TUVALU, a tiny country in the Pacific Ocean, has asked for help as it fears it will be swallowed up by the sea.Storms and huge waves are a constant threat and none of Tuvalu’s nine little islands is more than five meters above sea level, Salt water is already entering the country’s drinking water supply, as well as damaging plants that produce fruit and vegetable.__51___
___52___. Venice, a historic city in Italy best known for its canals, has sunk about 24 cm over the past 100 years. Experts say that it will have sunk another 20-50cm by 2050. A century ago, St. Mark’s Square, the lowest point in the city, floodedd about nine times a year, Nowadays, it happens more than 100 times. While Venice is slowly sinking into the mud on which it stands, Tuvalu’s rising sea level is caused by global warming.
The average global temperature has increased by almost 0.5 centigrade degrees over the past century; scientists expect it to rise by extra 1-3 degrees over the next 100 years.
Warmer weather makes glaciersmelt, adding more water to the ocean. The warmer temperatures also make water expand, so it takes up more space, causing the sea level to rise. The sea level has risen about 10－25 cm in the last 100 years.
___53___. Through burning coal, oil and gas, people have been increasing the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, such as CO2. This adds to the power of the greenhouse effect, making the planet even warmer.
Many scientists believe that, if the warming is not stopped, there will be huge climate changes.___54____.____55____, the sea will swallow up millions of homes and the world will be flooded with “climate refugees” looking for somewhere to live.
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A．The main cause of global warming is human pollution |
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B．Should this come true |
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C．Without urgent help, the country’s days are numbered. |
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D．But Tuvalu is not the first place to face sinking into the sea |
E. The sea level could rise by one meter this century.
F. people face a lot of pollution.
G. much has been done about our planet .
Environmentalists said our planet was doomed to die. Now one man says they are wrong.
"Everyone knows the planet is in bad shape," thundered a magazine article last year. Species are being driven to die out at record rates, and the rivers are so poisonous that fish are floating on the surface, dead.
But there's a growing belief that what everyone takes for granted is wrong: things are actually getting better. A new book is about to overturn our most basic assumptions about the world's environment. Rivers, seas, rain and the atmosphere are all getting cleaner. The total amount of forests in the world is not declining. The Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjorn Lomborg, professor of statistics at the University of Aarhus in Denmark, is an attack on the misleading claims of environmental groups, and the "bad news" culture that makes people believe everything is getting worse.
Now the attacks are increasingly coming from left-wing environmentalists such as Lomborg, a former member of Greenpeace. The accusation is that, although the environment is improving, green groups — with profits of hundreds of mil-lions of pounds a year — are using scare tactics(谋略)to gain donations. Lomborg's book doesn't deny global warming — probably the biggest environmental threat — but destroys almost every other environmental claim with many official statistics.
The Worldwatch Institute claims that "deforestation(沙漠化) has been accelerating over the last 30 years". But Lomborg says that is simply rubbish. Since the dawn of agriculture the world has lost about 20 per cent of its forest cover, but in recent decades the forest area's depleting has come to a stop. According to UN figures, the area of forests has remained almost steady, at about 30 per cent of total land area, since the 1940s. Forests in countries such as the US, the UK and Canada have actually been expanding over the past 40 years. Despite all the warnings the Amazon rainforest has only shrunk by about 15 per cent.
Nor are all our species dying out. Some campaigners claim that 50 per cent of all species will have died out within 50 years. But other studies show only 0.08 per cent of species are dying out each year. Conservation efforts have been successful. Whales are no longer threatened and the bald eagle is off the endangered list.
Environmental groups claim that many of the improvements are the results of the success of their campaigns. Stephen Tindale, director of Greenpeace UK, said, "There are important examples, such as acid rain and ozone, where things aren't as bad as predicted, and that's because behavior has changed."
1.In his book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, what is Lomborg's main argument?
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A．Our planet is in bad shape. |
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B．The world's environment is improving. |
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C．The total amount of forests in the world is not declining. |
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D．Conservation efforts have been successful. |
2.What is Lomborg's main accusation of environmentalists?
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A．They scared people into making donations. |
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B．They overturned our basic assumptions about the world's environment. |
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C．They changed their behavior toward the environment. |
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D．They only told people bad news about the environment. |
3.The underlined word "depleting" in Paragraph 5 is closest in meaning to "____".
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A．reducing |
B．limiting |
C．expanding |
D．accelerating |
4.According to the passage, which of the following statements is true?
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A．The total area of forests in the world has increased significantly. |
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B．The effects of global warming are not as bad as first expected. |
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C．It appears that the bald eagle will now survive. |
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D．In the last 50 years the number of whales has increased. |
Jack was halfway back to the village where his mother lived _____ Mary caught up with him.
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A．when |
B．while |
C．until |
D．though |
People Who Moved China, hosted by CCTV, honours the people ______ the valuable contributions should be remembered by every Chinese．
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A．whose |
B．of whom |
C．that |
D．of which |
It looks like __________ weather is changing for __________ worse. We had better cancel the trip to the mountains.
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A．the; the |
B．不填; the |
C．the; 不填 |
D．不填；不填 |
在最近的一次主题为中学生课余时间上网的英语班会上，同学们对上网的利弊争论不休，意见不 能统一。作为班长，请你根据下列信息，作总结性发言。
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大多数同学 |
少数同学 |
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1. 时间是自己的，提倡多上网 |
1. 上网可以，但必须限时 |
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2. 网络使我们的交流方便，可获得国内外新知识及最新信息 |
2. 多数人上网是玩游戏、聊天而不是真正学习或查阅资料 |
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3. 网络同时也丰富了学生的业余生活 |
3. 个别同学甚至沉迷网络游戏而逃学 |
要求： 1. 覆盖以上内容，可作适当发挥；
2. 发言的开头和结尾已给出（不计入总词数）；
3. 词数：100左右。
