1 . Just a year ago, the colors were bright under the waves. Now it’s gray — the Maldivian reef is dead. The coral is killed by the pressure of rising temperatures.
Coral reefs are areas underwater where small creatures live. The coral is hard material formed on the bottom of the sea by the skeletons of those creatures. But the world has lost about half its coral reefs in the last 30 years. Scientists are working to prevent their destruction. Due to global warming, over 90 percent of corals are expected to die by 2050. “To lose coral reefs is to fundamentally undermine the health of a very large proportion of the human race,” said Ruth Gates, director of the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology.
Why are coral reefs important? Coral reefs support a fourth of all marine species, as well as half a billion people worldwide. They serve as barriers to protect coastlines from the storms. They provide billions of dollars from tourism, fishing and other trade. They are also used in medical research for cures for diseases. “Everyone should be concerned,” said biologist Ove Guldberg at Australia’s University of Queensland. “This is not just some distant dive destination. This is the basic structure of the ecosystem we depend on.”
The ocean is getting warmer. A rising temperature of just one to two degree Celsius can force coral to expel the algae (驱逐海藻) that live there. This leaves their white skeletons uncovered. It is a process called “bleaching”. Sixteen percent of the world’s corals died of bleaching in 1998. The problem has become much worse in recent years.
“We’ve lost 50 percent of the reefs, but that means we still have 50 percent left,” said Ruth Gates, who is working in Hawaii to breed corals that can better withstand increasing temperatures. She is also trying to “train” corals to survive rising temperatures. Gates says it is time to start “thinking outside the box”— find creative ways to help them.
1. What does the underlined word “undermine” in paragraph 2 mean?A.Regain | B.Weaken |
C.Promote | D.Develop |
A.People won’t find a dive destination in the future. |
B.The effort to save corals will turn out to be fruitless. |
C.The bright sea has lost its charm because of those dead corals. |
D.The destruction of coral reefs will affect the earth ecosystem. |
A.The harm of algae. | B.The importance of coral reefs. |
C.The process of “bleaching”. | D.The change of ocean temperature. |
A.Worried | B.Positive |
C.Casual | D.Curious |
2 . ''It can't be done. '' Boyan Slat heard this over and over when he first proposed a way to clean up millions of tons of plastic polluting our oceans.
Slat, who grew up in the city of Delft in the Netherlands, was on a diving trip in Greece three years ago when he was deeply impressed by plastic. ''There were more plastic bags than fish, '' he says. ''That moment I realized it was a huge issue and that environmental issues are really the biggest problems my generation will face. ''
That fall, Slat, then 17, decided to study plastic pollution as part of a high school project. Soon, Slat learned that no one had yet come up with practical way to clean up this massive garbage patches. Most proposed solutions involved ''fishing'' up the plastic using ships equipped with nets—which, as Slat discovered, would likely take more than 1,000 years, cost too much, let off too much sea life along with the trash.
Slat proposed an alternative that mostly avoided these problems: a solar-powered system using a floating plastic tube which will go around the garbage and trap it is 600 meters long. Wind, waves and ocean currents will push the trash toward the tube. A ship will pick up the trash and take it back to the shore. Best of all, Slat predicted his system could clean up the North Pacific Garbage Patch within five to 10 years.
The following, Slat entered the aerospace engineering program at the Delft University of Technology and officially announced his ocean cleanup concept at TEDxDelft. But nothing much moved forward.
Slat organized a team of volunteers and employees for The Ocean Cleanup, which now numbers about 100. In answer to opposition, Slat and his team raised $100,000 from a crowd funding campaign and began testing a 40-meter collecting barrier near the Azores Islands last March.
Over the next three to four years, Slat will push toward a fully operational large-scale project by testing a series of longer and longer barriers.
1. What inspired the boy to study plastic pollution?A.One of his high school projects. |
B.Others' opposition to his proposal. |
C.Humans’ failure in cleaning up the ocean. |
D.The shockingly heavy plastic pollution in ocean. |
A.It is powerful but only used in California and Hawaii. |
B.It is huge but causes great damage to sea lives. |
C.It makes full use of natural forces and is friendly to nature. |
D.It was welcomed by all the public and worked very well. |
A.Presenting his idea at TEDxDelft. |
B.Raising funds with his team. |
C.Doing test. |
D.Stopping plastic from washing into the ocean. |
A.Explain a strange idea. | B.Introduce a fascinating person. |
C.Describe a social phenomenon. | D.Praise a point of view. |
3 . E-waste is fast becoming a serious global problem.
The source of e-waste
We live in a society that constantly produces and consumes electronic products. It is often cheaper to buy new pieces of equipment than to repair old ones. Also, through clever advertising, companies persuade consumers to replace their old TVs, mobile phones and computers for the latest models. E-waste is created when we throw away electronic equipment like this. In the EU alone, about 8.7 million tonnes of e-waste is produced each year.
The problem with e-waste
Burying e-waste in landfills or burning it causes serious problems for the environment.
Global recycling schemes (计划)
Take-back policy
Another solution to e-waste is to make manufacturers responsible for their used products. This could mean forcing them to take back old products which are no longer wanted.
Consuming less
We can all reduce the amount of waste we produce by buying electrical products only when we have to.
A.In recent years, many countries have started recycling e-waste. |
B.They should then make sure they are properly recycled or reused. |
C.Sadly, just over one million tonnes is recycled. |
D.This report will examine this problem and provide some possible solutions. |
E.By resisting the temptation to buy a product just to have the latest version, we cut down on e-waste. |
F.Electronics contain dangerous chemicals and metals. |
G.Both manufacturers and consumers must accept their responsibilities and make efforts to keep it to a minimum. |
4 . The early life of the green sea turtle (海龟) is full of danger. Only one in 1,000 baby sea turtles survive to adulthood (成年). From its home in the sand, it breaks its egg with an egg tooth. Its mother is not there to help it. Instead, it is greeted by crabs, coyotes, and dogs waiting to eat it for dinner. To survive, the baby turtle must hide in the sand until night. Then, it moves slowly to the sea.
The small turtle must swim hard to reach the ocean waters. In the sea, it tries hard to find food. It must also keep itself from being food for fish.
As dangerous as the sea turtle’s life is in the natural world, its most dangerous enemies are humans. The rubbish left by humans in the ocean causes problems for the small green sea turtle. A little turtle might eat a piece of plastic (塑料) in the sea. It might also eat oil on the ocean’s surface. Young turtles also get caught in fishing nets. There are laws against hunting sea turtles. Still, many are hunted, both for their meat and for their shells (壳). All of these dangers must be prevented.
Sea turtles that do survive to grow into adulthood go through many changes. For example, adult green sea turtles weigh about 500 pounds. They stop eating jellyfish and other meat and eat only plants. And they may plan a trip to go back home again. A mother sea turtle goes back to the beach where she was born. This is the only place where she will lay eggs. Even if it has been forty years since she was a baby, she always knows her way back home.
1. Why do baby turtles move to the sea at night?A.They dislike sunshine. |
B.They prefer lower temperatures. |
C.They can find food easily then. |
D.They need to avoid enemies. |
A.Pitiful. | B.Careless. |
C.Interesting. | D.Courageous. |
A.They mainly feed on fish and meat. |
B.They always produce eggs at their birthplaces. |
C.They can live for around forty years. |
D.They visit their beach homes several times a year. |
A.The homes of green sea turtles. |
B.How sea turtles find their food. |
C.The dangers faced by sea turtles. |
D.How young turtles become adults. |
5 . The Great Wall, China
Stretching over 21,000 kilometers, the Great Wall was built to prevent invasions and has a history of more than 2,000 years. UNESCO in February 2019 calls it an absolute masterpiece, not only because of the ambitious character of the undertaking but also the perfection of its construction.”
But perfection isn’t protection. 51.2 percent of the Great Wall had either already disappeared or is at a significant risk of disappearing. Besides for wind and rain erosion, the main reasons for the destruction of the Great Wall are human factors such as tourism, construction, human contact and so on.
Pamukkale,Turkey
Pamukkale, which means “cotton castle” in Turkish, is famous for its shining white calcite terraces (方解石阶地)with warm and mineral-rich waters overrun.
Before being listed as a World Heritage Site in 1988, Pamukkale had been severely damaged by human activities. People used hot spring water to fill swimming pools, some visitors stood on the rocks and some even bathed in the hot springs with soap and shampoo. To protect the terraces, the Turkish government has decided to pull down the hotels and require all tourists to visit this site barefoot.
Great Barrier Reef, Australia
Home to 400 types of coral and 1,500 species of fish, the Great Barrier Reef draws visitors to Australia from all over the world.
However, the Great Barrier Reef is expected to suffer from increasingly frequent bleaching events, cases in which corals turn white and may die, according to a UNESCO report. The heat waves caused by global warming have killed half of the coral here in the two years, according to a CNN report. Pollution from industry developments and harmful fishing practices are also big concerns.
The Dead Sea, Jordan
At 423 meters below sea level, the Dead Sea is 10 times saltier than the ocean, meaning that the water is so dense, even tourists who can9t swim will be able to float.
But the seaside resorts built in the 1980s now sit kilometers away from the water’s edge, which has lost half of its surface area in the past 40 years. The damage is irreversible due to the nature of the mineral industry and the type of agricultural use that has drained the water.
1. Which are you required to visit without shoes?A.The Great Wall, China. |
B.Pamukkale, Turkey. |
C.Great Barrier Reef, Australia. |
D.The Dead Sea, Jordan. |
A.Main reasons for the destruction of the Great Wall come from wind and rain erosion. |
B.Pamukkale was damaged by human activities after 1988. |
C.Pollution and the heat waves caused by global warming kill much coral in the Great Barrier Reef. |
D.Half of the Dead Sea surface area has disappeared in the past two decades. |
A.They are all famous endangered natural spots. |
B.They’re damaged only from human activities. |
C.They all draw the attention of the governments. |
D.They’re all seriously damaged. |
6 . Blue Planet II’s latest episode focuses on how plastic is having a disastrous effect on the ocean and slowly poisoning our sea creatures. Researchers recently also found that sea creatures living in the deepest place on Earth, the Mariana Trench, have plastic in their stomachs. Indeed, the oceans are drowning in plastic.
Though it seems now that the world couldn’t possibly function without plastics, consumer plastics are a remarkably recent invention. The first plastic bags were introduced in the 1950s; the same decade that plastic packaging began gaining in popularity in the United States. This growth has happened so fast that science is still catching up with the change. Plastics pollution research, for instance, is still a very early science.
We put all these plastics into the environment and we still don’t really know what the outcomes are going to be. What we do know, though, is disturbing. Ocean plastic is estimated to kill millions of marine animals every year. Nearly 700 species, including endangered ones, are known to have been affected by it. One in three leatherback turtles, which often mistake plastic bags for jellyfish, have been found with plastic in their bellies. Ninety percent of seabirds are now eating plastics on a regular basis. By 2050, that figure is expected to rise to 100 percent.
And it’s not just wildlife that is threatened by the plastics in our seas. Humans are consuming plastics through the seafood we eat. I could understand why some people see ocean plastic as a disaster, worth mentioning to the same degree as climate change. But ocean plastic is not as complicated as climate change. There are no ocean trash deniers (否认者), at least so far. To do something about it, we don’t have to remake our planet energy system.
This is not a problem where we don’t know what the solution is. We know how to pick up garbage. Anyone can do it. We know how to dispose (处理) of it. We know how to recycle. We can all start by thinking twice before we use single-use plastic products. Things that may seem ordinary, like using a reusable bottle or a reusable bag----when taken collectively, these choices really do make a difference.
1. Why is plastics pollution research still a very early science?A.The plastics pollution research is too difficult. |
B.Plastics have produced less pollution than coal. |
C.The world couldn’t possibly function without plastics. |
D.Plastics have gained in popularity too fast for science to catch up. |
A.By statistics. |
B.By quotations from leading experts. |
C.By using examples from his own experience. |
D.By comparison and contrast. |
A.Climate change is caused by human activities. |
B.Some people hold some doubts about climate change. |
C.Climate change is less important than ocean pollution. |
D.Ocean plastic is more complicated than climate change. |
A.Ocean plastic is a global issue. |
B.The oceans become choked with plastic. |
C.Blue Planet II has left viewers heartbroken. |
D.Plastics gain in popularity all over the world |
1. When was Greenpeace founded?
A.Twenty years ago. | B.Fifty years ago. | C.Seventy years ago. |
A.He is the action organizer. | B.He is a leading nuclear scientist. |
C.He is one of the plan makers. |
A.Protesting the use of nuclear weapons. | B.Protecting animals and plants. |
C.Environmental campaign. |
A.They showed little interest in it. | B.They were against the demonstration. |
C.They expressed their support in different ways. |
Diets have changed in China — and so too has its top crop. Since 2011, the country
A taste for meat is
According to the World Bank, China accounts for about 30 percent of total
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Last Sunday I saw a worst storm in years. It came sudden and went on for over three hours. After lunch, I went into my room to have a rest. The air was hot, but all was quiet. Then a strong wind started to blow into my room. Pieces of paper on my desk flew high into the air and some flew out the open window. As I ran out to catch it, big drop of rain began to fall. When I come back into my house, it was raining more harder and harder. Then I heard a loud crashing sound from the back of the house. When I ran out of my room to find out that had happened, a big tree had fallen down and broke the top of the backroom.