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  3. Underground Coal Fires a Looming Catastrophe Coal burning deep underground in China, India and Indonesia is threatening the envi

Underground Coal Fires a Looming Catastrophe Coal burning deep underground in China, India and Indonesia is threatening the envi

admin2009-06-15  13
问题 Underground Coal Fires a Looming Catastrophe
Coal burning deep underground in China, India and Indonesia is threatening the environment and human life, scientists have warned. These large-scale underground blazes cause the ground temperature to heat up and kill surroundings vegetation, produce greenhouse gases and can even ignite forest fires, a panel of scientists told the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Denver. The resulting release of poisonous elements like arsenic and mercury can also pollute local water sources and soils, they warned.
"Coal fires are a global catastrophe," said Associate Professor Glenn Stracher of East Georgia College in Swainsboro, US@A.@But surprisingly few people know about them.
Coal can heat up on its own, and eventually catch fire and burn, if there is a continuous oxygen supply. The heat produced is not caused to disappear and under the right combinations of sunlight and oxygen, can trigger spontaneous catching fire and burning. This can occur underground, in coal stockpiles, abandoned mines or even as coal is transported. Such fires in China consume up to 200 million tones of coal per year, delegates were told. In comparison, the US economy consumes about one billion tons of coal annually, said Stracher, whose analysis of the likely impact of coal fires has been accepted for publication in the International Journal of Coal Ecology, once underway, coal fires can burn for decades, even centuries. In the process, they release large volumes of greenhouse gases; poisonous gases fumes and black particles in to the atmosphere.
The members of the panel discussed the impact these fires may be having on global and regional climate change, and agreed that the underground nature of the fires makes them difficult to protect. One of the members of the panel, Assistant Professor Paul Van Dijk of the International Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation in the Netherlands, has been working with the Chinese government to detect and monitor fires in the northern regions of the country.
Ultimately, the remote sensing and other techniques should allow scientists to estimate how much carbon dioxide theses fires are emitting. One suggested method of containing the fires was presented by Cary Colaozzi, of the engineering firm Goodson, which has developed a heat-resistant grout (a thin mortar used to fill cracks and crevices), which is designed to be pumped into the coal fire to cut off the oxygen supply.
选项 A、underground fires loom large in the forests
B、coal burning deep underground is found in China
C、poisonous elements released by the underground fires can pollute water sources
D、arsenic and mercury are the most poisonous elements to water sources
答案C
解析 利用题干中山现的核心词/结构(one of the warnings和scientists)作为答案线索，同时注意到备选项C和D有关系：都提到了对水资源污染的问题，但比较来看C成为答案的可能性更大，因为C与文章中心相关，这样发现答案相关句：These large-scale underground blazes (火焰)Cause the ground temperature to heat up and kill surroundings vegetation，produce greenhouse gases and can even ignite(点燃)forest fires(排除A：因为A说地下火在森林中显得突出，而原文说“甚至会点燃森林大火”)， a panel of scientists told the annual meeting Of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Denver．The resulting release of poisonous elements like arsenic and mercury can also pollute local water sources and soils, they warned．该句的含义“释放有毒元素，如：砷和汞，可能会污染水资源和土壤。”与 C一致。
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