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.
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.
Ms Ryding examined museum specimens, comparing their bodies to those of their modern counterparts. She is not the first researcher to take that approach.
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.
| A．And there are other ways to adapt, too. |
| B．The animals living in it will look different, too. |
| C．Larger wings are heavier, and bigger legs cost more energy to grow. |
| D．Animals will have to rely on changing their bodies or their behaviour. |
| E．But it is hard to prove that climate change was the cause of an anatomical (结构上的) change. |
| F．Since any evolutionary adaptation comes with trade-offs, it is unclear how far the process might go. |
| G．Such adaptations boost an animal's surface area relative to its body volume, helping it to shed excess heat. |
China's winter, from December to February, will be chiller than usual, according to a nationwide weather outlook
The forecast, made
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Meanwhile, 20 percent to 50 percent more precipitation than normal will batter North China this winter, while in the south it will decrease by
3 . Recently the term “climate anxiety” has been used to better describe our growing concerns about climate change. While there is evidence that climate anxiety can be identified and reliably measured, what’s less clear is how it relates to mental illness. Mental health providers across the world are noting the presence of climate anxiety in their patients; however, the degree to which it is influencing mental illness is not yet clear, though evidence addressing this question is slowly growing.
For years now, mental health clinicians have seen climate anxiety influencing presentations of mental illness in a variety of ways, some extreme. Recent studies are starting to look at links between climate anxiety and mental illness in larger samples to help better understand the directionality of their relationship. In a U.S. survey of more than 340 people published in 2018, climate concerns were associated with depressive symptoms (症状). Ecological coping, which includes pro-environmental behaviors such as reducing energy consumption, appeared to be protective against depression, indicating that climate concerns and the poor coping skills used to address them could be causing depressive symptoms.
So who might be more at risk of mental illness secondary to the uncertainties around climate change? Unsurprisingly, climate anxiety appears higher in individuals with more concern about environmental issues at baseline and those already experiencing direct effects of climate change. Climatologists also face increased risk given their in-depth knowledge on the issue coupled with the upsetting task of trying to convey it to individuals and governments that often deny or downplay it. People with high levels of neuroticism, a personality trait that increases susceptibility to mental illness, are also likely to be at high risk.
Some individuals report adaptive responses to climate anxiety like adopting pro-environmental behaviors and participating in collective action, while others are unable to respond behaviorally at all. It’s not yet clear how these varying reactions manifest (呈现) on a population level and how they’re influencing humanity’s response to climate change. However, a recent survey of nearly 200 people found that, while climate anxiety was associated with an emotional response to climate change, it was not correlated with a behavioral response.
If this is true for humanity as a whole, we must urgently help motivate the anxious among us. Doing so successfully will require many approaches, such as delivering cognitive-behavioral therapy (认知行为疗法) to the most severely affected and demonstrating to entire populations that change is possible by better publicizing productive efforts by organizations to reduce their carbon footprints. We can’t let climate anxiety stop us from responding to climate change, because now, more than ever, we need action, not inaction.
1. What can be learned from the first two paragraphs?| A．Mental illness may increase the risk of climate anxiety. |
| B．Reducing energy consumption can help treat depression. |
| C．Failure to handle climate anxiety may cause depressive symptoms. |
| D．The influence of climate anxiety on mental illness can be measured. |
| A．as a result of | B．less important than |
| C．as serious as | D．regardless of |
| A．Publicizing the latest research on climate anxiety. |
| B．Funding studies into cognitive-behavioral therapies. |
| C．Delivering speeches to anxious people on a regular basis. |
| D．Informing the public of practical ways to live a greener life. |
| A．To reveal consequences of climate anxiety. |
| B．To show new findings about climate anxiety. |
| C．To compare climate anxiety and mental illness. |
| D．To demand care for those experiencing climate anxiety. |
