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  3. It was once thought that air pollution affected only the area immediately around large cities with factories or heavy automobile

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

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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 had covered the entire eastern half of the United States and led to health warnings 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 fossil fuels (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 a new ice age, and would make agriculture difficult or impossible in many of our top farming 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.
The word "offset" in the second paragraph could best be replaced by _____.
选项 A、slip
B、make up for
C、set up
D、catch up with
答案B
解析 文中offset用作动词，意思为“抵消；补偿”，原文认为如果文中所提到的两种 tendency(趋向)可以互做抵消的话，地球的温度就会保持不变。再如：Their wage in-creases would be offset by higher prices．意为：“他们增加的工资被物价上涨所抵消。”选项中，slip意为“滑倒，跌落，溜走”；set up 意为“建立”；catch up with意为“赶上”。
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