05 人与自然之自然生态
Passage 1
（23-24 高三下·山东烟台·阶段练习）Advanced machinery has changed agriculture
greatly, but many tasks are still done by hand. Manual pickers can select and handle ripe produce
more precisely, which reduces damage, while machines require a lot of upfront ( 预付的)
investment. But in a warming world, farm labour has its own cost in the form of heat stress which
can lead to serious diseases.
Data from the EU's Earth monitoring program showed that the seven years before 2022
were the hottest on record. According to one study, at least 65 workers died from heat-related
illness on US farms between 2002 and 2021. Another study concluded that American crop workers
were 20 times more likely to die as a result of heat stress than other civilian employees.
The average number of unsafe summer working days in the US is expected to double by
2050. The threat is worse in southern Asia and western Africa, where the impact of global
warming on human health and productivity is expected to be most extreme. The accumulated
global cost in terms of output and working days lost due to heat stress is estimated to reach 2,400
billion dollars by 2030, according to the International Labour Organization.
Some countries have made laws to prevent heat illness. California was the first US state to
bring in a large number of rules to protect outdoor workers in 2005. On days above 26 degrees
Celsius, employers have to provide shelter for workers during rest periods. When temperatures
rise above 35 degrees, workers must have regular breaks. Since the rules came into force, the
number of reported deaths from environmental heat exposure in California has fallen from 10 in
2005 to 3 in 2019.
A new federal standard to fight against heat risks across the US is currently in the works (在
筹备中). But campaigners say many farm workers, especially immigrants, may be afraid to raise
concerns for fear of losing their jobs. They also worry that doctors are unaware of or may fail to
recognize the long-term damage from repeated exposure to heat stress, an ongoing threat for
millions of agricultural labourers around the world.
1．What is one advantage of manual pickers compared with advanced machinery?
A．They have a good effect on agriculture.B．They help farm crops ripen earlier.
C．They reduce the loss of agricultural produce.
D．They cut the cost of heat stress.
2．What can be learned from the studies in paragraph 2?
A．The year 2022 is the hottest in history.
B．American civilians are free of heat stress.
C．US workers have heat-related diseases easily.
D．American farmers have suffered from heat stress badly.
3．Why is California mentioned in the text?
A．To show the effect of laws to avoid heat-related diseases.
B．To remind us of the danger of global warming.
C．To praise the efforts to protect outdoor workers.
D．To help the farm workers to be protected.
4．What may worry farm workers according to campaigners?
A．Heat risks. B．Unemployment.
C．The new federal standard. D．Exposure to heat stress.
Passage2
（23-24高一上·广西·期末）An international team of researchers, led by Dr Christine
Batchelor of Newcastle University, UK, used clear pictures of the seafloor to show just how
quickly a former ice cover retreated (退去) at the end of the last Ice Age, about 20,000 years ago.
The team mapped more than 7,600 small-scale landforms across the seafloor. The ridges (山
脊) are less than 2.5m high and are spaced between about 25 and 300 metres apart. These
landforms are understood to have formed when the ice cover’s retreating edge moved up and
down with the tides (潮汐), pushing seafloor into a ridge every low tide. Given that two ridges
would have been produced each day, the researchers were able to work out how quickly the ice
cover retreated. Their results, reported in the journal Nature, show the former ice cover rapidly
retreats at a speed of 50 to 600 metres per day.
The seafloor landforms also give light into the way in which such rapid retreat can happen.
Dr Batchelor and co-workers noted that the former ice cover had retreated fastest across the
flattest parts of its bed.“An ice can go away from the seafloor and retreat quickly when it becomes buoyant (有浮力
的),” explained co-author Dr Frazer Christie. “This retreat only happens across relatively flat beds,
where less melting (融化) is required to thin the overlying ice to the point where it starts to float
(漂浮).”
The researchers believe that the quick retreat could soon be observed in parts of Antarctica.
This includes at West Antarctica’s vast Thwaites Glacier. The authors of this new study suggest
that it could go through quick retreat because it has recently retreated close to a flat area of its bed.
“Our findings suggest that present-day rates of melting are enough to cause quick short
retreat across flat-bedded areas of the Antarctic Ice Sheet, including at Thwaites,” said Dr
Batchelor. “Satellites (卫星) may well know this ice-cover retreat in the near future, especially if
we continue our climate warming.”
5．What is the purpose of Paragraph 1?
A．To provide some advice for the readers.
B．To add some background information.
C．To make the story interesting.
D．To bring in the topic.
6．What does the second paragraph mainly tell us?
A．Where the ice cover’s retreating lies.
B．Why the ice cover’s retreating is formed.
C．What the result of ice cover’s retreating is.
D．How the speed of ice cover’s retreating is worked out.
7．Why is Thwaites Glacier mentioned in the text?
A．To give an example of quick retreat.
B．To tell where it is located.
C．To compare different types of retreat.
D．To explain why it is important.
8．What is Dr Batchelor’s attitude to the ice cover’s retreating?
A．Unclear. B．Anxious.
C．Positive. D．Doubtful.
Passage 3（23-24高三上·北京丰台·期末）The scientists behind a new database of more than 400
extreme weather attribution (归因) studies have performed an essential service. This piece of
work, drawing together every study of this type, ought to create a greater sense of urgency around
policymaking and campaigning. It shows that intense heatwaves, hurricanes, and floods have all
been made far more likely by greenhouse gas emissions. And it spells out the alarming
unpredictability as well as the extent of global heating’s consequences.
Until the early 2000s, when the first attribution studies were published, it was harder to link
CO2 in the atmosphere with global heating’s sensible effects. Thanks to a growing body of
research, now we know. The last summer’s record-breaking “heat dome”(热穹顶) across the globe
would have been almost impossible without human-caused climate change.
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” wrote the poet John Keats just over 200 years ago. When it
comes to climate, truth can feel closer to terror these days. But scientists are right to insist that the
reality must be faced. Indeed, this is the only way to avoid the most disastrous outcomes. In a new
book, Hothouse Earth, Prof Bill McGuire argues that we have reached a stage when minimising
dangers should be regarded as “climate appeasement”.
Like the historical responsibility for carbon emissions, attitudes and experiences in the
present crisis are unevenly and unjustly shared out. Billions of people around the world, and above
all in the global south, are caught up day-to-day in a struggle for survival. This doesn’t mean they
don’t recognise global heating; subsistence (勉强维持生活) farmers and fishers are more directly
exposed to environmental damage than anyone else. But western governments, businesses and
people who are relatively sheltered from global heating’s worst effects should recognise this as the
privilege that it is. With this year’s Climate Change Conference fast approaching, western
governments must follow through on their promises of climate finance to enable a green transition
in the developing world.
The purpose of attribution science is not simply to warn the world about what is happening,
but to aid preparations for what has not happened yet. The most alarming global trend, apart from
still-rising emissions that mean we are on course for 2. 5°C of heating, is the unexpected speed
with which it is already causing chaos. Given what we now know about the impact of 1°C of
warming, it is no exaggeration to say that this trend is disastrous.
But alternatives exist, and insisting on this point has never been more important. Thealarming findings of attribution scientists can give rise to desperation-but must not be allowed to
end determination and hope.
9．The attribution studies imply that ____.
A．policies addressing climate issues are ineffective
B．it is hard to link CO2 with the effects of global heating
C．the extent of global heating’s consequences is unpredictable
D．humans are to blame for the increased occurrence of disasters
10．How does Prof Bill McGuire feel about the present climate crisis?
A．Worried. B．Doubtful.
C．Optimistic. D．Puzzled.
11．What can we learn from this passage?
A．The global south is in urgent need of financial support.
B．The speeding up of global warming has spelled trouble.
C．Global heating affects western countries to a larger extent.
D．The effort to reduce greenhouse gas emission has worked.
12．What is the main purpose of the passage?
A．To urge the public to follow the science.
B．To persuade the scientists to further their study.
C．To assess the current policy on the climate crisis.
D．To confirm the public’s concern for global heating.
Passage 4
（23-24 高三上·重庆·阶段练习）The world feels like it’s being set alight. Wildfires in
Canada and Europe, floods in China, and a never-ending stream of record-breaking heat waves
have constantly dominated newspaper headlines. The feeling that time is quickly running out is
very real. But that feeling is a barrier to action — nothing has changed when we’ve called for
action before, so considering the seemingly limited time window.
Our past efforts tell us there is a chance. The world has solved large environmental
problems that seemed impossible to overcome at the time. An eye-opening example is acid rain.
Studying how the world dealt with this geopolitically divisive problem can give us some
inspiration on how we can address climate change today.It has mostly slipped from the public conversation, but acid rain was the leading
environmental problem of the 1990s. Caused by sulfur dioxide (二氧化硫), it dissolved old
sculptures, stripped forests of their leaves, and polluted rivers and lakes. Emissions from the UK
would blow over to Sweden and Norway; emissions from the US would blow over to Canada.
This is a classic game theory problem; outcomes don’t only depend on the actions of one country
but those of the others too. Eventually, government officials had to sign international agreements,
place emissions limits on power plants and start to reduce coal burning. Interventions were
incredibly effective. In Europe, sulfur dioxide emissions fell by 84 percent and in the US by 90
percent.
Surely climate change is not the perfect parallel for the environmental problems we’ve
solved before. It will be harder. It will involve every country, rich and poor. But change is
happening. To accelerate action, we need to have the expectation that things can move faster. Past
lessons tell us that these expectations are not unrealistic.
13．How does the sense of urgency affect attitudes to climate change?
A．It discourages team work.
B．It fuels doubts about efforts.
C．It arouses fear for disasters.
D．It weakens trust in newspapers.
14．Why does the author discuss acid rain?
A．To analyze the causes of present challenges.
B．To boost public confidence in the government.
C．To highlight acid rain’s environmental damage.
D．To offer insights into handling climate change.
15．What was the main challenge in addressing acid rain?
A．The seriousness of the pollution.
B．Unequal shares of responsibility.
C．Seeking international cooperation.
D．Reducing sulfur dioxide emissions.
16．What is the author’s attitude to current climate change measures?
A．Unsatisfied.
B．Dismissive.C．Optimistic.
D．Approving.
Passage 5
（23-24高三上·河南南阳·阶段练习）In warming Pacific Northwest, summers are getting
hotter and winters less cold, but the atmospheric patterns that influence the weather aren’t
necessarily expected to become stronger or more frequent by the end of the century, according to a
new study from Portland State University.
That means that in an overall warmer climate, models suggest we’ll have the same variety of
atmospheric patterns as we have now but the weather we experience from them will be warmer
and, in some cases, wetter.
Graham Taylor, a Ph. D．student in PSU’s Earth, Environment and Society program, and
Paul Loikith, associate professor of geography at PSU, applied a novel machine-learning approach
to assess to what degree the range of weather patterns over the Pacific Northwest will change
under a scenario (情景) of future warming using a suite of state-of-the-art climate models.
The study’s aim was to look at whether a warming climate would make certain types of
weather patterns movements of air that on a large scale can influence whether it’s hotter than
average, colder than average, dry or wet—become more or less frequent or stronger or weaker.
“We get a certain number of patterns that bring us rain, patterns that bring us heat waves and
patterns that are average, ”Taylor said. “The range and strength of those patterns isn’t projected to
necessarily change, but they will be within a much warmer climate.”
For example, the study does not show that heat domes, which became part of the public’s
vocabulary after the deadly weather event in June 2021, will become more common or stronger—
it only shows that they will be hotter when they do occur.
“Global warming is making everything warmer,” Loikith said. “Hot summer patterns are
getting hotter, but we’re not seeing a shift towards more hot patterns according to these models.
It’s just more hot weather because everything’s hotter.”
The study also found that the models show an increase in rainfall over the Pacific Northwest
in most seasons except summer in a warmer future.
17．What was the machine-learning approach used for?
A．Finding ways to prevent global warming.B．Creating a relatively cold weather scenario.
C．Exploring the factors leading to warm climate.
D．Knowing about the change of weather patterns.
18．Which can best replace the word “projected” underlined in paragraph 5?
A．Expected. B．Adjusted. C．Designed. D．Revised.
19．What statement does Loikith agree with?
A．Less rainfall leads to global warming.
B．The weather will be hotter and hotter.
C．More weather patterns will appear soon.
D．Winters will become colder and colder.
20．Which of the following is a suitable title for the text?
A．Why Are We Experiencing Hotter Weather?
B．When Will Global Warming Influence Weather?
C．How Will Weather Patterns Change in the Future?
D．What Causes an Increase in Rainfall in Most Seasons?
