英语听力：适应气候变化

英语听力：适应气候变化

Adapting to Climate Change

Adapt To Change?

We know global warming is bad

：

The temperature of the

air on the Earth’s surface is projected to increase at a

rate more rapid than any temperature change that has taken

place in the last ten thousand years.

Since species have adapted to climate change in the past,

why can’t they simply adapt to these changes?

Thanks to ecosystem changes due to agriculture and

deforestation and pollution, many species are already

weakened to begin with. Plus, in the past, climate change has

happened slowly enough that many species had enough time to

shift the locations where they grow and reproduce. But the

current projected rate of surface temperature change would

require for plants to move at a rate of 3.5 miles per year.

(The fastest plant species only migrate at the rate of 1.3

miles a year.)

Pick Up And Move?

Though they’re not quite as rooted, animals cannot just

pick up and move to more inclement environs if their food

source can’t move with them. And it doesn’t help that all

of the different ways we use land means that the Earth is

pretty much a mosaic of different ecosystems rather than

larger, contiguous habitats.