環(huán)球英語 — 605：Extreme Weather
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Hello and welcome to Spotlight. I'm James Totton.
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And I'm Marina Santee. Spotlight uses a special English method of broadcasting. It is easier for people to understand, no matter where in the world they live.
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Extreme weather is happening more often in different parts of the world. There are more storms, floods, and droughts. Droughts are long dry periods with no rain. Many people are wondering if this is connected to climate change. Climate change affects weather conditions around the world.
Two examples of extreme weather are the terrible fires and floods that happened in Australia in the first two months of 2009.
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The state of Victoria is in south-east Australia. Here, in February, 173 people died in bushfires. Hundreds more were injured. A bushfire is a fire that happens in open country, called ‘the bush' in Australia. These were the worst bushfires ever recorded in that state.
Saturday, February 7 was the day when the fires killed most people. People in Victoria now call it Black Saturday. Temperatures were higher than 40 degrees Celsius on that day. In the early evening, the wind changed its direction from the north east to the south west. It had a speed of more than 120 kilometres an hour. The new wind caused huge new fires that moved at great speed towards towns that had escaped earlier fires.
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Altogether, 78 small country towns were damaged. Some were almost completely destroyed. Over 7500 people lost their homes. One fire expert said the energy produced by those fires in a few hours was enough for the state's total energy needs for a year.
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At the same time as Victoria's towns were burning, the state of Queensland was also in big trouble. Queensland is in the north east part of Australia. The worst floods in twenty years were happening here. Normal floods caused by heavy rain were made worse by a cyclone. A cyclone is a kind of storm that brings high winds. This one came from the Pacific Ocean. It brought heavy rain and huge waves on the coast during January.
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Two weeks later another cyclone brought more heavy rain and floods over a big part of north Queensland. Many towns were surrounded by water. Thousands of homes were flooded. Many families were forced to look for shelter in other places.
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A week after that, on February 6 and 7, more heavy rain made the floods even worse. While people in Victoria were dying in the Black Saturday bushfires, 236 millimetres of rain fell on the Queensland town of Ingham. The flood water in that town was twelve point five metres deep.
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Australians are wondering what causes such extreme weather. Australian Government scientists say it may be caused by ‘rapid climate change'. They say that it is happening all over the world.
Records of weather in Australia show that average temperatures in this continent rose by nearly one degree Celsius in the last 50 years. There have also been more ‘heatwaves'. These are times when the temperature stays very high for many days. And there are fewer cold days in the year. Records made in other parts of the world tell the same story. Planet Earth is becoming warmer. Scientists call this ‘global warming'.
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As well as higher temperatures on the land surface, there are other signs of global warming. They include warmer ocean temperatures, less snow and ice, and rising sea levels.
Scientists at the Australian Department of Climate Change say it is difficult to prove the warmer climate has caused an extreme weather event. But they say more extreme weather in Australia is similar to what has been seen in other parts of the world. They believe climate change will bring more extreme weather events, including bushfires in Australia.
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Before the Black Saturday fires in February, Victoria experienced 10 years of the lowest rainfall on record, and warmer temperatures. This caused trees and other plants to be very dry. And then, in January and February, temperatures in south eastern Australia were the highest since records began in 1859. In Victoria on February 7, the temperature reached an all time high - 48.8 degrees Celsius.
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Australian government scientists say some changes in the weather, such as extreme temperatures, "now appear to be partly attributable to human influences ..." That is, they are partly caused by humans. They say ‘unusually high' levels of carbon dioxide gas have been measured in the Earth's atmosphere. The levels are 30 per cent higher than at any time in the past 420,000 years.
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Carbon dioxide is one of the gases in the Earth's atmosphere which acts like a blanket, keeping the planet warm. If the atmospheric temperature keeps rising, many scientists believe the whole world will suffer badly.
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Most scientists agree that human action seems to be the main cause of the sudden increase in carbon dioxide levels. Burning different kinds of fossil fuel and destroying forests are the two main things that have caused this increase. The fossil fuels are mostly coal and fuels made from oil - such as gasoline and natural gas.
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The governments of Australia and most other major countries believe that firm action is needed soon to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide being produced around the world. The United Nations is asking world leaders to meet in Copenhagen early in December to discuss the problem. The UN wants them to make a plan to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide that humans produce.
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Not all scientists agree that human action is causing global warming. Some argue that natural forces made the Earth's temperature rise and fall in past centuries. And they say it may be the same now.
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But most scientists advise us to take better care of our planet. That is not a new idea. The oldest part of the Bible tells that God gave the planet to humans. And yet it still belongs to God. So Christians believe that we humans are responsible for the way we use the natural environment. The Bible says that when God made the world he ‘saw that it was good'. He gave humans the responsibility to take care of it. It is our job to make sure it stays good.
