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VIII. Read and retell the story
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We must protect our environment.
Our country. Our environment. There are many big and small rivers, green forests, high mountains, lakes and seas in Russia.
Our Earth is our home. I think people must take care of our Motherland.
There are some laws and decisions on this important subject. We have state organizations which pay attention to this problem.
The international conventions pay much attention to the control of pollution too.
There are a lot of industrial enterprises in our country, that’s why we can’t ignore the problem of the protection of our environment. Our main aim is protection. Our environment must be clean. What must we do for it? We have to control atmospheric and water pollution, to study man’s influence on the climate. The pollution of the environment influences the life of animals, plants and human life. If we don’t use chemicals in a proper way we’ll pollute our environment.
There are many kinds of transport in our big cities, that is why we must pay attention to the protection of our nature and the health of people.
Radiation. Now it has become one of the main problems. It is not good for health of people. Many people died from radiation some years ago in Chernobyl. It was a tragedy. Another problem is earthquakes. Our scientists try to forecast earthquakes, then we can protect ourselves from them.
People all over the world do everything to protect their nature, to make their country richer, to make their life happier.
Words
1. defence – оборона, защита
2. influence – влияние
3. earthquake – землятресение
4. to forecast – предсказывать, прогнозировать
5. waste - отбросы
Supplementary Material For Home Reading
Ecology is a Priority
The ecological problem, which is also very much a social one, is one of the pressing problems of our days. It is closely linked, through cause-and-effect relations, to the problems of economic growth, food supplies. In many cases the environmental problem has become a dominant one in relation to many others.
The pollution of the environment, the destruction of ecosystems, the destruction of many species of plants and animals have now reached threatening proportions. An increasing influence on nature and the application of new technological processes (whose consequences are increasingly dangerous for the environment) may cause catastrophic results. Negative anthropogenic influences threaten to disrupt nature’s basic, cycles and to undermine the self-regenerating capacities of the biosphere and of its individual components.
This is illustrated by the following data. By comparison with the beginning of the twentieth century the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, as well as of aerosols has increased dozens of times in many cities, and has increased globally by 20 per cent. As a result of the formation of a layer of carbon dioxide around the Earth, which encloses it like a glass cover the threat of unfavourable changes in climate has arisen that may transform our blue planet into an enormous greenhouse during the next decades, with possibly catastrophic effects.
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Those include changes in its energy balance and a gradual increase in temperature that will transform fertile regions into and ones, raise the level of water in the oceans (through the melting of polar and drifting ice) and produce a flooding of great numbers of coastal lands and cities. The threat of disruption in the oxygen balance has arisen through the destruction of the ozone screen in the lower stratosphere as a result of the flights of supersonic aircraft (its destruction by 50 per cent will increase ultraviolet radiation 10 times, with corresponding influences on the sight of animals and humans). Pollution of the ocean has increased at a rate that threatens to make it global (4.10 tons of petroleum are channelled to the ocean, i. e., approximately 0.1 percent of petroleum production on maritime shelves)
All this exerts a substantial adverse influence on the health of individuals, their labour productivity, and their creative activities and requires increasing capital investments in order to sustain the fertility of agricultural land and to purify water bodies, since their waters are becoming unsuitable both for general use and for use in the economy. The pollution of the environment through chemical, physical and biological agents (the development of micro-organisms and agricultural pests that are immune to drugs and poisons) together with increases in the volume and types of ionizing radiation, produce, among other things, an increase in their mutagenic influence on individuals, that is, in pathological changes in heredity, and a greater number of hereditary defects, diseases, genetically determined forms of vulnerability to serious and chronic diseases. These impede the vital activities and reproductive functions of individuals and cause their genetic degeneration. Calculations of researchers indicate that increases in natural background radiation by only 10 rads may lead to the birth of 6 million hereditarily defective persons in each generation.
Already now, according to UN experts, 10.5 per cent of people are born with hereditary (genetic) defects. Data concerning deaths from cances published by the National Cancer Institute of the U.S. indicate that 60 per cent of more of the cases (500,000 cases of cancer per year) are caused by various cancer-producing factors in the environment.
Пояснения к тексту
1. self-regenerating capacity – саморегуляция
2. ozone screen – озоновый слой, слой озона
3. mutagenic – мутагенный
4. natural background radiation - естественная
5. rad - яд, физ. рад. (0,01 дж/кг)
1. Скажите, почему экологическая проблема – проблема социальная.
2. Объясните по-английски значение слова “ ecosystem”.
3. Пользуясь данными текста, расскажите о возможных последствиях:
а) накопления в атмосфере двуокиси углерода и аэрозолей;
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б) полета сверхзвуковых самолетов.
RADIOACTIVE PACIFIC
Radioactive pollution of the World Ocean has been going on ever since the very first nuclear tests held on the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific in 1946. The ocean gets polluted by radioactive substances in different ways. First of all, this happens because of underwater nuclear blasts (six of them were performed before 1963) and nuclear, tests on the ocean’s surface (more than 30 were performed). Underground nuclear explosions can also entail dangerous consequences.
In particular, leakage of radioactive substances into the ocean have often happened at the French nuclear range on Mururoa Islands in Polyhesea.
Environmental pollution by radioactivity has the greatest effect on living thing, causing death or anomalities in its development. The radioactive pollutants get through the soil, water or air into plants and the tissnes of animals and from them into the human organism. This has been confirmed by the Bikini tragedy. The nuclear tests held there by the USA in 1946. 1958 dramatically changed the plant life there (and not only as a result of the blast effects). The coconut palms and the breadfruit tress were replaced by the meagre thickets of bushes. The content of the isotopes of strontium, ceasium and plutinium in the Bikinias, who returned to the atoll, started to dangerously rise even in1978. It was established that poisons got into the human organism through food of local plants and fish. The inhabitants had to be evacuated again.
Задания к тексту.
I. Прочитайте и переведите текст, обращая внимание на значение следующих слов и выражений:
Pacific Ocean Тихий океан
to go on продолжаться
nuclear test ядерное испытание
substance вещество
surface поверхность
underground подземный
explosion взрыв
consequence последствие
leakage утечка
cause вызывать, служить причиной
tissues ткани
confirm потверждать
content содержание
atoll атол
establish устанавливать
inhabit обитать
II. Поставьте вопросы к тексту.
III. Составьте план передачи содержания текста.
IV. Передайте основное содержание текста на английском языке.
NATURE AND NUCLEAR WAR.
Wars and preparations for them, such as tests of new types of armament, are having a tremendous destructive effect on the natural environment. New types of weaponry, including shells with great explosive force, chemical substances and incendiary agents, used in recent wars, have produced a destructive effect on the environment.In South Vietnam, herbicides completely destroyed 1,500 square kilometers of vegetation and caused damage to 15,000 square kilometers of land; at the same time, natural restoration of vegetation there is catastrophically slow. About 100 kilogrammes of dioxin was sprayed as an additive to one of those defoliants, and precisely dioxin is still regarded to be the cause of congenital defects in children, numerous miscarriages and liver cancer.
Millions of people in South-east Asia were drive out of their homes and from the plots they filled. This resulted in a further worsening of the environment, including the growth of secondary vegetation and destruction of drainage to systems. Decades will be needed to get rid of the results of these numerous violations.
Even greater damage to the environment may be done if the new types of weapons presently being developed are widely used. A nuclear war would destroy all the principal towns of the Northern Hemisphere; it would destroy a considerable part of the urban population as a result of blast and fire, and a considerable part of the rural population through radioactive irradiation. In addition, many millions of people of the Southern Hemisphere would perish on account of radioactive fallout. Even though it is difficult to foresee the longterm consequences of a nuclear war, they would globally affect the climate, causing the ozone layer to seriously deplefe. Besides, radioactive affection would cause genetic consequences.
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The previous experimental nuclear blasts have seriously contaminated the atmosphere with radioactive materials and caused damage to considerable areas of the Earth’s surface.
A ten-kiloton nuclear blast can cause complete or partial destruction of vegetation over 400 to 1,300 hectares. The use of nuclear weapons in a large-scale war would destroy vegetation and erode soil over vast territories, and lead to blow-outs of huge amounts of radioactive dust into the stratosphere. On the other hand, nuclear blasts in the stratosphere would temporarily decrease the concentration of ozone and increase the extent of ultraviolet irradiation of the Earth’s surface causing a number of unfavourable effects on man and the ecosystem.
The use of the neutron bomb, i. c., a not so powerful nuclear weapon designed chiefly to put people out of action by affecting them with ionising radiation, rather than by blast or high temperature, would also result in considerable damage to the environment. Experts have calculated that an explosion of a one-kiloton neutron bomb at an attitude of 200 metres would destroy a major portion of microorganisms over 40 hectares, a multitude of insects over 100 hectares, amphibia and reptiles over 350 hectares, and also numerous species of unprotected mammals and birds over an area of 490 hectares.
The use of chemical and biological weapons could also result in very serious ecological consequences. Chemical dehydration of tropical regions with vulnerable soils, or of semi-arid regions already on the dangerous verge of desertification could causerapid soil erosion and irreversible consequences. Wide use of incendiary substances like napalm could lead to similar results. The experience of recent wars in Southeast Asia shows that even in areas characterized by ecological stability, it is possible to remedy the damage inflicted by fire and chemical substances only after a very long period of time.
An increase in the world stockpiles of weapons and in their destructive force presents an obvious danger to man and the environment. Even tests of these weapons could lead to serious ecological damage. The use of weapons agains the environment could result in the danger of long-term or even irreversible damage to soils, farming, and ecological balance.
I. Пояснения к тексту.
1. congenital врождённый
2. till (a plot) обрабатывать (участок земли)
3. get rid of избавиться (от)
4. be on the verge of быть на гране (чего- либо)
5. worsen ухудшать (ся)
6. considerable значительный, большой
7. hemisphere полушарие
8. on account of из-за, вследствие
9. foresee предвидеть, знать заранее
10. similar подобный, анологичный
11. inflict a damage наносить ущерб
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