-
Section B
Directions: In this
section, you are going to read a passage with ten
statements
attached to it. Each
statement contains information given in one of the
paragraphs.
Identify the paragraph from
which the information is derived.
You may choose a paragraph
more than once. Each paragraph is marked with a
letter. Answer the questions by marking
the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2.
A University
Degree No Longer Confers Financial Security
A
．
Millions of
school-leavers in the rich world are about to bid
a tearful goodbye
to their parents and
start a new life at university. Some are inspired
by a pure love of
learning. But most
also believe that spending three or four years at
university--and
accumulating huge debts
in the process--will boost their chances of
landing a
well-paid and secure job.
B
．
Their elders
have always told them that education is the best
way to equip
themselves to thrive in a
globalised world. Blue-collar workers will see
their jobs
outsourced and automated,
the familiar argument goes. School dropouts will
have to
cope with a life of cash-
strapped (
资金紧张的
) insecurity.
But the graduate elite will
have the
world at its feet. There is some evidence to
support this view. A recent study
from
Georgetown University's Centre on Education and
the Workforce argues
that
证书
) is almost
always worth it.
Educational
qualifications are tightly correlated with
earnings: an American with a
professional degree can expect to
pocket $$3.6m over a lifetime; one with merely a
high- school diploma can expect only
$$1.3m. The gap between more- and
less-
educated earners may be widening. A study in 2002
found that someone with a
bachelor's
degree could expect to earn 75% more over a
lifetime than someone with
only a high-
school diploma. Today the disparity is even
greater.
C
．
But is the past
a reliable guide to the future? Or are we at the
beginning of a
new phase in the
relationship between jobs and education? There are
good reasons for
thinking that old
patterns are about to change--and that the current
recession-driven
downturn
(
衰退
) in the demand for
Western graduates will morph
(
改变
) into
something structural. The strong wind
of creative destruction that has shaken so many
blue-collar workers over the past few
decades is beginning to shake the cognitive elite
as well.
D
．
The supply of
university graduates is increasing rapidly. The
Chronicle of
Higher Education
calculates that between 1990 and 2007 the number
of students
going to university
increased by 22% in North America, 74% in Europe,
144% in
Latin America and 203% in Asia.
In 2007 150m people attended university around the
world, including 70m in Asia. Emerging
economies
—
specially China--
are pouring
resources into building
universities that can compete with the elite of
America and
Europe. They are also
producing professional- services firms snch as
Tata Consulting
Services and Infosys
that take fresh graduates and turn them into
world-class
computer programmers and
consultants. The best and the brightest of the
rich world
must increasingly compete
with the best and the brightest from poorer
countries who
are willing to work
harder for less money.
E. At the same time, the demand for
educated labor is being reconfigured
(
重新
配置
) by
technology, in much the same way that the demand
for agricultural labor
was reconfigured
in the 19th century and that for factory labor in
the 20th. Computers
can not only
perform repetitive mental tasks much faster than
human beings. They can
also empower
amateurs to do what professionals once did: why
hire a flesh-and-blood
accountant to
complete your tax return when Turbotax (a software
package ) will do
the job at a fraction
of the cost? And the variety of jobs that
computers can do is
multiplying as
programmers teach them to deal with tone and
linguistic ambiguity.
l economists, including Paul Krugman,
have begun to argue that
post-
industrial societies will be characterized not by
a relentless rise in demand for the
educated but by a great
machines and high-level job growth
slows. David Autor, of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT), points
out that the main effect of automation in the
computer era is not that it destroys
blue-collar jobs but that it destroys any job that
can
be reduced to a routine. Alan
Blinder of Princeton University, argues that the
jobs
graduates have traditionally
performed are if anything more
low-wage
ones. A plumber or lorry-driver's job cannot be
outsourced to India. A
computer
programmer's can.
G. A university education is still a
prerequisite for entering some of the great
industries, such as medicine, law and
academia (
学术界
), that provide
secure and
well-paying jobs. Over the
20th century these industries did a wonderful job
of raising
barriers to entry--sometimes
for good reasons (nobody wants to be operated on
by a
barber) and sometimes for self-
interested ones. But these industries are
beginning to
bend the roles. Newspapers
are fighting a losing battle with the blogosphere.
Universities are replacing tenure-track
professors with non-tenured staff. Law firms
are contracting out routine work such
as
to a lawsuit) to computerized-search
specialists such as Blackstone Discovery. Even
doctors are threatened, as patients
find advice online and treatment in Walmart's new
health centers.
Malone of MIT argues that these
changes--automation, globalizafion
and
deregulation--may be part of a bigger change: the
application of the division of
labor to
brain-work. Adam Smith's factory managers broke
the production of pins into
18
components. In the same way, companies are
increasingly breaking the production
of
brain-work into ever tinier slices. TopCoder chops
up IT projects into bite-sized
chunks
and then serves them up to a worldwide workforce
of freelance coders.
changes will undoubtedly improve the
productivity of brain-workers.
They
will allow consumers to sidestep
(
规避
) the
professional industries that have
extracted high rents for their
services. And they will empower many brain-workers
to
focus on what they are best at and
contract out more tedious tasks to others. But the
reconfiguration of brain-work will also
make life far less cozy and predictable for the
next generation of graduates.
46. The creative destruction that has
happened to blue-collar workers in the past also
starts to affect the cognitive elite.
47. For the next generation of
graduates, life will be far less comfortable and
predictable with brain-work
reconfigured.
48. After computers are
taught by programmers to deal with tone and
linguistic
ambiguity, the variety of
jobs they can do will increase dramatically.
49. Most school-leavers believe that,
despite the huge debts they owe, going to
university will increase their chances
of getting secure jobs with high salaries.
50. Modern companies are more likely to
break the production of intellectual work
into ever tinier slices.
51.
A scholar of Princeton University claims that the
jobs traditionally taken by
graduates
are more likely to be offshored than low-wage
ones.
52. The income gap between an
American professional degree holder and an
American high-school graduate shows
income is closely related to educational
qualifications.
53. The
changes in the division of brain-work will save
consumers some high service
fees the
professional organizations charge.
54.
Some students have always been told that. to
achieve success in a globalised
world,
it is most advisable to equip themselves with
education.
55. Emerging economies are
providing a lot of resources to build universities
to
compete with the elite of America
and Europe.
Section C
Directions: There are 2 passages in
this section. Each is followed by some questions
or unfinished statements. For each of
them there are four choices marked A
),B
．
,
C
．
and D ). You
should decide on the best choice and mark the
corresponding letter on
Answer Sheet 2
with a single line through the centre.
Section B
Directions: In this section, you are
going to read a passage with ten statements
attached to it. Each statement contains
information given in one of the paragraphs.
Identify the paragraph from which the
information is derived.
You may choose a paragraph more than
once. Each paragraph is marked with a
letter. Answer the questions by marking
the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2.
Addicted,
Really?
A
．
Mental-health specialists disagree over
whether to classify compulsive
online
behaviour as addiction---and how to treat it.
Craig Smallwood, a disabled
American
war veteran, spent more than 20,000 hours over
five years playing an
online role-
playing game called
behind the game,
accused him of breaking the game's rules and
banned him, he was
plunged into
depression, severe paranoia
(
偏执
) and hallucinations
(
幻想
). He spent
three weeks in hospital. After that, he
sued NCsoft for fraud and negligence
(
过失
),
demanding over $$ 9m in damages and
claiming that the company acted negligently by
failing to warn him of the danger that
he would become
B. But does it make sense to talk of
addiction to online activity? Mental-health
specialists say three online behaviors
can become problematic for many people: video
games, pornography (
色情作品
) and
messaging via e-mail and social networks.
But there is far less agreement about
whether any of this should be called
addiction
C
．
Some mental-health specialists wanted
the fifth version of psychiatry's
bible, the
Disorders
全面修订
). The
American Medical
Association endorsed (
赞成
)
the idea in 2007, only to
backtrack(
放弃
) days later. The American
Journal of Psychiatry called Internet
addiction a
drafting group
made its decision: lnteruet addiction would not be
included as a
necessary.
D
．
Skeptics say there is nothing uniquely
addictive about the Internet. Back in
2000, Joseph Walther, a communications
professor at Michigan State University,
co-wrote an article in which he
suggested, tongue in cheek, that the criteria used
to
call someone an Internet addict
might also show that most professors were
to academia
(
学术活动
). He argued that other
factors, such as depression, are the real
problem.
He stands by that view today.
that lnternet use is a cause rather
than a consequence of some other sort of
issue,
says.
underlying
clinical issues, is definitely unwise.
E. Others disagree.
and therapist who has worked on
Interact addiction since 1994. She insists that
the
Internet, with its powerfully
immersive environments, creates new problems that
people must learn to
navigate(
应对
). Otherwise, the
changing lifestyle will affect the
development of the society.
one disputes that online
habits can turn toxic. Take South Korea, where
widespread broadband means that the
average high-school student plays video games
for 23 hours each week. In 2007 the
government estimated that around 210,000
children needed treatment for Internet
addiction. In 2010 newspapers around the globe
carried the story of a South Korean
couple who fed their infant daughter so little
that
she starved to death. Instead of
caring for the child, the couple spent most nights
at an
Internet cafe, sinking hours into
a role- playing game in which they raised, fed and
cared for a virtual daughter. And
several South Korean men have died from
exhaustion after marathon, multi-day
gaming sessions.
G. The South Korean government has
since asked game developers to adopt a
gaming curfew
(
宵禁
) for children, to
prevent them playing between midnight and 8
a.m. At the same time, it has also
opened more than 100 clinics for Internet
addiction
and sponsored an
H. But compulsive behaviour is not
limited to garners. E-mail or web-use behaviours
can also show signs of addiction.
Getting through a business lunch in which no one
pulls out a phone to check their
messages now counts as a minor miracle in many
quarters. A deluge
(
泛滥
) of self-help books,
most recently
Sherry Turlde, a social
scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, offer
advice on how to
unplug (
去除障碍
).
raphy is hardly new,
either, but the Internet makes accessing it much
easier than ever before. When something
can be summoned in an instant via
broadband, whether it is a game world,
an e-mail inbox or pornographic material, it is
harder to resist. New services lead to
new complaints. When online auction sites first
became popular, talk of
complain to her now about addiction to
Facebook--or even to
playable only
within Facebook.
ent centres have popped up around the
world with the popularity of
online
games. In 2006 Amsterdam's Smith & Jones facility
billed itself as
and, currently, the
only residential video-game treatment program in
the world
America the reSTART Internet
Addiction Recovery Program claims to treat
Internet
addiction, gaming addiction,
and even
military-style
K. Yet many people like
feeling permanently connected. As Arikia Millikan,
an
American blogger, once put it,
day, I would, and I think a lot of my
peers would do the, same.
Internet
specialist at Michigan State University, doesn't
believe her. In his research on
college
students, he found that most sense when they are
self-control
病态的
)
problem, he adds. For most
people,
Internet use
46. According to Joseph
Walther, it is unwise to emphasize the treatment
of Internet
addiction instead of
seeking for potential clinical issues.
47. As online games become popular,
treatment centres have sprung up all over the
world.
48. After playing
online games continuously for days, several South
Korean men were
exhausted to death.
49. Smallwood sued NCsoft and claimed a
huge compensation for fraud and its
negligence of warning him of the danger
of game addiction.
50. In South Korea,
a gaming curfew for children was adopted to
prevent children
playing after
midnight.
5l. Internet addiction still
needs to be further studied though the DSM-V did
not
categorize it as a
52.
An lnternet specialist found that most college
students could realize when they are
going too far and restore self-control.
53. According to mental-health
specialists, for many people, video games,
pornography and messaging via e-mail
and social networks can become problematic
online behaviors.
54. People
regard it as a small miracle if nobody takes out a
phone to read the
messages at a
business lunch.
55. Kimberly Young
insists that people must learn to deal with new
problems brought
about by the Interact.
Section B
Directions: In this
section, you are going to read a passage with ten
statements
attached to it. Each
statement contains information given in one of the
paragraphs.
Identify the paragraph from
which the information is derived.
You may choose a para'graph
more than once. Each paragraph is marked with a
letter. Answer the questions by marking
the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2.
Green Growth
A
．
The
enrichment of previously poor countries is the
most inspiring
development of our time.
It is also worrying. The environment is already
under strain.
What willhappen when the
global population rises from 7 billion today to
9.3 billion
in 2050, as
demographers(
人口统计学家
) expect,
and a growing proportion of these
people can'afford goods that were once
reserved for the elite? Can the planet support
so much economic activity?
B .Many policymakers adopt
a top-down and Western-centfic approach to such
planetary problems. They discuss
ambitious regulations in global forums, or look to
giant multinationals and well-heeled
(
富有的
) NGOs to set an
example. But since
most people live in
the emerging world, it makes sense to look at what
successful
companies there are doing to
make growth more sustainable.
C
．
A new study by the World Economic Forum
(WEF) and the Boston
Consulting Group
(BCG) identifies 16 emerging-market firms that
they say are
turning eco-consciousness
into a source of competitive advantage. These
highly
profitable companies (which the
study calls
using greenery to reduce
costs, motivate workers and forge relationships.
Their
home-grown ideas will probably be
easier for their peers to copy than anything
cooked up in the West.
D
．
The most outstanding quality of these
companies is that they turn
limitationsof resources, labor and
infrastructure) into opportunities. Thus, India's
Shree Cement, which has tong suffered
from water shortages, developed the world's
most water-efficient method for making
cement, in part by using air-cooling rather
than water-cooling. Manila Water, a
utility in the Philippines, reduced the amount of
water it was losing, through wastage
and illegal tapping, from 63% in 1997 to 12% in
2010 by making water affordable for the
poor.
Broad
Group, a Chinese maker of air conditioners, taps
the waste heat from
buildings to power
its machines. Zhangzidao Fishery Group, a Chinese
aquaculture
(
水产养殖
) company,
recycles uneaten fish feed to fertilize crops.
g green goals
is a common practice. Sekem, an Egyptian food
producer,
set itself the task of
reclaiming (
开垦
) desert land
through organic farming. Florida
Ice &
Farm, a Costa Rican food and drink company, has
adopted strict standards for
the amount
of water it can consume in producing drinks.
firms measure
themselves by their greenery, too. Florida Ice &
Farm, for
example, links 60% of its
boss's pay to the triple bottom line of
profit
green ideas. Natura, a
Brazilian cosmetics company, gives bonuses to
staff who find
ways to reduce the
firm's impact on the environment. Masisa, a
Chilean forestry
company, invites
employees to
consumers. Woolworths, a
South African retailer, claims that many of its
best green
ideas have come from staff,
not bosses.
emerging markets it is hard for companies to stick
to one specialism,
because they have to
worry about so many wider problems, from humble
infrastructure to unreliable supply
chains. So the sustainability champions seek to
shape the business environment in which
they operate. They lobby
(
游说
) regulators:
Grupo Balbo, a Brazilian organic-sugar
producer, is working with the Brazilian
government to establish a certification
system for organic products. They form
partnerships with governments and NGOs.
Kenya's Equity Bank has formed an
alliance with groups such as The
International Fund for Agricultural Development to
reduce its risks when lending to
smallholders. Natura has worked with its suppliers
to
produce sustainable packaging,
including a new
cane.
H. The firms also work hard
to reach and educate poor consumers, often
sacrificing short-term profits to
create future markets. Masisa organizes local
carpenters into networks and connects
them to low-income furniture buyers. Broad
Group has developed a miniature device
for measuring air pollution that can fit into
mobile phones. Jain Irrigation, an
Indian maker of irrigation systems, uses dance and
song to explain the benefits of drip
irrigation to farmers who can't read. Suntech, a
Chinese solar-power company, has
established a low- carbon museum to celebrate
ways of reducing carbon-dioxide
emissions.
Rich became green, or green
became rich?
could quibble (
争辩
)with BCG's
analysis. Phil Rosenzweig of
Switzerland's IMD business school has
argued that management writers are prone to
discovered some eternal
principle of good management. The fact that some
successful
companies have embraced
greenery does not prove that greenery makes a firm
successful. Some firms, having
prospered, find they can afford to splurge (
挥霍
) on
greenery.
Some successful firrns pursue greenery for public-
relations purposes. And
for every
sustainable emerging champion, there are surely
100 firms that have
prospered by
belching (
喷出
)
fumes into the air or pumping toxins into rivers.
eless, the
central message of the WEF-BCG study--that some of
the best
emerging-world companies are
combining profits with greenery--is
thought-provoking. Many critics of
environmentalism argue that it is a rich-world
luxury: that the poor need adequate
food before they need super-clean air. Some even
see greenery as a rich-world conspiracy
(
阴谋
): the West grew rich by
industrializing (and polluting ), but
now wants to stop the rest of the world from
following suit. The WEF-BCG report
demonstrates that such fears are overblown.
Emerging-world companies can be just as
green as their Western rivals. Many have
found that, when natural resources are
scarce and consumers are cash-strapped (
资金
短缺的
), greenery can be a
lucrative(
利润丰厚的
) business
strategy.
46. An air-conditioner
manufacturer uses the waste heat from buildings to
supply its
machines with power.
47. Many critics of environmentalism
hold the view that greenery is a rich-world
luxury because that's not what the poor
people badly want.
48. Workers of the
sustainability champions are motivated to bring
forward green
ideas.
49. It
is meaningful to study what successful companies
in the emerging world are
doing to
achieve more sustainable growth, since most people
live there.
50. It's difficult for
companies in emerging markets to keep focusing on
one specific
problem because they have
many wider problems to worry about.
51.
Although some successful firms have embraced
greenery, it doesn't mean that
greenery
will lead to the success of a firm.
52.
It will probably be easier for companies to follow
the home-grown ideas than
those
invented in the West.
53. It has been
found that greenery can be profitable when natural
resources are scarce
and consumers are
short of cash.
54. Sekem, which
produces food in Egypt, set a goal to reclaim
desert land through
organic farming.
55. To create future markets, the firms
also make effort to reach and educate poor
consumers, often at the cost of short-
term profits.
Section B
Directions: In
this section, you are going to read a passage with
ten statements
attached to it. Each
statement contains information given in one of the
paragraphs.
Identify the paragraph from
which the information
is
derived.
You
may choose a paragraph more than once. Each
paragraph is marked with a
letter.
Answer the questions by marking the corresponding
letter on Answer Sheet 2.
How Your
Language Affects Your Wealth and Health
A
．
Does the language we speak determine
how healthy and rich we will be?
New
research by Keith Chen of Yale Business School
suggests so. The structure of
languages
affects our judgments and decisions about the
future and this might have
dramatic
long-term consequences.
B. There has been a lot of research
into how we deal with the future. For
example, the famous marshmallow (
棉花糖
)studies of Walter
Mischel and
colleagues showed that
being able to resist temptation is predictive of
future success.
Four-year-old kids were
given a marshmallow and were told that if they do
not eat
that marshmallow and wait for
the experimenter to come back, they will get two
marshmallows instead of one. Follow-up
studies showed that the kids who were able
to wait for the bigger future reward
became more successful young adults.
C
．
Resisting our impulses for immediate
pleasure is often the only way to attain
the outcomes that are important to us.
We want to keep a slim figure but we also want
that last slice of pizza. We want a
comfortable retirement, but we also want to drive
that dazzling car, go on that dream
vacation, or get those gorgeous shoes.
Some people are better at
delaying gratification (
满足
) than others. Those
people
have a better chance of accumulating wealth and
keeping a healthy life style.
They are
less likely to be impulse buyers or smokers, or to
engage in unsafe sex.
D
．
Chen's recent findings suggest that an
unlikely factor, language, strongly
affects our future-oriented behavior.
Some languages strongly distinguish the present
and the future. Other languages only
weakly distinguish the present and the future.
Chen's recent research suggests that
people who speak languages that weakly
distinguish the present and the future
are better prepared for the future. They
accumulate more wealth and they are
better able to maintain their health. The way
these people conceptualize the future
is similar to the way they conceptualize the
present. As a result, the future does
not feel very distant and it is easier for them to
act
in accordance with their future
interestS.
E.
Different languages have different ways of talking
about the future. Some
languages, such
as English, Korean, and Russian, require their
speakers to refer to the
future
explicitly (
明确地
). Every
time English-speakers tall about the future, they
have to use future markers such as
Mandarin, Japanese, and German, future
markers are not obligatory
(
强制性的
). The
future is often talked about similar to
the way present is talked about and the meaning
is understood from the context. A
Mandarin speaker who is going to go to a seminar
might say
such as English
constantly remind their speakers that future
events are distant. For
speakers of
languages such as Mandarin future feels closer. As
a consequence,
resisting immediate
impulses and investing for the future is easier
for Mandarin
speakers.
analyzed individual-level
data from 76 developed and developing
countries. This data includes people's
economic decisions, such as whether they saved
any money last year, the languages they
speak at home, demographics
(
人口统计资
料
), and cultural factors such as
He also analyzed individual-level data
on people's retirement assets, smoking and
exercising habits, and general health
in older age. Lastly, he analyzed national-level
data that inchides national savings
rates, country GDP and GDP growth rates, country
demographics, and proportions of people
speaking different languages.
G. People's savings rates
are affected by various factors such as their
income,
education level, age, religious
connection, their countries' legal systems, and
their
cultural values. After those
factors were accounted for, the effect of language
on
people's savings rates turned out to
be big. Speaking a language that has obligatory
future markers, such as English, makes
people 30 percent less likely to save money
for the future. This effect is as large
as the effect of unemployment. Being
unemployed decreases the likelihood of
saving by about 30 percent as well.
H. Similar analyses showed
that speaking a language that does not have
obligatory future markers, such as
Mandarin, makes people accumulate more
retirement assets, smoke less, exercise
more, and generally be healthier in older age.
Countries' national savings rates are
also affected by language. Having a larger
proportion of people speaking languages
that does not have obligatory future markers
makes national savings rates higher.
a more
practical level, researchers have been looking for
ways to help
people act in accordance
with their long-term interests. Recent, findings
suggest that
making the future feel
closer to the present might improve future-
oriented behavior.
For instance,
researchers recently presented people with
renderings of their future
selves made
using age-progression algorithms
(
算法
) that forecast how
physical
appearances would change over
time. One group of participants saw a digital
representation of their current selves
in a virtual mirror, and the other group saw an
age-morphed version of their future
selves. Those participants who saw the age-
morphed version of their future selves
allocated more money toward a hypothetical
savings account. The intervention
brought people's future to the present and as a
result
they saved more for the future.
's research
shows that language structures our future-related
thoughts.
Language has been used before
to alter time perception with surprising effects.
Ellen
Langer and colleagues famously
improved older people's physical health by simple
interventions including asking them to
talk about the events of twenty years ago as if
it they were happening now. Talking
about the past as if it were the present changed
people's mindsets and their mindsets
affected their physical states. Chen's research
points at the possibility that the way
we talk about the future can shape our mindsets.
Language can move the future back and
forth in our mental space and this might have
dramatic influences on our judgments
and decisions.
46. Usually, preventing
ourselves from enjoying immediate pleasure
impulsively is
the only way to achieve
the outcomes that are important to us.
47. The structure of languages
influences us when we are making a judgment or
decision about the future.
48. Speaking a language that has
obligatory future markers and being unemployed
nearly share the same percentage of
decreasing the likelihood of saving.
49. According to the well-known
marshmallow studies, people who can resist
temptation tend to be successful in the
future.
50. People who speak languages
like English are more likely to feel that the
future
events are distant.
51. National savings rates of countries
are influenced by language as well.
52.
In Chen's recent research, people who speak
languages in which the present and
the
future are weakly distinguished are more prepared
for the future.
53. Recent findings
show that it is possible to improve future-
oriented behavior
through making the
future feel closer to the present.
54.
Through simple interventions, Ellen Langer and
colleagues made the physical
health of
the older people changed for the better.
55. Chen made an analysis of
individual-level statistics from 76 developed and
developing nations.
Section B
Directions: In this section, you are
going to read a passage with ten statements
attached to it. Each statement contains
information given in one of the paragraphs.
Identify the paragraph from which the
information is derived.
You may choose a paragraph more than
once. Each paragraph is marked with a
letter. Answer the questions by marking
the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2.
Robot
Management
A.
Robots have been the stuff of science fiction for
so long that it is surprisingly
hard to
see them as the stuff of management fact. A Czech
playwright, Karel Capek,
gave them
their name in 1920 (from the Slavonic word for
writer, Isaac Asimov, confronted them
with their most memorable dilemmas.
Hollywood turned them into
superheroes and supervillains. When some film
critics drew up lists of Hollywood's 50
greatest good guys and 50 greatest baddies, the
only character to appear on both lists
was a robot, the Terminator.
B
．
It is time for management thinkers to
catch up with science-fiction writers.
Robots have been doing auxiliary jobs
on production lines since the 1960s. The world
already has more than lm industrial
robots. There is now an acceleration in the rates
at
which they are becoming both
cleverer and cheaper: an explosive combination.
Robots are
learning to interact with the world around them.
Their ability to see
things is getting
ever closer to that of humans, as is their
capacity to ingest
information and act
on it. Tomorrow's robots will increasingly take on
delicate,
complex tasks. And instead of
being imprisoned in cages to stop them colliding
with
people, they will be free to
wander.
C
．
America's armed forces have blazed a
trail here. They now have no fewer
than
12,000 robots serving in their ranks. Peter
Singer, of the Brookings Institution, a
think-tank (
智囊团
),
says mankind's 5,000-year monopoly on the fighting
of war is
breaking down. Recent
additions to the battlefield include tiny
reconnaissance
(
侦查
) missions and giant
also working on the EATR, a robot that
fuels itself by eating whatever biomass
(
生物
量
) it finds
around it.
D
．
But
the civilian world cannot be far behind. Who
better to clean sewers or
suck up
nuclear waste than these remarkable machines? The
Japanese have made
surprisingly little
use of robots to clear up after the recent
earthquake, given their
world
leadership in this area. They say that they had
the wrong sort of robots in the
wrong
places. But they have issued a global call for
robotic assistance and are likely
to
put more robots to work shortly.
E. As robots advance into
the service industries they are starting to look
less like
machines and more like living
creatures. The Paro (made by AIST, a Japanese
research agency) is shaped like a baby
seal and responds to attention. Honda's robot,
ASIMO, is humanoid and can walk, talk
and respond to commands.
now executives have largely ignored
robots, regarding them as an
engineering rather than a management
problem. This cannot go on: robots are
becoming too powerful and ubiquitous
(
无处不在的
). Companies may need
to
rethink their strategies as they
gain access to these new sorts of workers. Do they
really need to outsource production to
China, for example, when they have clever
machines that work ceaselessly without
pay? They certainly need to rethink their
human-resources policies--starting by
questioning whether they should have
departments devoted to purely human
resources.
first issue is how to manage the robots
themselves. Asimov laid down the
basic
rule in 1942: no robot should harm a human. This
rule has been reinforced by
recent
technological improvements: robots are now much
more sensitive to their
surroundings
and can be instructed to avoid hitting people. But
the Pentagon's plans
make all this a
bit more complicated: many of its robots will be,
in essence, killing
machines.
H. A second
question is how to manage the homo side of homo-
robo relations.
Workers have always
worried that new technologies will take away their
livelihoods,
ever since the original
Luddites' fears about mechanised looms. That worry
takes on a
particularly intense form
when the machines come with a human face: Capek's
play
that gave robots their name
depicted a world in which they initially brought
lots of
benefits but eventually led to
mass unemployment and discontent. Now, the arrival
of
increasingly humanoid automatons in
workplaces, in an era of high unemployment, is
bound to provoke a reaction.
, companies
will need to work hard to persuade workers that
robots are
productivity-enhancers, not
just job- eating aliens. They need to show
employees that
the robot sitting
alongside them can be more of a helpmate than a
threat. Audi has
been particularly
successful in introducing industrial robots
because the carmaker
asked workers to
identify areas where robots could improve
performance and then
gave those workers
jobs overseeing the robots. Employers also need to
explain that
robots can help preserve
manufacturing jobs in the rich world: one reason
why
Germany has lost fewer such jobs
than Britain is that it has five times as many
robots
for every 10,000 workers.
two principles
--don't let robots hurt or frighten people--are
relatively
simple. Robot scientists are
tackling more complicated problems as robots
become
more sophisticated. They are
keen to avoid hierarchies
(
层级
) among rescue-robots
(because the loss of the leader would
render the rest redundant). So they are using
game theory to make sure the robots can
communicate with each other in egalitarian
(
平等
) ways. They
are keen to avoid duplication between robots and
their human
handlers. So they are
producing more complicated mathematical formulae
in order
that robots can constantly
adjust themselves to human intentions.
This suggests that the
world could be on the verge of a great management
revolution: making robots behave like
humans rather than the 20th century's preferred
option, making humans behave like
robots.
46. Tomorrow's robots will be
free to move around rather than being locked up in
cages so as not to hurt people.
47. It is not easy for people to regard
robots as management stuff, for the later are
mostly seen in science fictions.
48. Robots appear more like living
creatures as they enter into the service industry.
49. According to the Pentagon's plans,
many of its robots will essentially become
killing machines.
50. The
Japanese didn't use a lot of robots to clear up
after the recent earthquake,
considering their world leadership in
the robot field.
51. Companies should
show their workers that robots can be more of a
helper rather
than a threat to them.
52. The fact that more and more human-
like robots are used in workplaces will surely
arouse reaction in a time of high
unemployment.
53. Robots, who are
considered as an engineering instead of a
management problem,
have been largely
neglected by executives.
54. Scientists
are trying to enable robots to constantly adjust
themselves to people's
intenlions.
55. The example that Germany has lost
fewer manufacturing jobs than Britain shows
that robots can help preserve
manufacturing jobs in the rich world.
Section B
Directions: In this section, you are
going to read a passage with ten statements
attached to it. Each statement contains
information given in one of the paragraphs.
Identify the paragraph from which the
information is derived.
You may choose a paragraph more than
once. Each paragraph is marked with a
letter. Answer the questions by marking
the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2.
The Heart
Assoeiation’s Junk Science Diet
A.A
recent Cambridge University anal ysis of 76
studies involving more than
650
，
000 people
concluded,“The current evidence does not clearly
support guidelines
that low consumption
of total Saturated fats
．
“Yet
the American Heart
Association(AriA.
，
in its most recent dietary
guidelines
，
held fast to the
idea that we
must A.l eat
low
．
fat diets for optimal
heart health
．
It?s
a stance that—
at the very
best
—
is
controversiA.
，
and at worst
is dead wrong
．
As a
practicing cardiologist(
心脏
病学
家
)for more than three
decades
，
I agree with the
latte
—it?s dead
wrong
．
Why
does
the AHA cling to recommendations that fly in the
face of scientific evidence?
I discovered was both
eye
．
opening and
disturbin9
．
The AHA not only
ignored A.l the other risk factors for
heart disease
，
but it
appointed someone with ties
to Big Food
and bizarre scientific beliefs to lead the
guideline-writing paneHust the
type of
thing?that undermines the public?s confidence in
the medical community
．
The
AHA guidelines warrant that saturated
fat make up no more than 5 to 6 percent of
daily cal ories for adults because this
will lowe
r“bad”cholesterol(
胆
固醇
)
．
And
，
for
those people who need
blood pressure control
，
the
guidelines suggest lowering
sodium(salt)intake to no more than a
teaspoon(2
，
300
mg)daily
．
Despite many other
known risk factors for heart
disease
，
salt and fat
were
，
astonishingly,the only
two
considered by the AHA panel writing
the guidelines
．
There are
many other recognized
risk factors the
AHA ignored
，
including blood
sugar level
，
low“good”cholest
erol
，
insulin(
胰岛素<
/p>
)levels
，
and body
weight
—
an of these are
influenced by diet
．
fact
，
most people who have
heart attacks don?t have elevations in bad
cholesterol
．
They
are much
more likely to have metabolic
syndrome(
新陈代谢综合
征
)
—
a condition that puts you
at high risk for diabetes and heart
disease
．
Interestingly
enough
，
blood
triglycerides(
甘油三脂
)do not go
up with eating fat
—
they go
up if you
eat a diet high in processed
grains
，
starches
，<
/p>
and
sugar
．
Unfortunately for the
proponents of high-carbohydrate(
糖类
)diets
，
high
blood triglycerides are a major risk
factor for heart
disease
．
In
addition
．
low
fat
／
high carb diets lower
protective“good”cholesterol and raise
insulin
．
These
diets are involved in the development of
diabetes
．
which is a powerful
risk
factor for developing heart
disease
．
Heart
Cheek Program?s contribution
writers of the
20 13 statin guidelines based their
recommendations on
studies that looked
at the reduction in the risk of events like heart
attacks in people
treated with
statins
．
compared to people
on a placebo(
安慰剂
)
．
The AHA dietary
guidelines
do not cite any diet studies that looked at
whether following a specific diet
lowered the risk of developing heart
events
—
yet they are giving
dietary
advice
．
Why?There
might be two plausible
reasons
．
One is the AHA's
moneymaking“Heart Check
Program
．
”The second is the
conflict of interest of Rob
ert
Ecke
—
the co-chair
of the panel that wrote the
guidelines
．
．
five
percent of these“heart ”foods—
over 400
of them
—
are
meat
：
92 are processed
meats
—
which have been shown
to have either neutrA. or negative
effects on heart
health
．
Even more problematic
are the foods containing added
sugar
．
The AHA
recommends that women consume less
than
6 teaspoons(1 00 calories)of sugar a day and less
than 9 teaspoons(1 50
caories)for
men
．
Yet there are items that
get the nod of approvA. from the Heart
Check program despite being near or at
the sugar limit
．
1ike Bruce?s
Yams Candied
Sweet Potatoes and Choice
Steak
．
F. Until this year,Heart
Check approved many foods with trans-
fats
，
which raise
bad cholesterol and lower good
cholesterol
，
among other
harmful effects on
，
like
increasing
inflammation(
发炎
)and the
laying down of calcium in arteries(
动脉
)
．
the dietary
guidelines
，
the AHA Heart
Check Program appears to address
only
the effect of foods on cholesterollevel and blood
pressure
．
Meanwhile
，
since the
1
970s
，
our yearly sugar
consumption has increased quickly with the
incidence
of diabetes and
obesity
．
This brings us to
Dr
．
Robert
H
．
Eck
el
，
the co-chair of the
Working Group
．
He is a
consultant for
Foodminds
．
which
specializes“in food
，
beverage
，
nutrition
，
health and
wellness
．
”Foodminds works with more than 30 leading
food
，
beverage
，
and nutrition
to offer a“one
stop shop of…consulting…to guide food and beverage
companies in
navigating the
complexities around the upcoming FDA Nutrition
Facts label
overhaul
．
”In
other words
．
Foodminds is a
lobbying firm for“Big
Food
．
”
Creationist?s
coming
H. And then there is this
：<
/p>
Dr
．
Eckel describes
himself as“a scientist and
professing
six
．
day creationist and a
member of the technicA. advisory board of the
I
nstitute for Creation
Research…”Many scientists are
religious
．
111is is not to
question
Dr
．
Eckel?s religious
beliefs
．
but to question his
ability to think
．
He believes
there is scientific proof that the world was
created in six
days and mat evolution
does not exist
．
This should
at least raise eyebrows when the
co-
chair of an influential panel charged with giving
sound dietary
advice has a financiA.
conflict of interest and proselytizes for beliefs
that are
anti
．
sci
entific
．
American people should be
able to trust that only impartiA. scientists write
guidelines
．
We
should be confident that those experts are not
working to advance
corporate interests
and that they do not espouse beliefs that are well
outside the
scientific
mainstream
．
An avowed
creationist who consults for a food lobby hardly
seems an appropriate choice to fulfill
these criteria
．
For the last
several decades
，
the
AHA has promoted a
low
．
fat
higll
．
carbohydrate diet as a
cornerstone of heart
health
．
It has
taken a very public position that saturated fats
are a major driver of heart
disease
risk and the mounting tide of evidence that this
is dead wrong must put it in a
very
uncomfortable position
．
And
yet a fundamental requirement of science--as
opposed to propaganda--is that when
evidence that contradicts a hypothesis is
replicated over and over
again
，
that hypothesis must
be abandoned
．
J. The idea that eating
high amounts of saturated fat causes hardening of
the
arteries
—
the
so
．
called“diet
-he
art hypothesis
—
deserves to
be iettisoned along with
other
discredited belief
systems
．
Creationism comes to
mind
．
Will the AHA step up to
the plate?
46
．
It is ftm that
blood triglyeerides won?t rise when you eat
fat,but go up with eating
other sugar
and starches
．
47
．
The processed
meats are proved to be harmful more or less to our
heart health.
48
．
Many other
known risk factors for heart disease have been
overlooked by the
AHA
panel
．
except for salt and
fat
．
49
．
It does not
aim to query the religious faith of Dr
．
Eckel
，
but his
capability to
ponder
scientifically
．
50
．
At
best
．
the idea held by AHA
that we must A.l eat low
．
fat
diets for optimA. heart
is a
controversiA. stance
，
while
at worst
，
it is dead
wrong
．
51
．
Many foods
approved by Heart Check would be harmful to our
body health
．
52
．
A hypothesis
must be iettisoned when it clashes with the
convincing evidence
．
53
．
Since the
1970s
．
our annually sugar
accommodation has rocketed with the
occurrence of diabetes and
obesity
．
54
．
The view that
high intake of saturated fat could result in
sclerosis of artery should
be discarded
with other untrustful
beliefs
．
55
．
The AHA
dietary guidelines do not quote any diet
researches that can tell us
whether a
specific diet can decrease the risk of heart
disease
．
Section B
Directions: In this section, you are
going to read a passage with ten statements
attached to it. Each statement contains
information given in one of the paragraphs.
Identify the paragraph from which the
information is derived.
You may choose a paragraph more than
once. Each paragraph is marked with a
letter. Answer the questions by marking
the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2.
World Must
Adapt to Unknown Climate Future
is still great
uncertainty about the impacts of climate
change
，
according
to the latest report from the
Intefgovernmental Panel on Climate
Change
，
released
today
．
So if we
are to survive and prosper, rather than trying to
fend off specific
threats like
cyclones
，
we must build
flexible and resilient(
有弹性的
)
societies
．
?s report is the second of
three instal
ments(
分期连载
)of the IPCC?s fifth
assessment of
climate change
．
The first
instalment
，
released last
year,covered the
physical science of
climate change
．
It stated
with increased certainty that climate
change is
happenin9
，
and that it is the
result of humanity?s g
reenhouse gas
emissions
．
The new
report focuses on the impacts of climate change
and how to adapt
to
them
．
The third
instalment
，
on how to cut
greenhouse gas
emissions
，
comes out in
April
．
latest report
backs off from some of the predictions made in the
previous
IPCC
report
，
in
2007
．
During the final
editing process
．
the authors
also retreated from
many of the more
confident projections from the final
draft
，
leaked last
year
．
The
IPCC now
says it often cannot predict which specific
impacts of climate
change
—
such as
droughts
，
storms or
floods
——
will hit particular
places
．
d
，
the
IPCC focuses on how people call adapt in the face
of
uncertainty,arguing that we must
become resilient against diverse changes in the
climate
．
“The
natural human tendency is to w
ant
things to be clear and
simple
．
”says
the
report?s co
-chair Chris Field of the
Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford
，
Califomia
．
“
And one of the messages that doesn?t just come
from the IPCC
，
it comes
from history,is that the future doesn?t
ever turn
out the way you think it will
be
．
”That
means
，
Field
adds
，
that?'being prepared
for a wide range of possible futures is iust
always smart”
．
New Scientist
breaks down what is new in the
report
，
and what it means
for humanity?s efforts to cope with a
c
hanging
climate
．
A companion
article
，
“How
climate change will affect where you
live”
，
highlights some of the
key impacts that
different regions are
facing
．
What has changed in
the new IPCC report?
essence
，
the
predictions are intentionally
vaguer
．
Much of the firlner
language from the 2007 report about
exactly what kind of weather to
expect
，
and how
changes witl affect
people
，
has been replaced
with more cautious
statements
．
The
scale and timing of many regional
impacts
，
and even the form of
some
，
now appear
uncertain
．
example
，
the 2007 report
predicted that the intensity of cyclones over Asia
would increase by 10to 20 per
cent
．
The new report makes no
such
claim
．
Simila
rly,the last report estimated that climate change
would force up to a
quarter of a
billion Africans into water shortage by the end of
this decade
．
The new
report avoids using such firm
numbers
．
report has even watered
down many of the more confident predictions that
appeared in the lcaked
drafts
．
References
to“hundreds of millions”of p
eople being
affected by rising sea levels have been
removed from the summary,as have statements
about the impact of warmer temperatures
on crops
．
“I think it's gone
back a bit
，
”says
Jean Palutikof of Griffith University
in Brisbane
，
Queensland
，
Australia
，
w
ho worked
on the 2007
report
．
“That may be a good
thing
．
In the fourth [climate
assessment]we
tried to do things that
weren?t really possible and the fifth has sort of
rebalanced the
whole
thing
．
”
So do we know
less than we did before?
really,says Andy Pitman of the
University of New South Wales in
Sydney
,Australia
．
It is just more
rigorous language
．
“Pointing
to the sign of the
change
，
rather
than the precise magnitude of the
change
，
is scientifically
more
defensible
，
”he
says
．
also know more about
what we don?t know,says David Karoly at
the
University of
Melbourne
．
“There is now a
better understanding of uncertainties in
regional climate proj ections at
decadal timescales(
时标
)
．
”
Are we
less confident about all the impacts of climate
change?
quite
．
There are still plenty
of confident predictions of impacts in the
reponv
—
at least
in the draft chapters that were lcaked last
year,and which are
expected to be
roughly the same when they are released later this
week
．
These include
more rain in parts
ofAfrica
，
more heatwaves in
southem Europe
，
and more
frequent
droughts in Australia(see“How
climate change will affect where you
live”)
．
It also
remains clear that the seas are
rising
．
How do we prepare in
cases in which there is
low confidence
about the effects of climate change?
?s exactly what this report
deals with
．
In many
cases
，
the uncertainty is a
matter of
magnitude
，
so the choices are
not hard
．
“It doesn?t really
matter if the car
hits the wall at 70
or 80 kilometres an hour,”says
Karoly
．
“You should
still wear your
seat
belt
．
”So when it comes to
sea
．
1evel rise or
heatwaves
，
the uncertainty
does not
change what we need to
do
：
build sea
walls
，
use efficient cooling
and so forth
．
in some
cases
——
such as African
rainfall
，
which could go up
or
down
——
the
models are not giving us great
advice
．
so all we know is
that things will
change
．
“We are
not certain about the precise nature of regional
change
，
but we are
absolutely certain there are going to
be profound changes in many
regions
，
”says
Pitman
．
Even
then
，
there are things we can
do that will always help
．
A
big one is
getting people out of
poverty
．
The report says
poverty makes other impacts worse and
many suggested adaptations are about
alleviating it
．
The IPCC
suggests giving
disadvantaged groups
more of a voice
，
helping them
move when they need to and
strengthening social safety
nets
．
?s
more
，
all countries should
diversify their
economies
，
rather than
relying on a few main sources of income
that could flood or blow ovel Countries
should also find ways to become less
vulnerable to the current climate
variability
．
That
means improving the way they govem resources like
water,the report
says
．
short
，
we must become more
resilient
．
That would be wise
even if the
climate was
stable
．
Our current
infrastructure often cannot deal with the current
climate
，
says
Karoly,pointing to events like the recent UK
floods
．
“We don?t have a
resilient system now,even in extremely
well developed
countries
．
”
46
．
Focusing on
the clue of climate change instead of the severity
of climate effects is
scientifically
more reasonable
．
47
．
IPCC?s new
report has removed some of the predictions that
appeared in the
former one released
in2007
．
48
．
One of the
lessons both IPCC and history has taught us is
that future never
appears as you expect
it to be
．
49
．
The IPCC?s
latest report has weakened many firmer projections
written in the
leaked
drafts
．
50
．
The first of
IPCC?s three instalments has focused on the
current climate conditions
and the main
reason for those conditions
．
51
．
The most
important thing for us to do is to get people
rich
．
52
．
Sometimes the
uncertainty is just about the extent of climate
effects
，
thus the
choices
．
of what
we should doisquite easy
．
53
．
Countries must
make their economies varied and improve the way of
controlling
the recourses in order to
beRer deal with climate
change
．
54
．
The new IPCC
report has replaced some more confident statements
from the 2007
report with more careful
expressions
．
55
．
There are
still many of firm statements about the climate
effects in the new
report
，
which are generally
the same as they were in the draft
chapters
．
Section
B
Directions:
In this section, you are going to read a passage
with ten statements
attached to it.
Each statement contains information given in one
of the paragraphs.
Identify the
paragraph from which the information is derived.
You may choose
a paragraph more than once. Each paragraph is
marked with a
letter. Answer the
questions by marking the corresponding letter on
Answer Sheet 2.
Being Objective on Climate
Change
week
，
Craig
Rucker,a climate-change skeptic and the executive
director
of a nonprofit organization
called the Committee for a Constructive
Tomorrow(CFACT)
，
tweeted a
quotation supposedly taken from a 1922 edition of
the
Washington
Post
：
“Within a few years it
is p
redicted due to ice melt the sea
will rise
＆
make most coastal
cities uninhabitable
．
”The
intent
，
of
course
，
was to poke fun at
current headlines about climate
change
．
?s organization is a member
ofthe Cooler Heads
Coalition
，
an umbrella
organization operated by the
Competitive Enterprise
Institute
，
a nonprofit that
prides
itself on its opposition to
environmental ists
．
Rucker
himself is part of a network of
bloggers
，
op-cd
writers
，
and policy-shop
executives who argue that climate change is
either a hoax or all example of left-
wing hysteria
．
Surfacing old
newspaper clips is
one of their
favorite games
．
They also
make substantive arguments about climate
policy,but the sniping may be more
effective
．
There is no
stronger rhetorical tool than
ridicule
．
this
case
，
Ruckcr?s ridicule seems
misplaced
．
After spending a
few minutes
poking around
online
，
1 was able to find
both the Washington Post article and the
longer SourCe material that it came
from
—
a weather report issued
by the U
．
S
．
consul
in
Bergen
，
Norway,and sent to
the State Department on october 1
0
，
1
922
．
The report
didn?t say anything about coasts being
inundated
．
This isn?t
surprising
．
Scientists wete
smart back
then
，
too,and they knew that
melting sea ice wouldn?t appreciably raise
sea levels
．
any
more than a melting ice cube raises the level of
water in a glass
．
ultimately
corrected his tweet once commenters pointed out
the
misquote
．
Through
Twitter,he informed me that he had taken the line
from a
Washington Times
op
—
ed by Richard
Rahn
，
a senior fellow at the
Cato
Institute
．
When I
contacted Rahn?s office
．
a
press representative acknowledged that
Rahn had copied the quote from other
bloggers and columnists
；
the
fabricated
sentence appears in articles
at reason
．
corn and texasgopv
ote
．
corn
．
< br>The fabricated line
seems to have
been inserted around
2011
．
but the original
article has been circulating
online
since 2007
．
E. The statement about
rising sea levels aside
，
1
922 really was a strange period
in the
Svalbard archipelago
．
the
area described by the weather
report
．
The islands lie
halfway between Norway and the North
Pole,at a latitude that puts them several
hundred miles farther north than
Barrow,alaska
．
“The Arctic
seems to be warming
up
．
”the report
read
．
In August of that
year,a geologist near the island of Spitsbergen
sailed as far north as eighty-one degre
es
．
twenty
．
nine minutes in ice-free
water
．
This
was
highly unusual
．
The previous
several summers had likewise been
warrn
．
Seal
populations had moved farther
north
，
and formerly unseen
stretches of coast were
now
accessible
．
are we to take from this
historical evidence?A central tenet for Rucker
and his colleagues is mat today?s
sea
．
ice
retreat
。
warming surface
temperatures
，
and
similar observations are short-lived
anomalies of a kind that often happened in the
past
—
and that
overzealous scientists and gullible media are
quick to drum up crises
where none
exist
．
Favorite examples
include numerous newspaper articles from the
nineteen
．
seventies
that predicted the advent of a new ice
age
．
In
fact
．
it's possible to
find articles from nearly every decade
of the past century that seem to imply
information about the climate that
turned out to be premature or
wrong
．
1922 article has been
quoted repeatedly by Rucker?s
comrades
-in-arms
since its
2007 rebirth in the Washington
Times
．
For nearly that
long
，
scientists have
been
objecting
．
Gavin
Schmidt
，
a climate modeler
and the deputy director of the
NASA
Goddard Institute for Space
Studies
，
points out that what
was an anomaly in
1922 is now the
norm
：
the waters near
Spitsbergen are clear of ice at the end of every
summer
．
More
important
，
long-term
temperature and sea-ice records indicate that the
dramatic sea-ice retreat in the early
nineteen
．
twenties was short-
lived
．
It also
occurred locally around
svalbard
—
the unusual
conditions
didn?t even encompass the
whole Norwegian
Sea
，
let alone the rest of
the Arctic
．
H. 0ver the
weekend
，
after retracting his
previous tweet
，
Rucker posted
a link to
a blog item about a different
article
．
this one a 1932 New
York Times story
．
The
eighty-year-old headline
reads
，
“The Next Great Deluge
Forecast By Science
：
Melting
Polar Ice Caps to Raise the Level of
the Seas and Flood the
Continents
．
”That one
sounded juicy,and
，
indeed
，
this time the text
was correct
：
that really is
what the
headline
said
．
Ironically,the lcad
researcher cited in the piece was a German
scientist
named Alfred Wegener,who has
sometimes been considered a hero of climate-change
deniers for a completely different
reason
．
Wegener is known for
proposing the
phenomenon of continental
drift starting around the First Wbrid War,The idea
was
ridiculed before gaining acceptance
in the nineteen-sixties
，
once
ample evidence had been
amassed
．
Wegener?s lifc
story,then
，
is used to
support the
idea that the small number
of researchers in the field who downplay the risk
of
anthropogenic climate change will
one day prevail
．
reality,the potential for
anthropogenic global warming was being discussed
earlier than continental
drift
．
and took even longer
to gain wide acceptance
．
The
versatile Professor Wegener was a
geophysicist and polar researcher who spent much
of his career studying meteorology in
Greenland
，
and trying to
unlock the secrets of
the Earth?s
past
．
His elevated place in
the current climate-change debate is
abstracted from
history
．
any
case
，
it?s
not
clear that the bloggers linking to the 1932
article read much
beyond the
headline
．
Thc article does
discuss a collapse of the ice sheets that would
raise sea levels by more than a hundred
feet
—
but it says that event
lies thirty to forty
thousand years in
the future
．
There?s nothing
wrong with examining old newspaper
articles for clues about climate
conditions in the
past
．
Legitimate climate
researchers