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“Global warming could make humans shorter,” warn scientists who claim to have found evidence that it caused the world's first horses to shrink(收缩) nearly 50 million years ago. In fact, a team from the universities of Florida and Nebraska says it has found a link between the Earth heating up and the size of mammals – horses, in this case.
The scientists used foss
ils to follow the evolution of horses from their earliest appearance 56 million years ago. As temperature went up，their size went down, and vice versa（反之亦然）;“ At one point they were as small as a house cat,” said Dr Jonathan Bloch, curator（博物馆长） of the Florida Museum of Natural History, which was quoted by the "Daily Mail" as saying.
The scientists say that the current warming could have the same effect on mammals and could even make humans smaller."Horses started out small, about the size of a small dog . What's surprising is that after they first appeared, they then became even smaller and then dramatically increased in size, and that exactly corresponds to the global warming event, followed by cooling”
"It had been known that mammals were small during that time and that it was warm, but we hadn't realized that temperature specifically was driving the evolution of body size," Dr Bloch said in the "Science" journal.
1.How did scientists find out the horses’ earliest appearance millions of years ago?
A. searching the data on the net
B. sorting through the pictures of ancient times
C. using fossils to follow the evolution
D. analyzing the related images
2.What can we infer form the passage?
A. As temperatures went up, horses dramatically increased in size
B. The temperature has no effect on mammals’ evolution
C. As temperatures went up, horses’ size went down
D. In history, it used to be warm at early times , followed by a certain period of sharply cooling down.
3.Which is the most closest meaning to the underlined words most probably mean _______.
A. react to B. be contradictory to
C. be consistent with D. differ from
4.What is the best title of the passage?
A. Global warming is to disappear
B. The temperature on earth is to decrease
C. Global warming makes human shorter
D. Mammals are dying out.
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Global warming threatens to hold back human progress, and make unachievable all UN targets to reduce poverty, according to some of the world’s leading international development groups.
In a report published today, Oxfam, Greenpeace, Christian Aid, Friends of the Earth, WWF and 15 other groups say rich governments must immediately address climate change to avoid even “unbearable levels” of worldwide poverty.
“Food production, water supplies, public health and people’s living environment are already being damaged,” the report says. “The world must meet its promise to achieve poverty reduction and also deal with climate change.”
The report, which draws on UN predictions of the effects of climate change in poor countries over the next 50 years, says poor countries will experience more flooding, declining food production, more disease and the worsening or disappearing of entire ecosystems on which many of the world’s poorest people depend.
“Climate change needs to be addressed now. The poor will bear the burden of it. The frontline experience of many of us working in international development indicates that communities are having to fight against more extreme weather conditions.”
Climate change will play havoc (浩劫) with agriculture and water supplies and will increase diseases. “By 2025 the proportion of the world’s population living in countries of great water stress will almost double, to 6 billion people. Tropical and sub-tropical areas will be hardest hit — those countries already suffering from food shortage”.
Poor countries mostly do not need high-tech solutions, but would most benefit from education, research and being shown how to farm better. The report says unchecked global warming, more than wars or political confusion, will displace millions of people and destabilize (不安定) many countries.
1.Who should play a leading role in resisting the more extreme weather conditions?
A. International groups.
B. Rich countries.
C. Poor countries.
D. Tropical and sub-tropical countries.
2.Which of the following is not true according to the text?
A. Poverty and climate change are closely linked.
B. More and more people will suffer from the water stress and food shortage.
C. What the poor countries need badly is high technology.
D. International communities have to take steps to resist the bad climate.
3.What is the best title of the passage?
A. International Development Brings in Climate Change
B. Global Warming Is a Bigger Threat to the Poor
C. International Groups Work Together to Reduce Poverty
D. Worldwide Poverty Shall Be Avoided
________
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As warming continues, scientists warn the oxygen content of oceans across the planet could be more and more reduced, with serious consequences for the future of fish and other sea life.
1.One is the simple fact that as water gets warmer, it can hold less dissolved (溶解的) oxygen. The other reason is less obvious. The entire ocean gets its oxygen from the surface — either from the atmosphere, or from photosynthesizing algae floating at the top of the sea. 2.
Global warming is expected to reduce the mixing of the ocean by making surface seawater lighter. That’s because in a warmer world we can expect more rainfall and more melting(融化) of glaciers, icebergs, and ice sheets. 3.The extra heat from the warming atmosphere will also make surface water expand and thus make it lighter still. 4.Instead, more of the oxygen will remain near the surface, where it will be used up by oxygen-breathing organisms.
A low-oxygen ocean may become an inescapable feature of our planet. A team of Danish researchers wondered how long oxygen levels would drop if we could somehow reduce our carbon dioxide emissions to zero by 2100. They determined that over the next few thousand years oxygen levels would continue to fall, until they declined by 30 percent. The oxygen would slowly return to the oceans, but even 100,000 years from now they will not have fully recovered. 5.
A. It’s not known why the oxygen level of oceans has reduced.
B. Scientists point to two reasons to expect a drop in ocean oxygen.
C. Fresh water’s inpouring will make the water at the ocean’s surface lighter.
D. The oxygen then spreads to the deep ocean as the surface water slowly sinks.
E. Global warming has caused the reduction of the oxygen content of oceans worldwide.
F. The light surface water will be less likely to sink so the deep ocean will get less oxygen.
G. If they are right, we have every reason to worry about the major effect it has on sea life.
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Air travel can be annoying. But research now suggests global warming could make it much worse. To get off the ground in really hot weather, planes may be forced to carry fewer passengers. That might mean a little more space, which would be good. However, it also would make the passengers pay more.
Average air temperatures around the world are rising because people are polluting the air with increasing amounts of greenhouse gases, which, such as carbon dioxide, are a byproduct of burning fuels. Those warmer temperatures can influence an airplane’s ability to fly because air molecules (分子) spread out more as the air warms. This produces less lift under a plane’s wings, so a plane must be lighter to take off in hot weather than on cooler days.
It can even prove too dangerous for some planes to attempt a take-off. A record of June heat wave in the American Southwest, for instance, caused flight cancellations in Phoenix, Ariz. One airline ‘s planes were cleared to operate only up to 47.8℃. On June 20, Phoenix reached 48.3℃!
Radley Horton is a climate scientist at Columbia University. Two years ago, he and his graduate student Ethan David Coffel studied the effect of warming at four US airports and found that warming of track could triple (使成三倍) the number of days when planes face weight restrictions. Later, they explored the effect of rising temperatures on five types of commercial planes flying out of 19 of the world’s busiest airports. In the coming decades, as many as one to three out of every 10 flights that take off during the hottest time of day could face weight restrictions, they found. In some cases, a typical 160-seat plane would have to remove 4％of its weight. That would be equal to taking a dozen people off the plane, the researchers calculated.
1.How would global warming affect air travel according to the first paragraph?
A.It’ll add to the danger of flying.
B.It’ll increase passengers’ travel cost.
C.It’ll make flying much more comfortable.
D.It’ll encourage more people to travel by plane.
2.What is the second paragraph actually intended to explain?
A.How global warming is happening. B.What decides a plane’s ability to fly.
C.Why global warming affects flying. D.Where greenhouse gases are created.
3.What is the last paragraph mainly about?
A.Reasons for flight cancellation. B.Financial condition related to hot air.
C.The tendency of temperature change. D.Findings of effects of warming on flying.
4.What should be the best title for the text?
A.Air Travel isn’t Recommended during Hot Weather
B.Rising Temperatures May Reduce the Number of Flights
C.Weight Restrictions Are More Common in More Airports
D.Hotter Air May Lead to Planes Carrying Fewer Passengers
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In recent years some extreme weather events have arisen from global warming because of human activities, with studies indicating an increasing threat from extreme weather in the future. Scientists were certain that global warming is being caused mostly by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases and other humanactivities.
Its effects include warming global temperatur
e, rising sea levels and expansion of deserts in the subtropics(亚热带). Warming is expected to be greater over land than over the oceans and greatest in the Arctic, with the continuing loss of glaciers, permafrost and sea ice. Other likely changes include more frequent extreme weather events including heat waves, droughts, heavy rainfall with floods, heavy snowfall and species extinction due to great change of temperature. Bad effects on humans include the threat to food security from decreasing crop yields and the loss of populated(住人的) areas because of rising sea levels.
Possible responses to global warming are reduction of emissions(排放), adaptation to its effects, building systems resilient to its effects, and possible future climate engineering. Most countries are parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change UNFCCC), whose objective is to prevent dangerous climate change. It has adopted a range of policies designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to assist in adaptation to global warming. It is agreed that future global warming should be limited to below 2.0 °C (3.6 °F) relative to the pre-industrial level.
On 12 November 2015, NASA scientists reported that human-made carbon dioxide continues to increase above levels that have not been seen in hundreds of thousands of years: currently, about half of the carbon dioxide released from the burning of fossil fuels remains in the atmosphere and is not absorbed by vegetation and the oceans.
1.What does the underlined word “resilient” mean?
A. be easily damaged B. be able to recover easily
C. can be bent easily D. be difficult to change
2.Which of following is NOT mentioned as an effect of global warming?
A. rising sea levelsand expansion of deserts
B. more frequent extreme weather events
C. species extinction
D. increasing crop yields
3.Which of the following can be inferred from the last two paragraphs?
A. It is likely for us to deal with global warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, adapting to its effects and climate engineering.
B. There is no solution to too much carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere.
C. It is common that human-made carbon dioxide keeps on increasing greatly in the previous several centuries.
D. Future global warming should be limited to below 3.6 °C.
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The worsening of global warming, _____human activities are to blame, has led to frequently extreme weather.
A. by which B. for which C. that D. what
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Now scientists believe that global warming affects hibernating animals, causing them to wake up earlier. While this may seem a little concern, it is in fact a serious environmental problem. The shortened hibernation period could actually lead to significant decreases in the population of several species.
Some of the first evidence of the problem came from Colorado, where researchers at the Rocky Mountain Biological Lab have been observing marmot (旱獭) hibernation behavior since the 1970s. In the early days of their studies, marmots generally hibernated several weeks into the month of May. Nowadays, however, temperatures in the area have risen by 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit, and the marmots wake up about a month earlier.
At least the marmots are still hibernating. Several other animals have not been hibernating at all recently. Brown bears in the Spanish Cantabrian Mountains did not hibernate last year. Chipmunks (花鼠) in the US and some snakes in Australia also skipped the hibernation period. The bears seem to have survived without losing many individuals. The chipmunks and snakes, however, were not so lucky. Many of the animals died of starvation during the winter.
The problem with animals waking up early, or skipping hibernation altogether, lies with the creatures' metabolism (新陈代谢). When the animals hibernate, their metabolism drops significantly. The animals' heart rate slows, and they require very little energy to live. When the animals awake in the spring, their metabolism returns to normal.
But while their metabolism may be as active as it was before hibernation, food sources aren't as available as they were before. A marmot may wake up when temperatures get warmer, thinking it's spring, but plants will not have got the amount of sun they need to grow. So until the plants grow, the marmots have no reliable food source.
Many scientists believe the problem will continue to get worse. For many biologists, that's a scary prospect. Terry Root, an animal expert at Stanford University, said, “I do think what we will be facing is the extinction of many species.”
1. What is the viewpoint of the writer?
A. Global warming will continue to get worse as time goes on.
B. Waking up early in spring may lead to the extinction of some animals.
C. Shortened hibernation will definitely decrease the population of animals.
D. Animals which do not hibernate die of starvation.
2.The writer sets the example of the marmot in order to .
A. indicate that global warming influences animals' hibernation
B. explain that the weather gets warmer and warmer now
C. show that the weather in the United States is quite different
D. say some animals do not hibernate now due to warm weather
3.Judging from recent observation, which of the following animals suffered the LEAST from shortened hibernation?
A. Brown bears.
B. Marmots.
C. Some snakes in Australia.
D. Chipmunks in the US.
4.Why can't marmots find enough food when they wake up?
A. Because there are too many marmots in the wild now.
B. Because more and more animal species skip hibernation now.
C. Because winter days end much earlier than before.
D. Because plants haven't received enough sunlight for spring growth.
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Now scientists believe that global warming affects hibernating animals, causing them to wake up earlier. While this may seem a little concern, it is in fact a serious environmental problem. The shortened hibernation period could actually lead to significant decreases in the population of several species.
Some of the first evidence of the problem came from Colorado, where researchers at the Rocky Mountain Biological Lab have been observing marmot (旱獭) hibernation behavior since the 1970s. In the early days of their studies, marmots generally hibernated several weeks into the month of May. Nowadays, however, temperatures in the area have risen by 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit, and the marmots wake up about a month earlier.
At least the marmots are still hibernating. Several other animals have not been hibernating at all recently. Brown bears in the Spanish Cantabrian Mountains did not hibernate last year. Chipmunks (花鼠) in the US and some snakes in Australia also skipped the hibernation period. The bears seem to have survived without losing many individuals. The chipmunks and snakes, however, were not so lucky. Many of the animals died of starvation during the winter.
The problem with animals waking up early, or skipping hibernation altogether, lies with the creatures' metabolism (新陈代谢). When the animals hibernate, their metabolism drops significantly. The animals' heart rate slows, and they require very little energy to live. When the animals awake in the spring, their metabolism returns to normal.
But while their metabolism may be as active as it was before hibernation, food sources aren't as available as they were before. A marmot may wake up when temperatures get warmer, thinking it's spring, but plants will not have got the amount of sun they need to grow. So until the plants grow, the marmots have no reliable food source.
Many scientists believe the problem will continue to get worse. For many biologists, that's a scary prospect. Terry Root, an animal expert at Stanford University, said, “I do think what we will be facing is the extinction of many species.”
1.What is the viewpoint of the writer?
A. Global warming will continue to get worse as time goes on.
B. Waking up early in spring may lead to the extinction of some animals.
C. Shortened hibernation will definitely decrease the population of animals.
D. Animals which do not hibernate die of starvation.
2.The writer sets the example of the marmot in order to .
A. indicate that global warming influences animals' hibernation
B. explain that the weather gets warmer and warmer now
C. show that the weather in the United States is quite different
D. say some animals do not hibernate now due to warm weather
3.Judging from recent observation, which of the following animals suffered the LEAST from shortened hibernation?
A. Brown bears.
B. Marmots.
C. Some snakes in Australia.
D. Chipmunks in the US.
4.Why can't marmots find enough food when they wake up?
A. Because there are too many marmots in the wild now.
B. Because more and more animal species skip hibernation now.
C. Because winter days end much earlier than before.
D. Because plants haven't received enough sunlight for spring growth.
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_________is generally believed, it is human activities that have contributed to the global warming.
A. As B. That
C. What D. It
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Global warming caused by human being’s casual behaviour has become a major _______ for people all over the world.
A．conflict B．concern C．challenge D．factor
ils to follow the evolution of horses from their earliest appearance 56 million years ago. As temperature went up，their size went down, and vice versa（反之亦然）;“ At one point they were as small as a house cat,” said Dr Jonathan Bloch, curator（博物馆长） of the Florida Museum of Natural History, which was quoted by the "Daily Mail" as saying.
e, rising sea levels and expansion of deserts in the subtropics(亚热带). Warming is expected to be greater over land than over the oceans and greatest in the Arctic, with the continuing loss of glaciers, permafrost and sea ice. Other likely changes include more frequent extreme weather events including heat waves, droughts, heavy rainfall with floods, heavy snowfall and species extinction due to great change of temperature. Bad effects on humans include the threat to food security from decreasing crop yields and the loss of populated(住人的) areas because of rising sea levels.