|
|
Section B
Directions: In this section, you are going to read a passage with ten
statements attached to it. Each statement contains information given in one of
the paragraphs. Identify the paragraph from which the information is
derived.
You may choose a paragraph more than once. Each paragraph is marked with a
letter. Answer the questions by marking the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet
2.
Being Objective on Climate Change
A.Last week，Craig Rucker,a climate-change skeptic and the executive
director of a nonprofit organization called the Committee for a Constructive
Tomorrow(CFACT)，tweeted a quotation supposedly taken from a 1922 edition of the
Washington Post：“Within a few years it is predicted due to ice melt the sea will
rise&make most coastal cities uninhabitable.”The intent，of course，was to
poke fun at current headlines about climate change.
B.Rucker’s organization is a member ofthe Cooler Heads Coalition，an
umbrella organization operated by the Competitive Enterprise Institute，a
nonprofit that prides itself on its opposition to environmental ists.Rucker
himself is part of a network of bloggers，op-cd writers，and policy-shop
executives who argue that climate change is either a hoax or all example of
left-wing hysteria.Surfacing old newspaper clips is one of their favorite
games.They also make substantive arguments about climate policy,but the sniping
may be more effective.There is no stronger rhetorical tool than ridicule.
C.In this case，Ruckcr’s ridicule seems misplaced.After spending a few
minutes poking around online，1 was able to find both the Washington Post article
and the longer SourCe material that it came from—a weather report issued by the
U.S.consul in Bergen，Norway,and sent to the State Department on october 1 0，1
922.The report didn’t say anything about coasts being inundated.This isn’t
surprising.Scientists wete smart back then，too,and they knew that melting sea
ice wouldn’t appreciably raise sea levels.any more than a melting ice cube
raises the level of water in a glass.
D.Rucker ultimately corrected his tweet once commenters pointed out the
misquote.Through Twitter,he informed me that he had taken the line from a
Washington Times op—ed by Richard Rahn，a senior fellow at the Cato
Institute.When I contacted Rahn’s office.a press representative acknowledged
that Rahn had copied the quote from other bloggers and columnists;the fabricated
sentence appears in articles at reason.corn and texasgopvote.corn.The fabricated
line seems to have been inserted around 2011.but the original article has been
circulating online since 2007.
E. The statement about rising sea levels aside，1 922 really was a strange
period in the Svalbard archipelago.the area described by the weather report.The
islands lie halfway between Norway and the North Pole,at a latitude that puts
them several hundred miles farther north than Barrow,alaska.“The Arctic seems to
be warming up.”the report read.In August of that year,a geologist near the
island of Spitsbergen sailed as far north as eighty-one degrees.twenty.nine
minutes in ice-free water.This was highly unusual.The previous several summers
had likewise been warrn.Seal populations had moved farther north，and formerly
unseen stretches of coast were now accessible.
F.What are we to take from this historical evidence?A central tenet for
Rucker and his colleagues is mat today’s sea.ice retreat。warming surface
temperatures，and similar observations are short-lived anomalies of a kind that
often happened in the past—and that overzealous scientists and gullible media
are quick to drum up crises where none exist.Favorite examples include numerous
newspaper articles from the nineteen.seventies that predicted the advent of a
new ice age.In fact.it's possible to find articles from nearly every decade of
the past century that seem to imply information about the climate that turned
out to be premature or wrong.
G.The 1922 article has been quoted repeatedly by Rucker’s comrades-in-arms
since its 2007 rebirth in the Washington Times.For nearly that long，scientists
have been objecting.Gavin Schmidt，a climate modeler and the deputy director of
the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies，points out that what was an anomaly
in 1922 is now the norm：the waters near Spitsbergen are clear of ice at the end
of every summer.More important，long-term temperature and sea-ice records
indicate that the dramatic sea-ice retreat in the early nineteen.twenties was
short-lived.It also occurred locally around svalbard—the unusual conditions
didn’t even encompass the whole Norwegian Sea，let alone the rest of the
Arctic.
H. 0ver the weekend，after retracting his previous tweet，Rucker posted a
link to a blog item about a different article.this one a 1932 New York Times
story.The eighty-year-old headline reads，“The Next Great Deluge Forecast By
Science：Melting Polar Ice Caps to Raise the Level of the Seas and Flood the
Continents.”That one sounded juicy,and，indeed，this time the text was
correct：that really is what the headline said.Ironically,the lcad researcher
cited in the piece was a German scientist named Alfred Wegener,who has sometimes
been considered a hero of climate-change deniers for a completely different
reason.Wegener is known for proposing the phenomenon of continental drift
starting around the First Wbrid War,The idea was ridiculed before gaining
acceptance in the nineteen-sixties，once
ample evidence had been amassed.Wegener’s lifc story,then，is used to
support the idea that the small number of researchers in the field who downplay
the risk of anthropogenic climate change will one day prevail.
I.In reality,the potential for anthropogenic global warming was being
discussed earlier than continental drift.and took even longer to gain wide
acceptance.The versatile Professor Wegener was a geophysicist and polar
researcher who spent much of his career studying meteorology in Greenland，and
trying to unlock the secrets of the Earth’s past.His elevated place in the
current climate-change debate is
abstracted from history.
J.In any case，it’s not clear that the bloggers linking to the 1932 article
read much beyond the headline.Thc article does discuss a collapse of the ice
sheets that would raise sea levels by more than a hundred feet—but it says that
event lies thirty to forty thousand years in the future.There’s nothing wrong
with examining old newspaper articles for clues about climate conditions in the
past.Legitimate climate researchers look at historical documents of all
kinds.However,a good-faith effort to arrive at the truth would not rely on
cherry-picking catchy headlines.It would require considering the context and
looking at all the evidence.At the very least.it wouldn’t allow for deliberate
distortions.A prediction that the ice caps might melt by the year 42，000 is
hardly all example of climate alarmism.
46.Unlike melting ice in the glass，the melting sea ice cannot easily raise
sea level.
47.Rucker maintains that the climate.change is just a terrible fantasy of
the left-wing or even a totally distrustful matter.
48.It is fair to search for every piece of evidence to approach the truth
without distortion.
49.As for Rucker,the clear purpose of tweeting this quotation is to laugh
at the articles about climate change.
50.The various unusual phenomena about climate change are merely non-exist
alarms claimed by the scientists and media，would be short-lived.
51.The drastic sea-ice melt occurred around Svalbard was only local and
limited.
52.It is normal for the waters at northern latitude 8 1 degrees，29 minutes
to be covered with ice.
53.It is embraced that the number of climate-change researchers will be
multiplied one day.
54.It is ironic for the leading figure of climate-change opponents to quote
this piece.
55.In reality,the universal information in articles about climate change is
eventually proved to be unbelievable.
|
|
发表于 2018-12-8 10:33:15