Is the earth’s climate Changing.

18000 years ago, much of Europe lay buried beneath vast sheets of ice, hundreds of meters thick. Ever since this astonishing fact was discovered in the last century, scientists have speculated on the nature of the Ice Age climate, and the circumstances that brought it to an end.

More recently, people have wondered if climate changes could be taking place in our time.

Even small changes in climate that occur from time to time can have a highly damaging effect on agriculture. It is therefore vitally important for us to understand how climatic changes take place.

Equally important is the need to understand why such changes occur. Until recently we have assumed that variations in regional and global climate observed over centuries resulted from natural phenomena. But there is now some tentative evidence suggesting that man's activities are already affecting local climates and ma affect regional and even climatic patterns in the future.

There are several ways in which man could be altering regional and global climate. First, the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere is increasing, as a result of burning fossil fuels. Second, the atmospheric transparency is decreasing, because of particular matt (dust, sulfates, liquid droplets, etc.) that is injected into the atmosphere sphere from such activities as industry, cars and agriculture. Next - deforestation, irrigation, urbanization and agriculture are changing the albedo of the Earth's surface. Fourth the atmosphere is being directly heated by the burning of fossil nuclear fuels. And finally, oil films from spills and blowouts altering the rate of thermal energy transfer between the oceans the atmosphere.

(Abridged from "Panorama" by Ray Williams)

 

The following are possible topics of this passage. Number them in an order that follows the organization of the passage.

1. Climatic changes resulting from man's activities;

2. Different causes of climatic changes and the importance to understand them;

3 Europe's climate 18000 years ago and scientists' speculations on the climatic changes.

Read the following text.

GREAT TROUBLES

Our country. Our environment. There are many big and small rivers, green forests, high mountains, lakes and seas in Russia.

Our Earth is our home. I think people must take care of our Motherland.

There are some laws and decisions on this important subject. We have state organizations which pay attention to this problem.

The international conventions pay much attention to the control of pollution too.

There are a lot of industrial enterprises in our country, that's why we can't ignore the problem of the protection of our environment. Our main aim is the protection. Our environment must be clean. What must we do for it? We have to control atmospheric and water pollution, to study the man's influence on the climate. The pollution of the environment influences the life of animals, plants and our human life. If we don't use chemicals in a proper way we'll pollute our environment.

Our plants and factories put their waste materials into water and atmosphere and pollute the environment.

There are many kinds of transport in our big cities. That is why we must pay attention to the protection of our nature and the health of the people.

Radiation. Now it has become one of the main problems. It is not good for health of people. Many people died from radiation some years ago in Chernobyl. It was a tragedy. Another problem is earthquake. We know some terrible earthquakes in Armenia. Our scientists try to forecast earthquakes, and then we can protect ourselves from them. There is a very useful public commission "Green Peace." Its main task is to combine the people's efforts for peace and for nature conservation.

The people all over the world do everything to protect their nature, to make their country richer, to make their life happier.

7. Translate the following words into Russian and learn them by heart:

Movement, harmful substances, headline, ignore, industrial and nuclear waste, influence, nature conservation, nervous system, be nervous, nuclear power stations, on the brink of extinction, one depletion, overpopulation, obesity, pesticide, plant, pollution, potentially.