21 Prepare a short presentation and design a Power Point slide following a plan:

• type of activity provided;

• necessary warnings (for example safety signs);

• necessary means of personal protection;

• additional instructions

WRITING

2 2 In order to avoid any accidents design a safety leaflet for your future laboratory (on your specialty). You can use the leaflet below for writing safety rules as a model. You should provide the following information:

• type of activity provided in this lab

• necessary warnings (for example safety signs)

• necessary means of personal protection

• additional instructions

CHECKLIST

Assess your progress in this unit. Tick () the statements which are true.

	I can recognize and name different safety signs.
	I know chemistry lab safety rules.
	I can talk about personal means of protection at the lab.

UNIT 13

RESOURCE SAVING

STARTING UP

1 Everybody knows that there are such natural resources as minerals, energy, land, water and biota. Take a look at the following pictures displaying natural resources (A-E) and match them with the names.

A ________________ B __________________ C __________________

D __________________ E _________________

2 Here’s a list of ideas to help to reduce our consumption. Skim the list and give your comments. You are welcome to expand this list if you have any energy or resource saving tips.

• Power down electrical equipment (computers, monitors, printers, multifunction machines, etc.) when not in use.

• Unplug unused equipment when practical.

• Use duplex printing as default on capable printers/copiers.

• Turn off your lights when you leave your office.

• Scan and email documents instead of copying or faxing.

• Turn down your thermostat during winter and up during summer. This tip is particularly useful when you will be out of your office for extended periods of time, like over the weekend or on vacation.

• Keep a recycle box in your office and next to copiers and printers; use it for non-confidential paper disposal. When it fills up, empty it into one of the building recycling containers.

http://facstaff.grad.uiowa.edu/Energy-Resource-Saving (17.10.2012)

READING

3 Before reading explain the meaning of the following statement “The less evaporation there is, the less rainfall there is and the whole system dries up”.

4 Scan the article and find answers for the questions.

• How many Earth’s resources do people consume nowadays? What are they?

• What is the result of this consumption?

• What are the most reasonable ways of solving the problem of ravening resources?

E arth suffers as we gobble up resources

ALMOST one-quarter of nature's resources are being gobbled up by a single species, and it's not difficult to guess which one. Based on figures for the year 2000, the most recent available, humans appropriate 24 per cent of the Earth's production capacity that would otherwise have gone to nature.

The result is a gradual depletion of species and habitats as we take more of their resources for ourselves. Things could get even worse if we grow more plants like palm oil and rapeseed for biofuels to ease our reliance on fossil fuels.

That is the message from a team led by Helmut Haberl of Klagenfurt University in Vienna, Austria. Haberl and colleagues analysed UN Food and Agriculture Organization data on agricultural land use in 161 countries covering 97,4 per cent of farmland. By comparing carbon consumption through human activity with the amount of carbon consumed overall, Haberl's team found that humans use some 15.6 trillion kilograms of carbon annually. Half was soaked up by growing crops. Another 7 per cent went up in smoke as fires lit by humans, and the rest was used up in a variety of other ways "Things could get even worse if we grow more plants like palm oil and rapeseed for biofuels to ease our reliance on fossil fuels" related to industrialisation, such as transport [Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).

Haberl says that the Earth can just about cope if we meet future needs by producing food more efficiently. This could be done by intensifying agriculture on roughly the same amount of land as we use now. But we're asking for trouble, he says, if we expand production of biofuels, as the only fertile land available is tropical rainforests.

"If we want full-scale replacement of fossil fuels by biofuels, this would have dramatic implications for ecosystems," says Haberl. He warns that some projections foresee four or fivefold increases in biofuel production. "This would at least double the overall amount of biomass harvested, which is about 30 per cent above ground at present, but would increase to 40 or 50 per cent to meet these biofuel targets," he says.

This would mean clearing what remains of the world's rainforests in countries such as Brazil and Argentina. As well as wiping out thousands of species, this would have devastating effects on the climate, he says. Unlike farmland, forests help to seed rainfall because they have high evaporation rates.

"The less evaporation there is, the less rainfall there is and the whole system dries up," he says. Andy Coghlan

7 July 2007/NewScientist/15