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
Carbon Capture Has climate change made it harder for people to care about conservation? A)Last September, as someone wh
Carbon Capture Has climate change made it harder for people to care about conservation? A)Last September, as someone wh
admin
2015-07-13
33
问题
Carbon Capture
Has climate change made it harder for people to care about conservation?
A)Last September, as someone who cares more about birds than the next man, I was following the story of the new stadium that the Twin Cities are building for their football Vikings. The stadium’s glass walls were expected to kill thousands of birds every year, and local bird-lovers had asked its sponsors to use a specially patterned glass to reduce collisions: the glass would have raised the stadium’s cost by one tenth of one per cent, and the sponsors had hesitated. Around the same time, the National Audubon Society issued a press release declaring climate change "the greatest threat" to American birds and warning that " nearly half" of North America’s bird species were at risk of losing their home by 2080. Audubon’s announcement was retransmitted by national and local media, including the Minneapolis Star Tribune, whose blogger on bird-related subjects, Jim Williams, drew the inevitable inference: Why argue about stadium glass when the real threat to birds was climate change? In comparison, Williams said, a few thousand bird deaths would be "nothing. "
B)I was in Santa Cruz, California, and already not in a good mood. The day I saw the Williams quote was the two hundred and fifty-fourth of a year in which, so far, sixteen had qualified as rainy. To the injury of a very dry weather came the daily insult of radio forecasters describing the weather as beautiful. It wasn’t that I didn’t share Williams’s anxiety about the future. What upset me was how a terrible prediction like Audubon’s could lead to indifference toward birds in the present.
C)Whether it’s prehistoric North Americans hunting the mastodon(乳齿象)to extinction, Maori wiping out the large animals of New Zealand, or modern civilization deforesting the planet and emptying the oceans, human beings are universal killers of the natural world. And now climate change has given us an eschatology(末世论)for reckoning with our guilt: coming soon, some terribly overheated tomorrow, is Judgment Day. Unless we confess and mend our ways, we’ll all be sinners in the hands of an angry Earth.
D)Rarely do I board an airplane or drive to the grocery store without considering my carbon footprint and feeling guilty about it. But when I started watching birds, and worrying about their welfare, I became attracted to a strain of Christianity, inspired by St. Francis of Assisi’s example of loving what’s concrete and sensitive and right in front of us. I gave my support to the focused work of the American Bird Conservancy and local Audubon societies. Even the most obviously worsened landscape could make me happy if it had birds in it.
E)And so I came to feel miserably conflicted about climate change. I accepted its supremacy as the environmental issue of our time, but I felt threatened by its dominance. Not only did it make every grocery-store run a guilt trip: it made me feel selfish for caring more about birds in the present than about people in the future. What were the eagles killed by wind turbines(涡轮机)compared with the impact of rising sea levels on poor nations? What were the local cloud-forest birds of the Andes compared with the atmospheric benefits of Andean water-power projects?
F)A hundred years ago, the National Audubon Society was an active organization, campaigning against random bird killing and the harvesting of large birds for their feathers, but its spirit has since become gentler. In recent decades, it’s been better known for its holiday cards and its toy birds, which sing when you squeeze them. When the organization shifted into Jonathan Edwards mode, last September, I wondered what was going on.
G)In rolling out its climate-change initiative, Audubon mentioned the "citizen science data" it had mobilized(调动), and a " report" prepared by its own scientists, that justified its terrible predictions. Visitors to its updated Web site were treated to images of climate-endangered species and asked to "take the pledge" to help save them. The actions that Audubon suggested to pledge-takers were gentle stuff—tell your stories, create a bird-friendly yard—but the Web site also offered a "Climate Action Pledge" , which was long and detailed.
H)The climate-change report was not immediately available, but from the Web site’s graphics, which included range maps of various bird species, it was possible to deduce that the report’s method involved a comparison of a species’ present range with its predicted range in a climate-altered future. When there was broad overlap between the two ranges, it was assumed that the species would survive. When there was little or no overlap, it was assumed that the species would be caught between an old range that had grown inhospitable(荒凉的,不适合居住的)to it and a new range in which the place where the species live was wrong, and would be at risk of disappearing.
I)This kind of modelling can be useful, but it’s full of uncertainties. A species may currently breed in a place with a particular average temperature, but this doesn’t mean that it couldn’t tolerate a higher temperature, or that it couldn’t adapt to a slightly different place farther north, or that the more northerly place won’t change as temperatures rise. North American species in general, having contended with hot July days and frosty September nights as they evolved, are much more tolerant of temperature fluctuations than tropical species are. Although, in any given place, some familiar back-yard birds may have disappeared by 2080, species from farther south are likely to have moved in to take their place. North America’s birds may well become more diverse.
J)The eagle was an especially odd choice of poster bird for Audubon’s initiative. The species nearly became extinct fifty years ago, before DDT was banned. The only reason we can worry about its future today is that the public—led by the then energetic Audubon—rallied around an immediate threat to it. The eagle’s dilemma was a primary impetus for the Endangered Species Act of 1973, and the eagle is one of the act’s great success stories. Once its eggs were no longer weakened by DDT, its population and range expanded so dramatically that it was removed from the endangered-species list in 2007. It’s hard to think of a species less liable to be trapped by geography. Even if global warming squeezes it entirely out of its current summer and winter ranges, the melting of ice in Alaska and Canada may actually result in a larger new range.
The updated Web site of the National Audubon Society shows pictures of species endangered by climate changes.
选项
答案
G
解析
定位句表明,访问其更新的网址的访客能够看到受气候影响而有生命危险的物种的照片,并被要求“保证”帮助拯救它们,题干是该定位句的同义转述,故G)为答案。
转载请注明原文地址:https://jikaoti.com/ti/2t3FFFFM
0
大学英语四级
相关试题推荐
ThefamilyinBritainischanging.TheoncetypicalBritishfamilyheadedbytwoparentshasundergone【B1】______changesduringt
ThefamilyinBritainischanging.TheoncetypicalBritishfamilyheadedbytwoparentshasundergone【B1】______changesduringt
A、Theyarealreadyextinctonlandorintheair.B、Theyareimportantspeciesforconservation.C、Theyaresymbolsofdifferent
A、Hedislikedhisteachers.B、Hisparentsnolongersupportedhim.C、It’scoolforboysofhisagenottocareaboutstudies.D、
A、Materialassignedbytheteacherforreading.B、Materialdirectlyrelatedtodiscussioninclass.C、Materiallinkedtothejob
A、Itcanstayforalongertimeinspace.B、Itcanreturntoearthandmakefurtherflights.C、Itcanconvertsolarenergyinto
A、Prepareaspeech.B、Giveaclass.C、Gradethepaper.D、Finishtheproposal.B选项均以原形动词开头表明,问题可能考查某人将来的行为活动。对话开始的时候女士说她10分钟后要去上课
A、Low-incomesmokersspendtoomuchmoneyoncigarettes.B、Hightaxesoncigaretteswerenotsatisfactoryandeffective.C、Smoki
A、Moreandmoreteenssmokecigars.B、Moreteensaretryingtoquitsmoking.C、Thenumberofteenagesmokershasincreasedby11
CigarettesAreEnlistedtoTestWaysofQuittingA)Whenatruckrecentlydelivered45000cartonsofcigarettestoaresearchco
随机试题
明明总是跑来跑去,在班级里也非常活跃。他的行为主要反映了什么气质特征?()
某地公安机关在办理一起高楼盗窃案件时,侦查人员对于犯罪嫌疑人是否有可能从A楼楼顶进入相邻5米远的B楼12层甲房间存在不同意见。为了查明案情,侦查人员一致认为需要进行侦查实验。依据法律的规定,如进行侦查实验,首先应当:
甲房地产开发企业(以下简称甲企业)新建一普通商品住宅小区。小区在建期问就开始预售,完工后又以现房形式出售。在规定期间,甲企业经其商业伙伴推荐,未通过招投标,也未经有关部门批准,采用协议方式直接聘用乙物业服务企业负责该小区的物业管理。该行为违反了相关规定,甲
下列有关交叉持股的说法中,不正确的是()。
阅读以下文字。完成问题。不久前,中国科学院遗传与发育生物学研究所公布了中国姓氏研究新成果。专家耗时两年,根据1110个县市、2.96亿人口、4100个姓氏的大量数据绘制出100张大姓分布图。研究发现:这些分布图与《中国人口主要死因地图集》中的疾病
改革开放以来,我国主要区域政策经历了不同的阶段:①以经济特区为重心的沿海地区优先发展阶段;②以缩小区域差距为导向的西部大开发阶段;③以浦东开发为龙头的沿江沿边地区重点发展阶段;④以区域协调发展为导向的共同发展阶段。这四个阶段按时间顺序排列应为(
TherecentsocialandeconomicchangesintheU.S.havegreatimpactonalltheAmericanhousingsystem.
Thepassagetellsusthatthereisnodifferencesbetweentheflyingfoxandtheordinarybatin______.Howdoflyingfoxescar
Scientistsnowtendtoagreethatthenoiselevelforpotentialhearinglossbeginsatabout70decibels.Someofthemarevery
【B1】【B6】
最新回复
(
0
)