National parks are places to be treasured—places     1     the country locks away the very best it has to offer for everyone to enjoy. Not all famous national parks are on land. One good example is the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park in Australia.     2     (stretch)over 2,300 kilometers, the Great Barrier Reef is considered one of the natural     3     (wonder)of the world. The park was created in 1975 to protect the reef from overdevelopment and fishing. Unfortunately, the biggest danger to it is global warming,     4     park management cannot stop.

Little pool penguins are the world’s smallest penguin species. Hundreds of these little birds are washing up, dead, on New Zealand shores, shocking residents walking along the beaches and worrying experts about the implications of     1     so many deaths could mean. The abundant deaths     2     (lead) scientists and conservation experts to ask: How much is normal? And will it get worse? Who is to blame? Probably climate change is making it a lot worse for the penguins as sea surface temperature increases and marine heat waves and storms become     3     (frequent). As a consequence, less than a third of all chicks typically survive to adulthood,     4     (base) on studies in the South Island of New Zealand.

3 . Climate experts are having a debate: they are asking whether the UK should focus more on adapting to climate change or trying to prevent it.

David Frost holds that preventing climate change is no longer an option, given the extent to which the Earth now appears certain to heat up. Despite the many policies which attempt to stop climate change, it now seems unavoidable that the world will pass the 1.5℃ or 2℃ increases in average global temperature that are likely to induce large changes in the climate.

David Frost is right in that our economies are growing so much slower than we had anticipated. Our emissions can drop if we reduce emissions per unit of GDP we create—but they can also drop if the GDP is lower. Lower growth means it is more feasible (可行的) for us to achieve targets such as Net Zero, but it also makes it less environmentally urgent to achieve those targets so soon, because we are and have been emitting a lot less carbon than we had anticipated.

The UK authority finds the debate about adaptation difficult. Partly, it is because some activists claim that adaptation is not feasible. They say that climate change will end human civilization, potentially leading to the entire extinction of the human race.

However, the mainstream view of many scientists and economists, who work on climate change, is that global warming could lead to large changes in our environment. Significant parts of the world currently heavily populated could become effectively uninhabitable while other parts currently unsuitable for high-density human habitation would become more habitable. Meanwhile, at higher temperatures both climate and weather are likely to become more volatile—including increased frequency of storms, flooding and other weather events.

These would be significant changes, but it would be perfectly feasible for humans to adapt to them. The issue is not whether adapting would be technically feasible, but whether it would be desirable either in ethical or practical terms. Are we willing to accept a materially warmer world, with humans living in different parts of it? Are we willing to accept the possible extinctions of certain species and the greater flourishing of those currently less successful and of new species yet to evolve? Are we willing to accept the consequences of a large shift in the patterns of human habitation across the world?

It is by no means clear on what basis we ought to ethnically privilege the plants and animals that flourish under today’s climate over those that would flourish under a warmer, more volatile climate. However, adaptation will be feasible and is a necessity given the extent to which warming is now unavoidable. Slower GDP growth and thus slower climate change ought to make greater efforts at adaptation more attractive.

4 . Whales are an important part of the ocean. They maintain the ocean ecosystem by providing important nutrients for phytoplankton (浮游植物), microscopic organism (微生物) in the ocean, to grow as food for fish and other animals. Phytoplankton also carry out photosynthesis (光合作用) to keep carbon dioxide level low in the atmosphere to keep the Earth cool. So, without whales, the oceans wouldn’t be healthy.

Currently, North Atlantic right whales are critically endangered. Scientists from University of South Carolina and Cornell University imagined that it is the warmer ocean waters that force whales to go to new places that don’t have rules, such as speed limits for ships, shorter fishing seasons, etc., to protect whales.

To see if climate changes can explain the loss of whales, scientists analyzed the water temperature near the Gulf of Maine, the feeding place of the whales. The temperature is affected by the position of Gulf Stream which brings warm water from the south.

They also looked at population data for the whales and their food, which is primarily small shrimps and crabs called copepods. They estimated how the whale population changed based on the number of whale sightings, whale birth and their bodies. Finally, they analyzed how the change in the water temperature related to the change in the whale population.

The result showed that since 2010, the Gulf Stream has been farther north than ever before, bringing warmer waters to the region. The population data shows a significant decrease in copepods population beginning in 2010. This means there has been less food available for the whales.

The best explanation is that global warming is causing the northward shift of the Gulf Stream, which is consistent with climate change, and making the waters near the Gulf of Maine warmer. However, copepods prefer cold water. Warmer water wakes them too early, they miss the nutritious spring phytoplankton bloom they need to grow. Besides, when the Gulf Stream is farther north, less copepods are brought into the Gulf of Maine.

With food levels too low, fewer whales are born, and fewer survive. To find enough food, some whales swim north to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Therefore, there were more whale sightings there. It also explains why there were more whale deaths in the area in 2017 and 2019. By looking at the carcasses, scientists know that ships hit the whales, or they got trapped in fishing gear. So, climate change both makes the whales’ food shorter and causes them to move to new places, making it harder to protect them.

Global warming doesn’t only change the weather; it changes the ocean. To protect ocean species and keep our oceans healthy, governments need to adjust how they manage the ocean.

Extreme heat is becoming increasingly common across the globe. It is an     1     (extreme)dangerous weather condition where the temperatures are much hotter than average. It’s clear that how hot future summers will get depends on     2     humans do to stop climate change.Governments appeal to people to reduce greenhouse     3     (gas)—like methane (甲烷) and carbon dioxide (CO₂) -in the atmosphere. Also, they will set up public cooling stations     4    (protect) people at risk.

The Effects of a Warmer World Are Visible in Animals’ Bodies

For humans, adapting to climate change will mostly be a matter of technology. More air conditioning, better-designed houses and bigger flood defences may help mitigate the effects of a warm world.     1     In a paper published in Trends in Ecology & Evolution, a team led by Sara

Ryding, a phd candidate at Deakin University, in Australia, shows that is already happening. Climate change is already altering the bodies of many animal species, giving them bigger beaks, limbs and ears. In some species of Australian parrot, for instance, beak size has increased by between 4 % and 10 % since 1871.

All that dovetails (吻合)nicely with evolutionary theory. “Allen’s rule”, named for Joel Asaph Allen, who suggested it in 1877, holds that warm-blooded-animals in hot places tend to have larger appendages (附属物) than those in less hot regions.    2     For example, Fennec foxes, which are native to the Sahara desert, have strikingly large ears, especially compared with their Arctic cousins.

Ms Ryding examined museum specimens, comparing their bodies to those of their modern counterparts. She is not the first researcher to take that approach.     3     All sorts of other factors, from changes in prey to the evolving reproductive preferences of males or females, might possibly have been driving the changes. Her team combined data from different species in different places.Since they have little in common apart from living on a warming planet, she says, climate change is the most reasonable explanation.

    4     Researchers have already seen changes in the geographical range of many species, from insects to fish. Another evolutionary rule-of-thumb, Bergmann’s rule, holds that animals in hotter places tend to have smaller bodies, another way to boost the ratio between surface area and volume. Other animals may alter their behaviour as well as their bodies, such as by seeking shelter at hot times of the day.

Studying a broader range of animals will help firm up exactly what is happening. Much of Ms Ryding’s data concern birds, with less information available for other taxa (类群). But it seems clear that the world of the future is not just going to be hotter than humans are used to.    5