiation management attempts to offset effects of greenhouse gases by causing the Earth to absorb less solar radiation.