Global warning

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 411.

Guardian Unlimited, September 1, 1999

Spain will be ridden with malaria, the eastern Mediterranean will be as hot as the Sahara desert, flash floods will swamp parts of the American coastline and there will be almost no snow in the Alps. This is the doomsday scenario painted in a new report on the effects of global warming on 10 of the world's most popular tourist destinations in the next century.

The study, commissioned by theWorld Wild Fund for Nature (WWF), found that profitable tourist destinations could be turned into "holiday horror stories".

By 2020 visitors to the Costa del Sol could riskcontracting malaria as global warming brings more frequent heatwaves[8], making Spain a suitable habitatfor malaria-bearing mosquitoes, while increases in summer temperatures to more than 40C may make parts of Turkey and Greece no-go areas in July and August.

The study by the climatic research unit of the University of East Anglia in Britain suggests that countries that rely on holidaymakers for foreign revenue will need to take account of the changing climate when planning resorts or upgrading facilities.

David Viner, the senior research scientist who compiled the report, said: "Areas such as the Mediterranean could become unbearable during the traditional summer holiday season. As temperatures begin to soar[9], many tourists will stay away."

The report says a decline in cloud cover over Australia will increase exposure to the sun's harmful rays, increasing the risk of sunburn and skin cancer.

Winter tourism in the Alps and other European skiing destinations will be affected because they will have less snowfall and shorter skiing seasons. Lower-lying resorts in Austria, and areas where commercial skiing operations are already marginal[10], such as Scotland, will be particularly hard hit.

The southeast coastline of the United States, including parts of Florida, may be threatened by rising sea levels. Safari holidays in east and southern Africa may be affected as droughts[11] and changes in temperature alter thedistribution of wildlife. Some islands in the Maldives could disappear as they are submerged[12] by rising sea levels.

The tourism industry could be faced with huge costs as global warming begins to influence decisions about when and where people are going to go on holiday. From 594m international travellers in 1996, numbers are expected to rise to 702m in 2000, 1.1bn in 2010 and 1.6bn in 2020.

4. Fill in the gaps with words from the exercise above to make coherent sentences and restore the original ideas.

1. The provisions of the Kyoto Protocol envisage mitigating the rapid climate change. 2. The crash plan is aimed to stave off the environmental disaster. 3. One country's efforts will be marginal in the grand scheme of things. 4. The acid rains are attributed to industrial plants emitting large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. 5. Responding to climate change, industry will have a large initial outlay on requirement. 6. Flash floods have become endemic in the parts where hillsides were stripped of forests. 7. The bear's flabbiness was attributable to prolonged starvation. 8. The area is covered by vegetation that propagates by spores and seeds. 9. Regular epidemics were put an end to through improved sanitation of urban slums. 10. Chemical waste on polluted soils is absorbed by plants. 11. A number of most beautiful holiday destinations may find themselves submerged by the rising seas. 12. The polar ice meltdown would irrevocably change the geographical map of the world. 13. Last summer temperatures soared to record levels. 14. The heat wave parched most of the crop. 15. Animals ranging steppes are adapted to recurrent droughts.

5. Translate the text about the historical background and major environmental decisions.

During the 1980s, scientific evidence about the possibility of global climate change led to growing public concern. By 1990, a series of international conferences had issued urgent calls for a global treaty to address the problem. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) responded by establishing an intergovernmental working group to prepare for treaty negotiations. Rapid progress was made, in part because of work by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and by meetings such as the 1990 Second World Climate Conference.

In response to the working group's proposal, the United Nations General Assembly at its 1990 session set up the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for a Framework Convention on Climate Change (INC/FCCC). The INC/FCCC was given a mandate to draft a framework convention and any related legal instruments it considered necessary. Negotiators from over 150 States met during five sessions between February 1991 and May 1992. They adopted the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change on 9 May 1992 at UN Headquarters in New York.

Soon after, at the June 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (known as the Rio "Earth Summit"), the Convention received 155 signatures. Other States have since signed, and a growing number have ratified. The Convention will enter into force 90 days after the 50th ratification. The first session of the Conference of the Parties must then be convened within the following year. This meeting of all ratifying States will be hosted by Germany, possibly in early 1995. The INC/FCCC, which is continuing with important preparatory work, will then be dissolved and the Conference of the Parties will take over responsibility for the lengthy process of implementing the Convention.

6. Below is the abridged preamble of the FCCC in two languages. Provide translations for the missing clauses.

UNITED NATIONS FRAMEWORK CONVENTION ON CLIMATE CHANGE

Glossary of Part 1

7. Listen to a fragment of an article from the Observer of July 25, 1999. Take notes of what you hear and compare your guesses to the author's observations. Below is a list of words that will be helpful to get a better grasp of the contents.

A few degrees increase in temperature may not seem to matter much in a place where winter winds force the thermometer as low as -75C. But from plankton to polar bears, the Arctic meltdown threatens an environmental and human catastrophe.

Almost every living creature in the Arctic Ocean depends on ice. Humans and polar bears hunt the whales, walruses and seals which feed around it; walruses and seals live off the shellfish and Arctic cod[13] which eat the algae[14] that grows under it.

Now, as the floes[15] thin and retreat north, that delicate food chain is unravelling[16]. It is cold and dark out there for much of the year and survival is hard. Every species depends on a short food chain. Each link in that chain is vital because, unlike temperate or tropical areas, there are no food substitutes. If anything changes, the consequences are huge. Melting threatens everything.

Animals here depend on the ice. If it disappears, so will they. The stakes are pretty darn[17] high.'

This is scant[18] surprise to the environmentalists. Melanie Duchin, a climate change expert who visits the Chukchi Sea every year, says each time it gets harder to find the animals. 'The ice is much further from the shore and it is directly affecting wildlife.'

As the floes retreat north, animals find it harder to breed and raise their young. Warm snaps melt bear and walrus ice dens, crushing the suckling mothers and their cubs.

Even if the young do survive, adult animals cannot always feed them because the further the ice retreats, the deeper the water and the harder it is to dive to the bottom where shellfish and Arctic cod live. Some animals can even find themselves trapped on land because the ice has retreated so far they can no longer swim to it.

Scientists predict that, if the floes go on thinning, many species - including polar bears - could become extinct within 20 years.

It is not just marine wildlife which is at risk. On land, grizzly bears, caribou, Arctic foxes and wolves which roam the vast permafrost have finely tuned their migration habits over millions of years to coincide with the growing season of grass, moss and lichen[19] so that they can mate and feed their young.

But as spring arrives earlier and the tundra dries out, herds are finding it difficult to travel from wintering areas in time to feed. Some 10,000 reindeer died of starvation on Russia's Chukotka peninsula two years ago and Alaska's Peary caribou face extinction.

Warmer temperatures have also sped up the reproductive cycle of land parasites like the spruce bark[20] beetle. Plagues[21] of the voracious bug have devastated forests on Alaska's Kenai peninsula[22]. An estimated 20 to 30 million spruce trees are being killed each year. Some 30 million died in 1996 alone, and the outbreak now covers more than three million acres. If the natural world is under threat in the most hostile place on Earth, the people who depend on it to survive are quick to suffer.

For centuries Eskimo fishermen on the Alaskan coast and on St Lawrence Island have harpooned whales, walruses, and seals and gathered plants to feed their families and make boats, clothes and musical instruments and to carve ivory.

Food used to be so plentiful that when one village landed[23] a whale it shared the meat and blubber with neighbouring communities. Now Eskimos say they cannot even find enough to feed themselves and their children. A 67-year-old whaler who lives on St Lawrence Island said: 'We used to have a good life. We caught walrus and seals very much. But now we cannot find animals so easily. We go hunting for days but we do not find anything. The fishermen do not take food on their boats like the white man and after days they come home real skinny.'

Eskimos know little about the science of global warming. But they are convinced their environment is changing. March used to mark the start of spring but now the February sun melts the floes, strengthening the currents that sweep the ice edge further and further away from the coast.

Birds and insects are getting bigger. Fruits and berries they have never seen before have begun growing. If the land and water they depend on goes on warming, the people of the Arctic fear their ancient culture will die. 'We want to carry on the traditions that our grandparents, fathers and mothers showed us, but we can't,' said an Eskimo villager, who lives with his wife and seven children in a plywood[24] house by the sea shore.

'We don't find walrus intestine[25] and Arctic fox pelts[26] to make special clothes. We cannot get stomach to make the drums for singing and dancing. People not have clothes, not sing, not dance. I like traditional life, but we are suffering and people far away do not care.'

8. Translate the sentences below incorporating the vocabulary from the previous exercise. (The order of sentences is wrong).

Next year the Foundation starts a series of conservation projects in the north of the country. Conservationalists are trying to save big game from extinction. Roedeer ranges in the wooded regions of the northwest. Foresters beat an alarm about the shrinking populations of the wild boar. The recent floods in the Transcarpathia are attributed to region's deforestation. Ecological balance in nature is conditioned by conservation of biological biodiversity. The Askania Nova National Reserve is a melting pot of rare and endangered species. Local tour operators are committed to small-scale tourism, the only alternative for sustainable existence of the reserve. Farms of the area report massive invasion of the locust. Large areas of sunflower fields are destroyed by vermin. Land development and increased presence of Man in the formerly wild places disperse the wildlife populations across vast territories. Environment pollution has an adverse effect on public health and debilitates immunity to disease. Many people were injured and mutilated in the earthquake that struck the area. After the research results were made public, the team was inundated with requests for more information. Excessive combustion of fuels and burning of wastes ultimately leads to depletion of the ozone layer. There was ferocious (немилосердна) heat, unusual for the area and that time of year. After the whole hillsides were stripped of their forests, any further logging was banned. Fish reproduce by laying eggs. The gamekeepers found a few adult deer ill and emaciated. The woods were fragmented by a network of roads, farmlands and communities. Fragmentation of the habitat and unravelled food chain have taken away from the species' gene pool and depleted fertility. Conservationalists' many warnings go traditionally unheeded. Some people in the community have reported sightings of wolves.

Additional Exercises

This exercise looks at adjectives formed with prefixes “un”, “in”, “il”, “ir” and “im”, which give the word an opposite meaning.

There are only general rules for “il”, “ir” and “im”: “il” is used before the letter “l”; “ir” is used before the letter “r”; “im” is used before the letters “p” and “b”.

Translate the adjective for future reference.

a) inadequate[27], inaccessible[28], inaccurate[29], inadmissible[30], inadvisable[31], inapplicable[32], inappropriate[33], inarticulate[34], incautious[35], incoherent[36], incompatible[37], incompetent[38], inconceivable[39], incongruous[40], inconsiderate[41], inconsistent[42], incorrigible[43], incredulous[44], indispensable[45], inexcusable[46], insurmountable[47], innumerable[48], ineducable[49], inept[50], inessential[51], inexplicable[52], inexpressible[53], infallible[54], infinite[55], inhuman[56], inoperative[57], insensible[58], inseparable, insignificant[59], intolerable[60], invalid[61], invincible[62], involuntary[63];

b) unabridged[64], unaccustomed[65], unadulterated[66], unambiguous[67], unarguable[68], unattainable[69], unaware, unbiased[70], uncanny[71], uncommon[72], undeniable[73], unethical[74], uneventful[75], unaccompanied[76], unharmed[77], unimpressive[78], unkempt[79], unmanageable[80], unpredictable, unprejudiced[81], unprotected[82], unscrupulous[83], unspeakable[84], unsurpassed[85], untimely[86];

c) illegible[87], illiterate[88], illegal, illogical;

d) immature, immeasurable[89], impenetrable[90], imperfect[91], implausible[92], impoverished[93], impracticable[94], imprudent[95];

e) irrational[96], irrecoverable[97], irregular[98], irrelevant[99], irremediable[100], irreparable[101], irreproachable, irresistible, irrevocable[102].

Glossary of Part 2

9. Listen to a text entitled Finite Oceans looking at marine life. As you listen, mark the sentences below as true or false.

Finite[103] Oceans