1 . What is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch?

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP) is the largest of the five offshore plastic accumulation zones in the world’s oceans. It is located halfway between Hawaii and California.

PLASTIC __________

It is estimated that 1.15 to 2.41 million tonnes of plastic are entering the ocean each year from rivers. More than half of this plastic is less __________than the water, meaning that it will not sink once it encounters the sea.

The strong and floating plastics show resiliency(韧性) in the marine environment, allowing them to be transported over __________distances. They persist at the sea surface as they make their way off shore, transported by converging (汇聚的) currents and finally accumulating in the patch.

Once these plastics enter the gyre（环流）, they are unlikely to leave the area until they __________into smaller microplastics under the effects of sun, waves and marine life. As more and more plastics are discarded into the environment, microplastic __________in the GPGP will only continue to increase.

LOCATION

Due to seasonal and interannual variabilities of winds and currents, the GPGP’s location and shape are constantly changing. Only floating objects that are __________influenced by currents were likely to remain within the patch.

By simulating concentration levels in the North Pacific, the researchers were able to follow the location of the patch and found on average it orbits around 32°N and 145°W. However, the team observed seasonal __________from west to east and substantial variations in latitude（纬度）depending on the year.

IMPACT ON WILDLIFE

Plastic has increasingly become a very common substance in the ocean. Due to its size and color, animals __________the plastic for food, causing malnutrition; it poses entanglement（缠绕）risks and threatens their overall behavior, health, and existence.

Studies have shown that about 700 species have encountered marine debris, and 92% of these __________are with plastic. 17% of the species affected by plastic are on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species.

IMPACT ON HUMANS AND SOCIETY

Once plastic enters the marine food web, there is a possibility that it will contaminate the human food chain as well. Through a process called bioaccumulation, chemicals in plastics will enter the body of the animal __________on the plastic, and as the feeder becomes prey, the chemicals will pass to the __________—making their way up the food web that includes humans. These chemicals that affected the plastic feeders could then be __________within the human as well.

__________, yearly economic costs due to marine plastic are estimated to be between $6-19billion USD. The costs __________its impact on tourism, fisheries and aquaculture, and governmental cleanups. These costs do not include the impact on human health and the marine ecosystem due to __________research available.

2 . Goodish News of Climate Change

Emissions of carbon dioxide (related to energy production) have stabilized, for now.

Is it a peak, a stutter or just a brief pause? Time will tell. But whatever it is, on February 11th the International Energy Agency (IEA), an intergovernmental _________ which collects such data, announced that emissions of carbon dioxide in 2019 which were _________ energy had remained the same (33.3bn tonnes) as the previous year’s.

Energy-related emissions, which include those (produced by electricity generation), heating and transport, _________ for more than 70% of the world’s industrial CO pollution. The stall seems to have been caused by a(n) _________ in coal use, particularly in rich countries, combined with an increase in the use of renewable power.

As a result of this the CO2-intensity of electricity generation — a(n) _________ of how much of the gas is emitted per kilowatt hour of juice produced — fell by nearly 6.5%, to 340 grams of CO2 per kilowatt hour. It had already been _________, but this is three times the average for the past decade. Such declines more than offset the _________ of increased electricity production. The average emission-intensity of power generation in 2019 was “lower than all but the most efficient gas-power plants”, according to the IEA.

This is not the first time energy related emissions have plateaued (保持稳定). Between 2013 and 2016 they hovered around 32.2 bn tonnes a year, before _________ again in 2017 as the use of coal to fuel developing economies increased.This _________ plateau was accompanied by excited declarations that such emissions had peaked. Similar __________ have been made this week, perhaps also prematurely. __________ changes in coal use, a sluggish economy may have played a part and the data show that milder than usual weather caused a perceptible drop in emissions from several countries with large, carbon-hungry economies.

The news is also __________ by the latest data from the Amazon rainforest. This, one of the world’s largest woodlands, has acted __________ as an absorbing sponge (海绵)for CO2 by removing it from the atmosphere through photo-synthesis. Researchers at Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research have shown that a vast part of the south-east of the Amazon, about one fifth of its area, has lost its __________ to soak up the gas and is now a net source of emissions into the atmosphere instead. This land has been widely deforested, so the result is little __________. But it is disappointing.

Throughout history, people have fought bitter wars over political ideology, national sovereignty and religious expression. How much more     1     will these conflicts be when people fight over the Earth’s most indispensable resource water? We may find out in the not-too-distant future if projections about the     2     of water in the Middle East and other regions prove correct.

Less than three percent of the planet’s     3     is fresh water, and almost two-thirds of this amount is     4     in ice caps, glaciers, and underground aquifers too deep or too remote to access. In her book, Pillars of Sand-Can the Irrigation Miracle Last, Sandra Postel outlines three forces that     5     tension and conflict over freshwater. Using up the water “resource pie”. In India, the world’s second-most populous nation, with over 1 billion inhabitants, the rate of groundwater     6     is twice that of recharge, a deficit higher than in any other country. Although water is a renewable resource, it is not a(n)     7     one. The freshwater available today for more than 6 billion people is no greater than it was 2,000 years ago, when global population was approximately 200 million. (The current U.S. population is 287 million.)

Global     8     accounts for about 70% of all freshwater use. In five of the world’s most water-stressed, controversial areas the Aral Sea region, the Ganges, the Jordan, the Nileland and Tigris-Euphrates population increases of up to 75% are projected by 2025. With the fastest rate of growth in the world, the population of Palestinian territory will more than     9     over the next generation. Most experts agree that, because of geography, population     10     and politics, water wars are most likely to break out in the Middle East, a region where the amount of available freshwater per capita will decrease by about 50% over the next generation.

Kangaroos can “talk” to us

Kangaroos can “talk” to people, according to a new study. The report is the first research of its kind to be done on marsupials—a type of creature whose young get carried in skin pockets on their mother’s body. It suggests kangaroos are cleverer than previously thought.

Researchers from the University of Roehampton in the UK and the University of Sydney in Australia tested kangaroos at the Australian Reptile (爬行动物) Park, Wildlife Sydney Zoo and Kangaroo Protection Co-operative. The scientists put food in a box that the kangaroos could not open, and waited to see what the animals would do. Rather than giving up, 10 out of the 11 kangaroos actively looked at the person who had put the food in the box and then looked at the box. The researchers said this could be interpreted as the kangaroos requesting help to open the container.

Dr Alexandra Green, a co-author of the study, told The Guardian newspaper that some of the kangaroos actually approached the person and started scratching (挠) and sniffing (嗅) him, then looked back at the box. “So they were really trying to communicate,” Green said. This behaviour is not uncommon in animals. However, it is usually only seen in domesticated animals, such as pets or farm animals. The lead author of the study, Dr Alan McElligott, explained, “Through this study, we were able to see that communication between creatures can be learnt and that the behaviour of looking at humans to access food is not related to domestication. “Indeed, kangaroos showed a very similar pattern of behaviour we have seen in dogs, horses and even goats, when put to the same test,” he added.

It is hoped that the study will give people a more positive attitude towards kangaroos, which are sometimes seen as harmful creatures that damage farmers’ crops.

10 . Many of the world’s islands were previously unexplored places, but over time, people have come to these places with far-reaching effects, including deforestation, over-hunting and the introduction of invasive species. _______, most of the bird species disappeared.

While the death of many birds since the 1500s has been _______, our knowledge of the fate of species before this relies on fossils (化石), and these records are limited because birds’ lightweight bones are _______ over time. This conceals the true _______ of global extinctions.

Researchers now believe 1,430 bird species — almost 12 per cent — have died out over modern human history since around 130,000 years ago, with the vast majority of them becoming extinct directly or indirectly _______ human activity.

The study, led by the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH) and published in Nature Communications, used statistical modelling to _______ the undiscovered bird extinctions.

Lead author Dr Rob Cooke, an ecological modeler at UKCEH, says:“Our study demonstrates there has been a far higher _______ impact on diversity than previously recognized. Humans quickly destroyed bird populations through habitat loss, over-exploitation, and the introduction of rats, pigs, and dogs, which attacked the birds’ nests, and _______ with birds for food. We show that many species became extinct before written records and left no _______, lost from history.”

Dr Søren Faurby of the University of Gothenburg, a co-author of the study, adds: “These historic extinctions have had a major impact on the current biodiversity crisis. The world may not only have lost many fascinating birds but also their varied ________ roles, which are likely to have included key functions such as pollination (授粉). This will have had knock-on effects on ecosystems, so, ________ bird extinctions, we will have lost a lot of plants and animals that ________ these species for survival.”

Observations and fossils show 640 bird species have been driven extinct — 90 per cent of these on islands ________ by people. These ________ from the iconic (标志性的) Dodo of Mauritius to the Great Auk of the North Atlantic to the lesser-known Saint Helena Giant Hoopoe. But the researchers estimate there have been further 790 unknown extinctions, meaning a total of 1,430 lost species — leaving just under 11,000 today. Therefore, from the perspective of protecting species ________, the protection of birds is an urgent issue for mankind.