2010
was the year the Earth struck back.
Earthquakes,
heat waves, floods, volcanoes, super typhoons, blizzards(暴風(fēng)雪), landslides(滑坡)and droughts
killed
at least a quarter million people in 2010---the deadliest year in more than a
generation. More people were killed worldwide by natural disasters this year
than have been killed in terrorism attacks in the past 40 years combined.
“It just seemed like it was
back-to-back (接二連三) and it came waves,” said Craig Fugate, who heads the US Federal Emergency
Management Agency. It handled a record number of disasters in 2010.
“The term ' 100-year event '
really lost its meaning this year.”
And
we have ourselves to blame most of the time, scientists and disaster experts
say.
Even
though many disasters seem accidental, the hand of man made this a particularly
deadly, costly, extreme and strange year for everything from wild weather to
earthquakes.
Poor
construction and development practices make earthquake more deadly than they
need be. More people live in poverty in vulnerable building (危房) in crowded cities. That means that when the ground shakes the
river breaches(攻破), or the tropical cyclone (旋風(fēng)) hits, more people die.
The
January earthquake that killed well more than 220000 people in Haita is a
perfect example. Port-au-Prince has nearly three times as many people, many of
them living in poverty, and more poorly built shanties (棚戶區(qū)) than it did 25 years ago. So had the same quake hit in 1985
instead of 2010, total deaths would have probably been in the 80 000 range,
said Richard Olson, director of disaster risk reduction at Florida
International University.
Climate
scientists say Earth's climate also is changing thanks to man-made global
warning, bringing extreme weather, such as heat waves and flooding.
The
excessive (過(guò)多的) amount of extreme weather of
2010 is a clear sign of man-made global warning that climate scientists have
long warned about. They calculate that the killer Russian heat wave ---setting
a national record of 111 degrees --- would happen once every 100000 years
without global warning.
Preliminary
(之前的) data show that 18 counties broke their
records for the hottest day ever.
White
House science adviser John Holdren said we should get used to climate disasters
or do something about global warning. "The science is clear that we can
expect more and more of these kinds of damaging events unless and until
society's emissions of heat-trapping (吸熱的)gases
and particles are sharply reduce."
1. What does the second paragraph
mainly tell us?
A．How the Earth struck back
in 2010. B. Why the
Earth struck back.
C．How terrorism attacks
struck. D.
What natural disaster mean to us.
2.What does the underlined word
"it" refer to in the third paragraph?
A． Earthquake. B.
The Earth. C. 2010 D.
Natural disaster.
3.What do the fifth, sixth and
seventh paragraphs mainly tell us?
A.
The reason why there were so mainly disasters in 2010.
B.
The way that natural disasters happened.
C.
The way that man built buildings.
D.
The way that people lived.
4.What is the way to cut back on
the number of natural disasters?
A.
To build stronger houses.
B．To develop less.
C.
To reduce the emissions of heat-trapping gases and particles greatly.
D.
To forecast the happening of natural disasters correctly.
5.Why did the writer give the
example of the earthquake that happened in Haiti?
A.
To show more people's living in vulnerable building can cause more people to
die in an earthquake.
B.
To show Haiti is a poor country.
C．To show Port-au-Prince is
too crowded.
D．To show man's forecast
ability of an earthquake reduced.
, he used his shirt to bandage his leg, and tied his belt around the wound. To stop the bleeding on his head, he firmly pressed a sock to it. Concerned he might have been experiencing shock, Woolley used the app to look up what to do. It warned him not to sleep. So he set his phone alarm to go off every 20 minutes.
und.