1 . Composite image of Europe and North Africa at night, 2016. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, using Suomi NPP VIIRS data from Miguel Román, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Artificial light is often seen as a sign of progress: the march of civilization shines a light in the dark; it takes back the night; it illuminates. But a chorus of scientists and advocates argues that unnaturally bright nights are bad not just for astronomers but also for nocturnal (夜间活动的) animals and even for human health.

Now research shows the night is getting even brighter. From 2012 to 2016 the earth’s artificially lit area expanded by an estimated 2.2 percent a year (map), according to a study published last November in Science Advances. Even that increase may understate the problem, however. The measurement excludes light from most of the energy-efficient LED lamps that have been replacing sodium-vapor technology in cities all over the world, says lead study author Christopher Kyba, a postdoctoral researcher at the German Research Center for Geosciences in Potsdam.

The new data came from a NASA satellite instrument called the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS). It can measure long-wavelengths of light, such as those produced by traditional yellow-and-orange sodium-vapor street lamps. But VIIRS cannot see the short-wavelength blue light produced by white LEDs. This light has been shown to disrupt human sleep cycles and nocturnal animals’ behavior.

Credit: Mapping Specialists; Source: “Artificially Lit Surface of Earth at Night Increasing in Radiance and Extent,” by Christopher C. M. Kyba et al., in Science Advances, Vol. 3, No. 11, Article No. E1701528; November 22, 2017.

The team believes the ongoing switch to LEDs caused already bright countries such as Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the U.S. To register as having stable levels of illumination in the VIIRS data. In contrast, most nations in South America, Africa and Asia brightened, suggesting increases in the use of traditional lighting. Australia actually appeared to lose lit area—but the researchers say that is because wildfires skewed the data.

“The fact that VIIRS finds an increase (in many countries), despite its blindness in the part of the spectrum that increased more, is very sad,” says FabioFalchi, a researcher at Italy’s Light Pollution Science and Technology Institute, who did not participate in the study. In 2016 Falchi, along with Kyba and several other members of his research team, published a global atlas of artificial lighting that showed one third of the world’s population currently lives under skies too bright to see the Milky Way at night.

The data also cast doubt on the idea that the LED lighting revolution will lead to energy cost savings. Between 2012 and 2016 the median nation pumped out 15 percent more long-wavelength light as its GDP increased by 13 percent. And overall, countries’ total light production correlated with their GDP. In other words, Kyba says, “we buy as much light as we are willing to spend money on.”

1. Which is not true about the spread of lit areas?

A．Lit area expanded by an estimated 2.2 percent a year.

B．Artificial light is often seen as a sign of progress.

C．The increase in GDP is due to the increase in light.

D．It is bad for nocturnal animals and even for human health.

2. Which of the following about VIIRS is NOT true according to the passage?

A．It is a kind of NASA satellite device.

B．It can record and analyze long-wavelength light.

C．The blue light generated by white LEDs can disrupt human sleep cycles.

D．VIIRS has found an increase of traditional lighting in lots of nations.

4 . A carbon capturing device, called Orca, began operating in Iceland in September. The machine was invented and made by a Swiss company called Climeworks. The name comes from the Icelandic word orka which means energy.

Orca can pull carbon dioxide out of the air and send it deep into the ground, where it is turned into stone. The device is made up of four sections which look like giant air conditioners stacked together. Each section contains 12 large fans that suck air from outside into steel compartments.

Inside, the air passes through a filter (过滤器) which gathers the carbon dioxide. It is then heated to a high temperature so the carbon dioxide can be collected from the filter. Then, the carbon dioxide is mixed with water and put deep in the ground into a type of rock called basalt. Basalt causes the carbon dioxide mixture to turn into stone after two or three years.

Orca is an experimental device. It was built to demonstrate that it is possible to permanently remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. It can remove 4, 000 metric tons of carbon dioxide from the air each year. That’s about the same amount as the emissions produced by 850 cars in a year. In order to remove enough carbon dioxide to make a big difference to global warming, much larger devices like Orca would have to be built in many countries around the world.

Some environmental activists say governments should spend more time and money on reducing the amount of greenhouse gas we produce each year, instead of investing in carbon capture methods. But others say that, in order for countries to meet their goal of net zero emissions by 2050, they will need to do both: reduce new emissions and remove the carbon dioxide already in the air.

How does Orca work?
a. Sucking the air.                                   b. Collecting the carbon dioxide.
c. Mixing with water.                              d. Filtering and heating.
e. Putting into the ground.

A．a, d, b, c, e

B．a, c, d, b, e

C．a, d, c, b, e

D．a, b, c, d, e

6 . 请根据上下文内容，将文中划线部分译成汉语或者英语。

Man did not have to think about the protection of his environment in the past. There were not many people on the Earth, and natural resources seemed to be unlimited.

Today, things are different.     1    地球上有太多的人. We are using up our natural resources too quickly, and at the same time we are polluting our environment with dangerous chemicals.     2    If we continue like this, human life on the Earth will not survive.

Everyone realizes today that if too many fish are taken from the sea, there will soon be none left.     3    Yet, with modern fishing methods, more and more fish are caught. We know that if people cut down more trees. forests will disappear and nothing will grow on the land.

We realize that if rivers are polluted with waste products from factories, we will die. However, in most countries, waste products are still put into rivers or into the sea, and there are few laws to stop this.

We know, too, that if the population of the world continues to rise at the present rate, in a few years, there will not be enough food.

    4    我们能做些什么来解决这些问题?

If we eat more vegetables and less meat, we will easily get more food. Land that is used to grow crops can feed five times more people than land where animals are kept.

The world population will not rise so quickly if people use modern methods of birth control.     5    Finally, if we educate people to think about the problems, our living place will be better and cleaner in the future.

7 . You’ve heard that plastic is polluting the oceans — between 4.8 and 12.7 million tonnes enter ocean ecosystems every year. But does one plastic straw or cup really make a difference? Artist Benjamin Von Wong wants you to know that it does. He builds massive sculptures out of plastic garbage, forcing viewers to re-examine their relationship to single-use plastic products.

At the beginning of the year, the artist built a piece called “Strawpocalypse,” a pair of 10-foot-tall plastic waves, frozen mid-crash. Made of 168,000 plastic straws collected from several volunteer beach cleanups, the sculpture made its first appearance at the Estella Place shopping center in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Just 9% of global plastic waste is recycled. Plastic straws are by no means the biggest source (来源) of plastic pollution, but they’ve recently come under fire because most people don’t need them to drink with and, because of their small size and weight, they cannot be recycled. Every straw that’s part of Von Wong’s artwork likely came from a drink that someone used for only a few minutes. Once the drink is gone, the straw will take centuries to disappear.

In a piece from 2018, Von Wong wanted to illustrate (说明) a specific statistic: Every 60 seconds, a truckload’s worth of plastic enters the ocean. For this work, titled “Truckload of Plastic,” Von Wong and a group of volunteers collected more than 10,000 pieces of plastic, which were then tied together to look like they’d been dumped (倾倒) from a truck all at once.

Von Wong hopes that his work will also help pressure big companies to reduce their plastic footprint.

1. What are Von Wong’s artworks intended for?

A．Beautifying the city he lives in.

B．Introducing eco-friendly products.

C．Drawing public attention to plastic waste.

D．Reducing garbage on the beach.

2. Why does the author discuss plastic straws in paragraph 3?

A．To show the difficulty of their recycling.

B．To explain why they are useful.

C．To voice his views on modern art.

D．To find a substitute for them.

9 . With alarming regularity, we read about oil tankers having accidents near land and the terrible consequences of the oil spills(泄露) on people, nature, and the environment.
Millions of dollars have been used in developing special chemicals to help dismiss the spills and to clean up the animals, beaches, and land spoiled by the oil. Unfortunately, when many of these chemicals are used, more damage is caused to the environment, especially to lives in the sea.
Of all of today’s environmental disasters, an oil spill may actually be one of the least serious. Although oil is poisonous, it is a natural material. In the end, it breaks down naturally. There are, of course, long-term effects, but it is usually more serious in the short term.
Nature by itself works better than chemical materials, but when there is a spill we demand that governments act immediately with as much hi-tech knowledge as possible. In 1967 the tanker Torrey Canyon sank off the Scilly Isles near the coast of England and spilled 120,000 tones of oil into the ocean. If you go there today, you will find it hard to see any sign that it ever happened.
Governments seem to accept the risk of transporting millions of tons of oil by ship every day so that we can fill up our cars and drive around and cause even more environmental damage. Interestingly, the biggest companies in the world produce cars, and the next biggest supply the gasoline to make them run!
We should be thinking more about reducing our dependency on oil. Governments should be encouraging research into new technologies, such as cars run by solar power(太阳能), electricity, hydrogen, and so on. Much of this research has, in the past, been held back by the oil, gas, and coal.
If the world’s millions of cars were 10% more efficient(高效的) — and the industry could easily produce cars at least twice as efficient — we would need many fewer tankers crossing the oceans each year. If this happened, the risks of oil spills would be reduced, and the air we breathe would be cleaner and fresher, too.
1. What is the passage mainly talking about?

A．Oil spills pollution.	B．What oil pollution is.
C．Oil tanker accidents.	D．How to reduce oil pollution.

2. How does the author support the idea that oil spills are not as serious as people believe?

A．By giving a description.	B．By making an argument.
C．By giving an example.	D．By drawing a diagram.

3. What does the underlined word “risk” in Paragraph 5 refer to?

A．Transportation depending more on oil.	B．Poisonous oil breaking down naturally.
C．Millions of tons of oil spilling into the sea.	D．More environmental damage being caused.

4. Which suggestion is made for reducing oil tank accidents according to the passage?

A．We should build safer oil tankers in the near future.

B．We should develop new technologies to cut oil use.

C．Tankers should not be allowed to sail near the coastlines.

D．Countries should build more oil pipelines under the sea.