1 . 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 |
2 . 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. |
| 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. |
