2 . One evening, Catherine was at home as usual. As her ________ swung between what she was going to do with her life and her dinner plans for the evening, she was unexpectedly ________ by an urgent call from her sister “Get over here! Turn on NBC and cheek these guys out. They are just like you.” One Facebook message and a phone interview later, Catherine ________ herself on a bus with 8 strangers in the middle of the sweltering desert of Utah, picking up trash and ________ awareness of zero-waste and climate change.

With a deep ________ of the environment and a desire to make a ________, Catherine, Davey, and a group of self ________ environmental pick-up artists” went on a coast to coast road side trash pick-up. As they walked sometimes only ________ 0.9 miles on an entire day they ________ and steadily made their way across the United States for three years, picking up a total of 201,678 pounds of trash.

Catherine and Davey ________ wonderful stories of hope and inspiration with us that fueled their efforts to continue their journey. After spending weeks silently ________ how she would have enough money to fly home for her two-week spring break, Catherine found a blank, unidentified envelope ________ with S850 cash in the desert, just enough to get her home and back. After their bus ________ outside of Denver, they unexpectedly got ________ and arrived in Yosemite National Park three weeks later, just in time for the “Yosemite Facelift” where volunteers from all over the state came together with a ________ of cleaning up trash all over the park. Together, their team learned to simply devote themselves to their task, and surrender to the journey.

6 . For animals that spend most of their lives in the high trees, gaps in the forest might as well be the Grand Canyon. These gaps are especially hard on gibbons (长臂猴); although larger males can leap across some gaps, females and the young can be cut off from food, companions, and even potential mates. Now, a new study suggests a couple of strong ropes could really help bridge the gap.

Gibbons are at risk of extinction across Southeast Asia, largely because of habitat loss. With about 30 individuals left, the Hainan gibbon is considered the rarest primate (灵长类) on Earth. All of these animals live on the Hainan Baw angling National Nature Reserve. In July 2014, a typhoon caused landslides across the reserve, creating gaps in the forest that were difficult for these primates to cross.

To help reconnect the habitats, professional tree climbers set up an artificial “bridge” made of two mountaineering-grade ropes across a 15-meter-wide valley. Nearly 6 months later, the gibbons started to use the bridge to cross the gap, researchers report today in Scientific Reports. The team documented 52 crossings of a group of eight gibbons, with most walking along one rope while holding on to the second rope for support, which the scientists named “handrail”. The gibbons also shimmied underneath the ropes using all arms and legs to the opposite side.

Conservationists previously built artificial bridges to help other species such as the Bornean orangutan and the Javan slow loris. But this is the first example of the rare Hainan gibbon using them. The rope bridges could be a short-term solution to reconnect disjointed (脱节的) habitats, the researchers argue. Combined with efforts to provide enough natural forest cover.

7 . Skeptics are strange a lot. Some of them refuse to admit the serious threat of human activities to the environment and they are tired of people who disagree with them. Those people, say skeptics, spread nothing but bad news about the environment. The "eco-guilt" brought on by the discouraging news about our planet gives rise to the popularity of skeptics as people search for more comforting worldviews.

Perhaps that explains why a new book by Bjorn Lomborg received so much publicity. That book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, declares that it measures the "real state of the world" as fine. Of course, another explanation is the deep pockets of some big businesses with special interests. Indeed, Mr. Lomborg's views are similar to those of some industry-funded organizations, which start huge activities through the media to confuse the public about issues like global warming.

So it was strange to see Mr. Lomborg's book go largely unchallenged in the media though his beliefs were contrary to most scientific opinions. One national newspaper in Canada ran a number of articles and reviews full of words of praise, even with the conclusion that "After Lomborg, the environmental movement will begin to die down."

Such one-sided views should have immediately been challenged. But only a different review appeared in Nature, a respected science magazine with specific readership. The review remarked that Mr. Lomborg's "preference for unexamined materials is incredible".

A critical eye is valuable, and the media should present information in such a way that could allow people to make informed decisions. Unfortunately, that is often inaccessible as blocked by the desire to be shocking or to defend some special interest. People might become half-blind before a world partially exhibited by the media. That's a shame, because matters concerning the health of the planet are far too important to be treated lightly.

8 . To understand the effect of ice melting (融化) around the world we first have to understand what an ice sheet actually is. Covering 5. 4 million square miles in Antarctica (南极洲) and 656, 000 square miles in Greenland, an ice sheet is actually a huge land of ice from the Ice Age. These sheets form in areas where snow that falls in winter does not melt entirely over the summer. This ice, home to different species of animals, is now melting at a rate that cannot support the life it currently holds.

Many of these creatures rely on ice sheets as land for resting, hunting and protection, yet as the size decreases, they are forced out of their homeland in search of other land on which to live. Often this means journeys to search for food and an imbalanced ecosystem happens when different species are forced together onto the coast.

Since the 1990s, the deer population has dropped by 56 percent— climate change has caused warmer temperatures over winter setting off rainfall instead of snow, which freezes more quickly underfoot and makes it harder to walk and search for food. In the summer, frozen layers of land melts and releases trapped diseases which bring death to animals. A similar situation has fallen on the polar bears who suffered a 40 per cent population loss between 2001 and 2010.

Quite apart from these problems, the threat of sea levels rising if the ice caps were to disappear is approaching. If the Greenland Ice Sheet melted, the sea level would rise around six meters, and if the Antarctic Ice Sheet melted, sea levels would rise by around 20 feet. As a matter of fact, sea levels have risen about eight inches since 1880, three of which were gained over the last 25 years. This seemingly small amount has already caused dangerous flooding, loss of farmland and more deadly storms.

While we’re still a long way from losing the ice sheets all together, we’ve already lost too much and if we don’t take climate change seriously now, we will certainly hit the point of no return.

9 . Escaping predators (食肉动物), digestion and other animal activities—including those of humans—require oxygen. But that essential ingredient is no longer so easy for marine life to obtain, several new studies reveal.

In the past decade ocean oxygen levels have taken a dive—an alarming trend that is linked to climate change, says Andreas Oschlies, an oceanographer at the Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research in Germany, whose team tracks ocean oxygen levels worldwide. “We were surprised by the intensity of the changes we saw, how rapidly oxygen is going down in the ocean and how large the effects on marine ecosystems are,” he says. It is no surprise to scientists that warming oceans are losing oxygen, but the scale of the drop calls for urgent attention. Oxygen levels in some tropical (热带的) regions have dropped by an astonishing 40 percent in the last 50 years, some recent studies reveal. Levels have dropped less significantly elsewhere, with an average loss of 2 percent globally.

A warming ocean loses oxygen for two reasons: First, the warmer a liquid becomes, the less gas it can hold. That is why carbonated drinks go flat faster when left in the sun. Second, as polar sea ice melts, it forms a layer of water above colder, more salty sea waters. This process creates a sort of lid that can keep currents from mixing surface water down to deeper depths. And because all oxygen enters the surface, less mixing means less of it at depth.

Ocean animals large and small, however, respond to even slight changes in oxygen by seeking refuge in higher oxygen zones or by adjusting behavior, Oschlies and others in his field have found. These adjustments can expose animals to new predators or force them into food-scarce regions. Climate change already poses serious problems for marine life, such as ocean acidification, but deoxygenation is the most pressing issue facing sea animals today, Oschlies says. After all, he says, “they all have to breathe.”

Aside from food web problems, animals face various other physiological challenges as their bodies adjust to lower oxygen levels. Chinese shrimp (虾) move their tails less vigorously to preserve energy in lower oxygen environments. Some creatures, such as jellyfishes, are more tolerant of low oxygen than others are. But all animals will feel the impact of deoxygenation because they all have evolved their oxygen capacity for a reason, says Oschlies. “Any drop in oxygen is going to damage survivability and performance,” he says.