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  3. If two scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory are correct, people will still be driving gasoline-powered cars 50 years fro

If two scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory are correct, people will still be driving gasoline-powered cars 50 years fro

admin2012-02-29  51
问题     If two scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory are correct, people will still be driving gasoline-powered cars 50 years from now, giving out heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere — and yet that carbon dioxide will not contribute to global warming.
    The scientists, F. Jeffrey Martin and William L. Kubic Jr., are proposing a concept, which they have named Green Freedom, for removing carbon dioxide from the air and turning it back into gasoline.
    The idea is simple. Air would be blown over a liquid solution which would absorb the carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide would then be extracted (提取) and subjected to chemical reactions that would turn it into fuel.
    Although they have not yet built a synthetic fuel factory, or even a small prototype (原型), the scientists say it is all based on existing technology.
    "Everything in the concept has been built, is operating or has a close cousin that is operating," Dr. Martin said.
    The Los Alamos proposal does not violate any laws of physics, and other scientists have independently suggested similar ideas.
    In the efforts to reduce humanity’s emissions of carbon dioxide, three solutions have been offered: hydrogen(氢-)-powered fuel cells, electric cars and biofuels. Biofuels are gasoline substitutes produced from plants like corn or sugar cane. Plants absorb carbon dioxide as they grow, but growing crops for fuel takes up wide strips of land.
    Hydrogen-powered cars emit no carbon dioxide, but producing hydrogen requires copious (大量的) energy, and if that energy comes from coal-fired power plants, then the problem has not been solved.
    Electric cars also push the carbon dioxide problem to the power plant. And electric cars have typically been limited to a range of tens of miles as opposed to the hundreds of miles that can be driven on a tank of gas.
    Gasoline, it turns out, is an almost ideal fuel (except that it produces CO2). If it can be made out of carbon dioxide in the air, the Los Alamos concept may mean there is little reason to switch, after all.
    "It’s definitely worth pursuing," said Martin I. Hoffert, a professor of physics at New York University. Other scientists also said the proposal looked promising but could not evaluate it fully because the details had not been published.
What is the author’s purpose of writing this passage?
选项 A、To compare different energy sources.
B、To introduce a new concept of zero carbon gasoline.
C、To explain why gasoline is important to us.
D、To discus how to solve the problem of global warming.
答案B
解析 本文首先说明两位科学家的构想实现之后的积极影响，接着具体介绍了这一构想：将二氧化碳从空气中移除，并将其转化变回汽油，然后介绍该提议的可行性，接着通过说明三种减少碳排放量措施的缺点指出汽油几乎是最理想燃料，该构想如果成功可以不需要寻找汽油替代品，最后说明人们对该提议的肯定态度，由此可知，本文主要介绍了用二氧化碳制造汽油即二氧化碳零排放的新理念，故答案为[B]。
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