1 . What do Gladys, Ruby and Logan all have in common? Well, they are all names of storms.
Why are storms named?
A name is given when a storm is expected to cause medium or high impacts, or in weather-speak (气候语言), has the potential to cause an amber or red warning.
How are the names chosen?
The Met Office asks the public to suggest possible names and a new list is published every year. The lists are alphabetical (按字母顺序排列的), with names alternating between male and female. Bad news is if your name begins with Q, U, X, Y or Z, you’re never going to get a storm named after you.
| A．When is a storm named? |
| B．But how do storms get their names? |
| C．There’s quite a logical explanation for naming a storm. |
| D．The practice is to avoid a conflict with US hurricane naming traditions. |
| E．Giving storms names is one way to keep the public informed of potential risks. |
| F．These warnings are issued for things like rain, wind, snow, ice, fog and extreme heat. |
| G．When a storm arrives, forecasters will alphabetically pick the next name from the list. |
2 . Until 13, Parker Liautaud was an ordinary kid. That changed after he met polar explorer Robert Swan. They began an email correspondence which turned into a friendship that eventually saw the then 14-year-old invited to join a trip to the Antarctic. He said yes almost instantly. Friends and family, to whom he’d so far shown he had no particular interest in outdoor pursuits, particularly polar ones, were thrown into total confusion, to say the least. He ate lots of chicken, spent a long time in the gym, and proved them wrong.
The following year, Liautaud cooked up a more ambitious plan: to become the youngest-ever person to go to the North Pole. He found a new partner, Doug Stoup, and through a mixture of charm and luck raised the roughly $150, 000 needed for the record attempt. Then disaster struck. The early months of the year, when the two set out, were among the warmest on record. The North Pole, which is essentially a GPS location on a constantly-drifting collection of ice sheets, became virtually inaccessible, surrounded by pieces of uncovered ocean.
A trip which had intended to raise awareness of melting ice caps had been obstructed by melting ice caps. "We would get up, battle through these difficult conditions for 150 hours, then wake up the next morning and find that we were further away from the Pole than we’d started the previous morning, he said. After 14 days’ trying, they admitted defeat.
Liautaud came home and decided to try again the next spring. Conditions were cold but perfect, and he and Stoup reached the Pole in no time. While it might not have made him the youngest North-Poler, the success did give Liautaud a platform to continue advocacy against climate change, through his campaigning website. His view is that it’s his generation that must push hardest for cuts in carbon emissions. He has already contributed to research projects carried out by the International Atomic Energy Agency and will soon set up two stations to record weather data.
1. How did Liautaud’s family react to his decision to go to the Antarctic?| A．They made fun of it. | B．They were puzzled about it. |
| C．They turned a deaf ear to it. | D．They tried to talk him out of it. |
| A．The lack of funds. | B．A natural disaster. |
| C．The movement of the ice. | D．The failure of the equipment. |
| A．To push his physical limits. | B．To support environmental protection. |
| C．To become an experienced North-Poler. | D．To finish a research project for his website. |
| A．Demanding. | B．Generous. | C．Responsible. | D．Cooperative. |
3 . Hands up, who’s rubbish at drawing? Ha! Bet you’re not as bad as me.
Like most during lockdown, I missed being in familiar green city spaces. A quick snap on my phone never quite captured the moment. So excitingly, I found “green sketching” sessions near my home.
This type of art, “green sketching”, was inspired by environmental scientist Dr Ali Foxon. Ali thought that spreading the joy of sketching could be the key to making people care about nature instead of just wordy reports. She launched her movement, Boggy Doodles, in 2016.
The day we were there the forest was glorious. We spent the last hour trying to capture a forest scene I made a real effort to catch the dark and brighter areas of the trunks, their textures. I used an eraser to create the white shape of a silver tree in the distance. Mine looked more like a winter scene. But when the five of us brought our work together at the end, I wasn’t too ashamed: mine was only just the worst.
At the prospect of a new lock down, I can’t be the only one to feel sad. Sketching calms a busy, anxious mind and trains the brain to notice “little things” that spark joy and help strengthen us against life’s challenges. While engaging with nature may well make us keener on protecting it — in Robert Macfarlane’s words, “We will not save what we do not love — and we rarely love what we cannot name or do not see”— the benefits of sketching work the other way round.
1. Why would the author be a member of the “green sketching”?| A．She was eager to return to green spaces. | B．She followed her friends’ advice to do so. |
| C．She wanted to improve her painting skills. | D．She needed something special to kill time. |
| A．To let participants learn a skill. | B．To help participants to write a report. |
| C．To introduce people to a relaxing activity. | D．To raise the awareness of protecting nature. |
| A．Arouse. | B．Release. | C．Decline. | D．Prevent. |
| A．Sketching can strengthen one’s creativity. | B．A calm mind overcomes challenges in life. |
| C．Doing things we love brings us happiness. | D．To protect nature is to connect with it first. |
4 . The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its sixth major report on the health of the planet on Monday, demonstrating “if Pacific Ocean temperatures continue to rise, bleaching will kill the remaining corals that make up Australia’s Great Barrier Reef ”.
Bleaching is the result of higher-than-normal ocean temperatures. Warmer water causes corals to release the sea-plants that feed them and make them colorful. They turn white and sicken, often dying very quickly.
The Great Barrier Reef, which is over 2,300 kilometers long is the largest living structure on Earth. It is home to thousands of kinds of fish and other animals. Giant clams, whales, dolphins and birds are among the others that depend on the reef to live.
Humanity also profits from the reef. Popular with visitors, who bring a lot of money to the area, the reef was the center of Tony Fontes’ 40 years career. The professional diver taught the sport and led dive rips to the reef. He compared the destruction from a bleaching event to that from a forest fire. “You just realize you’ve just swum across a reef that a couple weeks ago was full of life and vibrant and now a bushfire has gone through it and the coral is dead,” he said, adding, “and the rest of the marine life will just have to move on or die off.”
IPCC panelist Mark Howden, director of the climate school at Australian National University said conditions that scientists predicted for the future “ are appearing pretty much now. ” However, he mentioned the report offered ideas that can reduce pressure on the reef and help Australia reduce its negative impact on the environment. “Australians should be concerned about all the problems discussed in the report,” he said, “but, the IPCC also wrote about solutions to prevent worst-case circumstances in the future.”
1. What makes the Great Barrier Reef suffer from bleaching?| A．Sick reef. | B．Emergence of sea-plants. |
| C．Warmer water. | D．More corals. |
| A．Many ocean creatures rely on the reef to live. |
| B．It is the largest living structure in the universe. |
| C．A forest fire damaged the reef a few weeks ago. |
| D．It’s popular with visitors because it brings them money. |
| A．To show his strong dislike of the bleaching. |
| B．To describe the gradual process of the bleaching. |
| C．To express the destructive effect of the bleaching. |
| D．To voice the similarity between bushfire and bleaching. |
| A．The vital importance of the reef. | B．The ways to solve the problems. |
| C．The problems discussed in the report. | D．The prediction of the future condition. |
5 . Earth Day, marked on April 22nd, is the perfect opportunity to think about how we can make the world a better place.
Get outdoors.
Did you know that the average person only spends four hours a week playing outdoors?
Many people find that connecting to the natural environment makes them happy for a much longer time, compared with crazy shopping, which only brings temporary excitement but, more likely, lasting harm to the planet.
It’s no accident that meditation (冥思) apps and videos are often themed with rain, forests and calming ocean sounds.
Save the planet by “plogging”!
Plogging simply means collecting litter as you jog, or walk around your community. Why not host a plogging event of your own?
| A．Purchase less and connect more |
| B．Leave your happiness in the wild |
| C．The following are three good chances |
| D．You can help clean up your community |
| E．There are so many ways to get involved |
| F．We challenge you to get outside on April 22nd |
| G．Since we can experience them easily outside in nature |
6 . What would you think if someone suggested pulling down Big Ben to make way for a car park? It would be ridiculous, right? But when it comes to devastation (毁灭) of the natural world, we aren’t so easily shocked. But we should be...or we’ll be in a lot of trouble.
Nature is shrinking by the day. Ancient forests are destroyed. Wetlands are becoming dry. Woodland is disappearing. And all in the name of progress. This is bad in itself, but it’s devastating for biodiversity.
Biodiversity refers to the variety of plants, animals and other living things which are all inter-connected. The ecological services provided by biodiversity are vital to everyday life. The air we breathe is a product of photosynthesis (光合作用) by green plants. In fact, all life on earth exists thanks to the benefit of biodiversity. More than 90 percent of the calories consumed by people worldwide are produced from 80 plant species. And 30 percent of medicines are developed from plants and animals. Maintaining a wide diversity of species in each ecosystem is necessary to preserve all living things.
The loss of biodiversity could be devastating. “It is wrong to think that biodiversity can be reduced indefinitely without threatening humans,” said Harvard University biologist Edward O. Wilson, known as “the father of biodiversity”. He warned, “we are about to reach a critical point beyond which biodiversity loss will be unavoidable.”
But what can we do? The problem is that the concept of biodiversity is so vague. People might care about giant pandas, but it is much harder to excite them about the fate of tiny sea creatures which are being boiled to death in the cooling systems of power stations along coastlines. The Guardian newspaper is trying to help. It has started the Biodiversity 100 campaign to try to convince governments around the world to take action to deal with the widespread concerns about biodiversity. This includes persuading the UK government to create a series of marine reserves to reverse the decline in sea-life caused by industrial fishing, banning the fishing sharks by the Japanese fishermen and stopping the killing of dingoes in Australia, among many other things.
There is a lot to do. And we’d better get a move on if we don’t want to end up with a planet that can’t support life!
1. What does the author want to tell us by the comparison in paragraph 1?| A．It is unreasonable to pull down Big Ben. | B．People take devastation of nature for granted. |
| C．The differences between Big Ben and nature. | D．The great trouble we have been faced with. |
| A．It doesn’t matter to reduce biodiversity. | B．People have done enough to preserve biodiversity. |
| C．The situation of biodiversity is very serious. | D．Biodiversity loss has become unavoidable. |
| A．The UK government. | B．The concept of biodiversity. |
| C．The action to deal with problem. | D．The Guardian newspaper. |
| A．Biodiversity Battle | B．Biodiversity Loss | C．Planet Conservation | D．Planet Changing |
7 . The red siskin holds a special place in Venezuela. Pictures of the bird appear on the country’s money, on products and in school textbooks. The “Little Cardinal”, as the bird is affectionately called, is loved by Venezuela.
However, this brilliantly colored songbird is now in danger. It has been vanishing at an alarming rate from the wild because of shrinking habitat and poachers cashing in on its red feathers prized around the world by breeders of exotic birds. Once flourishing in the millions, as few as about 300 remain in the wild in Venezuela.
That threat has brought together an international team that includes scientists from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D. C., and poor coffee farmers in Venezuela. They are all set on rescuing the red siskin from extinction. “They don’t have many years left, unless we do something right now,” said Miguel Arvelo, a vet for the non-profit organization Provita.
The Red Siskin Initiative began about three years ago. The plan is to persuade farmers to plant organic coffee plants with layers of thick branches that are inviting to the endangered bird. In the meantime, a red siskin breeding center is being built at a private zoo in Venezuela. The zoo expects to hatch 200 of the birds next year, which will be introduced into the coffee plant habitats.
The coffee initiative has been showing positive results. Some 40 farmers in the coastal mountains of Carayaca have stopped cutting down trees — an important first step.
Protecting the red siskin from poachers has been challenging due to Venezuela’s economic crisis. Poor Venezuelan families often capture and sell the threatened bird to illegal traffickers. Researchers and scientists have been robbed or shot by Venezuela’s growing poor population.
Scientists keep the places where the birds are known to live a secret to protect them from poachers. Catching sight of them required arriving before dawn and hiding in tall grass under pouring rain. Then, the sun broke through and they swooped in, landing one by one on tree branches overhead, singing loudly.
“It’s the first time I’ve seen so many together,” said biologist Jhonathan Miranda, a Provita researcher. “It gives us hope.”
1. Why is “pictures of the bird” mentioned in Paragraph 1?| A．To draw the attention of the readers. | B．To show the bird is precious and cute. |
| C．To emphasize the value of the red siskin. | D．To demonstrate how much Venezuelans love the bird. |
| A．The bird favors the thick branches of coffee plants. |
| B．The bird prefers to live in a private zoo in Venezuela. |
| C．The bird likes to land on tree branches or hide in tall grass. |
| D．The bird likes to stay with poor coffee farmers in Venezuela. |
①Venezuelan families has captured and sold the birds to the illegal buyers
②The poachers have been capturing them for their feather to make profits
③Farmers in Venezuela keep them for food in their daily life
④Their living habitat has been disappearing day by day
| A．①② | B．①③ | C．②④ | D．③④ |
| A．Poachers have robbed or even shot the researchers in Venezuela. |
| B．Venezuelan are forced to plant coffee trees for the red siskin to land on. |
| C．Protecting the bird seems pointless due to extreme poverty in Venezuela. |
| D．Keeping the living habitat of the bird hidden from the poachers is positive. |
8 . Eradajere Oleita thinks she may have a partial solution for two of their country’s persistent problems: garbage and poverty. It’s called the Chip Bag Project. As a student and
Chip
It takes about four hours to
Since its start in 2020, the Chip Bag Project has
Sure, it would be
And, of course, there’s the symbolism of recycling bags that would
| A．instructor | B．helper | C．environmentalist | D．tailor |
| A．criterion | B．qualification | C．question | D．favor |
| A．lightly | B．deliberately | C．occasionally | D．indirectly |
| A．sell | B．empty | C．clean | D．donate |
| A．producers | B．eaters | C．sponsors | D．buyers |
| A．dustbins | B．locations | C．bags | D．streets |
| A．lead | B．lie | C．lay | D．print |
| A．check | B．need | C．reach | D．use |
| A．sew | B．design | C．offer | D．discover |
| A．member | B．size | C．mission | D．debt |
| A．result | B．relief | C．method | D．produce |
| A．made | B．decorated | C．accumulated | D．charged |
| A．in terms of | B．regardless of | C．instead of | D．as of |
| A．busier | B．simpler | C．heavier | D．smaller |
| A．goal | B．stage | C．procedure | D．chance |
| A．objectively | B．politically | C．socially | D．secretly |
| A．moreover | B．otherwise | C．instead | D．besides |
| A．report | B．blame | C．reminder | D．solution |
| A．problems | B．groups | C．regulations | D．protection |
| A．divisions | B．similarities | C．messages | D．connections |
9 . When talking to people about climate change, you might always get asked the question: What can you do to help as a consumer? Here are some specific steps you can take:
Sign up for a green pricing program with your electric utility. Some utility companies allow homes and businesses to pay extra for power from clean sources. When you participate in these programs, you’re telling your utility company that you’re willing to pay more to address climate.
Buy an electric vehicle (EV). EVs have come a long way in terms of cost and performance. Although they might not be right for everyone, they’re becoming more affordable for many consumers.
| A．That’s cost-effective. |
| B．Try a plant-based burger. |
| C．Reduce your home’s emissions. |
| D．That’s an important market signal. |
| E．EVs are friendly to environment and easy to drive. |
| F．You can find them in many restaurants and grocery stores. |
| G．This is where consumers’ behavior can have a huge impact. |
10 . After being attacked by Hurricane Ida’s 150 mph winds and torrential rains, hundreds of thousands of Gulf Coast residents were left without power and fresh water this week as a 100-degree heat wave settled over the region. Ida smashed into Louisiana as a Category 4 hurricane, ripping off roofs, knocking out transmission lines, flooding roads, and reducing some brick buildings in downtown New Orleans to rubble. At least eight people died in the storm and the toll is expected to rise as emergency workers search wrecked homes and businesses.
One of the most powerful hurricanes to ever hit the U.S. mainland, Ida brought a 5 to 12-foot storm surge that covered low-lying communities in southeastern Louisiana. Grand Isle is now “uninhabitable,” said Parish President Cynthia Lee Sheng, with 3 feet of sand covering the entire barrier island and 40 percent of the buildings completely destroyed.
The storm caused a citywide blackout in New Orleans, but a Hurricane Katrina-level disaster was avoided there, thanks in part to the $ 14.5 billion spent on new levees, seawalls, and pumps after the 2005 storm. Experts are warning that Ida could worsen the Covid crisis in the Gulf Coast, as residents crowd together in homes and emergency shelters without immediate access to testing or medical care. ICUs in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama hospitals were already near capacity be- fore the storm hit. Nearly 1 million people are still without power across Louisiana, and authorities waned it could be weeks before electricity is restored. “If you have already evacuated,” said Gov. John Bel Edwands, “do not return here.”
1. Which of the following best describes Hurricane Ida?| A．Mild. | B．Destructive. | C．Uncontrollable. | D．Impressive. |
| A．The death number. | B．The heat wave. |
| C．The wind speed. | D．The citywide blackout. |
| A．The entire island is covered with sand. | B．It is one of the low-lying communities. |
| C．The residents there can't wait to leave. | D．Over half of its buildings were in ruins. |
| A．Ambitious | B．Undoubted. | C．Indifferent. | D．Unconfident. |
