2. 外语
  3. Global warming, after all, isn’t just about hotter summers. As the earth’s temperatures rise, scientists speculate, there will b

Global warming, after all, isn’t just about hotter summers. As the earth’s temperatures rise, scientists speculate, there will b

admin2012-07-11  56
问题     Global warming, after all, isn’t just about hotter summers. As the earth’s temperatures rise, scientists speculate, there will be a lot more than warming going on. The change in ocean temperatures and sea levels will affect everything from rain patterns to wind direction. But how much of that is already happening, and how much is speculation?
    Though we’ve seen increasingly unusual weather patterns in recent years,it’s important to separate individual instances of extreme weather from the broader category of climate change. Those heavy snows from last winter, according to researchers at Columbia University, were the result of two large colliding weather fronts—probably just a natural aberration (越轨), rather than necessarily a symptom of climate change. And tornado in Brooklyn was definitely bizarre—it occurred not only in a part of the country not known for touchdowns,but also during an unusual time of day and season and in the midst of a regional drought. However,it can’t be precisely pinned on global warming.
    Still,recent research has begun to show that at least in some cases, those altered and extreme weather patterns can be definitively linked to global warming. A just-released analysis by researchers at Duke University shows that’s the case for summertime weather in the southeastern United States. Eleven of the past 30 summers were either abnormally wet or abnormally dry in the Southeastern states. And there were twice as many instances of " extreme" rainfall as there had been compared to the rainfall during the 30 preceding summers. Summer weather in that part of the country—along with that of the entire eastern U. S. .Western Europe,and North Africa,is influenced by the North Atlantic subtropical high (NASH) ,a high-pressure system that has intensified an average of 0.9 geo-potential meters (位势 米) every decade over the past 60 years.
    In layman’s terms,that means that the system extended higher and higher above sea level,making NASH more powerful. And its reach extended in other ways too; the area of the system grew, meaning that it came westward, closer to the eastern coast of the United States, and also increased its north-south movement. But slight shifts in NASH’s path can have a big impact;If NASH goes slightly more northward than usual，it can make for a dry summer; southward, and the summer is an extremely wet one. Researchers at Duke say they thoroughly investigated naturally occurring phenomena for the growth of NASH,but found no seemingly reasonable explanations. They concluded that the change is a result of alterations to the climate that were caused by humans.
    More dramatic are the claims that global warming could bring about or aggravate civil wars in Africa because of agricultural resources scarcity. That may or may not come about, but the broader lesson seems to be that even if science hasn’t yet formally connected all the dots on climate change,we should expect the unexpected.
What is the author’s attitude towards scientists’ speculation?
选项 A、Skeptical.
B、Careless.
C、Ironical.
D、Critical.
答案A
解析 观点态度题。定位句指出，科学家猜测，随着地球温度的升高，除气候变暖之外，地球还会经历许多其他变化，如海洋温度及海平面的变化将会影响全球降雨分布及风向；但随即又指出，这些猜测有多少已经成为现实，又有多少仅仅是猜测?可知作者对科学家的某些猜测并不完全相信。因此，A)“怀疑的”，符合作者的看法，故为本题答案。B)“不关心的”，作者既然已经给出自己的看法，那么他对科学家的猜测就不可能是漠不关心的，故排除；C)“讽刺的”，作者只是对科学家的猜测提出异议，原文不含有讽刺意味，故排除；D)“批判的”。作者并无批评之意，故排除。
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