首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
Why You Can’t Ignore the Changing Climate — by Eugene Linden
Why You Can’t Ignore the Changing Climate — by Eugene Linden
admin
2013-04-08
36
问题
Why You Can’t Ignore the Changing Climate
— by Eugene Linden
PARADE Magazine (June 25, 2006)
As we learned last year in New Orleans, weather can be a weapon of mass destruction. With the 2006 hurricane season now upon us, scientists say the climate is changing in ways that could produce many more superhurricanes, as well as extreme floods, droughts and heat waves that could threaten our way of life.
Still, it’s easy to ignore the signs of global warming because we’ve always had crazy weather. Unfortunately, many of the predicted changes have begun, and they already affect our health and pocketbooks. Here’s what we know:
Look Outside: The Weather Already Is Changing
Every year since 1997 has been in the Top 10 list of hottest years, and 2005 set a record. The Earth has warmed about 1.4°F since the late 19th century, and the warming has accelerated during the past four decades.
That increase sounds small, but it has been sufficient to make weather records fall by the thousands. Studies by Kerry Emmanuel at MIT and others have documented that hurricanes are getting more intense. Extreme storms like the one that flooded New England with more than 10 inches of rain in May are becoming more frequent too. Birds are migrating earlier. Trees are blooming, and flowers and crops are popping up unseasonably early across the country.
The warming has produced clear winners: pests. Mosquitoes love the warmer weather and are celebrating by bringing infectious diseases to new places. A recent Duke University study found that increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has led to out-of-control growth of poison ivy (常春藤), as well as increased levels of allergy-producing pollen (引起过敏的花粉). Beetle populations have exploded in evergreen trees. Why should we care about beetles? It was beetles that killed the trees in Southern California, which provided the dry fuel for the wildfires that destroyed hundreds of homes in 2003.
Higher temperatures also are causing glaciers (冰川) to melt fast. Mount Kilimanjaro (乞力马扎罗山— 非洲的最高山峰), for instance, has been topped with ice for at least 11,700 years. Within the next 15 years, however, its summit might be ice-free, according to Lonnie Thompson, a glaciologist at Ohio State University. The fastest warming is taking place in the far north, where glaciers are receding. You may think this isn’t relevant to those of us farther south, but snow and ice play a big role in balancing Earth’s climate by reflecting sunlight back into space. Melting snow and ice could push climates everywhere past a tipping point: As the Earth warms, melting snow and ice expose dark surfaces such as land and oceans, and the switch from heatreflecting to heat-absorbing surfaces could turbo-charge further warming.
We’re Making It Worse
"I’m changing the climate! Ask me how" reads a bumper sticker that activists have been plastering on SUVs. Their point is that gas-guzzlers (耗油量大的车) contribute to climate change. In a more sober way, the great majority of scientists are saying the same thing: Burning gas or oil in engines and furnaces has pushed carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere far above where they’ve been for hundreds of thousands of years, and the debate has ended over whether these emissions are making the planet hotter. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of more than 1,500 scientists from 60 countries, asserts that some portion of the recent warming is the result of human activities.
Last year, the world’s leading scientific journal, Science, looked back at all the scientifically credible articles published between 1993 and 2003 that dealt with modern climate change. Not one took issue with the consensus that humans are contributing to the changes we are seeing.
A Darkening Financial Forecast
Changing weather already costs you money. Of course, many Americans have felt the impact of hurricanes and floods, but even those not directly affected by extreme weather are paying a steep price:
On May 13, the front page of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune trumpeted the news that State Farm Insurance, Florida’s largest property insurer, was seeking to raise rates by more than 70% for houses and 95% for mobile homes. That would jump average insurance costs from about $1,733 to $ 3,101. But even if you live on Cape Cod — more than 1,000 miles from the Gulf Coast— insurers are raising rates and pulling out of some markets as they try to adjust to a new world in which the past behavior of hurricanes is no longer a reliable guide to the future.
Southern California — where water availability is largely determined by snowfall in faraway mountains —already must scramble for water. Scarcities will become a severe problem if the snow pack continues to shrink and melt earlier because of warming temperatures, leaving residents extremely thirsty during the summer months. An extended water crisis will likely hurt house prices, setting off a chain reaction of job losses, foreclosures (回赎权取消) and bank failures.
Drought in the West already affects hydro-electric power production. Power shortages could reach the Pacific Northwest if the region’s river flows dropped below the levels needed to cool even coal- and gas-fired power plants. For America’s workers, climate change will feel like an enormous tax, stripping savings and imposing costs ranging from disrupted jobs to a rash of health threats.
Climate Has Destroyed Past Civilizations
From the Fertile Crescent to the Yucatan Peninsula (尤卡坦半岛美洲北部), past civilizations made the fatal mistake of assuming that good weather would continue. An abrupt shift to drought in Mesopotamia (美索不达米亚地区) 4,200 years ago probably spelled the doom of the Akkadian (古比伦阿卡得人的) culture, which united city-states into the first known empire. Others see the fingerprints of climate in the collapse of the Mayans (马雅人) around 900 AD., the disappearance of the Anasazi from the American Southwest a few centuries later and the end of Norse expansion into the New World in the 14th century. A recurrent pattern of history has been for civilizations to take root and flourish while the weather is good, only to fall when the weather suddenly changes.
But don’t our technology and markets make us different? Absolutely, but 6 billion people still rely on crops grown in fertile areas like the American Midwest —areas vulnerable to drought in a warming world.
Past civilizations had no way to know that climates could change. We do. But if we are to prevent disaster from happening, we have to act on our knowledge, and we haven’t done that yet.
The warming causes population explosions of mosquitoes as well as beetles, but it has been documented that the latter have done more damage to man than the former have.
选项
A、Y
B、N
C、NG
答案
C
解析
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/XZr7777K
0
大学英语四级
相关试题推荐
A、Astudent.B、Areporter.C、Avisitor.D、Alecturer,A
TheQuantifiedSelf—CountingEveryMomentTheideaofmeasuringthingstochartprogresstowardsagoaliscommonplaceinla
Books,magazinesandnewspapersdevoteagreatdealofspacetoarticlesonthewondersof______(作者们称之为“信息进代的”)
Thefamilyis【B1】______.Inthepast,grandparents,parentsandchildrenusedtolivetogether,andtheyhadanextendedfamily.
Theterm"qualityoflife"isdifficulttodefine.It【C1】______averywidescopesuchaslivingenvironment,health,employment,
Inadditiontotheiracademicwork,childrenintheUnitedStatesareofferedawiderangeofactivitiesintheafter-schoolhou
Forthispart,youareallowed30minutestowritealetter.Youshouldwriteatleast120words,andbaseyourcompositionont
Thedoctor,______(不想让患者紧张),didnotexplaintheseriousnessofhisillness.
A、Itcostsmuchmorethanitsworth.B、Itshouldbebroughtuptodate.C、Itcallsforimmediaterepairs.D、Itcanstillbeusedf
Theworldisnotonlyhungry,butthirstyforwater.Thatmayseem【B1】______toyou,sincenearly75%oftheearth’ssurfaceis【B
随机试题
驾驶机动车在这个路口允许掉头。
合成蛋白质后才由前体转变而成的氨基酸是
A、拉贝洛尔B、普萘洛尔C、阿替洛尔D、酚妥拉明E、哌唑嗪选择性阻断β1受体的药物是
根据文景时期肉刑改革的内容,文帝时期最后确定取代斩右趾的刑罚是()。
依据《建设项目环境保护管理条例》,建设单位若未按规定申请建设项目竣工环境保护验收或延期验收,依照相关规定对其采取的处罚可以有()。
()表示不动产需求量变动对不动产价格变动的反应程度。
下列措施中,能够降低企业销售物流运输成本的是()。
某公司生产和销售A产品,6月份现金收支的预计资料如下:(1)6月1日的现金余额为520000元。(2)产品售价117元/件,4月份销售11400件,5月份销售12600件,6月预计销售18500件,7月预计销售20000件。根据经验,商品售出后当月可收回货
男,51岁。因运动障碍到医院就诊,经多项检查,发现第四脑室附近肿瘤压迫小脑绒球小结叶,下列运动障碍最明显的是
课程
最新回复
(
0
)