Global warming caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases is having clear effects in the physical world: more heat waves, hea

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问题     Global warming caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases is having clear effects in the physical world: more heat waves, heavier rainstorms and higher sea levels, to cite a few. In recent years, though, social scientists have been wrestling with a murky question: What will climate change mean for human welfare?
    Forecasts in this realm are tricky, necessarily based on a long chain of assumptions. Scientific papers have predicted effects as varied as a greater spread of tropical diseases, fewer deaths from cold weather and more from hot weather, and even bumpier rides on airplanes. Now comes another entry in this literature: a prediction that in a hotter world, people will get less sleep.
    In a paper published online Friday by the journal Science Advances, Nick Obradovich and his colleagues predicted more restless nights, especially in the summer, as global temperatures rise. They found that the poor, who are less likely to have air-conditioning or be able to run it, as well as the elderly, who have more difficulty regulating their body temperature, would be hit hard.
    If global emissions are allowed to continue at a high level, the paper found, then additional nights of sleeplessness can be expected beyond what people normally experience. By 2050, for every 100 Americans, an extra six nights of sleeplessness can be expected every month, the researchers calculated. By 2099, that would more than double, to 14 additional nights of tossing and turning each month for every 100 people, in their estimation. Researchers have long known that being too hot or too cold at night can disturb anyone’ s sleep, but nobody had thought to ask how that might affect people in a world grown hotter because of climate change.
    To calculate the effect of warmer temperatures in the future, Dr. Obradovich turned to data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which asks people in a survey to recall their sleep patterns in the previous month. Sure enough, he found a correlation between higher temperatures in particular cities and disturbed sleep as reported by their residents. To make forecasts, he drew on computer estimates of how hot particular places will get if greenhouse emissions continue at a high level.
    Dr. Obradovich acknowledged that a survey about sleep over the previous month was subject to the vagaries of memory. More definitive research would involve putting lots of people in a sleep laboratory and manipulating the temperature to see what happened. "Those ideal data don’t exist and would be prohibitively expensive to collect," he said.
Which of the following can best summarize the main idea of this text?

选项 A、The Climate Change on Human Welfare
B、The Consequences of Global Warming
C、An Effect of Climate Change, You Could Really Lose Sleep Over
D、A Scientific Paper by Dr. Obradovich

答案C

解析 主旨题。分析文章可知,其第一段提出疑问,即“气候变化对人类的健康意味着什么”。第二段指出气候变暖后人类的睡眠会减少。第三至六段则科学地分析“气候变暖导致人类睡眠减少”这一结论。C项意为“气候变化会让你夜不能寐”,与文章相吻合。故本题选C。
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