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  3. Too Little for Global Warming Oil and gas will run out too fast for doomsday global warming scenarios to materialize, accord

Too Little for Global Warming Oil and gas will run out too fast for doomsday global warming scenarios to materialize, accord

admin2011-01-02  63
问题                      Too Little for Global Warming
    Oil and gas will run out too fast for doomsday global warming scenarios to materialize, according to a controversial new analysis presented this week at the University of Uppsala in Sweden. The authors warn that all the fuel will be burnt before there is enough carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to realize predictions of melting ice caps and searing temperatures. Defending their predictions, scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change say they considered a range of estimates of oil and gas reserves, and point out that coal-burning could easily make up the shortfall. But all agree that burning coal would be even worse for the planet.
    The IPCC’s predictions of global meltdown pushed forward the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, an agreement obliging signatory nations to cut CO2 emissions. The IPCC considered a range of future scenarios, from unlimited burning of fossil-fuels to a fast transition towards greener energy sources. But geologists Anders Sivertsson, Kjell Aleklett and Colin Campbell of Uppsala University say there is not enough oil and gas left even the most conservative of the 40 IPCC scenarios to come to pass.
    Although estimates of oil and gas reserves vary widely, the researchers are part of a growing group of experts who believe that oil supplies will peak as soon as 2010, and gas soon after. Their analysis suggests that oil and gas reserves combined about to the equivalent of about 3,500 billion barrels of oil considerably less than the 5,000 billion barrels estimated in the most optimistic model envisaged by the IPCC. Even the average forecast of about 8,000 billion barrels is more than twice the Swedish estimate of the world’s remaining reserves.
    Nebojsa Nakicenovic, an energy economist at the University of Vienna, Austria who headed the 80-strong IPCC team that produced the forecasts, says the panel’s work still stands. He says they factored in a much broader and internationally accepted range of oil and gas estimates than the "conservative" Swedes.
    Even if oil and gas run out, "there’s a huge amount of coal underground that could be exploited", he says that burning coal could make the IPCC scenarios come true, but points out that such a switch would be disastrous. Coal is dirtier than oil and gas and produces more CO2 for each unit of energy, as well as releasing large amounts of particulates. He says the latest analysis is a "shot across the bows" for policy makers.
How much is the IPCC’s estimate of oil and gas reserves?
选项 A、About 3,500 billion barrels.
B、About 8,000 billion barrels.
C、About 4,000 billion barrels.
D、About 5,000 billion barrels.
答案D
解析 短文第三段第二句提到“比由政府间气候变化专门委员会提出的最乐观的估计——5000亿桶少”，故选D。
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