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  3. Among the phrases you really, really do not want to hear from climate scientists are: "that really shocked us," "we had no idea

Among the phrases you really, really do not want to hear from climate scientists are: "that really shocked us," "we had no idea

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问题     Among the phrases you really, really do not want to hear from climate scientists are: "that really shocked us," "we had no idea how bad it was," and "reality is well ahead of the climate models." Yet in speaking to researchers who focus on the Arctic, you hear comments like these so regularly they begin to sound like the thumping refrain from Jaws: annoying signs of something that you really, really wish would go away.
    Let me explain the phrases above. The "shock" came when the International Polar Year, a global organization studying the Arctic, froze a small vessel into the sea ice off eastern Siberia in September 2006. Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen had done the same thing a century before, and his Fram, carried by the drifting ice, arrived eastern Greenland 34 months later. IPY scientists thought their Tara would take 24 to 36 months. But it reached Greenland in just 14 months, stark evidence that the sea ice found a more open, ice-free, and thus faster path westward thanks to Arctic melting.
    The loss of Arctic sea ice is well ahead of what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) forecast, largely because emissions of carbon dioxide have topped what the panel—which foolishly expected nations to care enough about global warming to do something about it—predicted. "The models just aren’t keeping up with the reality of CO2 emissions", says the IPY’s David Carlson. Although policy-makers hoped climate models would prove to be alarmist, the opposite is true, particular in the Arctic.
    The IPCC may also have been too cautious on Greenland, assuming that the melting of its glaciers would contribute little to sea-level rise. Some studies found that Greenland’s glacial streams were surging and surface ice was changing into liquid lakes, but others made a strong case that those surges and melts were short-term aberrations, not long-term trends. It seemed to be stuck. More reliable data, however, such as satellite measurements of Greenland’s mass, show that it is losing about 52 cubic miles per year and that the melting is accelerating. So while the IPCC predicted that sea level would rise 16 inches this century, "now a more likely figure is one meter (39 inches) at the least," says Carlson. "Chest high instead of knee high." Hence the "no idea how bad it was."
    The frozen north had another surprise in store. Scientists have long known that permafrost, if it melted, would release carbon, aggravating global warming, which would melt more permafrost, which would add more to global warming, on and on in a feedback loop. But estimates of how much carbon is locked into Arctic permafrost were, it turns out, woefully off. It is about three times as much as was thought, about 1.6 trillion metric tons, which has surprised a lot of people," says Edward Schuur of the University of Florida. That 1.6 trillion tons is about twice the amount now in the atmosphere. And Schuur’s measurements of how quickly CO2 can come out of permafrost, reported in May, were also a surprise: 1 billion to 2 billion tons per year. Cars and light trucks in the US emit about 300 million tons per year.
    In an insightful observation in The Guardian this month, Jim Watson of the University of Sussex wrote that "a new kind of climate skeptic is becoming more common": someone who doubts not the science but the policy response. For instance, the G8, led by Europe, has vowed to take steps to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius by reducing CO2 emissions. We are now at 0.8 degree. But the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is already enough to raise 2 degrees. The only reason it hasn’t is that the atmosphere is full
    of crap (dust and aerosols that contribute to asthma, emphysema, and other diseases) that acts as a global coolant. As that pollution is reduced for health reasons, we are going to blast right through 2 degrees, which is enough to aggravate droughts and storms, wreak havoc on agriculture, and produce a planet warmer than it’s been in millions of years. The 2 degree promise is an illusion.
Jim Watson’s attitude towards the international effort on dealing with global warming is________.
选项 A、trustful
B、doubtful
C、complimentary
D、derogatory
答案B
解析 本题关键词是Jim Watson，问题是：吉姆.华生对于国际应对全球变暖的努力持何种态度?定位到第六段。原文第六段第一句提到，吉姆.华生在评论中写道：“一种新的气象怀疑论(climate skeptic)越来越流行”：人们怀疑的不是科学，而是应对政策。而且最后一句称，G8集团承诺的2℃的承诺只是一个幻影罢了。由此可见，吉姆.华生对待国际应对全球变暖的努力的态度是怀疑的(doubtful)，选项B的doubtful(怀疑的)与原文的skeptic(怀疑论)属于同义替换，为正确答案。选项A“信任的”和选项C“赞扬的”属于正反混淆。原文中吉姆.华生只是持怀疑态度，而选项D的derogatory是“贬低的，侮辱的”之意，属于夸大事实。第六段：全球变暖会导致温度上升2℃，将给人类带来大浩劫。
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