托福阅读看什么书，你都看了吗?
“fdghjfgn”通过精心收集，向本站投稿了5篇托福阅读看什么书，你都看了吗?，下面是小编整理后的托福阅读看什么书，你都看了吗?，欢迎阅读分享，希望对大家有所帮助。
篇1：托福阅读看什么书，你都看了吗?
托福阅读看什么书，你都看了吗?
一、The Official ETS Study Guide (俗称OG)
本书的作者是美国教育考试服务中心(ETS) ，ETS自己出的官方指南是目前最权威的备考材料哦，题目虽然不多，但是指导性和权威性是本书的最大亮点。据有参加过IBT的朋友们反映这本书还是很有帮助的，考试题目风格，难度都与之非常接近(阅读和听力比考试真题稍简单一些，口语和作文和考试很接近)。建议同学们将此书的阅读和听力反复地多做几遍，细细体会作者的出题思路，口语和作文的录音以及范文都是非常有价值的参考资料，建议同学们要多听多看哦!
二、Longman新托福教程
本书的原著是Deborah Phillips ，使用过的朋友们觉得这本教材评价还可以，难度上来说比IBT考试明显简单，适合复习IBT入门用，推荐复习时间较长(4个月以上)且基础一般(CET4级左右)的朋友使用，不过这套教材的主观题部分尤其是口语部分，它们和考试真题是有一定的差异的，建议此书使用时重点看客观题部分。
三、《新托福阅读突破》
本套丛书主要针对托福考试的四个部分，即听、说、读、写的内容、任务、要求进行细致的讲解，所提供的应试策略方向明确，它操作起来比较容易，而且实用性也挺强的。这套丛书选用的资料涉猎英国、美国、加拿大以及澳大利亚等国家的社会、文化、历史等方面。资料来自英语国家的多种媒体，如广播、报纸、杂志等。这一套教材不但有助于在短期内提高托福备考生的应试能力，同时呢它也可以作为英语专业学生的专项训练丛书。
四、《新托福阅读7天突破》
从内容上来看本书包括两大版块：考试技巧和备考利器。考试技巧的版块总结了托福阅读实战中制胜的兵法，例如针对十大题型的精准破解方案、针对重中之重的词汇题的“托福阅读必背同义词对表，希望同学们能够深入地领会其中的精髓并且做到活学活用。备考利器版块也归纳了托福阅读必备的三大童子功。此版块需要同学们下真功夫去潜心钻研和反复琢磨，切实提高自身语言能力。
托福阅读材料：让将来的你感谢现在的努力
”Always remember that your present situation is not your final destination. The best is yet to come.“ - Unknown
“一定要记住，你目前的处境并非你的最终目标，最好的日子终将到来。”——匿名
If your life isn't where you want it to be, change it. It's what successful people have done for thousands of years. You may currently be struggling and frustrated with your life but it's not going to stay like this forever, that is, unless you don't do anything to change it.
如果现在的生活并非如你所愿，那就去改变，数千年来成功人士都是这样做的。你现在可能正在挣扎，目前的生活使你沮丧，但生活不会一成不变，只要你能行动起来做出改变。
The best time of your life may still be ahead of you but it won't just magically show up, you have to create it. It's in your power to create whatever future you want for your life. Even if your best days are truly behind you, you can still have plenty of great days ahead of you if you decide to make it so.
最好的生活仍在前方等着你，但它不会无缘无故出现，需要你亲手去创造。你拥有那种力量去创造自己未来想要的生活，即使最好的日子已经过去，但只要你下定决心未来仍有很多好日子等着你。
Instead of letting circumstances control and defeat you, use them to push you into action so that you can change your present situation. Bad times aren't going to last forever but if you want more great times ahead of you instead of just good times, it's time to start doing things that will make that a reality… it's time to work toward your ideal destination.
不要让生活控制或打败你，你要把压力变成动力去改变目前的处境。糟糕的情况不会永远持续下去，但如果你想要以后的生活更美好，那现在就要行动起来去把愿望变成现实，现在就要朝自己梦想的生活努力前行。
托福阅读背景知识：美国主要报刊
报纸(Newspapers)
(1)《纽约时报》(New York Times)：1851年创刊是美国最有影响的三家大报纸之一。社址在纽约市中心的时报广场，为苏兹贝克(Sulzberger)家族所有。该报基本反映美国的外交政策及动向。平日发行量为80万份，每份约60至100页，星期日刊增加两个副刊，发行量为140万份，每份达300页以上。读者主要是美国上层社会，包括资本家、国会议员、政府官员以及高级知识分子。
(2)《华盛顿邮报》(Washington Post)：1977年创刊于首都华盛顿，是美国最有影响的三家大报纸之一，属格雷厄姆(Graham)家族所有。政治上接近国会，支持民主党，颇受参议院重视。它向美国内外300多家报纸供稿，以刊载一些政府“内幕”而著称，平日发行量为50万份，星期日版为70万份。
(3)《洛杉矶时报》(Los Angeles Times)：该报是美国西部最大的一家报纸，为美国最有影响的三大报纸之一。1881年创刊，以其倾向于共和党，代表西部利益集团的观点而引人注目。发行量为100万份。
(4)《华尔街日报》(The Wall Street Journal)： 1889年创刊，由美国主要财政金融新闻出版企业集团“道·琼斯”公司(Dow Jones)出版，是美国有影响的全国性财政金融专业性报纸。发行量为140万份。
(5)《纽约每日新闻》(Daily News)：19创刊，为美国发行量最大的报纸。
杂志(Journals)
(1)《时代》(Time)：周刊，1923年创刊于纽约，分国内版和国外版，国外版又分欧洲、亚洲及拉丁美洲版。该刊以报导及时和文字新颖取胜。辟有国外新闻、经济、宗教、科学、法律、人物、医药、影剧评论、体育等各类专题报导。发行量约300万份。
(2)《新闻周刊》(Newsweek)：创刊于1933年，是一种综合性杂志。除国内版外，还有大西洋版和太平洋版。是与《时代》同享盛名的美国两家全国性周刊，发行量约300万份。
(3)《读者文摘》(Reader's Digest)： 月刊，创刊于1922年，号称世界发行量最大的杂志，以15种文字，39种版本出版，每期发行量达3000万册。内容广泛，以专摘各大报和著名杂志的文章为一特色，另一特色则是用刊头、刊尾到处补白、插警语、箴言、座右铭、小笑话等。政治上反映美国保守派的观点。
(4)《美国新闻与世界报导》(U.S. News and World Report)： 1948年由《美国新闻》、《世界报导》和《美国周刊》三刊合并而成。着重于政治、经济和军事的综合报导与评论。代表洛克菲勒财团的利益，发行量达300万份。
托福阅读背景知识：美利坚的起源
北美洲原始居民为印第安人。在16-18世纪，世界各国开始入侵北美洲，西班牙的航海技术在当时是首屈一指的，他们在北美洲建立新西班牙，领土包括现在的墨西哥和美国西南部。法国建立了新法兰西。在16，英国建立了第一个殖民据点——詹姆士城，此后在大西洋沿岸陆续建立了13个殖民地。当时到达殖民地的人群品流复杂，但是大部分是穷人，有些是逃避战祸和宗教迫害的逃难者，有些是从非洲被贩卖运来的黑人。只有极少数的地主、贵族和资产家也来到北美大陆。
英法为了争夺海上霸权，整整打了7年，最终英国取得了胜利。然后接管了加拿大，控制了法兰西，并增加苛捐杂税，以致民不聊生。1773通过了茶税法，引起了波士顿倾茶事件。1775年，在波士顿附近的莱克星顿，殖民地爱国者打响了反抗的第一枪，揭开了独立战争的序幕。次年7月召开大陆会议，通过独立宣言，并宣布13个殖民地脱离英国独立，这也是美国国旗上13颗星星的来源。
托福阅读看什么书，你都看了吗?
篇2：你今天看书了吗作文
你今天看书了吗作文
Li Ming is my classmate, he is always the best student in my class. The teachers speak highly of him all the time. I wondered how he can do so well, so I talked to him. He told me that he kept reading books every hour a day, if he was busy, he would do it before sleeping. I thought about most of us, we couldt wait to play computer games after we finished the homework. I could find something was different between Li Ming and other students, now I understand why, reading the books broadens his vision and enriches his mind, helping him to be a better man. So I make up my mind to keep reading.
李明是我的同学,他总是班上最好的学生。老师赞扬他。我想知道他如何能做的那么好,所以我和他聊天。他告诉我他一直每天读书一个小时,如果他很忙,他也会在睡觉前看。我想对大多数人来说,我们无法等到完成作业后再去玩电脑游戏。我能找到李明和其他学生之间不一样的东西,现在我明白为什么,阅读书籍开阔了他的'视野,丰富了他的思想,帮助他成为一个更好的人。所以我下决心保持阅读。
篇3：托福阅读中句子简化你懂了吗
托福阅读的句子简化
1、找原句逻辑：
找逻辑连接词词，常见逻辑连接词：
转折：but, however, yet, nevertheless
让步：although，though，even though， despite，in spite of
比较对比：more/less than, as…as , while, whereas, unlike
条件：if, only if, except, unless, provide that, as long as
因果： because (of) ,since, as, why, for, therefore, hence, thus, consequently, lead to, as a result (of),result in, result from, reason, A contribute to B, attribute/ascribe A to B, explain, come from, so A that B,A be responsible for B
2、找原句主干：
谁做什么，谁是什么 (一般删掉修饰语:定语从句，介词短语结构，时间地点状语)。
注意：若两个句子有对比关系，因为两个分句中被比较的事物本质可能都差不多，所以表修饰的定语从句才是关键，这时候定语时关键。
3、对比选项选答案：
排除有明显与主要信息矛盾的选项了，排除无中生有的逻辑。
除了以上提到的托福阅读句子简化题答题技巧外，解答托福阅读句子简化题一定要掌握好语法，希望大家在接下来的备考环节能够熟练应用以上技巧。
托福阅读句子化繁为简的方法
托福阅读中大家最烦的就是长难句，不仅影响理解还浪费不少时间，其实对于托福阅读句子大家要学会化繁为简，这也是托福阅读备考要重点学习和理解的地方，希望下面的介绍能给大家一些启发。
1. 简单句定义：
托福阅读备考练习中如果句子只包含一个主谓结构，句子各个成分都只由单词或短语表示。
2. 分析方法：
对于难度较大的托福阅读简单句，阅读的基本方法是确定句子的主、谓、宾，找出句子的主干，忽略其他的成分，将长句变成短句，新托福阅读要学会将句型结构复杂的句子变成句型结构简单的句子。
3. 复杂的简单句解析：
(1)不定式及不定式短语做主语、宾语、表语、定语、状语
例1.To hold people accountable for their actions is important.
中文译文：督促人们为自己的行为负责是十分重要的。
结构分析：不定式短语to hold people accountable for their action 做主语。
(2)动名词及动名词短语做主语、表语、宾语
例2. It involves probing for deeply rooted concerns, devising creative solutions，and making trade-offs and compromises where interests are opposed.
中文译文：它涉及到探究深层次的关注，想出有创造性的解决方案，以及当利益矛盾时，做出交易和妥协。
结构分析：这是一个简单句。主语是it，谓语是involves，三个动名词短语做宾语(属于平行结构)。在阅读中经常出现“a and b”或“a or b”的形式，其中a 与b 同义或近义，所以只要认识其中一个词就能猜测出另一个词的大致意思。例如：trade-off and compromises。
(3)后置定语
例3. The most common procedure for doing this is negotiation，the act of communication intended to reach agreement.
中文译文：做这件事最常用的方法是谈判，一种想要达成一致的交流的行为。
结构分析：The most common procedure for doing this 是主语从句;过去分词短语intended to reach agreement 是the act of communication 的后置定语，the act of communication intended to reach agreement 是negotiation的同位语，对negotiation 进行解释。
托福阅读中的长难句简化原则
托福阅读中有着几种题型是每次考试都爱出现的，其中托福阅读试题中的句子简化题便是一个，这种托福阅读题如果不会正确的方法可能会耽误不少时间，下面就来详细介绍一下这个问题。
句子简化的托福阅读试题可分为两种类型，那解答这种托福阅读题的方法也相应不同：
第一种是有逻辑关系的句子。那就需要分辨是哪一种逻辑关系，常见的逻辑关系有三种：转折、因果和比较;第二步就是要确定逻辑关系的双方：假如是因果关系就需要确定原因和结果分别是什么。错误选项往往会因果倒置;假如是转折关系就需要确定作者更强调哪一部分信息。错误选项往往把次要信息放在主要的位置上(如but后面);如果是比较关系的话，就需要确定比较的双方，比较的内容和比较的结果。错误选项往往把比较结果弄反。
有些托福阅读题型句子逻辑和答案逻辑是相对应的，优先用逻辑解题比较简单，可以迅速正确解题，如例1。
Example 1 TPO5-2 The Origin of the Pacific Island People
Contrary to the arguments of some that much of the pacific was settled by Polynesians accidentally marooned after being lost and adrift, it seems reasonable that this feat was accomplished by deliberate colonization expeditions that set out fully stocked with food and domesticated plants and animals.
9. Which of the sentences below best expresses the essential information in the highlighted sentence in the passage? Incorrect choices change the meaning in important ways or leave out essential information.
○ Some people have argued that the Pacific was settled by traders who became lost while transporting domesticated plants and animals.
○ The original Polynesian settlers were probably marooned on the islands, but they may have been joined later by carefully prepared colonization expeditions.
○ Although it seems reasonable to believe that colonization expeditions would set out fully stocked, this is contradicted by much of the evidence.
○ The settlement of the Pacific islands was probably intentional and well planned rather than accidental as some people have proposed.
先看原句，contrary to表示一个与主干部分相反的附加信息，主干部分在逗号之后，后半句说看起来合理的是这个壮举是由精心准备的殖民远征实现的，他们满载食物和动植物。原句中出现了一个表示相反的逻辑关系。选项中只有C和D含有转折关系。C说尽管看起来带着充足的食物殖民远征是合理的，但是这被很多证据反驳。原句中并没有体现用证据来反驳，所以C不正确。选项D中的intentional and well planed对应原句的deliberate，rather than 对应原句开头的contrary to，原文就是否定了意外，支持了精心准备，所以D正确。
但是有时会发现光靠逻辑去解题，有时不会简单甚至会错误，因为有时逻辑对了但语义不对，但有些逻辑发生了改变但是却是正确选项，如例2所示。
Example 2 TPO3-3 The Long-Term Stability of Ecosystems
Many ecologists now think that the relative long-term stability of climax communities comes not from diversity but from the “patchiness” of the environment, an environment that varies from place to place supports more kinds of organisms than an environment that is uniform.
11.Which of the sentences below best expresses the essential information in the highlighted sentence in the passage? Incurred choices change the meaning in important ways or leave out essential information.
○Ecologists now think that the stability of an environment is a result of diversity rather than patchiness.
○Patchy environments that vary from place to place do not often have high species diversity.
○Uniform environments cannot be climax communities because they do not support as many types of organisms as patchy environments.
○A patchy environment is thought to increase stability because it is able to support a wide variety of organisms.
先看句子，有not…but…表转折，如果先通过逻辑去做题，那就直接把正确的D选项直接排除掉了，A,B,C都有rather than，not，not等，显然这个方法是不行的，所以还得靠主干来做题。
句子中间逗号隔开，逗号之前是environment，之后是对environment的解释，所以这个句子的重点在前半句，说许多的生态学家现在认为 C群落的长期稳定性不是来源于多样性，而是来源于P环境。因此这句话的核心就是P对稳定性的决定作用。只有D与原句吻合，说P环境可以被认为增加稳定性，因为它可以支持广泛的各种各样的有机体，because后面的原因与原句后半句对应。
选项A说： 生态学家现在认为稳定性来源于多样性而不是P。与原文相反。
选项B说： P没有多样性。不对，原文P环境能支持更多的物种，且它没有说P和稳定性的关系，也不对;
选项C说： 统一的环境不可能是C群落，因为它们不能像P一样支持许多种类的有机体，主语Uniform environments出现在原句后半句，不是句子核心，所以一定不对。
第二种类型是没有逻辑关系的句子，那就需要确定句子的主干成分。确定句子的主谓宾，修饰部分先不看，根据主干成分去确定选项(正确选项往往是原文的主动变被动、语序颠倒或同义替换)。假如有超过一个选项符合句子的主干成分，再去看句子的修饰成分信息是否一致。错误选项往往是把原文次要信息当作主要信息来讲;或描述错误信息、无中生有信息等。
Example 3 TPO4-1 Deer Populations of the Puget Sound
11.Which of the sentences below best expresses the essential information in the highlighted sentence in the passage? Incorrect choices change the meaning in important ways or leave out essential information.
In addition to finding increase of suitable browse, like huckleberry and vine maple, Arthur Einarsen, longtime game biologist in the Pacific Northwest, found quality of browse in the open areas to be substantially more nutritive.
○Arthur Einarsen’s longtime family with the Pacific Northwest ?helped ?him discover areas where deer had an increase in suitable browse.
○Arthur Einarsen found that deforested feeding grounds provided deer with more and better food(browse).
○Biologist like Einarsen believe it is important ?to find additional open areas with suitable browse for deer to inhabit.
○According to Einarsen, huckleberry and vine maple are examples of vegetation that may someday improve the nutrition of deer ?in the open areas of the Pacific Northwest.
句子无明显逻辑，抓住干，句子有很多逗号，我们要先找到句子主语。开头in addition to是附加信息不会是主语，后面like举例子也不会是主语，再后面AE是一个人名，可能是主语，后面紧接着说生物学家，是AE的同位语，最后一个小分句， found是个动词，是句子谓语，这句话的核心是说AE发现空地上的草更有营养。到选项当中，只有B说 Arthur Einarsen 发现无树的觅食地点能给鹿提供更多更好的食物，这里的better对应原句more nutritive，deforested feeding grounds对应the open areas，因为the 表明前文中有提到，而前一句确实就说了deforested，因此完全对应，本题选B。
选项A说： AE与西北太平洋的密切关系帮助他发现有更多合适草料的地区。西北太平洋在原句中不是重点，在A里却是主语中的内容，所以A不能选。
选项C说：像Arthur Einarsen这样的生物学家认为，为鹿寻找额外的开阔并拥有合适嫩草的居住区是很重要的。主语不对，且原句中没强调重要性，C错。
选项D说：根据Einarsen，越橘和藤槭是典型植被，某日可能可以改善太平洋西北宽阔地区鹿的营养。D的主语huckleberry and vine maple只是原句中like分句中的例子，不是句子重点，所以D错。
综上所述，句子简化题，先看句子，有逻辑优先根据逻辑来看，但是不一定逻辑正确就是正确选项，还得结合内容;无逻辑直接找主干，带着主干信息，然后去选项中找答案
篇4：托福阅读长难句你真的“读懂”了吗
托福阅读长难句你真的“读懂”了吗
何谓“读懂”
在课堂上经常会有同学问到：“老师我文章中的句子都读懂了，为什么还是做不对题?”每次被如此问，我都会反问一句：“同学，文章中的句子，你是真的“读懂”了吗?”究竟把TOEFL阅读中的长难句读到什么程度，才算是真正理解了这句话?大家不妨先来看看下面的例子：
例1：农民希望通过他们的知识去存水来减少水的浪费让他们周围得利于用大量的水的动机，写下这个工序来减少全地区的水供应。
例2：由于相邻的农民运用知识通过大量使用水源而收益，那些对想要保存水源的农民的鼓励减少了，在这个过程中拉低了整个地区的水源供给。
上述两句话来自TOEFL阅读课堂上同学们的练习，均是对同一句TOEFL长难句的翻译。其实只要读一下就会发现，两个译文中每一个汉字大家都认识，但却完全不能理解句中想要表达的意思，更不要说它们是同一句话了。这句话的原文为：
The incentive of the farmers who wish to conserve water is reduced by their knowledge that many of their neighbors are profiting by using great amounts of water, and in the process are drawing down the entire region’s water supplies.
该英文句子中所使用的单词，是相对比较基础的“四级”阶段的词汇，并未涉及学术类的专业词汇，上述同学翻译的两个译文中，也都把句中的单词意思翻了出来，但为什么汉语译文却让人摸不着头脑?由此可见，同学们理解的“读懂”，更多的是在“读词”，认为句子里没有生词，或者翻译的时候把所有词的汉语释义都翻出来了，就算是读完了句子。如例1中所示，译文好像流水账一般把单词逐个译出，甚至是汉语的句子都难以理解;例2看上去要稍微好一点，至少汉语的部分相对比较通顺，说明同学在翻译的过程中尝试过想要把句中的单词以某种形式串起来，但是自己挑出句中的单词组成的所谓合理的句子，跟原句中词的组合方式是不同的，因此也不是原文想表达的意思。
概括一下就是：单纯翻译英文句子中的单词，或者脱离原文句法结构，按照自己的意愿组合句中的词义，都不是真正“读懂”了原文。而TOEFL这个语言考试中考查得就是能否用英文这种符号理解文章所述的内容，没有看懂原文，自然也就会做错题了。
如何“读懂”
那么，怎样才能做到真正理解英文句子所表达的意思呢?英语“葡萄藤”式的句子结构重在“形合”，是在句子主干的基础上缠枝绕蔓，在核心意思的基础上添加修饰成分，使得一个句子越缠越长，信息越绕越多。但只要抓住最核心的那根藤，即使修饰成分非常多，也能够层次清晰地理出个所以然来。相反，汉语则是“竹子节”式的句子结构，一个短句一个短句往下顺延，整体是一种“意合”的句式。当句子相对较简单时，英语与汉语比较容易对应起来，如“She is a beautiful girl”就可直接对应着翻成“她是一个美丽的姑娘”。但托福阅读的学术类语言中，经常出现三五行的长难句，层层叠叠，所以在理解英文的句子时，如果还是像理解汉语的流水句一样来翻译，当然就会跟原句意思差别很大了。
因此，要想真正理解英语中的长难句，除了要积极补充词汇外，还要把英文的单词放在英语的句法结构中来理解，通过先找到英语句子中的主干信息，再在其基础上添加修饰成分，把英语长难句拆成若干有序的小短句，才能够切实弄明白句子想要表达的内容。我们还是以上述的句子为例：
The incentive of the farmers who wish to conserve water is reduced by their knowledge that many of their neighbors are profiting by using great amounts of water, and in the process are drawing down the entire region’s water supplies.
这句话中，句子的主语是the incentive of the farmers, 谓语部分是被动语态is reduced by their knowledge, 可见句子就长在对名词farmers和knowledge的修饰上了。而knowledge后面的同位语从句中又可以划分出一个主干来，即主语为many of their neighbors, 谓语为并列的两部分are profiting和are drawing down the water supplies。所以整个句子的层次划分为：
第一层：The incentive of the farmers(1) is reduced by their knowledge(2).
第二层：1. The farmers wish to conserve water.
2. Many of their neighbors are profiting and are drawing down water supplies.
此时，原文的长难句就已经可以根据主次关系被拆分成若干个短句了。所以用汉语直译出来就是：
第一层：农民的动机(1)被他们的知识(2)减少了。
第二层：1. 这些农民想要节水。
2. 知识指的是：他们的邻居正在通过大量用水来获利，并且在这个过程中， 还拉低了整个地区的水供应。
因为TOEFL只是考查对原文的理解，并不是真正在考英汉翻译，所以其实把句子理解成上面的程度足矣，如果还想再对汉语加工一下，只需把上述不同层次的内容串联起来即可，如：
那些想要节水的农民的动机被减少了，是因为他们知道邻居们正在通过大量用水来获利，并且在这个过程中还拉低了整个地区的水供应。
意思即为：
因为看到邻居们在大量用水，并且从中获得了利益，所以那些想要节水的农民的动机就受到了影响。
至此，才算是真正理解了原文想要表达的意思。通过根据英文的句法结构对原句进行“解构”和“重组”，英文原句中所体现的中心思想与逻辑关系就可以清晰展现出来了。这种句子分析多加练习，就会渐渐习惯成自然，读句子会越来越快，也越来越准确。
“读句”与“做题”
TOEFL阅读题目的设置，正是在验证大家是否真的弄明白句子中所体现出来的逻辑关系，所以正确的选项也往往是对原文的同义转述，只有真正消化理解了原文的信息，才能看出选项是在用不同的句式或形式来表达同样的意思。例如文章对本文分析的长难句是如此来考查的：
Paragraph 5 mentions which of the following as a source of difficulty for some farmers who try to conserve water?
(A) Crops that do not need much water are difficult to grow in the High Plains.
(B) Farmers who grow crops that need a lot of water make higher profits.
(C) Irrigating less frequently often leads to crop failure.
(D) Few farmers are convinced that the aquifer will eventually run dry.
(TPO 3 Depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer)
题目并没有直接问农民知道了什么，而是问想要节水的农民面临的困难是什么，也就是在考查考生是否读懂原文的逻辑，即因为邻居在用水获益，所以想节水的人也发生了动摇。因而答案应该选B。如果只是从文章中挑词组成自己认为合理的意思，就会非常容易选择选项中看似有道理的选项了。
综上，同学们在分析TOEFL阅读长难句时，不能仅仅满足于“单词都认识=读懂句子”，而是要从英语句子结构出发，找到句子主干及修饰成分，把单词放在英语的句子逻辑中来理解，才能真正读出英文想要表达的意思，才能体会到“读懂”就可以“做对”的成就感。
托福阅读素材之缺失碳的情况
托福阅读材料The Case of the Missing Carbon
Here's what you need to know about the warming planet, how it's affecting us, and what's at stake.
By Tim Appenzeller
Republished from the pages of National Geographic magazine
It's there on a monitor: the forest is breathing. Late summer sunlight filters through a canopy of green as Steven Wofsy unlocks a shed in a Massachusetts woodland and enters a room stuffed with equipment and tangled with wires and hoses.
The machinery monitors the vital functions of a small section of Harvard Forest in the center of the state. Bright red numbers dance on a gauge, flickering up and down several times a second. The reading reveals the carbon dioxide concentration just above the treetops near the shed, where instruments on a hundred-foot (30-meter) tower of steel lattice sniff the air. The numbers are running surprisingly low for the beginning of the 21st century: around 360 parts per million, ten less than the global average. That's the trees' doing. Basking in the sunshine, they inhale carbon dioxide and turn it into leaves and wood.
In nourishing itself, this patch of pine, oak, and maple is also undoing a tiny bit of a great global change driven by humanity. Start the car, turn on a light, adjust the thermostat, or do just about anything, and you add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. If you're an average resident of the United States, your contribution adds up to more than 5.5 tons (5 metric tons) of carbon a year.
The coal, oil, and natural gas that drive the industrial world's economy all contain carbon inhaled by plants hundreds of millions of years ago—carbon that now is returning to the atmosphere through smokestacks and exhaust pipes, joining emissions from forest burned to clear land in poorer countries. Carbon dioxide is foremost in an array of gases from human activity that increase the atmosphere's ability to trap heat. (Methane from cattle, rice fields, and landfills, and the chlorofluorocarbons in some refrigerators and air conditioners are others.) Few scientists doubt that this greenhouse warming of the atmosphere is already taking hold. Melting glaciers, earlier springs, and a steady rise in global average temperature are just some of its harbingers.
By rights it should be worse. Each year humanity dumps roughly 8.8 billion tons (8 metric tons) of carbon into the atmosphere, 6.5 billion tons (5.9 metric tons) from fossil fuels and 1.5 billion (1.4 metric) from deforestation. But less than half that total, 3.2 billion tons (2.9 metric tons), remains in the atmosphere to warm the planet. Where is the missing carbon? ”It's a really major mystery, if you think about it,“ says Wofsy, an atmospheric scientist at Harvard University. His research site in the Harvard Forest is apparently not the only place where nature is breathing deep and helping save us from ourselves. Forests, grasslands, and the waters of the oceans must be acting as carbon sinks. They steal back roughly half of the carbon dioxide we emit, slowing its buildup in the atmosphere and delaying the effects on climate.
Who can complain? No one, for now. But the problem is that scientists can't be sure that this blessing will last, or whether, as the globe continues to warm, it might even change to a curse if forests and other ecosystems change from carbon sinks to sources, releasing more carbon into the atmosphere than they absorb. The doubts have sent researchers into forests and rangelands, out to the tundra and to sea, to track down and understand the missing carbon.
This is not just a matter of intellectual curiosity. Scorching summers, fiercer storms, altered rainfall patterns, and shifting species—the disappearance of sugar maples from New England, for example—are some of the milder changes that global warming might bring. And humanity is on course to add another 200 to 600 parts per million to atmospheric carbon dioxide by late in the century. At that level, says Princeton University ecologist Steve Pacala, ”all kinds of terrible things could happen, and the universe of terrible possibilities is so large that probably some of them will.“ Coral reefs could vanish; deserts could spread; currents that ferry heat from the tropics to northern regions could change course, perhaps chilling the British Isles and Scandinavia while the rest of the globe keeps warming.
If nature withdraws its helping hand—if the carbon sinks stop absorbing some of our excess carbon dioxide—we could be facing drastic changes even before 2050, a disaster too swift to avoid. But if the carbon sinks hold out or even grow, we might have extra decades in which to wean the global economy from carbon-emitting energy sources. Some scientists and engineers believe that by understanding natural carbon sinks, we may be able to enhance them or even create our own places to safely jail this threat to global climate.
The backdrop for these hopes and fears is a natural cycle as real as your own breathing and as abstract as the numbers on Wofsy's instruments. In 1771, about the time of the first stirrings of the industrial revolution and its appetite for fossil fuel, an English minister grasped key processes of the natural carbon cycle. In a series of ingenious experiments, Joseph Priestley found that flames and animals' breath ”injure“ the air in a sealed jar, making it unwholesome to breathe. But a green sprig of mint, he found, could restore its goodness. Priestley could not name the gases responsible, but we know now that the fire and respiration used up oxygen and gave off carbon dioxide. The mint reversed both processes. Photosynthesis took up the carbon dioxide, converted it into plant tissue, and gave off oxygen as a by-product.
The world is just a bigger jar. Tens of billions of tons of carbon a year pass between land and the atmosphere: given off by living things as they breathe and decay and taken up by green plants, which produce oxygen. A similar traffic in carbon, between marine plants and animals, takes place within the waters of the ocean. And nearly a hundred billion tons of carbon diffuse back and forth between ocean and atmosphere.
Compared with these vast natural exchanges, the few billion tons of carbon that humans contribute to the atmosphere each year seem paltry. Yet like a finger on a balance, our steady contributions are throwing the natural cycle out of whack. The atmosphere's carbon backup is growing: Its carbon dioxide level has risen by some 30 percent since Priestley's time. It may now be higher than it has been in at least 20 million years.
Pieter Tans is one of the scientists trying to figure out why those numbers aren't even worse. At a long, low National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) laboratory set against pine-clad foothills in Boulder, Colorado, Tans and his colleagues draw conclusions from the subtlest of clues. They measure minute differences in the concentration of carbon dioxide in air samples collected at dozens of points around the globe by weather stations, airplanes, and ships.
These whiffs of air are stacked against a wall in Tans's lab in 2.6-quart (2.5-liter) glass flasks. Because the churning of the atmosphere spreads carbon dioxide just about evenly around the planet, concentrations in the bottles don't differ by more than a fraction of a percent. But the differences hold clues to the global pattern of carbon dioxide sources and sinks. Scientists calculate, for example, that carbon dioxide should pile up in the Northern Hemisphere, which has most of the world's cars and industry. But the air samples show a smaller than expected difference from south to north. That means, Tans says, that ”there has to be a very large sink of carbon in the Northern Hemisphere.“
Other clues in the air samples hint at what that sink is. Both the waters of the ocean and the plants on land steal carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But they leave different fingerprints behind. Because plants give off oxygen when they absorb carbon dioxide, a plant sink would lead to a corresponding oxygen increase. But when carbon dioxide dissolves in the ocean, no oxygen is added to the atmosphere.
Plants taking in carbon dioxide also change what they leave behind. That's because plants prefer gas that contains carbon 12, a lighter form of the carbon atom. The rejected gas, containing carbon 13, builds up in the atmosphere. The ocean, though, does not discriminate, leaving the carbon ratio unchanged. From these clues, Tans and others have found that while the ocean is soaking up almost half the globe's missing carbon—2 billion tons (1.8 billion metric tons) of it—the sink in the Northern Hemisphere appears to be the work of land plants. Their appetite for carbon dioxide surges and ebbs, but they remove, on average, more than 2 billion tons (1.8 billion metric tons) of carbon a year.
Forests like Wofsy's are one place where it's happening. For more than a decade his group has monitored the carbon dioxide traffic between the trees and the air. Instruments on his tower track air above the treetops as wind and solar heating stir it. As each waft of air passes the tower, sensors measure its carbon dioxide content. The theory is simple, says Wofsy: ”If an air parcel going up has less carbon dioxide than an air parcel going down, you have carbon dioxide being deposited onto the forest.“
The amount changes fast. ”Sunshine, perhaps the temperature, rainfall over the past week—all those factors affect what the forest does on an hour-to-hour basis,“ he says. Even a passing cloud can dampen photosynthesis, spoiling the trees' appetite for carbon. In winter, when leaves fall and decay, more carbon dioxide—a by-product of plant respiration and decomposition—seeps back out of the forest and into the atmosphere. Still, over more than ten years, the bottom line of billions of measurements has been positive. On balance, Harvard Forest is sieving carbon from the atmosphere.
It shows in the trees and on the forest floor. To check that their high-tech air measurements weren't somehow being fooled, Wofsy's group strapped calibrated steel bands around trees to measure their growth, gathered and weighed deadfall, and set up bins to collect fallen leaves. The idea was to measure just how much carbon-containing wood and other organic matter was building up in the forest, and to see if it matched the gas measurements. It did. Each acre of the forest has been taking roughly 0.8 ton (0.75 metric ton) of carbon out of the atmosphere annually, doing its humble part to counteract greenhouse warming.
Other forests at research sites in the eastern U.S. are putting on weight as well. That's no surprise, Wofsy says. ”In the eastern U.S., the most common age for a forest is 40 to 60 years. That's the kind of forest that's going to be growing.“
The current Harvard Forest, in fact, has a precise birth date: 1938, when a hurricane barreled in from the Atlantic and leveled earlier stands of trees. Elsewhere in the U.S. humans were the hurricane, clearing vast stands of forest for farming. Abandoned in the early 20th century as agriculture shifted westward to the plains, the land is yielding to forest again. The trees, still young, are getting taller and stouter and putting on denser wood. Year by year this slow alchemy locks up carbon in thousands of square miles of eastern forest.
More missing carbon could be hiding in the West. Fire once regularly swept the grasslands, rejuvenating them while killing off woody shrubs like mesquite, juniper, and scrub oak. Decades of firefighting policies called for dousing the smallest blaze and allowed the brush to thrive. The practice disrupted the grasslands' natural cycle and led to bulkier, woodier brush that fueled larger, more destructive fires. But it may also have created a major storehouse for carbon. All told, forest and scrub across the 48 states could be taking in half a billion tons of carbon, balancing out more than a third of the emissions from U.S. cars and factories. It's a huge gift, says Wofsy: ”That's at least four times what they were trying with Kyoto“—the climate treaty that the U.S. refused to ratify—”and it hasn't hurt anyone.“
That leaves more than 1.5 billion tons (1.4 billion metric tons) of missing carbon to account for in the Northern Hemisphere. Mature forests, such as tropical rain forest and the great belt of coniferous forest across Alaska and Canada, probably can't help because they're in a steady state, taking in no more carbon dioxide for growth than they give off (plants breathe too). But Europe's managed woodlands, new forests planted in China, and forests regrowing in Siberia after decades of logging could account for another half billion tons (.45 billion metric tons), researchers say.
Then there is a change in the far north, where satellite measurements over the past 20 years have shown that vegetation is getting lusher and enjoying a longer growing season. Natives of the North American Arctic report a new luxuriance on the tundra, where once stunted plants, such as dwarf birch, willow, and alder, are growing taller. The reason is simple, says Princeton's Pacala: ”You go to the far north, and it's just palpable how much warming there is.“
Indeed it is. While the world as a whole has warmed by about 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.56 degree Celsius) since 1900, parts of Alaska have warmed by 5 degrees Fahrenheit (2.8 degrees Celsius). Brad Griffith studies caribou at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, where he has noticed a change in the winters. He remembers clear, cold days and powder snow. ”It was never slick, never cloudy; you never had to clean your windshield.“ Now the winters arc warmer, wetter, and slushier. The shrubs on the North Slope seem to love the change, and Griffith has found that the lusher forage gives newborn caribou a better shot at survival.
That's the good news from the north: Right now global warming, ironically, may be helping forestall even more warming, by speeding the growth of carbon-absorbing trees. But balanced against that are warning signs—hints that northern ecosystems could soon turn against us. Eventually, warming in the far north may have what scientists call a positive feedback effect, in which warming triggers new floods of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, driving temperatures higher.
Worrisome signs begin on the aircraft approach to Anchorage. As the route skirts the hundred-mile-wide (161-kilometer-wide) Kenai Peninsula, ugly gray gaps appear in the dark green canopy of spruce below. Since the early 1990s bark beetles have been on the rampage in the Kenai, killing spruce on more than 2-million acres (809,000 hectares) there. Farther south in the Kenai, says Glenn Juday, a forest ecologist at the University of Alaska, skeletal trees stretch from horizon to horizon. ”It's the largest single area of trees killed by insects in North America,“ says Juday. ”No outbreak this size has happened in the past 250 years.“
The vast tracts of dead trees will ultimately send their carbon back to the atmosphere when decay or fire consumes them. A warming climate is likely to blame, Juday and others believe. Warmth favors the beetle by speeding up its life cycle and improving its chance of surviving the winter. And as Juday has found in his study area, warming also stresses the hardy northern trees, making them less able to fight off infestation.
Two hundred seventy miles (434 kilometers) north of the Kenai, on a hillside just west of Fairbanks, the Parks Loop Stand appears to the unschooled eye to be thriving. But Juday, who has worked in this grove of hundred-foot-tall (30-meter-tall) white spruce for 15 years, knows practically every tree's biography—and he is concerned. Heavier, wetter snowfalls have broken off branches and crowns. The trees have also been assaulted by a pest new to northern Alaska, the spruce budworm.
The first outbreak of spruce budworm in this region was recorded in 1989, and Juday thinks the warmer climate is again to blame. Sickly orange branches high in the trees and ragged spruce seedlings festooned with black pupae show that the budworm is still at work. ”This was a healthy, beautiful white spruce stand,“ says Juday. But so many trees have died that the formerly dense canopy has opened up, and the moss that carpeted the shadowy floor has given way to sun-loving grasses.
It's not just the snow and the pests. On the jagged stump of a recently fallen tree Juday points to another fingerprint of warming. The 200-year-old tree's growth rings are thick at the core of the stump, but the outermost rings, representing the tree's last few decades of life, are as thin as puff pastry layers. Juday believes the tree's growth has been slowing because of hotter summers. Thin rings are a sign that the trees are undergoing stress, running short of water in the heat.
Since that finding, Juday's group has examined cores from black spruce, another major tree type in interior Alaska. It too grows more slowly in warmer years because of moisture stress. The future of the northern forest could be bleak. Assuming that Alaska continues to warm at the rate some climate models predict, Juday's analysis points to ”zero white-spruce growth“ by 2090. If that happened, the boreal forest as we know it would be no more. A smaller carbon storehouse could take its place—perhaps a grassy parkland dotted with aspen groves, Juday suggests. Substantial amounts of carbon dioxide could be released into the atmosphere from the corpse of the old forest.
Across the far north a still bigger pulse of greenhouse gas could come from the soil. In a somber grove of black spruce on the broad floodplain of the Tanana River south of Fairbanks, Jamie Hollingsworth, who manages an ecological research site at the University of Alaska, sinks a 4-foot (1.2-meter) steel probe into a damp carpet of moss. It slips in easily at first, then stops abruptly about three feet (one meter) in. Hollingsworth digs through a foot-thick (0.3-meter-thick) layer of moss, roots, and decaying needles, then scoops aside the silty soil below until his shovel grates on the hard permafrost that defeated the probe. Chipping off a clod or two, he reveals silvery veins of ice.
That eternal ice is in jeopardy across much of the far north. Near Fairbanks, at the heart of Alaska, the soil has warmed as much as 3 degrees Fahrenheit (5.4 degrees Celsius) over the past 40 years, putting large tracts of permafrost in danger of thawing. Here and there—even at spots on the university campus—it has already crossed the threshold, and melting has left the ground unstable and boggy. Farther north there's a larger margin of safety.
Fires can speed up the melting. In the summer of a fire raced through a hundred thousand acres (40,000 hectares) of floodplain forest along the Tanana. The charred snags now stand on bare sand and silt, in many places burned clean of the usual thick moss carpet. The moss is critical to the permafrost: It insulates the soil, keeping it at subfreezing temperatures and helping preserve the ice through the summer. Any permafrost in the fire zone is now in danger of thawing—and hotter summers have made fires more common in many parts of the north, including Siberia and western Canada.
Climate experts keep a worried eye on the permafrost because vast reserves of peat and other carbon-rich organic material are frozen into it—a global trove of carbon estimated at 200 billion tons (181.4 metric tons). For hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years low temperatures entombed it. Now, says Terry Chapin of the University of Alaska, ”it's potentially a very large time bomb.“
The permafrost's full megatonnage isn't certain. Some of the subterranean ice would create bogs when it melted, and the oxygen-poor waters of bogs can inhibit decay and keep the carbon locked up. But northern warming could well bring a drier climate, and that could open the way to a worst-case scenario, says NOAA's Tans. ”If, due to warming in the Arctic, the permafrost warmed up and dried out, most of that carbon could be released.“ The atmospheric level of carbon dioxide could jump by a hundred parts per million as a result, he says—more than 25 percent above current levels.
So where in nature can we look for salvation? Until recently climate scientists hoped it would come from farther south. In temperate and tropical vegetation, they thought, a negative feedback effect called carbon fertilization might rein in the carbon dioxide rise. Plants need carbon dioxide to grow, and scientists have found that in laboratory chambers well-nourished plants bathed in high-carbon dioxide air show a surge of growth. So out in the real world, it seemed, plants would grow faster and faster as carbon dioxide built up in the atmosphere, stashing more carbon in their stems, trunks, and roots and helping to slow the atmospheric buildup. Such a growth boost could, for example, turn mature tropical forests—which normally don't soak up any more carbon than they give off—into carbon dioxide sponges.
Alas, it appears not to work. At Duke University's forest in North Carolina, William Schlesinger and his colleagues have been giving hundred-foot-wide (30-meter-wide) plots of pines a sniff of the future. Over each plot a ring of towers emits carbon dioxide at just the right rate to keep the concentration in the trees at 565 parts per million, the level the real atmosphere might reach by midcentury. When the experiment started seven years ago, the trees showed an initial pulse of growth.
”These trees woke up to high carbon dioxide and were able to make good with it for a couple of years,“ says Schlesinger. But then the growth spurt petered out, and the trees' growth has slipped most of the way back to normal. That's not to say that high carbon dioxide didn't have some long-term effects. Poison ivy, for some reason, ”is one of the winners,“ says Schlesinger, with a sustained growth rate 70 percent faster than normal. And allergy sufferers will not be pleased to learn that the carbon dioxide-fertilized pines produced extravagant amounts of pollen.
To take advantage of a carbon dioxide bonanza, it seems, most plants also need extra nitrogen and other nutrients. Schlesinger's experiment is one of many to show lately that in the real world, more carbon just means plants will probably run short of something else essential. Resurgent forests are soaking up plenty of carbon now, but we owe that mainly to our ax-wielding forebears, who cleared the land in centuries past. That land sink is not likely to increase by much, say scientists. And it will eventually saturate as today's young forests mature. ”We can expect this sink to disappear on the order of a hundred years,“ says Princeton's Pacala. ”You can't count on it to keep getting larger, like manna from heaven, the way a carbon-fertilization sink would.“
The outlook for an increased ocean sink is no brighter. Taro Takahashi of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory has spent decades on oceanographic research ships, making thousands of carbon dioxide measurements just above and just below the water surface to track the exchange of gas between the ocean and the atmosphere.
The North Atlantic and the southern oceans have cold, nutrient-rich waters that welcome carbon dioxide, Takahashi has found. Carbon dioxide dissolves easily in cold water, and the nutrients foster marine-plant growth that quickly uses up the dissolved carbon dioxide. When the plants and the animals that feed on them die and sink into the abyss, their remains carry away the carbon and make room for more.
The traffic mostly goes the other way in warmer, less biologically rich seas. But the global balance is favorable, for now at least. More carbon dioxide dissolves in the oceans than is given off. Takahashi's measurements confirm that the oceans take up nearly as much carbon as the regrowing forests and thickening brush on land: an average of 2 billion tons (1.8 billion metric tons) a year. ”One-half of the missing carbon is ending up in the ocean,“ Takahashi says.
That may be as good as it gets,” he adds. “My major question is whether this ratio is going to change” as global warming raises the temperature of surface waters and carbon dioxide continues to build up in the atmosphere. “The prognosis is not particularly bright,” Takahashi says. A warm soda fizzing over the rim of a glass illustrates one effect: carbon dioxide is less soluble in warmer water. What's more, dissolved carbon dioxide can easily slip back into the atmosphere unless it is taken up by a marine plant or combines with a “buffer” molecule of carbonate.
But the ocean's supply of carbonate is limited and is replenished only slowly as it is washed into the ocean by rivers that erode carbonate-containing rocks such as limestone. In absorbing those two billion tons of carbon from the atmosphere year after year, the ocean is gradually using up its buffer supply. Jorge Sarmiento, an oceanographer at Princeton University, has been trying to predict the impact of such changes on the ocean's ability to act as a carbon dioxide sponge. He expects that over the next century, its carbon appetite will drop by 10 percent—and it may ebb much further in the long run.
With no new help from nature in sight, perhaps it is time for us to think about creating our own carbon sinks. Scientists have dreamed up plenty of possibilities: planting new forests, for example, which the Kyoto climate treaty would encourage. The approach has already taken root on a grand scale in China, where the government has planted tens of millions of acres since the 1970s. The bureaucrats set out to control floods and erosion, not stem global change, but the effect has been to soak up nearly half a billion tons (.45 billion metric tons) of carbon.
Steve Wofsy sees another possibility in his forest studies. Young forests like his study plot are hungry for carbon right now because they are growing vigorously. So why not try to keep a forest young indefinitely, by regular thinning? “You manage it so that every year or every ten years you take out a certain amount of wood” to be used in, say, paper, housing, and furniture, Wofsy says. “You might have a situation where you could make the landscape continue to take up carbon for a long time—indefinitely.”
Then there's the siren call of the sea. Although as Sarmiento points out the ocean's natural uptake is dwindling, scientists have tried to find a way to give a boost to its carbon appetite. In the 1980s oceanographer John Martin suggested that across large tracts of ocean, the tiny green plants that are the marine equivalent of forests and grasslands are, in effect, anemic. What keeps them from flourishing—and perhaps sucking up vast quantities of carbon dioxide—is a lack of iron. Martin and others began to talk of a “Geritol solution” to global warming: Send out a fleet of converted oil tankers to sprinkle the oceans with an iron compound, and the surge of plant growth would cleanse the air of industrial emissions. As the plants and the animals that grazed on them died and sank, the carbon in their tissues would be safely locked away in the deep ocean.
Reality has not been quite so elegant. Experiments have shown that Martin was partly right: A dash of iron sulfate does cause the ocean's surface waters to bloom with patches of algae tens of miles long, so vivid they can be seen by satellites. But oceanographers monitoring what happens in the water have been disappointed to find that when the extra plants and the animals they nourish die, their remains mostly decay before they have a chance to sink and be buried. The carbon dioxide from the decay nourishes new generations of plants, reducing the need for extra carbon from the atmosphere. Nature is just too thrifty for iron fertilization to work.
Perhaps carbon can be deep-sixed without nature's help: filtered from power plant emissions, compressed into a liquid, and pumped into ocean depths. Ten thousand feet (3,000 thousand meters) down, water pressure would squeeze liquid carbon dioxide to a density great enough to pool on the seafloor, like vinegar in a bottle of salad dressing, before dissolving. At shallower depths it would simply disperse. Either way environmentalists and many scientists are wary of the scheme because injecting vast quantities of carbon dioxide would slightly acidify the deep ocean and might harm some marine life. Last year protesters forced scientists to cancel experiments meant to test the idea, first near Hawaii and then off Norway.
But Peter Brewer, who is studying the scheme at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, says it's too early to write it off. Rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will acidify the ocean's surface waters in any case, he points out, and pumping some of the carbon into the ocean depths could slow that process. “Why would you want to take this off the table before you know what it does?” he asks.
The most fitting end for the carbon that human beings have tapped from the Earth, in coal, oil, and gas, would be to send it back where it came from—into coal seams, old oil and gas fields, or deep, porous rock formations. Not only would that keep the carbon out of the atmosphere, but the high-pressure injection could also be used to chase the last drops of oil or gas out of a depleted field.
In fact geologic sequestration, as it's called, is already under way. One field in the North Sea, for example, yields gas that is heavily contaminated with natural carbon dioxide. So before shipping the gas, the Norwegian oil company Statoil filters out the carbon dioxide and injects it into a sandstone formation half a mile (0.8 kilometer) below the seafloor. The U.S. Department of Energy plans to start its own test project, which would drill a 10,000-foot (3,000-meter) well in West Virginia and pump carbon dioxide into the deep rock.
No one knows yet how well such schemes might work in the long run. Tapped-out oil and gas fields are, by nature, full of man-made holes that might leak the carbon dioxide. Even if the stored gas didn't leak straight to the surface, it might seep into groundwater supplies. But the North Sea project seems to be working well eight years after it began. Seismic images that offer views beneath the ocean floor show that the thick layer of clay capping the sandstone is effectively sealing in the 6 million tons (5.4 million metric tons) of carbon dioxide injected so far.
That's encouraging news for researchers who are working on schemes that would allow humanity to keep burning fossil fuels without dire consequences for climate. Researchers at Princeton, for example, are exploring a technology that would take the carbon out of coal.
In a multistep process coal would react with oxygen and steam to make pure hydrogen, plus a stream of waste gases. The hydrogen could be burned to produce electricity or distributed to gas stations where hydrogen-powered cars—emitting nothing but water vapor—could fuel up. The waste, mostly carbon dioxide but also contaminants that coal-burning plants now emit, such as sulfur and mercury, would be buried. The scheme, says Princeton energy analyst Robert Williams, “could make coal as clean as renewable energy, and you can exploit the low cost of coal.”
Or maybe the future lies in fields of solar panels, armies of giant wind turbines, or a new generation of safe nuclear reactors. No one knows, but that gauge in Wofsy's shack tells us that we don't have long to dither. The trees are doing their best, but year by year the flickering red number is climbing.
篇5：英语日记及翻译：今天你看书了吗
英语日记及翻译：今天你看书了吗
*月*日 星期* 晴
Have You Read Books Today Li Ming is my classmate, he is always the best student in my class. The teachers speak highly of him all the time. I wondered how he can do so well, so I talked to him. He told me that he kept reading books every hour a day, if he was busy, he would do it before sleeping. I thought about most of us, we could’t wait to play computer games after we finished the homework. I could find something was different between Li Ming and other students, now I understand why, reading the books broadens his vision and enriches his mind, helping him to be a better man. So I make up my mind to keep reading.
李明是我的同学,他总是班上最好的.学生。老师赞扬他。我想知道他如何能做的那么好,所以我和他聊天。他告诉我他一直每天读书一个小时,如果他很忙,他也会在睡觉前看。我想对大多数人来说,我们无法等到完成作业后再去玩电脑游戏。我能找到李明和其他学生之间不一样的东西,现在我明白为什么,阅读书籍开阔了他的视野,丰富了他的思想,帮助他成为一个更好的人。所以我下决心保持阅读。
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