雅思阅读第027套2-ANew Ice Age
READING PASSAGE 2
You should spend about 20minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading Passage 2below.
A New Ice Age
William Curry is a serious,sober climate scientist, not an art critic. But he has spent a lot of timeperusing Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze’s famous painting “George Washington Crossingthe Delaware”, which depicts a boatload of colonial American soldiers makingtheir way to attack English and Hessian troops the day after Christmas in 1776.“Most people think these other guys in the boat are rowing, but they areactually pushing the ice away,” says Curry, tapping his finger on areproduction of the painting. Sure enough, the lead oarsman is bashing thefrozen river with his boot. “I grew up in Philadelphia. The place in thispainting is 30 minutes away by car. I can tell you, this kind of thing justdoesn’t happen anymore.”
But it may again soon. Andice-choked scenes, similar to those immortalised by the 16th-century Flemishpainter Pieter Brueghel the Elder, may also return to Europe. His works,including the 1565 masterpiece “Hunters in the Snow”, make the now-temperateEuropean landscapes look more like Lapland. Such frigid settings werecommonplace during a period dating roughly from 1300 to 1850 because much ofNorth America and Europe was in the throes of a little ice age. And now thereis mounting evidence that the chill could return. A growing number ofscientists believe conditions are ripe for another prolonged cooldown, or smallice age. While no one is predicting a brutal ice sheet like the one thatcovered the Northern Hemisphere with glaciers about 12,000 years ago, the nextcooling trend could drop average temperatures 5 degrees Fahrenheit over much ofthe United States and 10 degrees in the Northeast, northern Europe, andnorthern Asia.
“It could happen in 10 years,”says Terrence Joyce, who chairs the Woods Hole Physical OceanographyDepartment. “Once it does, it can take hundreds of years to reverse.” And he isalarmed that Americans have yet to take the threat seriously.
A drop of 5 to 10 degreesentails much more than simply bumping up the thermostat and carrying on. Botheconomically and ecologically, such quick, persistent chilling could havedevastating consequences. A 2002 report titled “Abrupt Climate Change:Inevitable Surprises”, produced by the National Academy of Sciences, pegged thecost from agricultural losses alone at $100 billion to $250 billion while alsopredicting that damage to ecologies could be vast and incalculable. A grimsampler: disappearing forests, increased housing expenses, dwindling freshwater, lower crop yields, and accelerated species extinctions.
The reason for such hugeeffects is simple. A quick climate change wreaks far more disruption than aslow one. People, animals, plants, and the economies that depend on them arelike rivers; says the report: "For example, high water in a river willpose few problems until the water runs over the bank, after which levees can bebreached and massive flooding can occur. Many biological processes undergoshifts at particular thresholds of temperature and precipitation.”
Political changes since thelast ice age could make survival far more difficult for the world's poor.During previous cooling periods, whole tribes simply picked up and moved south,but that option doesn't work in the modern, tense world of closed borders."To the extent that abrupt climate change may cause rapid and extensivechanges of fortune for those who live off the land, the inability to migrate mayremove one of the major safety nets for distressed people,” says the report.
But first things first. Isn'tthe earth actually warming? Indeed it is, says Joyce. ' In his clutteredoffice, full of soft light from the foggy Cape Cod morning, he explains howsuch warming could actually be the surprising culprit of the next mini-ice age.The paradox is a result of the appearance over the past 30 years in the NorthAtlantic of huge rivers of fresh water - the equivalent of a 10-foot-thicklayer - mixed into the salty sea. No one is certain where the fresh torrentsare coming from, but a prime suspect is melting Arctic ice, caused by abuild-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that traps solar energy.
The freshwater trend is majornews in ocean-science circles. Bob Dickson, a British oceanographer whosounded an alarm at a February conference in Honolulu, has termed the drop insalinity and temperature in the Labrador Sea - a body of water betweennortheastern Canada and Greenland that adjoins the Atlantic - "arguablythe largest full-depth changes observed in the modern instrumentaloceanographic record”.
The trend could cause a littleice age by subverting the northern penetration of Gulf Stream waters. Normally,the Gulf Stream, laden with heat soaked up in the tropics, meanders up the eastcoasts of the United States and Canada. As it flows northward, the streamsurrenders heat to the air. Because the prevailing North Atlantic winds bloweastward, a lot of the heat wafts to Europe. That’s why many scientists believewinter temperatures on the Continent are as much as 36 degrees Fahrenheitwarmer than those in North America at the same latitude. Frigid Boston, forexample, lies at almost precisely the same latitude as balmy Rome. And somescientists say the heat also warms Americans and Canadians. “It’s a realmistake to think of this solely as a European phenomenon," says Joyce.
Having given up its heat to theair, the now-cooler water becomes denser and sinks into the North Atlantic by amile or more in a process oceanographers call thermohaline circulation. Thismassive column of cascading cold is the main engine powering a deep-watercurrent called the Great Ocean Conveyor that snakes through all the world’soceans. But as the North Atlantic fills with fresh water, it grows less dense,making the waters carried northward by the Gulf Stream less able to sink. Thenew mass of relatively fresh water sits on top of the ocean like a big thermalblanket, threatening the thermohaline circulation. That in turn could make theGulf Stream slow or veer southward. At some point, the whole system couldsimply shut down, and do so quickly. “There is increasing evidence that we aregetting closer to a transition point, from which we can jump to a new state.”
SECTION 2: QUESTIONS 14-26
Questions 14-17
Choose the correct letter A,B, C or D.
Write your answers in boxes 14-17 onyour answer sheet.
14The writer uses paintings in the firstparagraph to illustrate
Apossible future climate change.
Bclimate change of the last two centuries.
Cthe river doesn’t freeze in winteranymore.
Dhow George Washington led his troopsacross the river.
15Which of the following do scientists believe to bepossible?
AThe temperature may drop over much of theNorthern Hemisphere.
BIt will be colder than 12,000 years ago.
CThe entire Northern Hemisphere will becovered in ice.
DEurope will look more like Lapland.
16Why is it difficult for the poor tosurvive the next ice age?
APeople don’t live in tribes anymore.
BPolitics are changing too fast today.
CAbrupt climate change causes people tolive off their land.
DMigration has become impossible because ofclosed borders.
17Why is continental Europe much warmer thanNorth America in winter?
AWind blows most of the heat of tropicalcurrents to Europe.
BEurope and North America are at differentlatitudes.
CThe Gulf Stream has stopped yielding heatto the air.
DThe Gulf Stream moves north along the eastcoast of North America.
Questions 18-22
Look at the followingstatements (Questions 18-22) and the list of people in the boxbelow.
Match each statement with thecorrect person A-D.
Write the appropriateletter A-D in boxes 18-22 on your answersheet.
NB You may use any letter morethan once.
18 _____________ Most Americans are not prepared for the next ice age.
19 _____________ Theresult of abrupt climate change is catastrophic.
20 _____________ Theworld is not as cold as it used to be.
21 _____________ Global warming is closely connected to the ice age.
22 _____________ Alerted people to the change of ocean water in a conference
List of People
A
William Curry
B
Terrence Joyce
C
Bob Dickson
D
National Academy of Sciences
Questions 23-26
Complete the flow chart below.
Choose NO MORE THANTHREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers inboxes 23-26 on your answer sheet.
答案
雅思阅读第027套P2-A New Ice Agehttp://www.tuonindefu.com/?p=2254雅思阅读第027套P2:A New Ice Age
