Environmentalists said our planet was doomed to die. Now one man says they are wrong.
"Everyone knows the planet is in bad shape," thundered a magazine article last year. Species are being driven to die out at record rates, and the rivers are so poisonous that fish are floating on the surface, dead.
But there's a growing belief that what everyone takes for granted is wrong: things are actually getting better. A new book is about to overturn our most basic assumptions about the world's environment. Rivers, seas, rain and the atmosphere are all getting cleaner. The total amount of forests in the world is not declining. The Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjorn Lomborg, professor of statistics at the University of Aarhus in Denmark, is an attack on the misleading claims of environmental groups, and the "bad news" culture that makes people believe everything is getting worse.
Now the attacks are increasingly coming from left-wing environmentalists such as Lomborg, a former member of Greenpeace. The accusation is that, although the environment is improving, green groups — with profits of hundreds of mil-lions of pounds a year — are using scare tactics(谋略)to gain donations. Lomborg's book doesn't deny global warming — probably the biggest environmental threat — but destroys almost every other environmental claim with many official statistics.
The Worldwatch Institute claims that "deforestation(沙漠化) has been accelerating over the last 30 years". But Lomborg says that is simply rubbish. Since the dawn of agriculture the world has lost about 20 per cent of its forest cover, but in recent decades the forest area's depleting has come to a stop. According to UN figures, the area of forests has remained almost steady, at about 30 per cent of total land area, since the 1940s. Forests in countries such as the US, the UK and Canada have actually been expanding over the past 40 years. Despite all the warnings the Amazon rainforest has only shrunk by about 15 per cent.
Nor are all our species dying out. Some campaigners claim that 50 per cent of all species will have died out within 50 years. But other studies show only 0.08 per cent of species are dying out each year. Conservation efforts have been successful. Whales are no longer threatened and the bald eagle is off the endangered list.
Environmental groups claim that many of the improvements are the results of the success of their campaigns. Stephen Tindale, director of Greenpeace UK, said, "There are important examples, such as acid rain and ozone, where things aren't as bad as predicted, and that's because behavior has changed."
【小题1】In his book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, what is Lomborg's main argument?

There are two main forms of teaching in Nottingham University: seminar(研讨会) and lecture. They are very different from the sort of teaching most often used in schools and colleges.

    In seminars you will be taught with discussion focusing on a text or topic set in advance in a friendly and informal atmosphere. The purpose is to provide an opportunity to try out new ideas and to think through difficulties with fellow- learners. Students develop friendships through groups, as well as learning more about other people’s ideas. You can also know your tutors as an individual rather than a face at the end of the room.

    Lectures are the most formal. There may be over a hundred in the audience and the lecture Mil last about fifty minutes. The value of the lecture is that it can present to a large number of people information which is not readily available in books, that it can give you an opportunity to hear a specialist develop a coherent (有条理的) argument, and that it can show visual material to a wide audience.

    Your typical week’s work will feel strange after school or college since there are fewer timetabled teaching hours. Each week in the first year you may attend about six lectures and four to six seminars or tutorials (辅导). For the rest of the time you are working on your own, doing the necessary reading in preparation for tutorials or writing seminar papers. When writing an essay or carrying out project work, you can often discuss with your tutor about the title and topic.

68. The purpose of the passage is ________.

to introduce two main forms of teaching

to persuade you to try out new ideas

to stress the importance of discussion

to make you believe that seminar is more helpful

69. One of the values of the lecture is

  A. to make friends through groups

  B. to learn more about other people’s ideas

  C. to offer a chance to discuss with a specialist

  D. to present to students information not found in books

70. Your typical week’s work in the university will feel strange because ________.

  A. you may have no project work after class

  B. you may give lectures and seminars

  C. you may have fewer timetabled teaching hours

  D. you may write seminar papers with fellow-learners

71. We can learn from the passage that _________.

  A. seminar is better than lecture        B. lecture is better than seminar

  C. seminar is more formal than lecture   D. lecture is more formal than seminar

阅读下列短文，掌握其大意，然后从26—50各题所给的四个选项中，选出一个最佳答案。

The use of nuclear power has already spread all over the world, However, scientists still have

not 36 on what should be done with the large 37 of waste material that tend to increase everyyear .

Most waste materials are dealr38simply by placing them39.But nuclear waste40be dealt with very carefully. It gives41dangerous radiation and it will continue to be 42for hundreds, thousands, even mil-lions of years.

How should we get rid of such waste material in a43that it will not harm the environment? Where can we safely44it? One idea is to put this45waste inside a 46 container ,47is then dropped to the deep bottom of the ocean. But some scientists believe that this way of dealing with nuclear waste could kill fish and other living things in the oceans48interfere(干扰)with their growth.. Another way49nuclear waste is to send it into space, to the sun, 50 it would be burned. Some scientists suggests suggest that this polluting material51buried thousands of meters under the52surface. Such under-ground areas must be lree53possible earthquakes. Advance id being54,But it may still be many years55this problem could be finally settled.

A. planned        B. agreed         C. regarded        D. known

A. nunber          B. amounts      C. lot              D. mass 

A. of              B. with         C. up              D. to

A. anywhere        B. nowhere       C. elsewhere        D.somewhere

A. may             B. should        C. must            D. can 

A. away            B. off           C. up              D. down 

A. harm            B. deathly       C. dying            D. deathly

A. method           B. way         C. means            D. manner

A. place             B. export        C. do with           D. do 

A.radioactive         B. radiation      C. active          D. activity

A. large             B. stone          C. thick            D. nice

A. that             B.such            C. and             D. which

A. or              B. and             C.so              D. then

A. to move        B. to transport      C. to remove        D. to carry

A. so               B. when         C. as              D. here

A. can be           B. being      C. be            D. muse be

A. earth            B. being     C. ocean          D. water

A. of             B. with        C. at              D. in

A.caused          B. made       C. taken           D. done

A.when           B. if          C. befire               D. thus

B
In China, if you are not married by the time you are 30, you are in for trouble: social blame and pressure from family and friends can get you down. And if you are a woman it’s even worse.
Many young people get married simply to get other people off their backs(免受别人的指责) . This is a serious compromise (妥协) with their ideals (理想). One ends up not marrying the ideal partner.
There are, however, a few young people who refuse to compromise: if they can’t find a good marriage partner,they say, they would rather not many at all.
34-year-old Kate is university lecture in English.She said she would not describe herself as backelorette(独身主义者) but simply a woman who hasn't come across the right man yet. She has sharp comments for the way in which the old generation looks at marriage.
“Many people think marriage is a duty —— to your parents, family and society. Nobody cares if your marriage is happy or not. she said, I think this is very wrong and I intend to live and act according to my own will.”
Happily for her, her parents are open-minded and not put pressure on her. But the same does not apply to her friends. They are .constantly trying to get her together with some young man or another. She always refuses politely.
59. The main idea of this passage is that ____ .
A. marriage is duty to society
B. people should get married before 30 years old
C. late marriage should be respected
D. women should get married earlier than men
60. Miss Kate refuses to get together with some young man or another because____.
A. she doesn’t think he is the right man she wants
B. he is either too old or too young
C. he is either important or little learned
D. he doesn’t have good manners
61. In the first paragraph the underlined words “in for”  refer to ____.
A. interested in   B. satisfied with    C. worried about   D. possible to suffer
62. Which is not true according to this passage
A. In China, one mil face social blame and family pressure if one hasn’t got married at he age of 30.
B. Miss Kate’s parents are always worried about her marriage.
C. Miss Kate won’t compromise with her ideal marriage.
D. Miss Kate wants to many a worthy young man.
63. If marriage is regarded as a duty to society,_______.
A. everybody will be happy and satisfied
B. nobody will pay attention to whether you are happy or not in your family life
C. you can easily find an ideal partner
D. young people will have nothing to worry about in marriage

Every year landslides {滑坡} cause 25 to 50 deaths and $1.5 billion in damage in the United States．They account for 15 percent of the deaths from natural disasters in Europe．And in Decem??ber, a single event killed more than 200 people in the Philippines．Sending workers to stabilize (加固) mountainsides using steel bars and cement (水泥) can help prevent disaster, but it introduces new difficulties．Shaking drills produce harmful dust and loosen heavy, dangerous debris (米屑)．"It's quite a risky job," says Giorgio Pezzuto of D'Appolonia, an engineering company in Italy.

D'Appolonia, working with eight other companies, may have an answer:  a three-ton robot called Roboclimber．"The idea is to operate a machine far away that can drill without a hu??man being on board,'" says Pezzuto, manager for the project, which is supported by the European Commission．Engineers claim that the machine will be faster and cheaper than manual labor．The robot, a large radio-controlled four-legged me??chanical spider (蜘蛛), has cost at least $2 mil??lion so far．The final product should be able to climb unstable mountainsides, drill holes, insert bars and cement, and collect data on the slope' s stability．Testing should begin in May.

The underlined word "event" (in Paragraph l) refers to ___.

A．landslide         B．machine C．earthquake       D．flood

The purpose in writing this text is ___..

A．to tell people how serious the damage caused by landslides is

B．to tell people that sending workers to sta??bilize mountainsides is a risky job

C．to introduce a product that can be used to stabilize mountainsides

D．to show people how to use a new product

What does the robot look like?

A．A human being． B．A spider．C．A truck．       D．A drill．

The biggest advantage of this product is that_________.

A．it will be faster and cheaper than manual labor

B．it can climb mountainsides, drill holes, insert bars and cement

C．it can collect data on the slope’s stability

D．it can drill without a human being on board