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At international conferences, people speaking for the developing world insist that it is the developed nations that feel endangered by carbon emissions and want to retard elsewhere the kind of development that has been enjoyed by Western Europe, North America, and Japan. A reduction in carbon emissions in the developing world, they assert, will have to be at the expense of the rich nations. Their diagnosis is wrong, but their conclusion is right. Any costs of mitigating climate change during the coming decades will surely be borne by the high-income countries. But the benefits, despite what spokespeople for the developing world say, will overwhelmingly accrue to future generations in the developing world. Any action combating global warming will be, intended or not, a foreign aid program.
The Chinese, Indonesians, or Bangladeshis are not going to divert resources from their own development to reduce the greenhouse effect, which is caused by the presence of carbon-based gases in the earth's atmosphere. This is a prediction, but it is also sound advice. Their best defense against climate change and vulnerability to weather in general is their own development, reducing their reliance on agriculture and other such outdoor livelihoods. Furthermore, they have immediate environmental problems – air and water pollution, poor sanitation, disease – that demand earlier attention.
There are three reasons the beneficiaries will be in the developing countries, which will be much more developed when the impact of climate change is felt. The first is simple: that is where most people live – four-fifths now, nine-tenths in 75 years.
Second, these economies may still be vulnerable, in a way the developed economies are not, by the time climate change occurs. In the developed world hardly any component of the national income is affected by climate. Agriculture is practically the only sector of the economy affected by climate, and it contributes only a small percentage – three percent in the United States – of national income. If agricultural productivity were drastically reduced by climate change, the cost of living would rise by one or two percent, and at a time when per capita income will likely have doubled. In developing countries in contrast, as much as a third of GNP and half the population currently depends on agriculture. They may still be vulnerable to climate change for many years to come.
Third, although most of these populations should be immensely better off in 50 years, many will still be poorer than the rich countries are now. The contribution to their welfare by reduced climate change will therefore be greater than any costs the developing world bears in reducing emissions.
I say all this with apparent confidence, so let me rehearse the uncertainties, which have remained essentially the same for a decade and a half. Arbitrarily adopting a doubling of greenhouse gases as a benchmark, a committee of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences estimated in 1979 that the change in average global surface atmospheric temperature could be anywhere from 1.5 to 4.5 degrees Celsius. (Note that the upper estimate is three times the lower.) This range of uncertainty has still not officially been reduced.
More important than the average warming is the effect it may have on climates. Things will not just get warmer, climatologists predict: some places will, but others will get cooler, wetter, drier, or cloudier. The average warming is merely the engine that will drive the changes. The term "global warming" is mischievous in suggesting that hot summers are what it is all about.
The temperature gradient from equator to pole is a main driving force in the circulation of the atmosphere and oceans, and a change in that gradient will be as important as the change in average temperature. Climatologists have to translate changes in temperature at various latitudes, altitudes, and seasons into changes in weather and climate in different localities
3 . Answer the questions.
1. What nations are more endangered by carbon emissions according to people speaking for the developing world at international conferences?
2. What is their diagnosis and what is their conclusion?
3. What is a prediction for the Chinese, Indonesians or Bangladeshis?
4. What environmental problems demand earlier attention for these nations?
5. How many reasons are there for the beneficiaries’ being in the developing countries?
6. Name the simplest one.
7. Why may the economics in the developing countries be vulnerable by the time climate change occurs?
8. What was the estimation of the change in global surface atmosphere temperature in 1979?
9. What is more important than the average warming? Why?
10. What will be as important as the change in average temperature?
4. Match the words on the left with the definitions on the right.
1. developed nations a) to join with others in giving money, help, etc.
2. conclusion b) able to be easily attacked, harmed or wounded
3. decade c) to be rich / richer
4. global warming d) a judgment or decision reached after consideration
5. income e) anything that brings help, advantage or profit
6. vulnerable f) rich countries with high standards of life
7. pollution g) a period of ten years
8. contribute h) money received regularly as payment for work or
interest from investment
9. benefit i) a general increase in world temperature caused by
carbon dioxide
10. be well / better off j) the action of making air, water, soil, etc.
dangerously impure or unfit to use
5. Find synonyms to the following words in the text.
1. declare 6. diminish
2. oppose 7. self-reliance
3. help 8. foretell
4. illness 9. simply
5. influence 10.on the contrary
6. Translate the following sentences from Russian into English
1. Именно развитым странам угрожают выбросы углерода.
2. На международных конференциях заявляют, что борьба с загрязнением окружающей среды должна быть за счет богатых стран.
3. Это не только прогноз, но также и здравый совет.
4. В развитых странах климат едва ли влияет на национальный доход.
5. Наоборот, в развивающихся странах одна треть ВНП и половина населения зависят от сельского хозяйства и, следовательно, от изменения климата.
7. Look through the text and suggest a headline.
Global warming is the increase in the average temperature of the Earth's near-surface air and oceans in recent decades and its projected continuation. Global average air temperature near the Earth's surface rose 0.74 ± 0.18 °C (1.33 ± 0.32 °F) during the past century. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes, "most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations," which leads to warming of the surface and lower atmosphere by increasing the greenhouse effect. Natural phenomena such as solar variation combined with volcanoes have probably had a small warming effect from pre-industrial times to 1950, but a small cooling effect since 1950. These basic conclusions have been endorsed by at least 30 scientific societies and academies of science, including all of the national academies of science of the major industrialized countries. The American Association of Petroleum Geologists is the only scientific society that rejects these conclusions. A few individual scientists disagree with some of the main conclusions of the IPCC.
Climate models referenced by the IPCC project that global surface temperatures are likely to increase by 1.1 to 6.4 °C (2.0 to 11.5 °F) between 1990 and 2100. The range of values reflects the use of differing scenarios of future greenhouse gas emissions and results of models with differences in climate sensitivity. Although most studies focus on the period up to 2100, warming and sea level rise are expected to continue for more than a millennium even if greenhouse gas levels are stabilized. This reflects the large heat capacity of the oceans.
An increase in global temperatures may in turn cause other changes, including sea level rise, and changes in the amount and pattern of precipitation resulting in floods and drought. There may also be changes in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, though it is difficult to connect specific events to global warming. Other effects may include changes in agricultural yields, glacier retreat, reduced summer streamflows, species extinctions and increases in the ranges of disease vectors. Remaining scientific uncertainties include the exact degree of climate change expected in the future, and how changes will vary from region to region around the globe.
The effects of forcing agents on the climate are complicated by various feedback processes. One of the most pronounced feedback effects relates to the evaporation of water. In the case of warming by the addition of long-lived greenhouse gases such as CO2, the initial warming by these gases will cause more water to be evaporated into the atmosphere. Since water vapor itself acts as a greenhouse gas, this causes still more warming; the warming causes more water vapor to be evaporated, and so forth until a new dynamic equilibrium concentration of water vapor is reached with a much larger greenhouse effect than that due to CO2 alone. (Although this feedback process involves an increase in the absolute moisture content of the air, the relative humidity stays nearly constant or even decreases slightly because the air is warmer.) This feedback effect can only be reversed slowly as CO2 has a long average atmospheric lifetime. Feedback effects due to clouds are an area of ongoing research and debate. Seen from below, clouds emit infrared radiation back to the surface, and so exert a warming effect. Seen from above, the same clouds reflect sunlight and emit infrared radiation to space, and so exert a cooling effect. Increased global water vapor concentration may or may not cause an increase in global average cloud cover. The net effect of clouds thus has not been well modeled, however, cloud feedback is second only to water vapor feedback and is positive in all the models that were used in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report.
There is ongoing political and public debate regarding what, if any, action should be taken to reduce or reverse future warming or to adapt to its expected consequences. Most national governments have signed and ratified the Kyoto Protocol aimed at combating greenhouse gas emissions.
8. Find the key words in each paragraph of the text and translate them into Russian.
9. Find the English equivalents of the following word combinations in the text and translate the sentences with them into Russian in writing.
1. по всей вероятности обусловлено
2. парниковый эффект
3. природные явления
4. по крайней мере
5. в том числе
6. в свою очередь
7. и так далее
8. как видно из приведенного ниже
9. как видно из вышеупомянутого
10. если таковые имеются
10. Give the summary of the text in Russian using the key words and word combinations from exercises 8 and 9.
11. Read the following text.
SETTING THE CEILING
1. Two thousand American economists recently recommended that national emission quotas promptly be negotiated, with purchase and sale of emission rights allowed to assure a fair geographic distribution of reductions. This appears to be the U.S. position for the meeting in Kyoto. It is an elegant idea. But its feasibility is suspect, at least for the present. One cannot envision national representatives calmly sitting down to divide up rights in perpetuity worth more than a trillion dollars. It is also hard to imagine an enforcement mechanism acceptable to the U.S. Senate. I do not even foresee agreement on what concentration of greenhouse gases will ultimately be tolerable. Without that, any trajectory of global emissions has to be transitory, in which case renegotiation is bound to be anticipated, and no prudent nation is likely to sell its surplus emissions when doing so is clear evidence that it was originally allowed more than it needed.
2. The current focus of international negotiation is extremely short-term. That is probably appropriate, but the long term needs to be acknowledged and kept in mind. If carbon-induced climate change proves serious, it will be the ultimate concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that matters. The objective should be to stabilize that final concentration at a level compatible with tolerable climate change. Emissions of the carbon-based gases are the current focus of attention, but the question of concentration is what needs to be settled.
3. If scientists knew the upper limit to what the earth's climate system could tolerate, that limit could serve as the concentration target. It would probably not matter much climatically how that limit was approached. The optimal trajectory would probably include a continuing rise in annual emissions for a few decades, followed by a significant decline as the world approached a sustainable low level compatible with the ceiling on concentration. That is no argument for present inaction: future technologies that people will rely on to save energy or make energy less carbon-intensive 10, 20, or 30 years from now will depend on much more vigorous research and development, much of it at public expense, than governments and private institutions are doing or even contemplating now.
12. Combine the following sentences to make one complete statement. Make any changes you think necessary but do not change the sense of the original. Refer to the passage when you have finished the exercise.
The optimal trajectory would probably include a continuing rise in annual emissions. It would be taken for a few decades. The rise would be followed by a significant decline. It could happen as the world approached a sustainable low level. This level might be compatible with the ceiling on concentration. (paragraph 3)
13. Find sentences with: a) subjunctive mood, b) complex subject. Analyze them and suggest different ways of their translation.
14. Translate the text in writing.
15. Before translating the text from Russian into English translate the following words.
1. threat, threaten, threatening
2. consider, consideration, considerable, considerably
3. favour (n), favour (v), favourable, unfavourable, favourite
4. economy, economic, economics, economical, economize
5. populate, population, popular, popularity
6. move, movement, movable, movability
7. increase (n), increase (v), increasing, increasingly
8. harm (n), harm (v), harmful, harmfulness, harmless
9. act, action, active, activity
10. quantity, quantify, quantitative
16. Match word combinations on the left with the English equivalents on the right.
1. угрожающие последствия a) from the point of view
2. уровень мирового океана b) annual death of famine
3. в результате тектонических процессов c) it is hardly worth concerning about
4. куда менее трагичные d) the level of the ocean
5. ежегодная гибель от голода e) far less tragic
6. вряд ли стоит беспокоиться о … f) anticipated damage
7. ожидаемый ущерб g) any sort of productive activity
8. отдавать себе отчет h) as a result of tectonic processes
9. с точки зрения i) be aware of
10.любой вид производственной j) threatening consequences
деятельности
17. Translate the following sentences into English.
1. Как показывает пример наших предков, глобальное потепление не несет реальной угрозы существованию человечества.
2. Известно, что изменение климата становится причиной возникновения и гибели многих великих цивилизаций.
3. Все ли страны отдают себе отчет в последствиях повышения глобальной температуры?
4. С этой точки зрения Киотский протокол заставляет потенциальных конкурентов создать рынок для сбыта своих энерготехнологий.
5. Ожидаемый ущерб мировой экономики, по всей вероятности, не будет велик.
18. Translate the text in writing.
Дата: 2019-04-23, просмотров: 219.