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One conclusion to be drawn from the Yale-Columbia project is the need for better data, which requires funds.

Experiences like the recent biofuels surge, which is driving up food prices, show how treacherous even well-intentioned decisions about the environment can be when they're uninformed.

The same holds for consumers, who sometimes think paying somebody to plant a few trees will compensate for flying around the world in airplanes.

For such decisions, data are essential. If we're going to avoid squandering our natural resources, the quicker we begin to rely more on facts and less on assumptions, the better.

Some countries simply lie or make up the facts.

Today's Russian bureaucrats may still be fudging its environmental figures.

Among the worst offenders were Japan, South Korea, Brazil, the United States, Italy and Paraguay.

(While there are good comparative data on ozone, smog also includes nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxides and other components that are poorly tracked in most nations.) Among the best industrial countries were Malaysia, the United Kingdom and all of Eastern Europe (a legacy of the Soviet nuclear program).

Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, which have more severe water problems.

Brazil is another country whose high rank—34th—is deceptive.

Brazil is a vast land blessed with an abundance of water, which yields energy relatively cheaply with no carbon emissions

Brazil is now the world's fourth biggest emitter of carbon, mainly due to the felling of trees.

By contrast, Belgium and the Netherlands, which share much in terms of population and geography with their neighbors, suffer from neglect of the environment—particularly in protecting native habitats.

cannot be reversed to regenerate the original fuel mass

a fuel problem does exist

If the supply of fuel is finite, not only will there be no energy supply when the fuel is exhausted

all other processes that depend on it will cease

Several factors combine to make the problem an urgent one

World population

demand for energy will also increase

coal, oil (petroleum), natural gas, uranium, and fuel wood—is limited and insufficient to sustain rapid rates of development.

debate about the exact length of time available before the effects of a worldwide shortage become apparent

shortage will occur.

geothermal energy, hydroelectric power, peat, ocean thermal energy, solar energy, tidal energy, wind power, and fuel wood.

replenish themselves naturally in a relatively short time and will therefore always be available.

Renewable energy resources

indirectly responsible for many other renewable energy sources.

ocean currents and winds are results of the uneven distribution of solar radiation over the Earth's surface

winds in turn produce waves whose energy can be utilized

windmills and wind power

ocean thermal energy, solar heating of the upper layers of the ocean produces temperature gradients that can be harnessed to generate electricity

Sun also powers the hydrologic cycle, in which ocean water is evaporated, transported over the continents, and precipitated as rain or snow to form rivers

flow energy produces hydroelectric power.

energy locked in such renewable fuel sources as wood and peat is derived from the Sun by the process of photosynthesis.

renewable energy source is geothermal energy

arises through the leakage of heat from the Earth's interior to the surface

over the entire surface of the Earth at a very low average rate, leakage is much higher in certain locations.

Yellowstone National Park

Iceland, Italy, and New Zealand.

possible to tap the heat and use it for human purposes.

Nonrenewable resources originate from two processes: (1) photosynthesis, which occurred many millions of years ago, followed by the fossilization of the plant and animal life that resulted, and (2) the formation of the Earth itself.

fossil fuels—coal, oil (petroleum), and natural gas;

produced the fuels for nuclear energy, such as uranium for fission and lighter elements for fusion

irreplaceable fuels represent an energy capital that must be invested wisely.

A cleaner-burning fuel than oil, natural gas seemed to be in abundant supply at the turn of the 21st century and, with the greatly enlarged network of gas pipelines, was rapidly growing in use.

nearly total dependence on fossil fuels and hydroelectricity ensures that efforts to solve energy problems by switching to alternative sources will have to overcome a great deal of inertia, both economic and psychological.

sources as solar power, wind power, and synthetic fuels suffer from the serious drawback that few major installations now exist.

handicapped by the engineering problems of converting the energy to a form useful to human beings.

solar energy reaches the top of the atmosphere in amounts 10,000 times greater than all human production of energy, it reaches the Earth's surface at rates of only about 80 to 250 W/m2, and considerably less on cloudy days.

arge-scale system based on solar-collector panels will be physically huge, causing problems of maintenance and land use

Wind power, wave power, and ocean-thermal-generation sources suffer from similar difficulties

“In 2007 it became clear that the recorded-music industry is contracting and that it will be a very different beast from what it was in the 20th century,”

Warner Music's share price has fallen to $4.75, 72% lower than its IPO price in 2005

They now want to move beyond Apple's iTunes and its paid-for downloads.

Barnstormers, who were in fact aerial showmen, fired the imagination of aviators and skydivers after World War I. The barnstormers showed airborne performances and parachute jumps and travelled every year throughout the United States. Competitions began as a result of the increase of parachuting awareness. The first contest of accuracy landing was held in 1930 in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

The military used paratroopers in World War II , that is between 1939 and 1945. The paratroopers were parachute-equipped soldiers and had the most famous use on D-Day, the invasion of Normandy (Normandie), France, on June 6, 1944

The surplus of nylon parachute equipment after World War II and the fact that the U.S. Army had started the first military sport parachuting clubs, set the grounds of skydiving in the United Dtates, as a pleasant and relaxing activity. The same thing happened in many other countries, and thus , the first parachuting world championships were organized in 1951 in Yugoslavia.

Little by little, in the mid 1960, systems specially made for sport parachutes took the place of the military surplus systems. Parachutists started to call this activity skydiving and calling themselves skydivers. In order to improve the opening characteristics and to make them more maneuverable, there were a few sport modifications to military parachutes. A French Canadian kite builder, Domina Jalbert, developed in 1964 the the ram-air design, that has set the tendencies for parachutes in skydiving from then on.

Sport skydivers constantly tested new and revolutionary designs and materials. Apart from sport uses , there have also been designed sport-generated designs like military HAHO (high altitude, high opening) designs, smoke jumping designs and many types of equipment for two-person and four-person tandem jumping. The military HAHO designs allowed soldiers to silently fly over large areas. The smoke jumping designs aimed to put firefighters into remote forest fires from low altitude.

Skydiving has kept on becoming more and more popular after the late 1980s, and this is because the equipment, that is reliable, lightweight, and easy-to-operate, picture this sport as accesible to many people. The U.S. president George H. W. Bush also jumped , thus increasing the popularity of skydiving.