1 . He may be approaching his 90th birthday, but Sir David Attenborough has no desire to slow down. Fresh from an appearance at the Paris climate change summit, he fronts a new series David Attenborough’s Great Barrier Reef (大堡礁).
“There was a book by Saville-Kent called The Great Barrier Reef with fascinating hand-drawn illustrations which always fascinated me as a child. It was as if born from pure imagination. I thought no such place on earth can surely exist.” he said.
Nearly sixty years after his first visit, Attenborough dives 1000 feet below the surface off the Queensland coast to explore the world’s largest living organism like never before.
“It was the first place I was lucky enough to scuba (水肺) dive and I was, entering those waters, welcomed by magic. It was 1957 and I was shocked by remarkable beauty and life.”
The dive also gives Attenborough the chance to properly examine the effects of climate change and how the rising temperatures and acidity of the seas is causing harm to the reef.
“You can see where the sea grass is going and you know that if it continues on like that for the next decade or so, the coral (珊瑚) won’t be able to tolerate it. You can show experimentally that they’re incapable of living in these higher temperatures and the acidity will be such that they won’t be able to form coral limestone (灰岩) anymore,” he explains.
Attenborough admits that though he is incredibly enthusiastic about spreading awareness of climate change he was unwilling to be referred to as an authority on the subject. “I have a view, but it’s a second-hand view. I haven’t done the chemistry,” he said.
The truth is, he is well respected and beloved. When he talks about something as serious as climate change we are willing to pay attention.
1. What impressed Attenborough in his childhood?| A．The vivid imagination of TV series. | B．Severe pollution on the Great Barrier Reef. |
| C．The importance of climate change summits. | D．Interesting pictures in The Great Barrier Reef. |
| A．Mild temperatures stopped the growth of coral. |
| B．The sea grass posted a potential threat to the coral. |
| C．The acidity sped up the formation of coral limestone. |
| D．Scientists were doing experiments under deep sea water. |
| A．Passionate and frank. | B．Humourous and creative. |
| C．Brilliant and sociable. | D．Competent and generous. |
| A．To set an example for the old. | B．To analyze climate change effects. |
| C．To introduce a famous and admired person. | D．To promote underwater sports. |
2 . Soda bottles and sour cream containers—these plastics (and many others) typically arrive at recycling plants mixed together in the same bin. But because they are made of different molecular (分子的) building blocks, called monomers, they must be sorted into different streams before they can be melted to make new products. Otherwise, their various monomers tend to separate from one another like oil and water.
“Until about a year ago, everybody thought the only thing you could do is take a plastic, break it down to a monomer and then reform it,” says Sanat Kumar, a chemical engineer at Columbia University. “Now we’ve come up with a different way of doing it.” His team has developed a process that allows different kinds of plastic to be recycled together. Their findings, reported recently in Nature, could give new life to many items that end up in landfills.
The new process solves the problem by adding chemicals called universal dynamic cross-linkers to the mix. Just as soap brings together oil and water, these cross-linkers form covalent (共价的) molecular bonds that tie the diverse monomers together. This process creates materials that can keep certain useful properties of each plastic, such as keeping oxygen from passing through. These materials can then be melted and remade again and again because the cross-linkers can break and re-form their bonds.
The researchers hope the technique could eventually help repurpose more plastic waste, and Kumar says the process consumes less energy than breaking plastics down into their original monomers—but it’s not yet cheap enough to be widely used at existing recycling facilities. Still, showing that it works could lead to profitable markets for less expensive recycled plastics, which Kumar says would be one way to help recyclers eventually address the plastic waste crisis. “The plastics problem is huge,” he says, “and you’re going to have to look for multiple solutions.”
1. What’s the first paragraph mainly about?| A．The recycling method of plastics. |
| B．The present situation of plastic pollution. |
| C．The difficulty of recycling mixed plastics. |
| D．The variety in monomers among different plastics. |
| A．Sorting out plastics. | B．Recycling plastics. |
| C．Breaking down plastics. | D．Melting plastics. |
| A．They can be used as soap to bond oil and water. |
| B．They can keep oxygen from passing through. |
| C．They can maintain their own useful properties. |
| D．They can help bring different monomers together. |
| A．Its relatively high cost. | B．Its low efficiency. |
| C．Its negative environmental effect. | D．Its high energy consumption. |
1. What is the aim of the campaign?
| A．To remind people of Earth Day. |
| B．To encourage people to reduce garbage. |
| C．To warn people of the bad effects of pollution. |
| A．Designing posters. | B．Planting trees. | C．Collecting garbage. |
| A．Stop driving cars. | B．Paint paper. | C．Decorate classrooms. |
| A．Wonderful. | B．Confusing. | C．Strange. |
1. What is the conversation mainly about?
| A．Fighting fires. | B．Detecting fires. | C．Using fires. |
| A．Around 50. | B．About 400. | C．Over 8600. |
| A．Size of a car. | B．Size of a plane. | C．Size of a sports field. |
| A．Saving animals. | B．Saving the trees. | C．Saving humans. |
1. What is Dr. Tilly expert in?
| A．Renewable energy. |
| B．Educational courses. |
| C．Sea life conservation. |
| A．They weren’t efficient. |
| B．They harmed some sea life. |
| C．They didn’t have enough power. |
| A．A journey to the sea. |
| B．A chance to create devices. |
| C．An opportunity to work at a lab. |
1. When did the speaker know about the construction of a park for the locals?
| A．Last month. | B．Last week. | C．Yesterday. |
| A．They chat there. | B．They throw the garbage there. | C．They raise animals there. |
| A．On the streets. | B．At their own homes. | C．In the park. |
| A．Unfavorable. | B．Casual. | C．Favorable. |
This year, August 15th marked China’s first National Ecology Day,
The establishment of National Ecology Day will enhance ecological understanding among the public and help the nation
The move
China’s laws and administrative regulations
The extinction of the Chinese paddle-fish (白鲟) and wild Yangtze sturgeon (野生长江), announced by the international Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), started
The IUCN’s latest list of threatened species showed that 100% of the world’s remaining 26 sturgeon species are now
The Chinese paddle-fish was one of the biggest freshwater fish species in the world
9 . Melanie Guttmann, co-founder of LG, a German climate (气候) group, once spent six days in prison after being arrested during a public gathering against “new normal”. She tells me that she just wanted to have a peaceful life, spend some time with the people she loved and start a family. But finally, she says, she’d be willing to be in prison even longer if it might make a difference. “I started to realize that no matter whether I’m in prison or not, I will never have those things.”
I have been turning over her words for what happened later. Vermont experienced storms last week, causing floods and resulting in deaths. An extreme heat brought the number of people in one Phoenix emergency room to levels never seen since the COVID-19 pandemic. The ocean water around the Florida Keys reached a temperature of over 90°F, seriously endangering coral reefs.
Many well-meant statesmen mention what’s happening as “new normal”. It’s meant, of course, to point out the long-term effects of putting large amounts of greenhouse gases into air. But the phrase of “new normal”, to me, also has the suggestion that now, at least, is “normal,” as if we’ve been riding a lift of global (全球的) temperature rise, and just arrived at the top floor. “It surely is hot up here at the new normal, but good thing is that it won’t get any worse.”
Unfortunately, though, it will. The changes we are experiencing are only quickening. Each new season is a baseline from which things will get stranger still. There’ll be yet more heat domes, storms, and flooding, coming at a faster and faster speed. By 2050, the world could be dealing with 1.2 billion climate refugees (难民) escaping for their lives.
One thing from Guttmann’s words is clear: However bad things are now, they’re set to get a whole lot worse. We need to have the awareness that there is no “new normal” where we can stop to catch our breath. And, if we don’t do something, things will get worse.
1. Why is Guttmann’s story mentioned?| A．To explore what is behind the story. |
| B．To describe what life holds in the future. |
| C．To explain the cause of her being in prison. |
| D．To experience her feeling of disappointment. |
| A．The climate disasters. | B．The storm. |
| C．The extreme heat. | D．The high water temperature. |
| A．The statesmen propose “new normal” with a good purpose. |
| B．“New normal” alarms the long-term impact of climate change |
| C．Things about global temperature at “new normal” won’t be worse. |
| D．What Guttmann wants will probably come to nothing at such a “new normal”. |
| A．Unclear. | B．Supportive. | C．Doubtful. | D．Negative. |
10 . Two years ago, enormous fires swept through some 46 million acres of forest in Russia, the country’s worst fire season on record. Now, researchers have a clearer sense of just how significant the 2021 boreal (北方的) forest fires were in terms of emissions. The fires produced more planet-heating carbon dioxide than any other extreme fire event that has occurred since the turn of the 21st century, according to a study.
Boreal forests grow where it is very cold. The trees that live in this type of forest grow slowly and seal (封存) carbon in their trunks and roots for hundreds of years, comprising a collection of trapped emissions that researchers call a carbon sink. But rising temperatures and related drought in these historically cool regions have led to an increase in extreme wildfire activity and threaten to release the carbon stored in the trees that grow there, transforming a carbon sink into a carbon source.
In all, fires in boreal forests released the carbon sink and produced nearly half a billion metric tons of carbon in 2021. That’s more carbon than the entire continent of Australia produced the same year, though some of the emissions produced by the fires will be sucked back up as forests regrow.
The researchers obtained the data for their study by tracking concentrations of emissions in the atmosphere using satellites, and then they put that information into a computer model to determine where, geographically, those emissions came from. They found that boreal forests, which typically produce about 10 percent of the globe’s annual wildfire emissions, accounted for 23 percent of the world’s wildfire emissions in 2021 — more than twice as much as normal.
Canadell, who led the study, is most concerned about the study’s main takeaway; Boreal forests have served an important and underappreciated role in sequestering carbon emissions, but climate change threatens to release that carbon. “We need to be very careful with these systems in terms of their future development.” he said.
1. What is the function of paragraph 2?| A．To indicate the seriousness of the fire. |
| B．To illustrate two scientific concepts. |
| C．To explain the source of carbon. |
| D．To show the importance of boreal forests. |
| A．By searching on the website. | B．By employing technology. |
| C．By analyzing previous data. | D．By turning to the firefighters. |
| A．Stopping. | B．Increasing. | C．Monitoring. | D．Assessing. |
| A．The reasons for the forest fires in the north. |
| B．The impact of the 2021 boreal forest fires. |
| C．The link between fires and carbon dioxide. |
| D．The increasingly growing carbon emissions. |
