2 . Rising sea levels, extremes of weather and more droughts and floods will all destroy the world’s energy systems as global warming picks up its pace, a new report has found.

Energy companies are quite often cited as part of the problems of climate change, generating the lion’s share of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, amounting to around 60% of the total. But they will also suffer as global warming worsens.

Many large plants are particularly threatened by floods because they lack protection from sudden storms. Electricity distribution networks are also likely to be affected.

Christoph Frei, secretary general of WEC, said governments must play a key role in ensuring the world’s important infrastructure is protected. Climate change is certain to affect the energy sector. We need powerful policy frameworks to unlock the long-term investments that are urgently needed to deliver the future we want. Leadership will be required at all levels.

Despite efforts to increase energy efficiency, the amount of energy used globally is still set to rise. But the effects of this could be reduced if companies spend more energy on renewable and low-carbon forms of energy.

However, there is little sign so far that energy companies around the world have got this message. Fossil fuels continues to dominate new investment in energy generation capacity, according to the International Energy Agency. Besides, we have failed in creating a global price for carbon emissions, which could help to reverse this trend.

Another key focus must be energy distribution networks, according to the report, as new technology can be used to make them “smart”, saving energy by distributing energy from generators to users in more intelligent ways.

“The time has come to get real about the challenges facing the energy sector,” Frei said.

Philipes Joubert, executive chairman of WEC’s global electricity initiative and former president of Alstom Power, said large companies are taking note. “Leading businesses in this sector are increasingly realising that business as usual is no longer acceptable.”

4 . In the last 100 years, the global temperature has gone up by around 0.75℃. Such a small increase is causing sea levels to rise and ________ the habitat of many species of plants and animals. A(n) ________ of 2℃ in global temperatures could result in ________ of 30% of the world’s land species.

Sea levels in the UK have increased by around 10 cm in the last 100 years and experts ________ that global sea levels could rise by up to 59 cm in the near future. ________, areas which were land a few hundred years ago are now under water.

As a result of the changing ________, the world’s ecosystems are also changing faster than ever before. So what is ________ climate change? The main cause of climate change is the huge amount of greenhouse gases like CO₂ in the atmosphere, but the reason for this is the world’s population — you and me. As the ________ increases, more land is needed to provide food, and more energy is ________ too. Burning fossil fuels for heating, lighting, transport, or electricity ________ CO₂. Furthermore, humans breathe out CO₂ and trees “breathe in” CO₂ and produce oxygen — so by ________ trees, we are increasing the amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere and reducing the amount of oxygen. As a result of these ________, CO₂ levels are now at their highest for 800,000 years.

The biggest ________ we all face is to prevent further environmental disasters. We need to ______________ burning fossil fuels and start using renewable energy. If we can get enough ________ from renewable fuels, we can stop using fossil fuels completely.

7 . One of the ocean’s noisiest creatures is smaller than you’d expect — snapping shrimp (鼓虾). They create a widespread background noise in the underwater environment, which helps them communicate, protect their homes and hunt for food. When enough shrimp snap (发出噼啪声) at once, the noise can be deafening.

Aran Mooney, a biologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, suggested that with increased ocean temperatures, snapping shrimp will snap more often and louder than before. This could raise the background noise of the global ocean. “They make a sound by closing a claw so fast. This makes a bubble (泡泡) and when that bubble bursts, it makes that snapping sound,” said Mooney.

Mooney discovered a strong relationship between warmer waters and more frequent snapping shrimp sounds after experimenting with the shrimp in tanks in the lab and by listening to the shrimp in the ocean at various water temperatures. “As the temperature rises, the snap rate increases,” he said. This makes sense because shrimp are essentially cold-blooded animals, meaning their body temperature and activity levels are largely controlled by their living environment. “We can actually show in the field that not only do snap rates increase, but the sound levels increase as well.”

How the louder snapping shrimp would affect or benefit the surroundings remained to be seen. “We know that fish use sound to communicate,” Mooney said. “If the environment gets noisy, it has the possibility to influence that communication. That’s something we have to follow up on.” There is also the possibility that the change of snapping shrimp affects machines humans use to discover mines, which could lead to unpleasant results.

The Earth set unofficial record high temperatures last week. Scientists said they were a clear sign of how pollutants     1     (release) by humans are warming the environment. But the heat is also just one way the planet is telling us something is     2     (serious) wrong, they added.

Most of the planet     3     (cover) by oceans, which have taken in     4     percent of the recent warming caused by planet-warming gases such as carbon dioxide and methane.

In April, worldwide ocean temperature rose to 21.1 degrees Celsius,     5     scientists believe was caused by a     6     (combine) of planet-warming gases and the early El Nino formation.

High levels of wildfire smoke are more common on the West Coast. But, recently, several rounds of wildfire smoke from wildfires in northern Canada brought     7     (danger) air quality levels to eastern North America.

The current El Nino formed a month or two     8     (early) than usual. It replaced La Nina that, with its cooling of Pacific waters, kept worldwide temperatures down. That means that it will have more time than usual to     9     (strength).

The World Meteorological Organization predicts there is     10     98 percent chance that at least one of the next five years will be the warmest     11     record. One of these years would beat temperatures from 2016 when an exceptionally strong El Nino was present.

10 . The streets, sidewalks and roofs of cities all absorb heat during the day, making some urban areas across the United States up to 6 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than rural ones during the day—and 22 degrees F hotter at night. These “urban heat islands”   can also develop underground as the city heat spreads downward, beneath the surface. And basements, subway tunnels and other underground infrastructure also constantly bleed heat into the surrounding earth, creating hotspots. Now the underground heat is building up as the planet warms.

According to a new study of downtown Chicago, underground hotspots may threaten the very same structures that emit the heat in the first place. Such temperature changes make the ground around them expand and contract (收缩) enough to cause potential damage. “Without anyone realizing it, the city of Chicago’s downtown was deforming,” says the study’s author Alessandro F. Rotta Loria, a civil and environmental engineer at Northwestern University.

The findings, published in Communications Engineering, expose a “silent hazard (危险)” to civil infrastructure in cities with soft er ground — especially those near water — Rotta Loria says. “There might have been structural issues caused by this underground climate change that happened, and we didn’t even realize,” he adds. While not an immediate or direct danger to human lives, this previously unknown effect highlights the impacts of a lesser-known component of climate change.

Similar to climate change above the surface, these underground changes occur over long periods of time. “These effects took decades, a century, to develop,” Rotta Loria says, adding that elevated underground temperatures would likewise take a long time to dissipate (逐渐消失) on their own.

But other researchers interviewed for this story all say this wasted energy could also be recycled, presenting an opportunity to both cool the subsurface and save on energy costs. Subway tunnels and basements could be updated with technologies to recapture the heat. For example, water pipes could be installed to run through underground hotspots and pick up some of the heat energy.