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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  41
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 most remarkable about the proposal made by the two scientists?
选项 A、It is given a special name.
B、No law of physics is violated.
C、It is based on existing technology.
D、CO2 can be converted into fuel.
答案D
解析 根据题干中的proposal和the two scientists将本题出处定位到第二段。该段提到，科学家杰弗里·马丁和小威廉·库比茨现在提出一种观念，这个概念就是将二氧化碳从空气中移除，并将其转化变回汽油。由此可知，将二氧化碳转化为汽油燃料是两位科学家提议的不寻常之处，故答案为[D]。[A]是针对构想的名字Green Freedom设的干扰项；[B]和[C]虽然在文中提到，但不是这一观念最引人注目之处，故排除。
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