1 . An earthquake is literally an earth-shattering experience! There you are enjoying an afternoon nap, having a cup of coffee in the morning, or even sleeping on a cold winter night when —WHAM! —the entire crockery (陶器) shelf collapses, and all the plates and cups break into pieces. A painting on the wall nearly knocks you down as it falls.
What should one do in an earthquake? The prime-time (黄金时间的) news gives no warning, nor is there a time of year, like the monsoon (风) season, when an earthquake always occurs. Unlike a tornado or hurricane, there is no known way of predicting an earthquake.
Though about 500, 000 earthquakes occur each year, only 100 of them cause damage! However, an earthquake can strike any time of the day or night, so it needs to be prepared for when you have the misfortune of being caught in the middle of one.
If you’re indoors, stay indoors, unless you’re on the ground floor, where you can easily run outside. The best thing to do if you’re indoors is to hide under a strong piece of furniture like a bed or desk. Do not head for the stairway if you’re living on an upper storey, because stairways can collapse.
If you’re driving, get out of traffic and stop on a wide and open road. Do not stop on a bridge, or in another case, under one. Stay inside your car until the shaking stops. Before you restart driving, look out for fissures (裂缝), breaks in the road, and bumps or cracks. Inside your home, be careful not to turn on the gas until you’re sure the cylinder (气罐) is safe, and there is no leak.
Avoid using your telephone unless there’s an emergency. You could be occupying lines that are needed by other people. Lastly, if you’re not trapped or seriously hurt, do not expect fire fighters, army or police to help you. They may be busy rescuing people in greater need than you!
1. What does the underlined word mean in the first paragraph?| A．worthwhile | B．amazing | C．endangered | D．earthshaking |
| A．No better way has been found to predict earthquakes yet. |
| B．The monsoon season disorders because of global warming. |
| C．The prime-time news can not receive timely information. |
| D．Earthquakes are accompanied by hurricanes or tornadoes. |
| A．On the rooftop. | B．Under the stairway. |
| C．Under a table. | D．In a wardrobe. |
| A．Hurry up to get out of the car. | B．Park away from the bridges. |
| C．Call the police for help at once. | D．Turn on gas pipe immediately. |
2 . Since the 1950s, some 9.2 billion tonnes of plastic have been produced globally, of which only about 10% has ever been recycled. Yet environmentally conscious companies and consumers continue to look to recycling as a way to ease the plastic problem. Manufacturing giants claim to be committed to making more of their products and packaging from recycled materials. However, this confidence masks (掩饰) a complex web of issues around plastic recycling. Recycling rates remain extremely low and critics argue that we should look at alternative ways to tackle plastic pollution.
While many plastics have the potential to be recycled, most are not because the process is costly, complicated and the resulting product of a lower quality than the original. Despite rising demand for recycled plastic, few waste companies turn a profit. Part of this is because virgin plastic-linked to oil prices - is often cheaper than recycled plastic, meaning there is little economic incentive to use it. Worse yet, much of our plastic waste is difficult to recycle. Lightweight food packaging, like a mozzarella packet, contains different plastics, dyes and toxic additives (添加剂). This dirty mix means plastic recycled through mechanical methods- the most common form- can only be melted down and moulded (浇铸,塑造) again a couple of times before it becomes too fragile to be reused. And the nature of the process means plastic recycling has a carbon footprint of its own.
Given all of these difficulties, environmental critics say recycling is not the solution-and argue that creating more products from recycled material to attract environmental consciousness merely worsens the problem. “The solution is to use less plastic and to stop misleading the public about the recyclability,” says Enck, president of Beyond Plastics, a US campaign group with a mission to end single-use plastic. “They should stop making false claims about the recyclability of plastics since they know most will either be littered (乱扔) or burned or landfilled (填埋). Using less plastics means shifting to reusable products and relying more on paper, cardboard, glass and metal- -all of which should be made from recycled content.”
1. What is an environmentally conscious customer’s attitude towards recycling plastics?| A．Suspicious. | B．Favorable. | C．Indifferent. | D．Disapproving. |
| A．motive. | B．issue. | C．crisis. | D．policy. |
| A．The recycling process of plastics. | B．Pollutants contained in recycled plastics. |
| C．Reasons why users dislike recycled plastics. | D．Contributing factors to low plastic recycling rates. |
| A．Using metal or glass food containers. | B．Littering recycled plastics in a landfill. |
| C．Processing plastics in a mechanical way. | D．Launching campaigns to promote recyclability. |
3 . Several days of unusual warm weather in northern Greenland have caused rapid melting(融化). “Temperatures have been running around -12.2 ℃-15.5 ℃. It is warmer than normal for this time of year,” scientists said. The amount of ice that melted in Greenland between July 15 and July 17 alone—6 billion tons of water per day—would be enough to fill 7.2 million Olympic-sized swimming pools, according to the report from the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Put another way, it was enough to cover the whole state of West Virginia with a foot of water.
For the scientists out on the ice sheet(冰盖), the warmth has been alarming. “It really makes me anxious,” said Kutalmis Saylam, a scientist who is now working in Greenland. “Yesterday, we could hang about in our T-shirts, which was not really expected. Since Greenland holds enough ice, sea level would rise by 7.5 meters around the world if ice all melted.”
In 2020, scientists found that Greenland’s ice sheet had melted beyond the point of no return. “No efforts to prevent global warming can stop it from finally breaking into small parts,” said researchers.
Aslak Grinsted, a climate scientist, said that they were trying to get flights into the camp so they can ship out the ice cores(冰芯) they had recently collected. But the warmth is destabilizing the landing site. “The weather we are seeing right now is too hot for the ski-equipped planes to land,” Grinsted said. “So we store the ice cores in large caves we have made into the snow to protect it from the heat of the summer.” Scientists made use of the abnormal warmth while they were waiting, playing volleyball in their shorts on an ice sheet at the top of the world.
Grinsted referred to the temperatures as a heat wave, and noted that the possibility of temperatures getting this hot was clearly connected to global warming.
1. How does the author support the topic of paragraph 1?| A．By exploring reasons. | B．By making comparisons. |
| C．By designing the numbers. | D．By doing some experiments. |
| A．He disliked wearing a T-shirt. |
| B．He worried about the warmth. |
| C．He was deeply impressed by the ice. |
| D．He was thirsty for enjoying the sea view. |
| A．Quitting. | B．Improving. | C．Sheltering. | D．Destroying. |
| A．Recommend visiting Greenland. |
| B．Describe how to ship out the ice core. |
| C．Call on people to protect the environment. |
| D．Plan to organize a sports meeting on ice. |
4 . Earthquakes happen without warning (前兆). They can happen any time of a day, at any point during the year. But don’t worry because most are so weak that they cannot be felt.
Stay under a desk, table, or other strong furniture. Hold on to it. Or stay in a corner of the building. Cover your face and head with your arms and cover your mouth with a towel or clothing.
Also keep away from a fire.
If you are driving when an earthquake happens, stop the car if it’s safe. Stay inside your car until the earthquake stops, and don’t drive near bridges. Try not to stop by power lines or trees.
| A．Do not go outside. |
| B．These could fall and hurt you. |
| C．Only a few big ones hurt people. |
| D．Every earthquake can cause disaster. |
| E．You could fall down and burn yourself on the fire. |
| F．Stay inside until shaking stops and it is safe to go outside. |
| G．Most people get injured by falling things in an earthquake, not by the shaking itself. |
5 . Catch your reusable bag and kiss your plastic bags goodbye. Plastic waste is on its way out, thanks to these governmental bans from around the world.
From Indiana to Maine, governments at all levels in the US are forcing bans and improving recycling. People are shopping smarter and companies are doing better to ensure the protection of our environment. Slowly but surely, the world is entering a brighter future as more and more countries follow. But there’s still a lot of work to be done—or undone.
Since the 1950s, researchers say that about more than 8.3 billion tons of plastic has been produced. And 60% of that waste has ended up in the environment. That number has increased quickly over the years. For example, it was recorded that the world’s plastic production doubled from 1976 (50 million tons) to 1989 (100 million tons). It was highest at 368 million in 2019 before decreasing to 367 million in 2020.
A million tons decrease of plastic production is not enough to deal with the rising pressures plastic puts into the environment. We still do not know how long it takes for plastic to breakdown. It means that about 12 million tons of plastic waste that entered the ocean in 2010 is still breaking into micro plastics and filling up the stomachs of birds and sea animals. The plastic going into our environment is not going away. While recent studies of plastic-eating enzymes and bacteria offer some hope for the future of plastic waste management, the best way to deal with our environmental stress is through decrease.
In 2020, New York City began to ban plastic bags. But this wasn’t the first plastic bag ban in a US state. In fact, the US wasn’t even the first country to introduce this idea. Back in 2002, Bangladesh became the first country to implement a plastic bag ban. Since then, other countries have followed, introducing their own ways to fight with the continuing plastic bags.
1. What do we know about plastic waste?| A．We have completely cleaned it up | B．It is hardly increasing all over the world. |
| C．We have done nothing to deal with it. | D．There is a long way to solve the problem of it. |
| A．More than 8.3 billion tons. | B．About 5 billion tons. |
| C．About 100 million tons. | D．Less than 368 million tons. |
| A．It doesn’t take long to breakdown it | B．Sea animals can be eating most of it. |
| C．Some enzymes and bacteria help a lot. | D．Cutting plastic waste down is still the best way. |
| A．Carry out. | B．Keep up. | C．Look at. | D．Take away. |
6 . Earthquakes are a natural disaster—except when they're man-made. The oil and gas industry has forcefully used the technique known as hydraulic fracturing (水力压裂法) to destroy sub-surface rock and liberate the oil and gas hiding there. But the process results in large amounts of chemical-filled waste water. Horizontal drilling (水平钻孔) for oil can also produce large amount of natural, unwanted salt water. The industry deals with this waste water by pumping it into deep wells.
On Monday, the US Geological Survey published for the first time an earthquake disaster map covering both natural and “induced” quakes. The map and a report show that parts of the central United States now face a ground-shaking disaster equal to the famously unstable terrain (不稳定地形) of California.
Some 7 million people live in places easily attacked by these man-made quakes, the USGS said The list of places at highest risk of man-made earthquakes includes Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, Arkansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Ohio and Alabama. Most of these earthquakes are relatively small, in the range of magnitude (震级) 3, but some have been more powerful, including a magnitude 5.6 earthquake in 2011 in Oklahoma that was connected to waste water filling.
Scientists said they do not know if there is an upper limit on the magnitude of man-made earthquakes; this is an area of active research. Oklahoma has had prehistoric earthquakes as powerful as magnitude 7.
It's not immediately clear whether this new research will change industry practices, or even whether it will surprise anyone in the areas of newly supposed danger. In Oklahoma, for example, the natural rate of earthquakes is only one or two a year, but there have been hundreds since hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, with the waste water filling, became common in the last ten years.
1. What kind of human activities can cause earthquakes?| A．The man-made produced waste water in the factories. |
| B．The process of digging deep wells in those poor areas. |
| C．The advanced techniques used to deal with waste water. |
| D．The oil or gas industry's work connected with the earth. |
| A．Man-made. | B．Reduced. |
| C．Newly-built. | D．Controlled. |
| A．It's been said as small as magnitude 3. |
| B．It has been said as high as magnitude 7. |
| C．It's being studied without a final conclusion. |
| D．It has risen by an average of magnitude 5. 6. |
| A．Natural Earthquakes in America Are Disappearing Now |
| B．7 Million Americans at Risk of Man-Made Earthquakes |
| C．Time for Oil and Gas Industry Change Their Working Practice |
| D．More Often Earthquakes as Powerful as Magnitude 7 in America |
7 . Pumpkins (南瓜) have all shapes and sizes and have colors of golden orange, white and green. Cooked in a pie, they are symbols of autumn that are grown in every county of Washington.
U.S. farmers grow more than a billion pounds of pumpkins every year, and many famers use sheets (膜) of plastic blocking the grass and preventing water loss to make their plants grow well. In the country, farmers use about a billion pounds of plastic every year. Unfortunately, that plastic is thrown away finally, and in some areas, burned in the fields.
For several years, Carol Miles has studied a new product—the soil-biodegradable (土壤生物降解的) plastic cover that can be left in the ground after harvest, then broken down by things in the soil. “You don't need to pull it out of the field and throw it away every autumn, saving time and money,” Miles said.
Most pumpkins grow along vines (藤蔓) that spread through the grass-blocking cover, and Miles wanted to see how pumpkin fruit performed over the plastic cover. That brought a challenge: the soil-biodegradable cover stuck to the bottom of the fruit.
“We have a lot of dew (露水) in the morning, and we found that if we let the fruit dry after harvest, the cover would stick more strongly to the pumpkins,” Miles said. “Nobody wants plastic stuck to pumpkins, even if it's biodegradable. But if you wipe the fruit before the dew dries, the plastic comes right off.”
Farmers who grow plants that don't set fruit on plastic covers won't meet this challenge. For those who do, it means an extra step that they'll have to weigh against advantages and disadvantages for the development.
“Challenges aside, working with this crop can bring on a happy picture,” the farmer Tymon said. “Pumpkins are great. They have bright colors, and are really fun to work with.”
1. How did farmers deal with the sheets of plastic in old farming method?| A．They collected them and recycled them. |
| B．They burned them or threw them away. |
| C．They covered them under the ground. |
| D．They broke down them and buried them in the soil. |
| A．It prevents water loss. |
| B．It blocks the grass. |
| C．It is stuck to pumpkins easily. |
| D．It's environment-friendly. |
| A．Let the pumpkins break down plastic sheets. |
| B．Wipe the dew from the plastic cover. |
| C．Clean the pumpkins when they're wet. |
| D．Put some powder on the plastic sheets. |
| A．Balance against. | B．Fight against. |
| C．Remove. | D．Measure. |
