1 . 阅读下面短文，根据题目要求用英文回答问题。请在答题卡指定区域作答。

Balancing Trees and CO₂

Tree planting used to be regarded as an effective means of reducing climate change. Perhaps it’s time for us to rethink this practice. Trees pull CO₂ from the air. This effectively removes CO₂ from the atmosphere. But trees only hold onto CO₂ as long as they’re alive. Once they die, trees decay (腐烂) and release that CO₂ back into the atmosphere.

Recent studies have found that trees around the world are growing faster than ever. The rise of CO₂, mainly due to burning fossil fuels, is probably driving that rapid growth, said Roel Brienen, a forest ecologist at the University of Leeds, UK. High levels of CO₂ are increasing temperatures, which in turn speeds tree growth in those areas, he added.

The faster trees grow, the faster they store carbon. It seems like good news. However, it is known that fast-growing tree species, in general, live shorter lives than their slow-growing relatives.

In order to see whether the growth-lifespan trade-off (生长与寿命之间的权衡) is a universal phenomenon, Brienen and his colleagues analyzed over 210,000 individual tree ring records of 110 tree species from more than 79,000 sites worldwide. They found that, in almost all habitats and all sites, faster-growing tree species died younger than slow-growing species, and even within a species, the trade-off between growth and life span held strong.

The team also created a computer program that modeled a forest and tweaked (微量调整) the growth of the trees in this model. Early on, it showed that “the forest could hold more carbon as the trees grew faster”, Brienen reported. But after 20 years, these trees started dying and losing this extra carbon again. “We must understand that the only solution to bringing down CO₂ levels is to stop emitting (排放) it into the atmosphere,” said Brienen.

1. What does “this practice” in Para.1 refer to?
___________________________________________________________________________________________
2. Why are trees around the world growing faster than ever?
___________________________________________________________________________________________
3. Read the following statement, underline the false part of it and explain the reason. The team has found that the faster trees grow, the faster they store CO₂, and the longer lives they live.
____________________________________________________________________________________________
4. Please briefly present what you can do in daily life to reduce the emission of CO₂.（about 40 words）
____________________________________________________________________________________________

2 .

Climate change influences how organisms live and function in their environment. Investigating how organisms adapt is essential for accurately predicting their survival, and tracking genomic(基因组的) changes helps researchers determine the lasting effects of the changing environment. Copepods, a dominant coastal species, are particularly useful for studying genetic changes in response to shifting marine environments. By studying copepods, researchers can get an idea of how the ocean food chain might react to changes in the Earth’s climate.

Tracking a copepod’s evolving genome in the wild, however, can be time-consuming and laborious. To circumvent this challenge, Pespeni and her team used an evolve-and-resequence approach in the lab. They exposed a copepod population to three stressors—water warming, acidification via high CO₂ levels, and combinations of the two ocean warming and acidification (OWA) conditions in the laboratory, and tracked their adaptations to these conditions over 25generations. Previously, they tracked reproductive fitness traits such as egg-hatching success under these conditions. They found that the fitness of the population exposed to OWA conditions initially decreased, but then adapted to the stressors over several generations.

In the current study, the researchers sequenced the genomes of animals in each experimental group at generation 0 and 25 to quantify how allele (等位基因) frequencies changed in response to experimental selective pressures. The researchers found adaptive alleles related to development were unique to the multiple stressor experiment, providing a possible explanation for the observed selection of hatching success.

“We showed that the warming alone was a much strong er selective pressure than CO₂. But when you combine them, you get a unique synergy. So, it’s not just one plus one equals two; it’s one plus one equals something totally different,” said Pespeni. Whereas previous studies observed the effects of single stressors on evolving organisms, Pespeni’s study demonstrated that multiple stressors result in a unique response to selection in a non-additive manner. This is important because human-induced environmental changes are multifaceted(多方面的), and additional stressors are still needed to further mimic natural environmental changes, and this study reveals the complexity of the genomic adaptive response.

According to Morgan Kelly, a professor who was not involved in the study, the insights presented by the researchers in this study call into question the previous single stressor studies and will influence future experimental design. “There’s this big question of the role that evolutionary change will play in response to climate change, and the way the researchers integrate genomic information is the best of its kind in the world of marine experimental evolution,” said Kelly.

According to Pespeni, there is reason to maintain hope in the face of climate change because her work revealed that the copepods eventually fully regained their ability to reproduce following the combined environmental changes.

1. What can we learn about Pespeni’s previous and current studies?

A．The previous study tried new ways to quantify the response of copepods.

B．The current study may explain the success of hatching in the previous one.

C．The previous study reveals the complexity of the genomic adaptive response.

D．The current study sequenced copepods’ genes of 25 generations in each group.

2. To improve their future research, researchers should         .

A．study how other species adapt to global warming

B．include additional stressors in their experiments

C．track a copepod’s evolving genome in the wild

D．compare Pespeni’s study with previous ones

3. What makes the current study particularly significant?

A．It integrates genomic information in the research.

B．It shows most species can easily adapt to climate changes.

C．It confirms the effectiveness of previous single stressor studies.

D．It demonstrates multiple stressors produce an additive response.

4. Which of the following can be the best title for the passage?

A．Scientists Edit Genomes to Help Copepods Survive

B．Research Removes People’s Worries about Climate Change

C．Combining Climate Stressors Leads to Unique Genomic Changes

D．The Evolve-and-resequence Approach Helps Fight Climate Change

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.

1. According to the passage, who hesitate(s) to adapt to the climate change?

A．The government.	B．Climate experts.
C．David Frost.	D．The activists.

2. The underlined word “volatile” in Paragraph 5 probably means ________.

A．changeable

B．predictable

C．bearable

D．noticeable

3. The questions in Paragraph 6 are mainly aimed at __________.

A．expressing doubts about people’s adaptability

B．presenting examples of future climate patterns

C．highlighting the consequences of human activities

D．helping people decide on their openness to adaptation

4. Which of the following might the author agree with?

A．Slowing climate change deserves great efforts.

B．Global warming is preventable to some extent.

C．Adaptation to climate change is beyond question.

D．Protection of the current species should be prioritized.