It was once thought that air pollution ’affected only the area immediately around large cities with factories or heavy automobi

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问题    It was once thought that air pollution ’affected only the area immediately around large cities with factories  or heavy automobile traffic. Today, we know that although these are the areas with the worst air pollution, the problem is literally worldwide. On several occasions over the past decade, a heavy cloud of air pollution has covered the entire eastern halt’ of the United States and led to health warning even in rural areas away from any major concentration of manufacturing and automobile traffic. In fact, the very climate of the entire earth may be affected by air pollution. Some scientists feel that the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in the air resulting from the burning of coal and oil is creating a "greenhouse effect" holding in heat reflected from the earth and raising the world’s average temperature. If this view is correct and the world’s temperature is raised only a few degrees, much of the polar ice cap will melt and cities such as New York, Boston, Miami, and New Orleans will be under water.
   Another view, less widely held, is that increasing particulate matter in the atmosphere is blocking sunlight  and lowering the earth’s temperature — a result that would be equally disastrous. A drop of just a few degrees could create something close to new ice age and would make agriculture difficult or impossible in many of our top fanning areas. At present we do not know for sure that either of these conditions will happen ( though one recent government report prepared by experts in the field concluded that the greenhouse effect is very likely). Perhaps, if we are very lucky, the two tendencies will offset each other and the world’s temperature will stay about the same as it is now.
According to the text the word" offset" in ( Line 6, Para. 2 ) means______.

选项 A、pat up
B、set up
C、make up for
D、catch up with

答案C

解析 由题干offset定位到第二段最后一句,该句意为如果幸运的话,气温升高与降低两种趋势将互相“弥补”,世界温度也就不会变化。offset本意为“抵消”,这里引申为“弥补,互补”。
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