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  3. Year after year, the world’s nations gather to find ways to reduce carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, with little meaningf

Year after year, the world’s nations gather to find ways to reduce carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, with little meaningf

admin2012-07-05  21
问题     Year after year, the world’s nations gather to find ways to reduce carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, with little meaningful progress. Frustrated by this slow pace, the United States and five other countries announced this week a modest but potentially game-changing initiative to cut three other pollutants that also contribute significantly to climate change.
    The three pollutants—methane (甲烷), black carbon and hydrofluorocarbons (氢氟碳)—together account for about 30 percent to 40 percent of the rise in global temperatures. Unlike carbon dioxide, they do not remain in the atmosphere for a long time, but, while they are there, they drive temperatures upward.
    Mainstream scientists believe that to avoid disastrous increases in the sea levels and widespread drought, the rise in global temperatures by 2050 should not exceed 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. Though cuts in carbon dioxide will also be necessary to reach that goal, curbing these three pollutants will help enormously.
    Officials hope further that by tackling these pollutants they can achieve relatively quick and measurable reductions in emissions without waiting for politicians to act or the United Nations process to produce a global agreement on carbon dioxide.
    The plan’s founding members are the United States, Canada, Sweden, Mexico, Ghana and Bangladesh. Washington and Ottawa will jointly underwrite a $15 million start-up fund. Clearly, the program must be scaled up over time, with many more countries participating. In the short term, officials say their purpose is to educate and test inexpensive and technologically accessible ways of capturing these gases.
    Soot, a huge health hazard, can be reduced by installing filters on diesel engines, replacing traditional cook stoves with more efficient models and banning the open burning of agricultural waste. Methane can be captured from oil and gas wells, leaky pipelines, municipal (城市的) landfills and wastewater treatment plants.
    Significantly reducing hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, could be harder. These compounds, widely used in air-conditioners and originally developed to replace the refrigerants that were damaging the ozone layer, turned out to be a disastrous greenhouse gas. Efforts to find less-harmful substitutes have met resistance from countries like India, where most HFCs are manufactured.
    Governments everywhere should obviously be pushing to reduce carbon dioxide, the most dangerous greenhouse gas. In the meantime, opening an important second front in the climate war will demonstrate that progress is possible.  
What is the purpose of the initiative at present?
选项 A、To find economical and accessible ways of capturing three pollutants.
B、To call for more countries’ participation in controlling global warming.
C、To educate people the accessible ways of capturing these gases.
D、To start a strong fund for this program and attract more countries in.
答案A
解析 事实细节题。根据定位句可知，在短期内，这一法案的目的在于培养和测试花费小且在技术上可行的采集这些气体的办法，故A)正确。B)“呼吁更多国家参与到控制全球变暖中”和问题不符，题干中问的是目前的目标而不是以后的长期效果，故排除；C)“教会人们采集这些气体的可行办法”是对原文的错误理解。原文中的educate不是“教育”的意思，而是“培养”，故排除；D)“为该计划成立一个强有力的基金，吸引更多国家加入”和原文意思不符，故排除。
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