2 . Sometimes we may find that every week there are a lot of new stories about how climate change is affecting the planet, or new plans to battle its effects. But the concept itself isn't new at all --- in fact, scientists have been exploring questions about climate change for almost 200 years.
The idea of “greenhouse gases” goes back to 1824, when Joseph Fourier wondered what was regulating the earth's temperature. Fourier concluded that the atmosphere must be responsible for containing the heat absorbed from the sun and described it as a box with a glass lid: As light shines through the glass, the inside gets warmer as the lid traps the heat. As Fourier's ideas spread, it came to be called “the greenhouse effect”.
Scientists continued to study the greenhouse effect. Not until a Swedish chemist named Svante Arrhenius came along, did scientists understand how global warming actually works. After years of work, Arrhenius determined that the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere did in fact have a direct effect on global temperatures.
Arrhenius found that CO2, and other gases trap radiation, which warms the atmosphere. Arrhenius was the first to suspect that burning coal could contribute to the greenhouse effect. But Arrhenius welcomed the warming effect on the planet. At a lecture later that year, Arrhenius noted that creatures of a warmer earth “might live under a milder sky and in less barren surroundings”.
While Arrhenius' findings won him the 1903 Nobel Prize in chemistry, scientists kept debating whether the greenhouse effect was increasing until 1950, when researchers finally began to find strong data supporting it. By the end of the 1950s, American scientists had been sounding the alarm on the long-term consequences of climate change. Climate change research has come a long way since Fourier first described the greenhouse effect – still, maybe Arrhenius should have been more careful of what he wished for.
1. What does the underlined word “it” in Paragraph 2 refer to?
| A．The atmosphere. |
| B．The greenhouse effect. |
| C．The climate change. |
| D．The heat from the sun. |
2. When did the scientists find evidence for the bad effect of global warming?
| A．In 1903. |
| B．In 1950. |
| C．200 years ago. |
| D．By the end of 1950s. |
3. What's the author's attitude towards Arrhenius' wish?
| A．Positive. |
| B．Indifferent. |
| C．Supportive. |
| D．Opposed. |
4. What’s the main idea of the text?
| A．Causes of climate change. |
| B．Effects of greenhouse gases. |
| C．Explorations on climate change. |
| D．Findings about global warming. |
