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  3. Are You Ready for More? In a world of climate change, abnormal storms are the new normal. Why we’re unprepared for the distr

Are You Ready for More? In a world of climate change, abnormal storms are the new normal. Why we’re unprepared for the distr

admin2013-09-16  31
问题                     Are You Ready for More?
    In a world of climate change, abnormal storms are the new normal. Why we’re unprepared for the distressing future.
    Joplin. Mo. , was prepared. The tornado(龙卷风)warning system gave residents 24 minutes’ notice that a twister was moving quickly towards them. Doctors and nurses at St. John’s Regional Medical Center, who had practiced tornado drills for years, moved fast. And yet more than 130 people died in Joplin, including four people at St. John’s, where the tornado sucked up the roof and left the building in ruins, like much of the shattered city.
    Even those who deny the existence of global climate change are having trouble dismissing the evidence of the last year. In the U. S. alone, nearly 1, 000 tornadoes have ripped across the heartland, killing more than 500 people and causing $ 9 billion in damage. Worldwide, the 2010 heat wave in Russia killed an estimated 15, 000 people. Floods in Australia and Pakistan killed 2, 000 and left large areas of each country under water. And the temperature keeps rising: 2010 was the hottest year on earth since weather records began.
    From these and other extreme-weather events, one lesson is sinking in with terrifying certainty. The stable climate of the last 12, 000 years is gone. And we are not prepared. Picture California a few decades from now, a place so hot and dry the state’s trademark orange and lemon trees have been replaced with olive trees that can handle the new climate. Alternating floods and droughts have made it impossible for the reservoirs to capture enough drinking water. They’re all changes that California officials believe they need to prepare for within the next decade or two. And they aren’t alone. Across the U. S. , it’s just beginning to dawn on civic leaders that they’ll need to help their communities brave coming dangers brought by climate change. Yet only 14 states are even planning, let alone implementing, climate-change adaptation plans, says Terri Cruce. a climate consultant in California. The other 36 apparently are hoping for a miracle.
    The game of catch-up will have to happen quickly because so much time was lost to inaction.
    The burning of fossil fuels has raised atmospheric levels of heat-trapping CO2 by 40% above what they were before the Industrial Revolution. The added heat in the atmosphere retains more moisture, builds up the energy in the system, and results in more violent and extreme weather. There is wide consensus that the 2 degrees Fahrenheit(华氏温度)of global warming of the last century is behind the rise in sea levels, more intense hurricanes, more heat waves, and more droughts and floods. Even if the world went carbon-neutral tomorrow, we’d be in for more; because of the CO2 that has already been emitted, we’re on track for another 5 degrees of warming.
    Changing temperatures will have a profound effect on the plants and animals among us. Crops that flourished in the old climate regime will have to adapt to the new one, as some pests are already doing. Tropical diseases are reaching temperate regions. Yet most of us are naive about what climate-change adaptation will involve. At the positive extreme, "adapting" sounds as pleasant as cities planting more trees, as Chicago, New York, Boston, and scores of others are doing. And it sounds as architecturally interesting as changing roofs: New York, which is looking at an average temperature increase of up to 3 degrees Fahrenheit by 2020, is planning to paint 3 million square feet of roofs white, to reflect sunlight and thus reduce urban heat-island effects.
    But those steps don’t even hint at how disruptive and expensive climate-change adaptation will be. "Ten years ago. when we thought climate change would be slow and linear, you could get away with thinking that ’adaptation’ meant putting in permeable(渗水的)pavement, so that storm water would be absorbed rather than cause floods, "says Bill McKibben, author of the 2010 book Earth. "Now it’s clear that’s not going to be at all sufficient. Adaptation is going to have to be a lot more than changing which trees cities plant. "
    States and cities will have to make huge investments in infrastructure to handle the rising sea and raging rivers. Keene. N. H. recently enlarged pipes along its highways so storm runoff would be less likely to wash out roads. In the San Francisco Bay area, planners are considering increasing the height of the seawall on the city’s waterfront at the San Francisco and Oakland airports. Because warmer air provides less lift, airport runways the world over will have to be lengthened in order for planes to take off.
    In Norfolk, Va. , where the combination of global sea-level rising and local-land sinking has brought water levels 13. 5 inches higher since 1930, the city has fought a battle to stay ahead of the tide by elevating one often-flooded roadway by 18 inches. An expected sea-level rise there of twice the global average means that 371 miles of highway are at risk of looking more like canals, while 2, 500 historic and archeological sites could become real-life versions of Atlantis.
    In Alaska, six native villages on the coast, including Newtok and Shishmaref, are likely to get swamped as seas rise and storm surges intensify. They also sit on permafrost(永冻层). which isn’t "perma" anymore. As the ground melts beneath the villages, the state is figuring out how and where to relocate them.
    The U. S. could take some advice from other countries like the Netherlands, which has more than a little experience keeping the ocean at bay. As part of a 200-year plan, the country has launched a 1. 5 billion project to broaden river channels so they aren’t overwhelmed as a result of the higher flows. Rotterdam raised by two feet a storm gate at the port that holds back the(rising)North Sea, and elevated the ground the new 1. 700-acre port sits on by a foot and a half to keep it from being submerged. all at a cost of some 50 million. All told. it will soon be spending some 4 billion a year to cope with what will happen. Britain, too, is taking adaptation seriously, planning to raise the height of the floodgates protecting central London from the Thames by 12 inches.
    So what lies behind America’s resistance to action? Economist Sachs points to the lobbying power of industries that resist acknowledgment of climate change’s impact. "The country is two decades behind in taking action because both parties are controlled by Big Oil and Big Coal, " says Sachs. But the pioneers of action isn’t waiting any longer. This week, representatives from an estimated 100 cities are meeting in Bonn, Germany, for the 2nd World Congress on Cities and Adaptation to Climate Change. As Joplin, Mo. . learned in the most tragic way possible, against some impacts of climate change, man’s minor efforts are useless. But time is getting short, and the stakes are high. Says Daniel Sarewitz. a professor of science and society at Arizona State University: "Not to adapt is to put millions of people to death and breakdown. "
People widely accept that the extreme weather conditions such as intense hurricanes and heat waves result from______.
选项 A、the wide damage to the earth
B、planting less trees in the cities
C、the added heat in the atmosphere
D、excessive burning of fossil fuels
答案C
解析 由题干关键词extreme weather conditions，intense hurricanes，heat waves定位到第六段第二、三句; Theadded heat in the atmosphere retains more moisture，builds up the energy in the system，and results in more violentand extreme weather．There is wide consensus…可知，大气中增加的热量保留了更多的湿气，不断积累能量，因而导致更多的恶劣极端天气。人们普遍认为温室效应增加的2华氏度就是罪魁祸首。故选C)项。
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