L3ships in the desert 课前思考

Ships in the Desert 课外补充练习题EXERCISES Lesson 3Ships in the DesertⅠ. Choose the best words to complete the sentences.1. This thought _______ their objections.A. underliedB. processedC. scatteredD. slipped2. She wore a dress that _______ her stomach.A. pointedB. revealedC. burnedD. chart3. The boiling water _______ the glass.A. crashedB. stretchedC. changedD. cracked4. The patient showed signs of ________.A. distressB. layersC. atmosphereD. slab5. The trade union _______a new contract with the owner.A. monitoredB. absorbedC. negotiatedD. comprehend6. The bank required collateral to _______ the loan agreement.A. adjustB. ecureC. reservedD. shimmered7. The film will soon be _______.A. threatenedB. understoodC. releasedD. shimmered8. The noise outside _______ my attention.A. distractsB. transformsC. resistsD. changes9. The amount of rain _______ the growth of crops.A. influencedB. effectedC. affectedD. impacted10. He _______ several important changes.A. emergedB. submergedC. restrainedD. effected11. Scientists _______ that there is no animal life on the Mars.A. presentB. assumeC. assessD. require12. This is a fact even our enemies have to _______.A. holdB. leapfrogC. complicateD. acknowledge13. He tried to _______ his anger.A. disarmB. restrainC. poseD. include14. I have got _______ in the quarrel between Tom and Jack.A. involvedB. inspiredC. concludedD. accomplished15. An airliner _______ west of the city last night.A. aroseB. landedC. crashedD. dropped16. I saw a clearly __ shape outside the window in a flash of light.A. developedB. acceleratedC. viewedD. defined17. The milk __ over the table.A. distributedB. reshapedC. lastedD. spilled18. Can't you guess the meaning of the word from the _______?A. environmentB. atmosphereC. contextD. relationship19. The children were thin and badly in need of ________.A. precedentsB. sustenanceC. speciesD. regulation20. This microscope has a ________ of eight.A. magnificationB. accelerationC. transformationD. collisionⅢ. Fill in the blank with the following phrases and make changes if necessary.oa good catch,at best, at rest, at stake, in time to, blot out, comparable to, in nature, in progress, in the process, in turn, present … with, reserve for, taken together, to the point1. Nothing is her beauty.2. The mist came down and the view3. He is for some young woman.4. Our work is now .5. I told Frank and he told Sheila.6. They are trying to extend the range of goods they sell and, to appeal to a new type of customer.7. The company is on the verge of bankruptcy, and hundreds of jobs are .8. These seats are old and sick people.9. Our class ____the school ____a clock.10. We can’t get home before nine o’clock.11. The machine is12. The audience clapped the music.13. The temperature rose that the firemen had to leave from building.14. , these measures should create a lot of new jobs.15. The two things are the same in outward form but different .Ⅳ. Text comprehension:1. By saying “It wasn’t a good day,” the author meant ______.A. there wasn’t any fishB. the weather was not goodC. they were not feeling goodD. it’s impo ssible to have a good catch of fish2. In order to search for the underlying causes of the environmental crisis, the author has been to ________.A. the equatorB. the North poleC. the South poleD. all the above3. According to the author, _______ is the worst among the following problems.A. acid rainB. large oil spillsC. global warmingD. the contamination of underground aquifers4. The eventual solution to the arms race exists in _______.A. disarmament of one sideB. a new deployment of forces on either sideC. some ultimate weapon owned by one side or anotherD. new understanding and a mutual transformation of relationship itself5. From this text we learned the best way to settle the environmental crisis is to ______.A. return to natureB. stop deforestationC. educate people about environmentD. reduce our power to affect the worldⅤ. Write T for a true statement and F for a false statement, according to the text.1. The core sample dug from the glacier showed that a small reduction in one country’s emissions had changed the amount of pollution found in the Antarctic.2. The industrial revolution early in the 19th century accelerated the global warming.3. There are more different species of birds in each square mile of the Amazon than in all Americas.4. In high northern latitude, you can sometimes see a strange kind of cloud high in the sky, if the sky is clear after sunset.5. All the water pollution, air pollution, and illegal waste dumping are essentially local in nature.6. Human civilization is now the main cause of change in the global environment.7. The 20th century has witnessed two key factors that define the physical reality of our relationship to the earth are: a sudden and starling surge in human population and a sudden acceleration of the scientific and technological revolution.8. The startling images of environmental destruction now occurring all over the world have so much in common that they do not shock and awake us any more.9. The problem of the unclear arms race is primarily caused by technology.10. The key changes in the transformation of the way we relate to the earth involve more new technologies than new ways of thinking about the relationship itself.Ⅵ. Point out the right rhetorical device for the following used in the text.1. … but as I looked out over the bow, the prospects of a good catch looked bleak.2. Acre by acre, the rain forest is being burned to create fast pasture for fast-foodbeef:3. What should we feel toward these ghosts in the sky?4. But, without even considering that threat, shouldn’t it startle us that we have now put these clouds in the evening sky which glisten with a spectral light?5. And in our own time we have reshaped a large part of the earth’s face with concrete in ourcities …练习答案见下页第一册第3课练习答案1-1: /答案:A1-2: /答案:B1-3: /答案:D1-4: /答案:A1-5: /答案:C1-6: /答案:B1-7: /答案:C1-8: /答案:A1-9: /答案:C1-10: /答案:D1-11: /答案:B1-12: /答案:D1-13: /答案:B1-14: /答案:A1-15: /答案:C1-16: /答案:D1-17: /答案:D1-18: /答案:C1-19: /答案:B1-20: /答案:A2-1: /答案:lap2-2: /答案:scheme2-3: /答案:permanent2-4: /答案:dock2-5: /答案:emission2-6: /2-7: /答案:companion2-8: /答案:collide2-9: /答案:controversial 2-10: /答案:pasture2-11: /答案:species2-12: /答案:image2-13: /答案:distress2-14: /答案:swarm2-15: /答案:frequency2-16: /答案:contaminate 2-17: /答案:symptom2-18: /答案:illustrate2-19: /答案:subemerge2-20: /答案:discard3-1: /答案:comparable to 3-2: /答案:blotted out3-3: /答案:a good catch 3-4: /答案:in progress.3-5: /答案:in turn3-6: /答案:in the process 3-7: /答案:at stake3-8: /3-9: /答案:presented with 3-10: /答案: at best.3-11: /答案:at rest3-12: /答案:in time to3-13: /答案:to the point3-14: /答案:Taken together3-15: /答案:in nature4-1: /答案:D4-2: /答案:D4-3: /答案:C4-4: /答案:D4-5: /答案:C5-1: /答案:T5-2: /答案:F5-3: /答案:F5-4: /答案:T5-5: /答案:F5-6: /答案:T5-7: /答案:T5-8: /答案:T5-9: /答案:F5-10: /答案:F6-1: /答案:understatement6-2: /答案:alliteration6-3: /答案:metaphor6-4: /答案:rhetorical question 6-5: /答案:metonymy。

Lesson 3 Ships in the Desert课后练习答案及补充练习习题全解I.（1)The writer went to the Aral Sea to search for the underlying causes of theenvironmental crisis. What he saw there was hot dry sand.（2)It was the annual layers of ice in a core sample dug from the glacier.（3)Scientists were monitoring the air several times a day to chart the course ofthe climate change.（4)Because the polar cap plays a crucial role in the world's weather system, thethinning of the polar cap might cause flood in many places of the world.（5)There are more different species of birds in each square mile of the Amazon thanexist in all of North America. The destruction of the Amazon rain forest will meansilencing thousands of songs we have never even heard.（6)The writer calls noctilucent clouds"ghosts in the sky".As a result of pollution,the clouds occasionally appear when the earth is first cloaked in the evening darkness.And they appear more often because of a huge buildup of methane gas inthe atmosphere.（7)Because we are not yet awakened to take effective measures to deal with theclimate change.（8)Carbon dioxide's ability to trap heat in the atmosphere causes global warming.Because global warming seriously threatens the global climate equilibrium thatdetermines the pat- tern of winds，rainfall，surface temperatures，ocean cur- rents,and sea level. These in turn determine the distribution of vegetative and animal lifeon land and sea and have a great effect on the location and pattern of human societies.（9)The two key factors are human population and the scientific and technologicaldevelopment.The dramatic changes that have occurred in these two factors are a suddenand startling surge in human population and a sudden acceleration of the scientificand technological revolution.（10)The writer's solution to our ecological problems is to reinvent and finallyheal the relationship between human beings and the earth by carrying out a carefulreassessment of all the factors that led to the relatively recent dramatic changein the relationship.II.（1)It was not at all possible to catch a large amount offish.(2)Following the layers of ice in the core sample，his finger came to the placewhere the layer of ice was formed 2050 years ago.(3)keeps its engines running for fear that if he stops them，the metal parts wouldbe frozen solid and the engines would not be able to start again.(4)Bit by bit trees in the rain forest are felled and the land is cleared and turnedinto pasture where cattle can be raised quickly and slaughtered and the beef can beused in ham- burgers.(5)Since miles of forest are being destroyed and the habitat for these rare birdsno longer exists，thousands of birds which we have not even had a chance to see willbecome extinct.(6)Thinking about how a series of events might happen asa consequence of thethinning of the polar cap is not just.(7) We are using and destroying resources insuch a huge amount that we are disturbing the balance between daylight and darkness.(8)Or have we been so accustomed to the bright electric lights that we fail tounderstand the threatening implicationof these clouds.(9)To put forword the question in a different way(10)and greatly affect the living places and activities of human societies.(ll)We seem unaware that the earth's natural systems are delicate.(12)And this continuing revolution has also suddenly developed at a speed thatdoubled and tripled the original speed.Ⅲ. See the translation of the text.IV.(1)transportation, imitation， destruction .(2)encirclement，enrichment,enlightenment(3)postage，coinage，advantage.(4)sharpness，boldness，smoothness(5)admission，concession，depression(6)productivity，sensitivity，desirability(7)posture，departure,indenture(8)independence，prudence,impudence(9)flagrancy，consistency，potency(10)analysis，metabasis，metamorphosis(ll)dictatorship，ownership，partnership(12)depth，length,birthV.(1)technology技术(2) ecology 生态学(3) hydrology水文学(4)phrenology颅像学(5) neurology 神经病学(6)pathology 病理学(7) physiology生理学(8)pharmacology药理学(9) gynaecology妇科学(10)oceanology海洋学(11)lexicology词汇学(12) archaeology考古学(13)anthropology人类学(14)criminology犯罪学(1) anarchist无政府主义者(2)naturalist自然主义者(3)biologist 生物学家(4)psychologist心理学家(5)satirist 讽刺作家(6) encyclopaedist百科全书编纂者(7) geologist地质学家(8) sociologist社会学家(9)zoologist动物学家(l0)impressionist印象派艺术家(l1)environmentalist环境保护论者( (12)terrorist恐怖主义分子VII.(1)submarine潜水艇(2)submerge淹没，潜入水中(3)subantartic亚南极的(4)subsolar在太阳正下面的，赤道的(5)subhead小标题(6)subaquatic半水栖的(7) subdivide把……再分(8)suboxide低氧化物(9)subclass亚纲(l0) subclimax亚顶极群落(l1) subcommittee小组委员会(12)subconscious下意识的(13)subcontinent 次大陆(14) subcontract转包合同(15)subculture亚文化群(16)subspecies亚种(17)subsoil 底土(18)sublethal （毒药的量等）尚不致命的Vl.inland sea，desert，core sample，glacier，atmosphere，carbon dioxide,polar icecap，global warming，Amazon rain forest，species of birds,ecological balance,noctilucent cloud,methane gas，natural gas，landfills, coal mines,ricepaddies,termites,biomass，upperatmosphere,elephants,greenhouse gases，water vapor,growing mountains of waste, acid rain,chlorine，human activities，heatIX.(1)basic examples(2)unalterable(3)meeting(4)characterized strikeagainst each other(5)set up(6)see,attack(7)at the same time(8)balance(9)increasing,existence(10)taskll)out-of-date(1)consequences(2)results(3)results(4)outcome(5)results,(6)outcome(7)causes(8)causes(9)reason(10)reason(ll)relations(12)relationship(13)relations(14)relationship(15)complex(16)complex(17)complicated(18)complex(19)simple(20)simplistic（1)with（2)of（3)on（4)of（5)in（6)in（7)against（8)than（9)of（10)as（ll)as（12)with（13)of（14)of（15)for（16)ofXII.relationship， environment，garbage，what，endless,allow,that，dumping,dispose,drown，having，old，,mind，running，waste，it， sight 11 recent，debates，disposal,ocean，elsewhere，confront，capacity，of，quantities，only，change，reduce，we，used,interdependent，chosen，unless，dramatically，thinking,humankind, inherit.XIII. Omitted.XIV.We Must Protect Our Ecological System.With the development of human civilization，man has created countless wonders,but at what a price! Our ecological sys-tem，on which all animals’existence depends,has been seriously damaged and is still being threatened. The earth's temperatureis getting higher，more and more forests are being felled,large numbers of animalsare facing extinction,and deserts are expanding at an incredible rate.The causes for the worsening ecological system are manifold. Perhaps two of themajor problems lie in people's pursuit of short-term interests with little attentionto long-term interest sand their pursuit of individual interests rather thancollective interests. In the first case，many lakes are filled to grow crops or evenbuild houses; trees are cut down，only bare mountains stand cold in the wind and arecapable of holding no water when it rains. In the second case，scenic spots becomedirty and deserted because of newly established nearby factories producing wastewater and air; industrial countriesinvest heavily in chemical factories in the ThirdWorld nations，keeping their own land relatively clean.To solve the problems mentioned above,we should try our best to balance short-terminterests with long-term ones by making long-term plans and taking as many thingsas possible into consideration. We're living today and are still to live tomorrowwe and our posterity both have to live on the earth. Besides，Global action shouldbe taken to protect our ecological system. People，eastern or western,rich or poor,should join their hands to prevent our。

ships in the desert教学设计教学设计：船在沙漠中教学目标：1.了解沙漠的地理特征和生物适应性。

2.了解运输和交通工具的发展历史。

3.掌握描述事物外貌和功能的词汇。

4.发展学生的合作和创新能力。

教学准备：1. PPT幻灯片。

2.教学资源：关于沙漠和船只的图片、视频和文章。

3.沙箱。

4.工作纸和素描工具。

教学过程：一、导入（10分钟）1.准备一张图片展示给学生，让他们猜测图片背后的故事。

然后引导学生思考：为什么一艘船会出现在沙漠中？2.导入话题并与学生讨论：沙漠中船只的可能性。

二、发现与探索（20分钟）1.分组讨论：将学生分成小组，每个小组总结和共享他们对沙漠的了解。

2.讲解：介绍沙漠的地理特征、气候和生物适应能力等。

使用图片、视频和文章提供示例，以便学生更好地理解。

3.小组合作活动：要求学生合作完成一份关于沙漠生物适应性的调查报告。

他们需要选择并研究至少三种沙漠生物，并了解它们的适应性特点。

三、信息交流和展示（20分钟）1.小组展示：让每个小组展示他们的调查报告，并让其他学生提问和评论。

2.教师补充：根据学生的讨论和展示，进一步讲解沙漠的生物适应性。

四、发展词汇（15分钟）1.提供素描工具和工作纸，要求学生根据他们对沙漠船只的想象画出沙漠船只的图片。

2.学生小组互相展示并讨论自己的沙漠船只设计。

教师引导学生用适当的词汇描述他们的设计。

五、创新设计（25分钟）1.小组讨论：要求学生在小组内合作，并设计一种能在沙漠中移动的交通工具，以解决沙漠地区的运输问题。

他们应考虑沙漠的地理特征和生物适应能力。

2.创新展示：每个小组展示他们设计的交通工具，并让其他学生提问和分享自己的观点。

六、总结与评价（10分钟）1.总结回顾：教师对学生的学习进行总结回顾，并强调沙漠船只的可能性和创新设计的重要性。

2.评价学生：根据小组展示和回答问题的表现，评价学生的合作和创新能力。

拓展活动：1.鼓励学生独立阅读和研究与沙漠相关的课外书籍或文章。

高级英语第一册l e s s o n3s h i p s i n t h e d e s e r t课文高级英语第一册lesson3 ships in the desert 课文Ships in the DesertAL GoreI was standing in the sun on the hot steel deck of a fishing ship capable of processing a fifty-ton catch on a good day. But it wasn' t a good day. We were anchored in what used to be the most productive fishing site in all of central Asia, but as I looked out over the bow , theprospects of a good catch looked bleak. Where there should have been gentle blue-green waves lapping against the side of the ship, there was nothing but hot dry sand – as far as I could see in all directions. The other ships of the fleet were also at rest in the sand, scattered in the dunes that stretched all the way to the horizon . Ten year s ago the Aral was the fourth-largest inland sea in the world, comparable to the largest of North America's Great Lakes. Now it is disappearing because the water that used to feed it has been diverted in an ill-considered irrigation scheme to grow cotton In the user t. The new shoreline was almost forty kilometers across the sand from where the fishing fleet was now permanently docked. Meanwhile, in the nearby town of Muynak the people were still canning fish – brought not from the Aral Sea but shipped by rail through Siberia from the Pacific Ocean, more than a thousand miles away.My search for the underlying causes of the environmental crisis has led me to travel around the world to examine and study many of these images of destruction. At the very bottom of the earth, high in the Trans-Antarctic Mountains, with the sun glaring at midnight through a hole in the sky, I stood in the unbelievable coldness and talked with a scientist in the late tall of 1988 about the tunnel he was digging through time. Slipping his parka back to reveal a badly burned face that was cracked and peeling, he pointed to the annual layers of ice in a core sample dug from the glacier on which we were standing. He moved his finger back in time to the ice of two decades ago. "Here's where the U. S Congress passed the Clean Air Act, ” he said. At the bottom of the world, two continents away from Washington, D. C., even a small reduction in one country's emissions had changed the amount of pollution found in the remotest end least accessible place on earth.But the most significant change thus far in the earth' s atmosphere is the one that began with the industrial revolution early inthe last century and has picked up speed ever since. Industry meant coal, and later oil, and we began to burn lots of it – bringing rising levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) , with its ability to trap more heat in the atmosphere and slowly warm the earth. Fewer than a hundred yards from the South Pole, upwind from the ice runway where the ski plane lands and keeps its engines running to prevent the metal parts from freeze-locking together, scientists monitor the air several times every day to chart the course of that inexorable change. During my visit, I watched one scientist draw the results of that day's measurements, pushing the end of a steep line still higher on the graph. He told me how easy it is – there at the end of the earth – to see that this enormous change in the global atmosphere is still picking up speed.Two and a half years later I slept under the midnight sun at the other end of our planet, in a small tent pitched on a twelve-toot-thick slab of ice floating in the frigid Arctic Ocean. After a hearty breakfast, my companions and I traveled by snowmobiles a few miles farther north to a rendezvous point where the ice was thinner – only three and a half feet thick – and a nuclear submarine hovered in the water below. After it crashed through the ice, took on its new passengers, and resubmerged, I talked with scientists who were trying to measure more accurately the thickness of the polar ice cap, which many believe is thinning as a re-suit of global warming. I had just negotiated an agreement between ice scientists and the U. S. Navy to secure the release of previously top secret data from submarine sonar tracks, data that could help them learn what is happening to the north polar cap. Now, I wanted to see the pole it-self, and some eight hours after we met the submarine, we were crashing through that ice, surfacing, and then I was standing in an eerily beautiful snowcape, windswept and sparkling white, with the horizon defined by little hummocks, or "pressure ridges " of ice that are pushed up like tiny mountain ranges when separate sheets collide. But here too, CD, levels are rising just as rapidly, and ultimately temperature will rise with them – indeed, global warming is expected to push temperatures up much more rapidly in the polar regions than in the rest of the world. As the polar air warms, the ice her e will thin; and since the polar cap plays such a crucial role in the world's weather system, the consequences of a thinning cap could be disastrous.Considering such scenarios is not a purely speculative exercise. Six months after I returned from the North Pole, a team of scientists reported dramatic changes in the pattern of ice distribution in the Arctic, and a second team reported a still controversialclaim (which avariety of data now suggest) that, over all, the north polar cap has thinned by 2 per cent in just the last decade. Moreover, scientists established several years ago that in many land areas north of the Arctic Circle, the spring snowmelt now comes earlier every year, and deep in the tundra below, the temperature e of the earth is steadily rising.As it happens, some of the most disturbing images of environmental destruction can be found exactly halfway between the North and South poles – precisely at the equator in Brazil – where billowing clouds of smoke regularly blacken the sky above the immense but now threatened Amazon rain forest. Acre by acre, the rain forest is being burned to create fast pasture for fast-food beef; as I learned when I went there in early 1989, the fires are set earlier and earlier in the dry season now, with more than one Tennessee's worth of rain forest being slashed and burned each year. According to our guide, the biologist Tom Lovejoy, there are more different species of birds in each square mile of the Amazon than exist in all of North America – which means we are silencing thousands of songs we have never even heard.But one doesn't have to travel around the world to witness humankind's assault on the earth. Images that signal the distress of our global environment are now commonly seen almost anywhere. On some nights, in high northern latitudes, the sky itself offers another ghostly image that signals the loss of ecological balance now in progress. If the sky is clear after sunset -- and if you are watching from a place where pollution hasn't blotted out the night sky altogether -- you can sometimes see a strange kind of cloud high in the sky. This "noctilucent cloud" occasionally appears when the earth is first cloaked in the evening darkness; shimmering above us with a translucent whiteness, these clouds seem quite unnatural. And they should: noctilucent clouds have begun to appear more often because of a huge buildup of methane gas in the atmosphere. (Also called natural gas, methane is released from landfills , from coal mines and rice paddies, from billions of termites that swarm through the freshly cut forestland, from the burning of biomass and from a variety of other human activities. ) Even though noctilucent clouds were sometimes seen in the past., all this extra methane carries more water vapor into the upper atmosphere, where it condenses at much higher altitudes to form more clouds that the sun's rays still strike long after sunset has brought the beginning of night to the surface far beneath them.What should we feel toward these ghosts in the sky? Simple wonder or the mix of emotions we feel at the zoo? Perhaps we should feelawe for our own power: just as men "t ear tusks from elephants’ heads in such quantity as to threaten the beast with extinction, we are ripping matter from its place in the earth in such volume as to upset the balance between daylight and darkness. In the process, we are once again adding to the threat of global warming, because methane has been one of the fastest-growing green-house gases, and is third only to carbon dioxide and water vapor in total volume, changing the chemistry of the upper atmosphere. But, without even considering that threat, shouldn't it startle us that we have now put these clouds in the evening sky which glisten with a spectral light? Or have our eyes adjusted so completely to the bright lights of civilization that we can't see these clouds for what they are – a physical manifestation of the violent collision between human civilization and the earth?Even though it is sometimes hard to see their meaning, we have by now all witnessed surprising experiences that signal the damage from our assault on the environment --whether it's the new frequency of days when the temperature exceeds 100 degrees, the new speed with which the -un burns our skin, or the new constancy of public debate over what to do with growing mountains of waste. But our response to these signals is puzzling. Why haven't we launched a massive effort to save our environment? To come at the question another way' Why do some images startle us into immediate action and focus our attention or ways to respond effectively? And why do other images, though sometimes equally dramatic, produce instead a Kind of paralysis, focusing our attention not on ways to respond but rather on some convenient, less painful distraction?Still, there are so many distressing images of environmental destruction that sometimes it seems impossible to know how to absorb or comprehend them. Before considering the threats themselves, it may be helpful to classify them and thus begin to organize our thoughts and feelings so that we may be able to respond appropriately.A useful system comes from the military, which frequently places a conflict in one of three different categories, according to the theater in which it takes place. There are "local" skirmishes, "regional" battles, and "strategic" conflicts. This third category is reserved for struggles that can threaten a nation's survival and must be understood in a global context.Environmental threats can be considered in the same way. For example, most instances of water pollution, air pollution, and illegal waste dumping are essentially local in nature. Problems like acid rain, thecontamination of underground aquifers, and large oil spills are fundamentally regional. In both of these categories, there may be so many similar instances of particular local and regional problems occurring simultaneously all over the world that the pattern appears to be global, but the problems themselves are still not truly strategic because the operation of the global environment is not affected and the survival of civilization is not at stake.However, a new class of environmental problems does affect the global ecological system, and these threats are fundamentally strategic. The 600 percent increase in the amount of chlorine in the atmosphere during the last forty years has taken place not just in those countries producing the chlorofluorocarbons responsible but in the air above every country, above Antarctica, above the North Pole and the Pacific Ocean –all the way from the surface of the earth to the top of the sky. The increased levels of chlorine disrupt the global process by which the earth regulates the amount of ultraviolet radiation from the sun that is allowed through the atmosphere to the surface; and it we let chlorine levels continue to increase, the radiation levels will all so increase – to the point that all animal and plant life will face a new threat to their survival.Global warming is also a strategic threat. The concentration of carbon dioxide and other heat-absorbing molecules has increased by almost 25 per cent since World War II, posing a worldwide threat to the earth's ability to regulate the amount of heat from the sun retained in the atmosphere. This increase in heat seriously threatens the global climate equilibrium that determines the pattern of winds, rainfall, surface temperatures, ocean currents, and sea level. These in turn determine the distribution of vegetative and animal life on land and sea and have a great effect on the location and pattern of human societies.In other words, the entire relationship between humankind and the earth has been transformed because our civilization is suddenly capable of affecting the entire global environment, not just a particular area. All of us know that human civilization has usually had a large impact on the environment; to mention just one example, there is evidence that even in prehistoric times, vast areas were sometimes intentionally burned by people in their search for food. And in our own time we have reshaped a large part of the earth's surface with concrete in our cities and carefully tended rice paddies, pastures, wheatfields, and other croplands in the countryside. But these changes, while sometimes appearing to be pervasive , have, until recently, been relatively trivial factors in the global ecological system. Indeed, until our lifetime, it was always safe to assumethat nothing we did or could do would have any lasting effect on the global environment. But it is precisely that assumption which must now be discarded so that we can think strategically about our new relationship to the environment.Human civilization is now the dominant cause of change in the global environment. Yet we resist this truth and find it hard to imagine that our effect on the earth must now be measured by the same yardstick used to calculate the strength of the moon's pull on the oceans or the force of the wind against the mountains. And it we are now capable of changing something so basic as the relationship between the earth and the sun, surely we must acknowledge a new responsibility to use that power wisely and with appropriate restraint. So far, however, We seem oblivious of the fragility of the earth's natural systems.This century has witnessed dramatic changes in two key factors that define the physical reality of our relationship to the earth: a sudden and startling surge in human population, with the addition of one China's worth of people every ten years, and a sudden acceleration of the scientific and technological revolution, which has allowed an almost unimaginable magnification of our power to affect the world around us by burning, cutting, digging, moving, and transforming the physical matter that makes up the earth. The surge in population is both a cause of the changed relationship and one of the clearest illustrations of how startling the change has been, especially when viewed in a historical context. From the emergence of modern humans 200 000 years ago until Julius Caesar's time, fewer than 250 million people walked on the face of the earth. When Christopher Columbus set sail for the New World 1500 years later, there were approximately 500 million people on earth. By the time Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence in 1776, the number had doubled again, to 1 billion. By midway through this century, at the end of World War II, the number had risen to just above 2 billion people. In other words, from the beginning of humanity's appearance on earth to 1945, it took more than ten thousand generations to reach a world population of 2 billion people. Now, in the course of one human lifetime -- mine -- the world population will increase from 2 to more than 9 million, and it is already more than halfway there.Like the population explosion, the scientific and technological revolution began to pick up speed slowly during the eighteenth century. And this ongoing revolution has also suddenly accelerated exponentially. For example, it is now an axiom in many fields of science that more new and important discoveries have taken place in the last ten years that. inthe entire previous history of science. While no single discover y has had the kind of effect on our relationship to the earth that unclear weapons have had on our relationship to warfare, it is nevertheless true that taken together, they have completely transformed our cumulative ability to exploit the earth for sustenance -- making the consequences, of unrestrained exploitation every bit as unthinkable as the consequences of unrestrained nuclear war.Now that our relationship to the earth has changed so utterly, we have to see that change and understand its implications. Our challenge is to recognize that the startling images of environmental destruction now occurring all over the world have much more in common than their ability to shock and awaken us. They are symptoms of an underlying problem broader in scope and more serious than any we have ever faced. Global warming, ozone depletion, the loss of living species, deforestation -- they all have a common cause: the new relationship between human civilization and the earth's natural balance. There are actually two aspects to this challenge. The first is to realize that our power to harm the earth can indeed have global and even permanent effects. The second is to realize that the only way to understand our new role as a co-architect of nature is to see ourselves as part of a complex system that does not operate according to the same simple rules of cause and effect we are used to. The problem is not our effect on the environment so much as our relationship with the environment. As a result, any solution to the problem will require a careful assessment of that relationship as well as the complex interrelationship among factors within civilization and between them and the major natural components of the earth's ecological system.There is only one precedent for this kind of challenge to our thinking, and again it is military. The invention of nuclear weapons and the subsequent development by the United States and the Soviet Union of many thousands of strategic nuclear weapons forced a slow and painful recognition that the new power thus acquired forever changed not only the relationship between the two superpowers but also the relationship of humankind to the institution at warfare itself. The consequences of all-out war between nations armed with nuclear weapons suddenly included the possibility of the destruction of both nations – completely and simultaneously. That sobering realization led to a careful reassessment of every aspect of our mutual relationship to the prospect of such a war. As early as 1946 one strategist concluded that strategic bombing with missiles "may well tear away the veil of illusion that has so long obscured the reality of the change in warfare – from a fight to a process ofdestruction.”Nevertheless, during the earlier stages of the nuclear arms race, each of the superpower s assumed that its actions would have a simple and direct effect on the thinking of the other. For decades, each new advance in weaponry was deployed by one side for the purpose of inspiring fear in the other. But each such deployment led to an effort by the other to leapfrog the first one with a more advanced deployment of its own. Slowly, it has become apparent that the problem of the nuclear arms race is not primarily caused by technology. It is complicated by technology, true; but it arises out of the relationship between the superpowers and is based on an obsolete understanding of what war is all about.The eventual solution to the arms race will be found, not in a new deployment by one side or the other of some ultimate weapon or in a decision by either side to disarm unilaterally , but ratter in new understandings and in a mutual transformation of the relationship itself. This transformation will involve changes in the technology of weaponry and the denial of nuclear technology to rogue states. But the key changes will be in the way we think about the institution of war far e and about the relationship between states.The strategic nature of the threat now posed by human civilization to the global environment and the strategic nature of the threat to human civilization now posed by changes in the global environment present us with a similar set of challenges and false hopes. Some argue that a new ultimate technology, whether nuclear power or genetic engineering, will solve the problem. Others hold that only a drastic reduction of our reliance on technology can improve the conditions of life -- a simplistic notion at best. But the real solution will be found in reinventing and finally healing the relationship between civilization and the earth. This can only be accomplished by undertaking a careful reassessment of all the factors that led to the relatively recent dramatic change in the relationship. The transformation of the way we relate to the earth will of course involve new technologies, but the key changes will involve new ways of thinking about the relationship itself.NOTESI) Al Gore: born in 1948 in Washington D. C., U. S. Senator (1984-1992) from the State of Tennessee,and U. S. Vice-President ( l 992-) under President Bill Clinton. He is the author of the book Earth in the Balance from which this piece is taken.2) Aral Sea: inland sea and the world’s fourth largest lake, c. 26 000sqmiles, SW Kazakhstan and NW Uzbekhstan, E of the Caspian Sea3) Great Lakes: group of five freshwater lakes, Central North America, between the United States and Canada, largest body of fresh water in the world. From west to east, they are Lake Superior,Lake Michigan,Lake Huron, Lake Erie, and Lake Ontario.4) Trans-Antarctic Mountains: mountain chain stretching across Antarctica from Victoria I and to Coats I and; separating the E Antarctic and W Antarctic subcontinents5) Clean Air Act: one of the oldest environmental laws of the U. S., as well as the most far-reaching, the costliest, and the most controversial. It was passed in 1970.6) Washington D. C.: capital of the United States. D. C. (District of Columbia).is added to distinguish it from the State of Washington and 3 other cities in the U. S bearing the sonic name.7) freeze-locking: the metal parts are frozen solid and unable to move freely8)midnight sun: phenomenon in which the sun remains visible in the sky for 24 hours or longer, occurring only in the polar regions9)global warming; The earth is getting warmer. The temperature of the earth's atmosphere and its surface is steadily rising.10) Submarine sonar tracks: the term sonar is an acronym for sound navigation ranging. It is used for communication between submerged submarines or between a submarine and a surface vessel, for locating mines and underwater hazards to navigation, and also as a fathometer, or depth finder.11) greenhouse (effect): process whereby heat is trapped at the surface of the earth by the atmosphere. An increase of man-made pollutants in the atmosphere will lead to a long-term warming of the earth's climate.12) Julius Caesar: (102? B. C -- 44 B. C:. ), Roman statesman and general13) Christopher Columbus: ( 1451-1506), discoverer of America, born Genoa, Italy14) Thomas Jefferson: (17-13-1826 ), 3d President of the United States(1801-1809), author of the Declaration of Independence.15) Declaration of Independence: full and formal declaration adopted July 4,1776, by representatives of the thirteen colonies in North精品资料仅供学习与交流，如有侵权请联系网站删除 谢谢11 America announcing the separation of those colonies from Great Britain and making them into the United States16)Ozone depletion: A layer of ozone in the stratosphere prevents most ultraviolet and other high-energy radiation, which is harmful to life, from penetrating to the earth's surface.Some.environmental, scientists fear that certain man-made pollutants, e.g. nitric oxide,CFCs(Chlorofluorocarbons), etc., may interfere with the delicate balance of reactions that maintains the ozone’ s concentration, possibly leading to a drastic depletion of stratospheric ozone. This is now happening in the stratosphere above the polar regions.。

ships in the desert教学目标教学目标：通过学习《沙漠中的船》这个故事，使学生能够：1.理解并解释故事中的主要内容和情节。

2.掌握故事中的主要词汇和表达方式。

3.学会运用故事中的句型和语法结构。

4.培养学生的阅读、听说、写作和思维能力。

教学内容：1.故事的内容和情节故事《沙漠中的船》主要讲述了一个年轻的船匠尼科洛斯在生活中的努力和毅力。

尼科洛斯住在一个沙漠中的小镇上，由于城镇缺水，人们生活困苦。

尼科洛斯决定用木头制造一艘木船，然后将船运到城镇，并卖给缺水苦难的人民。

他经历了很多困难和挑战，但始终没有放弃他的梦想。

最终，他成功地造出了一艘漂亮的木船，将船送到了城镇上，解决了人们的缺水问题。

2.词汇和表达方式教学中应重点介绍以下词汇和表达方式：-沙漠(desert)：指干燥、缺水的地区。

-木头(wood)：指树木的树干和树枝。

-缺水(lack of water)：指没有足够的水。

-船匠(shipbuilder)：指制造船只的人。

-努力(effort)：指付出的力量和精力。

-毅力(perseverance)：指在困难面前坚持不懈。

-梦想(dream)：指追求的目标或愿望。

3.句型和语法结构通过教学可以学习以下句型和语法结构：-主语+动词：例如，“尼科洛斯制造船只”。

-主语+ be动词+形容词：例如，“船是漂亮的”。

-宾语从句：例如，“人们说他是个勇敢的人。

”-表示原因的连词：例如，“因为干旱，城镇缺水。

”4.阅读、听说、写作和思维能力的培养通过教学，学生可以提高他们的阅读、听说、写作和思维能力。

教师可以利用故事进行阅读理解训练，问答练习，听力理解活动，小组讨论以及写作任务，以帮助学生加深对故事的理解和表达能力。

总结：通过学习故事《沙漠中的船》，学生不仅能够理解和解释故事的内容和情节，掌握故事中的词汇和表达方式，还能够运用故事中的句型和语法结构，培养学生的阅读、听说、写作和思维能力。

这将对学生的学习和个人发展起到积极的推动作用。

高级英语第一册lesson3 ships in the desert 课文 Ships in the DesertAL GoreI was standing in the sun on the hot steel deck of a fishing ship capable of processing a fifty-ton catch on a good day. But it wasn' t a good day. We were anchored in what used to be the most productive fishing site in all of central Asia, but as I looked out over the bow , the prospects of a good catch looked bleak. Where there should have been gentle blue-green waves lapping against the side of the ship, there was nothing but hot dry sand – as far as I could see in all directions. The other ships of the fleet were also at rest in the sand, scattered in the dunes that stretched all the way to the horizon . Ten year s ago the Aral was the fourth-largest inland sea in the world, comparable to the largest of North America's Great Lakes. Now it is disappearing because the water that used to feed it has been diverted in an ill-considered irrigation scheme to grow cotton In the user t. The new shoreline was almost forty kilometers across the sand from where the fishing fleet was now permanently docked. Meanwhile, in the nearby town of Muynak the people were still canning fish – brought not from the Aral Sea but shipped by rail through Siberia from the Pacific Ocean, more than a thousand miles away.My search for the underlying causes of the environmental crisishas led me to travel around the world to examine and study many of these images of destruction. At the very bottom of the earth, high in the Trans-Antarctic Mountains, with the sun glaring at midnight through a hole in the sky, I stood in the unbelievable coldness and talked with a scientist in the late tall of 1988 about the tunnel he was digging through time. Slipping his parka back to reveal a badly burned face that was cracked and peeling, he pointed to the annual layers of ice in a core sample dug from the glacier on which we were standing. He moved his finger back in time to the ice of two decades ago. "Here's where the U. S Congress passed the Clean Air Act, ” he said. At th e bottom of the world, two continents away from Washington, D. C., even a small reduction in one country's emissions had changed the amount of pollution found in the remotest end least accessible place on earth.But the most significant change thus far in the earth' s atmosphere is the one that began with the industrial revolution early in the last century and has picked up speed ever since. Industry meant coal, and later oil, and we began to burn lots of it – bringing rising levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) , with its ability to trap more heat in the atmosphere and slowly warm the earth. Fewer than a hundred yards from the South Pole, upwind from the ice runway where the ski plane lands and keeps its engines running to prevent the metal parts from freeze-locking together, scientists monitor the air several times every day to chart the course ofthat inexorable change. During my visit, I watched one scientist draw the results of that day's measurements, pushing the end of a steep line still higher on the graph. He told me how easy it is – there at the end of the earth – to see that this enormous change in the global atmosphere is still picking up speed.Two and a half years later I slept under the midnight sun at the other end of our planet, in a small tent pitched on a twelve-toot-thick slab of ice floating in the frigid Arctic Ocean. After a hearty breakfast, my companions and I traveled by snowmobiles a few miles farther north to a rendezvous point where the ice was thinner – only three and a half feet thick – and a nuclear submarine hovered in the water below. After it crashed through the ice, took on its new passengers, and resubmerged, I talked with scientists who were trying to measure more accurately the thickness of the polar ice cap, which many believe is thinning as a re-suit of global warming. I had just negotiated an agreement between ice scientists and the U. S. Navy to secure the release of previously top secret data from submarine sonar tracks, data that could help them learn what is happening to the north polar cap. Now, I wanted to see the pole it-self, and some eight hours after we met the submarine, we were crashing through that ice, surfacing, and then I was standing in an eerily beautiful snowcape, windswept and sparkling white, with the horizon defined by little hummocks, or "pressure ridges " of ice that are pushed up like tinymountain ranges when separate sheets collide. But here too, CD, levels are rising just as rapidly, and ultimately temperature will rise with them –indeed, global warming is expected to push temperatures up much more rapidly in the polar regions than in the rest of the world. As the polar air warms, the ice her e will thin; and since the polar cap plays such a crucial role in the world's weather system, the consequences of a thinning cap could be disastrous.Considering such scenarios is not a purely speculative exercise. Six months after I returned from the North Pole, a team of scientists reported dramatic changes in the pattern of ice distribution in the Arctic, and a second team reported a still controversialclaim (which a variety of data now suggest) that, over all, the north polar cap has thinned by 2 per cent in just the last decade. Moreover, scientists established several years ago that in many land areas north of the Arctic Circle, the spring snowmelt now comes earlier every year, and deep in the tundra below, the temperature e of the earth is steadily rising.As it happens, some of the most disturbing images of environmental destruction can be found exactly halfway between the North and South poles – precisely at the equator in Brazil – where billowing clouds of smoke regularly blacken the sky above the immense but now threatened Amazon rain forest. Acre by acre, the rain forest is beingburned to create fast pasture for fast-food beef; as I learned when I went there in early 1989, the fires are set earlier and earlier in the dry season now, with more than one Tennessee's worth of rain forest being slashed and burned each year. According to our guide, the biologist Tom Lovejoy, there are more different species of birds in each square mile of the Amazon than exist in all of North America – which means we are silencing thousands of songs we have never even heard.But one doesn't have to travel around the world to witness humankind's assault on the earth. Images that signal the distress of our global environment are now commonly seen almost anywhere. On some nights, in high northern latitudes, the sky itself offers another ghostly image that signals the loss of ecological balance now in progress. If the sky is clear after sunset -- and if you are watching from a place where pollution hasn't blotted out the night sky altogether -- you can sometimes see a strange kind of cloud high in the sky. This "noctilucent cloud" occasionally appears when the earth is first cloaked in the evening darkness; shimmering above us with a translucent whiteness, these clouds seem quite unnatural. And they should: noctilucent clouds have begun to appear more often because of a huge buildup of methane gas in the atmosphere. (Also called natural gas, methane is released from landfills , from coal mines and rice paddies, from billions of termites that swarm through the freshly cut forestland, from the burning of biomass and from a variety of other humanactivities. ) Even though noctilucent clouds were sometimes seen in the past., all this extra methane carries more water vapor into the upper atmosphere, where it condenses at much higher altitudes to form more clouds that the sun's rays still strike long after sunset has brought the beginning of night to the surface far beneath them.What should we feel toward these ghosts in the sky? Simple wonder or the mix of emotions we feel at the zoo? Perhaps we should feel awe for our own power: just as men "t ear tusks from elephants’ heads in such quantity as to threaten the beast with extinction, we are ripping matter from its place in the earth in such volume as to upset the balance between daylight and darkness. In the process, we are once again adding to the threat of global warming, because methane has been one of the fastest-growing green-house gases, and is third only to carbon dioxide and water vapor in total volume, changing the chemistry of the upper atmosphere. But, without even considering that threat, shouldn't it startle us that we have now put these clouds in the evening sky which glisten with a spectral light? Or have our eyes adjusted so completely to the bright lights of civilization that we can't see these clouds for what they are – a physical manifestation of the violent collision between human civilization and the earth?Even though it is sometimes hard to see their meaning, we have bynow all witnessed surprising experiences that signal the damage from our assault on the environment --whether it's the new frequency of days when the temperature exceeds 100 degrees, the new speed with which the -un burns our skin, or the new constancy of public debate over what to do with growing mountains of waste. But our response to these signals is puzzling. Why haven't we launched a massive effort to save our environment? To come at the question another way' Why do some images startle us into immediate action and focus our attention or ways to respond effectively? And why do other images, though sometimes equally dramatic, produce instead a Kind of paralysis, focusing our attention not on ways to respond but rather on some convenient, less painful distraction?Still, there are so many distressing images of environmental destruction that sometimes it seems impossible to know how to absorb or comprehend them. Before considering the threats themselves, it may be helpful to classify them and thus begin to organize our thoughts and feelings so that we may be able to respond appropriately.A useful system comes from the military, which frequently places a conflict in one of three different categories, according to the theater in which it takes place. There are "local" skirmishes, "regional" battles, and "strategic" conflicts. This third category is reserved for struggles that can threaten a nation's survival and must be understood in a globalcontext.Environmental threats can be considered in the same way. For example, most instances of water pollution, air pollution, and illegal waste dumping are essentially local in nature. Problems like acid rain, the contamination of underground aquifers, and large oil spills are fundamentally regional. In both of these categories, there may be so many similar instances of particular local and regional problems occurring simultaneously all over the world that the pattern appears to be global, but the problems themselves are still not truly strategic because the operation of the global environment is not affected and the survival of civilization is not at stake.However, a new class of environmental problems does affect the global ecological system, and these threats are fundamentally strategic. The 600 percent increase in the amount of chlorine in the atmosphere during the last forty years has taken place not just in those countries producing the chlorofluorocarbons responsible but in the air above every country, above Antarctica, above the North Pole and the Pacific Ocean – all the way from the surface of the earth to the top of the sky. The increased levels of chlorine disrupt the global process by which the earth regulates the amount of ultraviolet radiation from the sun that is allowed through the atmosphere to the surface; and it we let chlorine levels continue toincrease, the radiation levels will all so increase – to the point that all animal and plant life will face a new threat to their survival.Global warming is also a strategic threat. The concentration of carbon dioxide and other heat-absorbing molecules has increased by almost 25 per cent since World War II, posing a worldwide threat to the earth's ability to regulate the amount of heat from the sun retained in the atmosphere. This increase in heat seriously threatens the global climate equilibrium that determines the pattern of winds, rainfall, surface temperatures, ocean currents, and sea level. These in turn determine the distribution of vegetative and animal life on land and sea and have a great effect on the location and pattern of human societies.In other words, the entire relationship between humankind and the earth has been transformed because our civilization is suddenly capable of affecting the entire global environment, not just a particular area. All of us know that human civilization has usually had a large impact on the environment; to mention just one example, there is evidence that even in prehistoric times, vast areas were sometimes intentionally burned by people in their search for food. And in our own time we have reshaped a large part of the earth's surface with concrete in our cities and carefully tended rice paddies, pastures, wheatfields, and other croplands in the countryside. But these changes, while sometimes appearing to bepervasive , have, until recently, been relatively trivial factors in the global ecological system. Indeed, until our lifetime, it was always safe to assume that nothing we did or could do would have any lasting effect on the global environment. But it is precisely that assumption which must now be discarded so that we can think strategically about our new relationship to the environment.Human civilization is now the dominant cause of change in the global environment. Yet we resist this truth and find it hard to imagine that our effect on the earth must now be measured by the same yardstick used to calculate the strength of the moon's pull on the oceans or the force of the wind against the mountains. And it we are now capable of changing something so basic as the relationship between the earth and the sun, surely we must acknowledge a new responsibility to use that power wisely and with appropriate restraint. So far, however, We seem oblivious of the fragility of the earth's natural systems.This century has witnessed dramatic changes in two key factors that define the physical reality of our relationship to the earth: a sudden and startling surge in human population, with the addition of one China's worth of people every ten years, and a sudden acceleration of the scientific and technological revolution, which has allowed an almost unimaginable magnification of our power to affect the world around us byburning, cutting, digging, moving, and transforming the physical matter that makes up the earth. The surge in population is both a cause of the changed relationship and one of the clearest illustrations of how startling the change has been, especially when viewed in a historical context. From the emergence of modern humans 200 000 years ago until Julius Caesar's time, fewer than 250 million people walked on the face of the earth. When Christopher Columbus set sail for the New World 1500 years later, there were approximately 500 million people on earth. By the time Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence in 1776, the number had doubled again, to 1 billion. By midway through this century, at the end of World War II, the number had risen to just above 2 billion people. In other words, from the beginning of humanity's appearance on earth to 1945, it took more than ten thousand generations to reach a world population of 2 billion people. Now, in the course of one human lifetime -- mine -- the world population will increase from 2 to more than 9 million, and it is already more than halfway there.Like the population explosion, the scientific and technological revolution began to pick up speed slowly during the eighteenth century. And this ongoing revolution has also suddenly accelerated exponentially. For example, it is now an axiom in many fields of science that more new and important discoveries have taken place in the last ten years that. in the entire previous history of science. While no single discover y has had thekind of effect on our relationship to the earth that unclear weapons have had on our relationship to warfare, it is nevertheless true that taken together, they have completely transformed our cumulative ability to exploit the earth for sustenance -- making the consequences, of unrestrained exploitation every bit as unthinkable as the consequences of unrestrained nuclear war.Now that our relationship to the earth has changed so utterly, we have to see that change and understand its implications. Our challenge is to recognize that the startling images of environmental destruction now occurring all over the world have much more in common than their ability to shock and awaken us. They are symptoms of an underlying problem broader in scope and more serious than any we have ever faced. Global warming, ozone depletion, the loss of living species, deforestation -- they all have a common cause: the new relationship between human civilization and the earth's natural balance. There are actually two aspects to this challenge. The first is to realize that our power to harm the earth can indeed have global and even permanent effects. The second is to realize that the only way to understand our new role as a co-architect of nature is to see ourselves as part of a complex system that does not operate according to the same simple rules of cause and effect we are used to. The problem is not our effect on the environment so much as our relationship with the environment. As a result, any solution to the problem will require a carefulassessment of that relationship as well as the complex interrelationship among factors within civilization and between them and the major natural components of the earth's ecological system.There is only one precedent for this kind of challenge to our thinking, and again it is military. The invention of nuclear weapons and the subsequent development by the United States and the Soviet Union of many thousands of strategic nuclear weapons forced a slow and painful recognition that the new power thus acquired forever changed not only the relationship between the two superpowers but also the relationship of humankind to the institution at warfare itself. The consequences of all-out war between nations armed with nuclear weapons suddenly included the possibility of the destruction of both nations – completely and simultaneously. That sobering realization led to a careful reassessment of every aspect of our mutual relationship to the prospect of such a war. As early as 1946 one strategist concluded that strategic bombing with missiles "may well tear away the veil of illusion that has so long obscured the reality of the change in warfare – from a fight to a process of destruction.”Nevertheless, during the earlier stages of the nuclear arms race, each of the superpower s assumed that its actions would have a simple and direct effect on the thinking of the other. For decades, each new advancein weaponry was deployed by one side for the purpose of inspiring fear in the other. But each such deployment led to an effort by the other to leapfrog the first one with a more advanced deployment of its own. Slowly, it has become apparent that the problem of the nuclear arms race is not primarily caused by technology. It is complicated by technology, true; but it arises out of the relationship between the superpowers and is based on an obsolete understanding of what war is all about.The eventual solution to the arms race will be found, not in a new deployment by one side or the other of some ultimate weapon or in a decision by either side to disarm unilaterally , but ratter in new understandings and in a mutual transformation of the relationship itself. This transformation will involve changes in the technology of weaponry and the denial of nuclear technology to rogue states. But the key changes will be in the way we think about the institution of war far e and about the relationship between states.The strategic nature of the threat now posed by human civilization to the global environment and the strategic nature of the threat to human civilization now posed by changes in the global environment present us with a similar set of challenges and false hopes. Some argue that a new ultimate technology, whether nuclear power or genetic engineering, will solve the problem. Others hold that only a drasticreduction of our reliance on technology can improve the conditions of life -- a simplistic notion at best. But the real solution will be found in reinventing and finally healing the relationship between civilization and the earth. This can only be accomplished by undertaking a careful reassessment of all the factors that led to the relatively recent dramatic change in the relationship. The transformation of the way we relate to the earth will of course involve new technologies, but the key changes will involve new ways of thinking about the relationship itself.NOTESI) Al Gore: born in 1948 in Washington D. C., U. S. Senator(1984-1992) from the State of Tennessee,and U. S. Vice-President ( l 992-) under President Bill Clinton. He is the author of the book Earth in the Balance from which this piece is taken.2) Aral Sea: inland sea and the world’s fourth la rgest lake, c. 26 000 sqmiles, SW Kazakhstan and NW Uzbekhstan, E of the Caspian Sea3) Great Lakes: group of five freshwater lakes, Central North America, between the United States and Canada, largest body of fresh water in the world. From west to east, they are Lake Superior,Lake Michigan,Lake Huron, Lake Erie, and Lake Ontario.4) Trans-Antarctic Mountains: mountain chain stretching across Antarctica from Victoria I and to Coats I and; separating the E Antarcticand W Antarctic subcontinents5) Clean Air Act: one of the oldest environmental laws of the U. S., as well as the most far-reaching, the costliest, and the most controversial. It was passed in 1970.6) Washington D. C.: capital of the United States. D. C. (District of Columbia).is added to distinguish it from the State of Washington and 3 other cities in the U. S bearing the sonic name.7) freeze-locking: the metal parts are frozen solid and unable to move freely8)midnight sun: phenomenon in which the sun remains visible in the sky for 24 hours or longer, occurring only in the polar regions9)global warming; The earth is getting warmer. The temperature of the earth's atmosphere and its surface is steadily rising.10) Submarine sonar tracks: the term sonar is an acronym for sound navigation ranging. It is used for communication between submerged submarines or between a submarine and a surface vessel, for locating mines and underwater hazards to navigation, and also as a fathometer, or depth finder.11) greenhouse (effect): process whereby heat is trapped at the surface of the earth by the atmosphere. An increase of man-made pollutants in the atmosphere will lead to a long-term warming of theearth's climate.12) Julius Caesar: (102? B. C -- 44 B. C:. ), Roman statesman and general13) Christopher Columbus: ( 1451-1506), discoverer of America, born Genoa, Italy14) Thomas Jefferson: (17-13-1826 ), 3d President of the United States(1801-1809), author of the Declaration of Independence.15) Declaration of Independence: full and formal declaration adopted July 4,1776, by representatives of the thirteen colonies in North America announcing the separation of those colonies from Great Britain and making them into the United States16)Ozone depletion: A layer of ozone in the stratosphere prevents most ultraviolet and other high-energy radiation, which is harmful to life, from penetrating to the earth's surface.Some.environmental, scientists fear that certain man-made pollutants, e.g. nitric oxide,CFCs(Chlorofluorocarbons), etc., may interfere with the delicate balance of reactions that maintains the ozone’ s concentration, possibly leading to a drastic depletion of stratospheric ozone. This is now happening in the stratosphere above the polar regions.。

Unit3.shipsinthedesert课⽂解释Unit 3: Ships in the Desertby Al GorI . Additional Background Knowledge1. Al Gore the author2. Clean Air Act3. The Aral SeaII . Introduction to the Passage1. Type of literature: a piece of exposition2. The purpose of a piece of exposition:--- to inform or explain3. Ways of developing the thesis of a piece of exposition:--- comparison, contrast, analogy, identification, illustration, analysis, definition, etc.4. The central thought or thesisIII . Effective Writing Skills1. making effective use of specific verbs2. discussing the solution to environmental problems from a politician’s point of view, that is, relating the solution to environmental destruction to the solution to arm racesIV . Rhetorical Devices1. understatement2. metaphorV . Special Difficulties1. analyzing the structure of some long and complicated sentences2. understanding the scientific matters connected with ecological environment3. translating long and complicated sentences4. mastering the rules of word formationVI . Questions1. How has human civilization now become the dominant cause of change in the global environment2. What changes in the global environment present a strategic threat to human civilization How should we face this challenge and solve the problemsolutions does the writer put forward to our ecological problems Detailed Teaching Notes:Background knowledgeAbout the author:Al Gore was born in 1948 in Washington ., . He has been a Senator (1984-1992) representing the State of Tennessee, and . Vice-President (1992-2000) under President Bill Clinton. He ranfor the Presidency against George W. Bush Jr. but the latter won the closely tied election and has become the 43rd AmericanPresident. The text is taken from Al Gore’s book Earth in the Balance.The Aral Sea:The Aral Sea, located in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan (both countries were part of the former Soviet Union), is historically a saline lake. It is in the centre of a large, flat desert basin. The Aral Sea is a prime example of a dynamic environment. In 1960 it was the world’s fourth largest lake, the size of the entirety of Southern California (at 26,250 square miles, approximately two hundred times larger than the Salton Sea).America’s Great Lakes:America’s Great Lakes re fer to the group of five freshwater lakes, central North America, between the United States and Canada, largest body of fresh water in the world. From west to east, they are Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, Lake Erie, and Lake Ontario. HOMES can help remember the names of the five lakes. H stands for Huron, O for Ontario, M for Michigan, E for Erie and S for Superior.Lake Superior:Lake Superior is one of the cleanest lakes in the world because of its temperature, size, and the lack of people living around it. Lake Superior, with a surface area of 31,700 square miles, is the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area. This one body of water contains 10% of all the freshwater in all the lakes and rivers in the world. The amount of time needed for the water in Lake Superior to be completely replaced is 191 years. The lake is known for its cold temperatures. Almost all of Lake Superior’s water stays at 39 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius) all year. Lake Superior is often referred to as “crystal clear,” with visibility of 50 feet or more.Antarctica:Antarctica is icy cold. Transantarctic Mountains divide it into the East Antarctic and West Antarctic subcontinents. China has set up two scientific research stations there: Zhongshan Station in the East and Great Wall in the West.Clean Air Act:American Congress passed the Clean Air Act in 1970, which is one of the oldest environmental laws of the . as well as the mostfar-reaching, the costliest, and the most controversial.Rhetorical devices:understatement: the prospects of a good catch looked bleak alliteration: fast pasture for fast-food beefmetaphor: cloak, ghostsrhetorical question:But, without even considering that threat, shouldn’t it startle us that we have now put these clouds in the evening sky which glisten with a spectral lightOr have our eyes adjusted so completely to the bright lights of civilization that we can’t see these clouds for what they are—a physical manifestation of the violent collision between human civilization and the earthmetonymy: concretePreview:What’s the meaning of the titleWhat do you expect to have when you read the titleWhat kind of writing is the textWhat is the theme What does the author try to tell us through his articleHow is the exposition developedTypical content of an exposition:Part 1 A problem is pointed out (definition, phenomena, etc) Part 2 The problem is analyzed (causes, classification,advantages/disadvantages, etc)Part 3 How to solve it (suggestion, etc.)How does an essay / feature article beginWhat’s the effect the writer produces hereDetailed studyParagraph 1of processing a fifty-ton catch on a good day: having the ability of cleaning and preparing for marketing or canning fifty-tons of fish on a productive day.catch: the amount of something caught; in the sentence it refers to the amount of fish caught. The boat brought back a big catch of fish.bow : the front part of a ship vs stern2. the prospects of a good catch looked bleak: a good catch did not look promising / hopeful.This is obliviously an understatement because with sand all around there was no chance of catching fish, to say nothing of catching a lot of fish.bleak: a) If a situation is bleak, it is bad, and seems unlikely to improve.. His future looked bleak.bleak prospect; the bleakness of the post war yearsb) If a place is bleak, it looks cold, bare, and unattractive . the bleak coastlinec) When the weather is bleak, it is cold, dull, and unpleasant . the bleak wintersd) If someone looks or sounds bleak, they seem depressed, hopeless, or unfriendly. his bleak featuresbleakly adv.. He stared bleakly ahead.“What,” he asked bleakly, “are these”3. waves lapping against the side of the ship: waves touching the side of the ship gently and makes a soft soundlap can also be used as a noun.. Her youngest child was asleep in her lap.He placed the baby on the woman’s lap.In a race, when you say that a competitor has completed a lap when he or she has gone round the course race.4. as far as I could see in all direction: that extended as far as the eye could see：that stretched all the way to the horizon: that extended to the far off place where the sky meet the earth5. comparable: something that is comparable to something elsedock: v. anchor, moorHow many images of environmental destruction are presented here in para 1Paragraph 2.6. My search for… these images of destruction: I traveled around the world because I wanted to see, check and study cases of such destruction in order to find out the basic causes behind the environmental crisis.images of destruction: typical examples of destruction7. the sun glaring at midnight through a hole in the sky: the sun shining at midnight through the ozone depletion8. about the tunnel he was digging through time: about the tunnel he was drilling for samples from the glacier, which estimates the time. The deeper he drilled, the farther the sample in time; in other words, the surface of the glacier is an indication of recent time while the deeper part of the glacier tells of situation of a much more remote period.9. Slipping his parka back to reveal a badly burned face that was cracked and peeling: Pushing his parka back, he revealeda badly burned face because of overexposure to direct sunlight; on the face there were lines that were split open and pieces of skin were comingdown.parka: n. waterproof jacket with a hood attached (as worn for skiing, mountain climbing, etc.)10. He moved his finger back in time to the ice of two decades ago: Following the layers of ice in the core sample, his finger came to the place where the layer of ice was formed 20 years ago.continents: South America and Antarctica: the amount of pollutants dischargedaccessible place on earth: the place which is the most difficult to get to in the worldParagraph 314. Industry meant coal:the development of industry meant the use of large amount of coal as fuel to generate power.15. bringing rising levels of carbon dioxide: making the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere growits ability to trap more heat…warm the earth: heat cannot easily get through carbon dioxide and go into the high altitude so carbon dioxide plays the role of a cover, keeping the heat near the earth.from the ice runaway…that inexorable change:upwind: in the direction from which the wind is blowing or usually blowsrunway : runway is a strip of paved ground for use by airplanes in taking off and landing, and here in the South Pole the runway is a strip of ice groundprevent the metal parts from freeze-locking together: to stop the metal parts from being frozen solidthe air: watch or check on the airto chart the course: to show the onward movement on an outline map: that cannot be changed; unalterable. the inexorable rise in the cost of livingHis own career continues its inexorable ascent他事业的上升势头锐不可当。

Lesson 1 The Middle Eastern Bazaar1)Little donkeys thread their way among the throngs of people.Little donkeys make their way in and out of the moving crowds2)Then as you penetrate deeper into the bazaar, the noise of the entrance fades away, and you come to the muted cloth-market.Then as you go deeper into the market, the noise of the entrance gradually disappears, and you come to the silent cloth-market.3) They narrow down their choice and begin the really serious business of beating the price down. After careful search, comparison and some primary bargaining,they reduce their choices and try making the decision by beginning to do the really serious job convince the shopkeeper to lower the price.4) He will price the item high, and yield little in the bargaining.He will ask for a high price for the item and refuse to cut down the price by any significant amount.5) As you approach it, a tinkling and banging and clashing begins to impinge on your ear.As you get near it, a variety of sounds begin to strike your ear.Lesson 2 Hiroshima -- the "Liveliest”City in Japan1）serious-looking men spoke to one another as if they were obvious of the crowds about them They were so absorbed in their conversion that they seemed not to pay any attention to the people around them.2）The cab driver’s door popped open at the very sight of a traveler.As soon as the taxi driver saw a traveler, he immediately open the door3)The rather arresting spectacle of little old Japan adrift amid beige concrete skyscrapers is the very symbol of the incessant struggle between the kimono and the miniskirt.The traditional floating houses among high modern buildings represent the constant struggle between old tradition and new development.4）I experienced a twinge of embarrassment at the prospect of meeting the mayor of Hiroshima in my socks.I suffered from a strong feeling of shame when I thought of the scene of meeting the mayor of Hiroshima wearing my socks only.5) The few Americans and Germans seemed just as inhibited as I was.The few Americans and Germans seemed just as restrained as 1 was．6)After three days in Japan, the spinal column becomes extraordinarily flexible.After three days in Japan one gets quite used to bowing to people as a ritual to show gratitude．7)I was about to make my little bow of assent, when the meaning of these last words sank in, jolting me out of my sad reverie .I was on the point of showing my agreement by nodding when I suddenly realized what he meant．His words shocked me out my sad dreamy thinking．8)I thought somehow I had been spared.I thought for some reason or other no harm had been done to me．Lesson3 Ships in the Desert1. the prospects of a good catch looked bleakIt was not at all possible to catch a large amount of fish.2.He moved his finger back in time to the ice of two decades ago.Following the layers of ice in the core sample, his finger came to the place where the layer of ice was formed 2050 years ago.3.keeps its engines running to prevent the metal parts from freeze-locking togetherkeeps its engines running for fear that if he stops them, the metal parts would be frozen solid and the engines would not be able to start again4.Considering such scenarios is not a purely speculative exercise.Bit by bit trees in the rain forest are felled and the land is cleared and turned into pasture where cattle can be raised quickly and slaughtered and the beef can be used in hamburgers.5.Acre by acre, the rain forest is being burned to create fast pasture for fast-food beef…Since miles of forest are being destroyed and the habitat for these rare birds no longer exists, thousands of birds which we have not even had a chance to see will become extinct.6 which means we are silencing thousands of songs we have never even heard.Thinking about how a series of events might happen as a consequence of the thinning of the polar cap is not just a kind of practice in conjecture (speculation), it has got practical Value.7.we are ripping matter from its place in the earth in such volume as to upset the balance between daylight and darkness.We are using and destroying resources in such a huge amount that we are disturbing the balance between daylight and darkness.8.Or have our eyes adjusted so completely to the bright lights of civilization that we can't see these clouds for what they are …Or have we been so accustomed to the bright electric lights that we fail to understand the threatening implication of these clouds.9. To come at the question another way…To put forward the question in a different way10.and have a great effect on the location and pattern of human societiesand greatly affect the living places and activities of human societies11.We seem oblivious of the fragility of the earth's natural systems.We seem unaware that the earth's natural systems are delicate.12. And this ongoing revolution has also suddenly accelerated exponentially.And this continuing revolution has also suddenly developed at a speed that doubled and tripled the original speed.Lesson 4 Everyday Use1.She thinks her sister has held life always in the palm of one hand…She thinks that her sister has a firm control of her life.2. "no" is a word the world never learned to say to herShe could always have anything she wanted, and life was extremely generous to her.3. Johnny Carson has much to do to keep up with my quick and witty tongue.The popular TV talk show star, Johnny Carson, who is famous for his witty and glib tongue, has to try hard if he wants to catch up with me.4. It seems to me I have talked to them always with one toot raised in flightIt seems to me that I have talked to them always ready to leave as quickly as possible.5.She washed us in a river of make-believeShe imposed on us lots of falsity.6.burned us with a lot of knowledge we didn't necessarily need to knowimposed on us a lot of knowledge that is totally useless to us7.Like good looks and money, quickness passed her by.She is not bright just as she is neither good-looking rich.8.A dress down to the ground, in this hot weather.Dee wore a very long dress even on such a hot day.9.You can see me trying to move a second or two before I make it.You can see me trying to move my body a couple of seconds before I finally manage to push myself up.10.Anyhow, he soon gives up on Maggie.Soon he knows that won't do for Maggie, so he stops trying to shake hands with Maggie. 11.Though, in fact, I probably could have carried it back beyond the Civil Warthrough the branches.As I see Dee is getting tired of this, I don't want to go on either. In fact, I could have traced it far back before the Civil War along the branches of the family tree.12.Every once in a while he and Wangero sent eye signals over my head.Now and then he and Dee communicated through eye contact in a secretive way.13.Less than that!If Maggie put the old quilts on the bed, they would be in rags less than five years.14.This was the way she knew God to work.She knew this was God's arrangement.Lesson 5 Speech on Hitler's Invasion of the U.S.S.R.1.Hitler was counting on enlisting capitalist and Right Wing sympathies in this country and the U. S. A.Hitler was hoping that if he attacked Russia, he would win in Britain and the U.S. the support of those who were enemies of Communism.2.Winant said the same would be true of the U. S. A.Winant said the United States would adopt the same attitude.3 .…my life is much simplified therebyIn this way, my life is made much easier in this case, it will be much easier for me to decide on my attitude towards events.4. I see the German bombers and fighters in the sky, still smarting from many a British whipping, delighted to find what they believe is an easier and a safer prey.I can see the German bombers and fighters in the sky, who, after suffering severe losses in the aerial battle of England, now feel happy because they think they can easily beat the Russian air force without heavy loss.5.We shall be strengthened and not weakened in determination and in resources.We shall be more determined and shall make better and fuller use of our resources.6. Let us redouble our exertions, and strike with united strength while life and power remain.Let us strengthen our unity and our efforts in the fight against Nazi Germany when we have not yet been overwhelmed and when we are still powerful.Lesson 6 Blackmail1.The house detective's piggy eyes surveyed her sardonically from his gross jowled face.The house detective's small narrow eyes looked her up and down scornfully from his fat face with a heavy jowl.2.Pretty neat set-up you folks got.This is a pretty nice room that you have got.3.The obese body shook in an appreciative chuckle .The fat body shook in a chuckle because the man was enjoying the fact that he could afford to do whatever he liked and also he was appreciating the fact that the Duchess knew why he had come.4.He lowered the level of his incongruous falsetto voice.He had an unnaturally high-pitched voice. now, he lowered the pitch.5.The words spat forth with sudden savagery , all pretense of blandness gone.Ogilvie spat out the words, throwing away his politeness.6. The Duchess of Croydon –three centuries and a half of inbred arrogance behind her –did not yield easily.The Duchess was supported by her arrogance coming from parents of noble families with a history of three centuries and a half. She wouldn't give up easily.7."It's no go, old girl. I'm afraid. It was a good try."It's no use. What you did just now was a good attempt at trying to save the situation. 8."That's more like it," Ogilvie said. He lit the fresh cigar. "Now we're getting somewhere." "That's more acceptable," Ogilvie said. He lit another cigar, "Now we're making some progress. "9.... his eyes sardonically on the Duchess as if challenging her objection....he looked at the Duchess sardonically as if he wanted to see if she dared to object to his smoking.10. The house detective clucked his tongue reprovingly .The house detective made noises with his tongue to show his disapproval.Lesson 9 Mark Twain ---Mirror of America1.a man who became obsessed with the frailties of the human racea man who became constantly preoccupied by the moral weaknesses of mankind2.Mark Twain digested the new American experience before sharing it with the world as writer and lecturer.Mark Twain first observed and absorbed the new American experience, and then introduce it to the world in his books or lectures.3.The cast of characters set before him in his new profession was rich and varied----a cosmos .In his new profession he could meet people of all kinds.4.Broke and discouraged, he accepted a job as reporter with the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise…With no money and a frashated feeling, he accepted a job as reporter with Territorial Enterprise in Virginia City ...5.Mark Twain began digging his way to regional fame as a newspaper reporter and humorist. Mark Twain began working hard to became well known locally as a newspaper reporter and humorist.6. and when she projects a new surprise, the grave world smiles as usual, and says 'Well, that is California all over. '"and when California makes a plan for a new surprise, the solemn people in other states of the U.S. smile as usual, making a comment "that's typical of California"7.Bitterness fed on the man who had made the world laugh.The man who had made the world laugh was himself consumed by bitterness.Lesson 10 The Trial That Rocked the World1. we'll show them a few tricksWe have some clever and unexpected tactics and we will surprise them in the trial.2.The case had erupted round my head...The case had come down upon me unexpectedly and violently.3.The fundamentalists adhered to a literal interpretation of the Old Testament.The fundamentalists believe in a word-for-word acceptance of what is said in the Bible.4.that all animal life, including monkeys and men, had evolved from a common ancestor.that all life had developed gradually from a common original organism5."Let's take this thing to court and test the legality of it."Let's accuse Scopes of teaching evolution and let the court decide whether he is breaking the law or not.6.People from the surrounding hills, mostly fundamentalists, arrived to cheer Bryan against the " infidel outsiders"People from the nearby mountains, mostly fundamentalists, came to support Bryan against those professors, scientists, and lawyers who came from the northern big cities and were not fundamentalists.7.As my father growled, "That's one hell of a jury!"As my father complained angrily, "That' s no jury at all. "8. He is here because ignorance and bigotry are rampant.He is here because unenlightenment and prejudice are widespread and unchecked.9.Spectators paid to gaze at it and ponder whether they might be related.People had to pay in order to have a look at the ape and to consider carefully whether apes and humans could have a common ancestry.10.and the crowd punctuated his defiant replies with fervent "Amens"and the crowd, who were mainly fundamentalists, took his words showing no fear as if they were prayers, interrupting frequently with "Amen"。