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  3. In the course of a long weekend in 1991, the Philippines’ Mount Pinatubo volcano injected enough sulfur dioxide into the stratos

In the course of a long weekend in 1991, the Philippines’ Mount Pinatubo volcano injected enough sulfur dioxide into the stratos

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问题     In the course of a long weekend in 1991, the Philippines’ Mount Pinatubo volcano injected enough sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere to temporarily reduce the sunlight reaching the earth’s surface by about 10%. As a result, global temperatures dropped by an average of 0.5 degrees °C over the next 18 months. Turns out the lesson nature taught us that weekend has not been wasted; it may help us combat global warming.
    The late climate scientist Stephen Schneider used to compare the modern world’s dependence on fossil fuels to a drug addict’s need for heroin. The habit is dangerous and unhealthy, yet almost impossible to break. Certainly, that’s the lesson to be drawn from the inability of the world’s governments to reduce carbon emissions over the past 20 years. So what are we to do? The solution for addiction often involves palliatives like methadone for a heroin junkie, and so it may be for our addiction to fossil fuels. Our planetary methadone, Schneider said, may be geoengineering—or the attempt to replicate the effect Mount Pinatubo had on the climate in 1991.
    Geoengineering, the deliberate modification of the environment to suit human needs, has long been regarded as the height of hubris by many people and most environmentalists. We are a long way from fully understanding how the climate system works. Who’s to say that in our efforts to tinker with it we won’t make things worse? These are valid concerns. But it is increasingly hard to see how we are going to solve global warming without some reliance on it. Indeed, after a lengthy study(in which I participated)the U.S. Government Accountability Office just issued a report about geoengineering that makes this very point.
    Can geoengineering really do the job? The evidence is all around us. Modern global warming is itself evidence of inadvertent geoengineering, the result of all that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases we’ve been pumping into the atmosphere for a century or so. But it was the Pinatubo eruption that provided a modern-day example of geoengineering’s potential. Scientists studying the eruption wondered if they could do the same thing deliberately. The eventual result was an ingenious technology known as stratospheric aerosol injection, or SAI, which today is on the verge of providing us with a potentially powerful tool to cool the planet.
    Under a plan currently being developed by Nathan Myhrvold’s Intellectual Ventures, sulfur dioxide would be pumped up a 25-km-long pipe suspended by high-altitude balloons, then sprayed out into the stratosphere. Myhrvold, formerly Microsoft’s chief technology officer, says just one such pipe less than a foot in diameter could do the job for the entire northern hemisphere—at a cost of less than $1 billion. More research is needed, however, to establish the technology’s ramifications, including its effects on ozone levels.
According to the text, what can be learned about geoengineering?
选项 A、Its inspiration comes from the effect of methadone on a heroin addict.
B、People hold divided views about this immature technology.
C、Its feasibility lacks sufficient evidence nowadays.
D、It has a disadvantageous effect on our ozone level.
答案B
解析 属信息推断题。作者在第三段表示有人对这项技术表示担忧，但在后文又大力支持这项技术，所以选项B符合题意。作者在文章第二段第一句只是将地球工程学比作美沙酮的镇痛剂，而并非说地球工程学的灵感源自于美沙酮，故选项A错误。选项C起到了反向干扰的作用，作者在第四段第一句谈到了地球工程学可行性的证据很丰富，故选项C错误。原文在最后一段最后一句谈到了应该研究它对臭氧层的影响，但其对臭氧层真正有害与否尚未确认，选项D将推测当成事实，故选项D错误。
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