Perevod_textov_ekologicheskoy_napravlennosti

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5. Language input.

Study the terms below and give their Russian equivalents

Resource – something such as land, minerals, or natural energy that exists in a country and can be used to increase its wealth;

Eg As the number of people increases, more pollution is generated, more habitats are destroyed, and more resources are used up.

Natural resources – all the land, minerals, natural energy, etc. that exist in a country; Eg The world’s supply of natural resources is finite, and in some regions particular resources are already scarce.

Fossil fuel – a fuel such as coal or oil that is produced by the very gradual decaying of animals or plants over millions of years;

Eg Environmentalists would like to see fossil fuels replaced by renewable energy sources;

Reserve - a supply of something that a country or an organization can use when they need to;

Eg Germany’s coal reserves were concentrated in a few large fields

Deposit – a layer of a mineral, metal, etc. that is left in soil or rocks through a natural process;

Eg Valuable new deposits of tin have been found in Bolivia

Waste– unwanted materials or substances that are left after you have used something; Eg A bill was introduced to clean up toxic wastes from local factories

Refuse (formal)/rubbish (esp BrE)/garbage (espAmE)/trash (AmE) - waste material, such as paper, empty containers, and food thrown away

Eg The District Council made a weekly collection of refuse.

6. Hot verbs.

Study these verbs and use them in the sentences of your own.

To dump / to tip – to get rid of something unwanted, especially by leaving it in a place where it is not allowed to be;

Eg Which is better, to incinerate the rubbish from our towns or to tip it into disused quaries?

Сва лива т ь (му со р, о т хо д ы и т .п.); вы гру ж а т ь, ра згру ж а т ь

To dispose – to get rid of something unwanted, especially something that is difficult to get rid of;

Eg The Earth like many organisms, can regulate its temperature, dispose of its wastes, and fight off disease.

Изба влят ься; у д а лят ь, у бира т ь, у н ичт о ж а т ь; вы во зит ь

To recycle - to put used objects or materials through a special process, so that they can be used again;

Eg We take all our bottles and newspapers to be recycled

Ут илизиро ва т ь; перера ба т ы ва т ь; по вт о рн о испо льзо ва т ь; во звра щ а т ь в о бо ро т (о т хо д ы про изво д ст ва )

To clean up – to make something completely clean and tidy;

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Eg. Investment in waste water treatment has helped to clean up rivers and lakes

Убира т ь, чист ит ь; о чищ а т ь; у лу чш а т ь со ст о ян ие (о кру ж а ю щ ей сред ы )

To purify – to remove dirty or harmful substances from something; Eg The liquid is purified by passing it through charcoal

О чищ а т ь

7. Translate the text.

Recycling.

Recycling is really just common sense, and until the “modern era”, it was a common household activity. Before the 1920s, 70% of US cities ran programs to recycle certain materials. During World War II, industry recycled and reused about 25 % of the waste stream. Because of concern for the environment, recycling is again on the upswing. The nation’s composting and recycling rate rose from 7.7% of the waste stream in 1960 to 17% in 1990. It’s currently up to around 30%.

The Garbage Crisis.

The world has changed a lot in the past century. More garbage is generated now than ever before. The Average American discards seven and a half pounds of garbage every day. This garbage goes mostly to landfills, where it’s compacted and buried. As the waste stream continues to grow, so will the pressures on our landfills, our resources, and our environment.

Recycling – an important part of the solution.

The more we recycle, the less garbage winds up in our landfills and incineration plants. By reusing aluminium, paper, glass, plastics, and other materials, we can save production and energy costs, and reduce the negative impacts that the extraction and processing of virgin materials has on the environment.

Interesting end products.

What gets recycled into what? Sometimes it’s exactly what you’d expect. Old corrugated boxes turn into new corrugated boxes. Newspapers? Some pulp, different news. Glass bottles into glass bottles. But some of the end products may surprise you. There are just a few examples of the thousands of products that are created using recycled materials that would otherwise wind up in our landfills. Glass beverage containers can be recycled over and over again. But they can also be used for other things you may not expect. Like roads. Marbles. Decorative tiles. Surfboards. And a host of other products and materials.

In 1995, the recycling of polyethylene bottles reached a new high. 34% of all the bottles produced were being recycled. These bottles are turned into everything from rugs to goggles, park benches and fences to fiber for filling ski jackets.

Steel and aluminium cans can be easily recycled for use in other steel and aluminium products. This not only conserves mineral resources, but the recycling process also uses about 75% less energy than using virgin materials.

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Extension

Text1

Uncertainty, Climate Change, and Adaptive Management

Introduction

Humanity’s transformation of the Earth has increased the concentration of greenhouse gases, thereby altering Earth’s climate. The potential consequences of climate change are interwoven with a huge variety of biogeophysical processes that complicate the analysis of policies designed to mitigate and adapt to climate change. In this paper, we explore how adaptive management can be used to grapple with the regional and global scientific, economic, and political uncertainties of climate change.

Climate change and its impacts

Atmospheric change

Climate change policy has focused upon the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. However, reorganizing society to reduce greenhouse gas emissions quickly will be difficult. Atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases will probably continue to increase in the near future. Existing concentrations of greenhouse gases are likely to alter climate, and future emissions will only add to that alteration. Although the extent of this alteration in uncertain, it could prove significant. Extreme impacts are likely in some regions.

Resilience

Walker and Steffen (1997) point out that global changes, such as biodiversity loss, hydrological modification, and the alteration of global biogeochemical cycles, will interact with climate change to alter ecosystems in complex ways across a broad range of scales. Ecological resilience, the ability of an ecosystem to persist despite disruption and change, depends upon the continuity of ecological processes. The impacts of global change threaten to reduce ecological resilience, producing ecosystems that are increasingly brittle and sensitive to disruption.

Ecological reorganization

Climate change affects species individually (Root 1993, Pitelka et al. 1997). Different species and populations migrate, establish, and become extinct at different rates. Climate change, therefore, will cause the dissolution of existing ecosystems and the formation of new ecosystems. Ecological collapses will probably eliminate some species entirely, and these species losses may cause the elimination of entire ecosystems. The Earth may lose cold-adapted systems such as arctic and alpine communities to warming, and low elevation islands to sea level rise. New ecosystems will form as a consequence of climate change, but the membership of these new systems will be drawn from the subset of existing species that can survive under the new conditions. Although climate change has occurred many times throughout

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Earth’s history, the ecological impacts of current climate alterations are amplified by other anthropogenically-driven global changes.

Walker and Steffen (1997) also note that the rate at which existing ecosystems dissolve will exceed that at which new assemblages form. Mortality of existing vegetation through processes such as insect outbreak, flooding, or fire – all processes projected to increases under climate change – will occur rapidly compared to the accumulation of vegetative structure in new ecosystems.

Climate and people

Humanity is threatened by both direct and indirect consequences of climate change. Unlike other species, humans have the ability to plan for the future and to invest in technology and learning to mitigate and adapt to future changes. Wealth, infrastructure, and political stability all contribute to a nation’s capacity to anticipate and respond to change. A poorly educated populace, limited physical infrastructure, degraded natural capital, or ineffective governance can all contribute to the vulnerability of a region to climate change. Unfortunately, some areas that are already vulnerable due to social and economic circumstances, such as small island states and arid tropics, are also predicted to experience larger than average impacts from climate change.

Text 2

A barrage of criticism

For the past century or so, governments and development agencies alike have been keen on dams. Built to store water and generate electricity, they are often emblems of national pride. And surely driving turbines from flowing rivers is a greener way to generate than burning coal, oil or gas? But now serious doubts are emerging. For the first time a comprehensive effort has been made to analyse the environmental, economic and social impacts of the world’s 45,000 large dams. The World Commission on Dams has spent two years gathering data on 1,000 of them, soliciting the views of governments and non-governmental groups. This week the result has been unveiled. The conclusion is bleak.

Dams make valuable economic contributions, of course: a third of countries depend on hydropower for over half of their electricity, and over a third of irrigated land depends on dams. Farmers benefit from cheap irrigation water which, in turn, subsidises much of the world’s food. But the overall costs of dams, to both man and nature, have never before been considered. The report concludes that dams’ impacts on ecosystems are “mostly negative”.

The building of dams is often destructive. It usually means clearing forests or other habitats in areas to be flooded. Water in reservoirs, especially in water-storage dams, becomes silted with vegetation washed off land upstream. As that rots, it emits carbon dioxide and methane, contributing to the greenhouse effect. How much is emitted is not known, but some estimates say reservoirs could account for more than a quarter of the “global-warming potential” of gases in the atmosphere. It was assumed that hydropower, by substituting for burning fossil fuels, would reduce

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emissions of greenhouse gases. In hot, tropical countries, where reservoirs appear to produce most gases, that claim now needs reassessing.

Two studies of a single hydropower project in Brazil show why that will not be easy. The first, in 1998, found that the massive (2,600 square km) Tucurui reservoir emitted 76 tonnes of methane per square km and 3,808 tonnes of carbon dioxide each year; but a second study last year put the figures at a mere five tones of methane and only 2,378 tonnes of carbon dioxide. On the first analysis it would have been cleaner to burn gas, oil or even coal for electricity; on the second, the dam is probably cleaner. Both analyses could even be correct, if gas emissions from reservoirs vary greatly.

There are other problems, too. Some large dams alter food cycles and downstream flows; some pollute rivers, remove nutrients and alter the water temperature. All these can affect the survival of plants, fish and animals. Reservoirs may serve as hosts for mosquitoes and diseases, including malaria that they spread. Blocked rivers disrupt the migration and breeding of fish, causing some species to become extinct.

Assessing the net benefits of dams requires far more attention to be paid to these difficulties. Nearly half the world’s rivers have at least one large dam; more are now being built in China, India, Turkey and elsewhere. Over $2 trillion has been invested, and as many as 80m people have been displaced by dams. Yet the projects have often proved unprofitable, slow to deliver energy or water, and prone to corruption. In poor countries, even when dams deliver as promised, the better-off often benefit most.

Will this barrage of criticisms improve the way dams are built? The involvement of the World Bank and industry in the report should ensure closer scrutiny of big dam projects, and help make the report’s recommendations more palatable to the private sector. But a decision to build a dam is often made for political reasons, to create jobs, or to benefit a particular group. So better information, or pressure from outsiders, may not help. At least the report offers a yardstick for measuring future failures.

Text 3

Фа кт о ры за грязн ен ияво зд у ха

К т окс ичес ким вещ ес т вам, предс т авл яю щ им опас нос т ь дл я ат мос феры, от нос ит с я цел ый ряд химичес ких с оединений, провоцирую щ их раки другие опас ные забол евания. Выброс ы подобных вещ ес т в с опровождаю т бол ьшинс т во

химчис т ки и авт омобил и, ис пол ьзую щ ие ос винцованныйбензин. П о с равнению с другими видами загрязнения, объемы выбрас ываемых в воздух химикат ов явл яю т с я с равнит ел ьно небол ьшими, однако их воздейс т вие наокружаю щ ую

кис л от нос т и водоемов и почв нас т ол ько, чт о л окал ьным экос ис т емам нанос ит с я непоправимыйвред.

Ещ е одним негат ивным пос л едс т вием с горания т опл ива явл яет с я с мог, образую щ ийс я пут ем химичес кой реакции между окс идами азот аи л ет учими

органов зрения и дыхания. К роме т ого, озон вреден и дл я рас т ений, т аккакв резул ьт ат е его воздейс т вия нас т енки кл ет окзамедл яет с я их рос т .

О дноокис ь угл ерода (угарный газ) выдел яет с я при непол ном с горании т опл ива. Э т от газ не имеет запаха, однако явл яет с я ядовит ым: при вдыхании он

ис т очники образования угарного газа– т ранс порт ные с редс т ва.

Э кс перт ы опас аю т с я, чт о т емпы загрязнения ат мос феры во вс ем мире пос т оянно рас т ут . П редпол агает с я, чт о выброс ы с ернис т ого газа и окс идов азот а, кот орые оказываю т негат ивныйэффект напочву и с ел ьс кохозяйс т венные

ис пол ьзуемых во вс ем мире т ранс порт ным с редс т в удвоит с я к2030 году и с ос т авит 1 мил л иард, чт о нес омненно от разит с я на с т епени загрязненнос т и воздуха. Бол ьшая час т ь рос т априходит с я наразвиваю щ иес я с т раны, где дол я нас ел ения, пол ьзую щ аяс я авт омобил ями, мож е т возрас т и к2020 году бол ее чем на200%.

Г лосса р ий

Вещ ес т ва, загрязняю щ ие ат мос феру – air pollutants

Очис т нойзавод – refinery

Ос винцованныйбензин – leaded petrol

Сернис т ыйгаз, диокс ид с еры – sulphur dioxide Серная кис л от а– sulphuric acid

Сухое ос аждение – dry deposition

А зот – nitrogen

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К ис л от ные ос адки – acid precipitation

Выс око коррозийные кис л от ы – highly corrosive acids К ис л от нос т ь , уровень кис л от нос т и – acidity

Л ет учий– volatile

О рганичес кие с оединения – organic compounds Ф от охимичес кийс мог – photochemical smog

О дноокис ь угл ерода(угарныйгаз)- carbon monoxide

Text 4

Гло ба льн о е по т еплен ие клима т а

с войс т вом задерживат ь т епл о, пос т упаю щ ее наЗемл ю , не вызывает с омнений, однако до с их пор неяс но, какие именно пос л едс т вия могут вызват ь эт и газы.

Сол нечная энергия учас т вует в формировании погодных ус л овий и кл имат аЗемл и. К роме т ого, онанагревает поверхнос т ь земного шара, кот орая,

т емперат уранаЗемл е был абы гораздо ниже чем с ейчас , аразл ичные формы жизни, извес т ные с егодня, был и бы невозможны. Бол ее т ого, бл агодаря газам, с оздаю щ им парниковый эффект , с редняя т емперат урапл анет ы, с ос т авл яю щ ая

с одерж ание угл екис л ого газав ат мос фере увел ичил ос ь прибл изит ел ьно на30%, концент рация мет анапревыс ил апрежние показат ел и бол ее чем в двараза, а с одерж ание окс идов азот авозрос л о на15%. Вс е эт и изменения с пос обс т вовал и увел ичению с пос обнос т и ат мос феры Земл и удерживат ь т епл о.

период, предшес т вую щ ий промышл енной револ ю ции, объемы выдел яемого угл екис л ого газа при разл ожении органичес ких с оединений находил ис ь в равновес ии с газом, погл ощ аемым наземными рас т ениями и мировым океаном. В с вязи с чел овечес кой деят ел ьнос т ью объемы угл екис л ого газазапос л едние нес кол ько с т ол ет ий значит ел ьно возрос л и. Работ а многих промышл енных

ат мос феру парниковых газов, ож идаемых в будущ ем, т аккакмногое завис ит от демографичес койс ит уации в мире, экономичес кого развит ия с т ран и появл ения

кот орых явл яет с я формирование научного прогнозирования в от ношении вышеперечис л енных факт оров.

Г лосса р ий

П арниковые газы/газы, с оздаю щ ие парниковыйэффект – greenhouse gases

О кс ид азот а– nitrous oxide

Сжигание (органичес кого т опл ива) – combustion

Разл ожение (зд.) – decomposition

О рганичес кие с оединения – organic matter Выброс (вредных вещ ес т в в ат мос феру) – release Выброс (газообразных от ходов) - emission

Н аземные рас т ения – terrestrial vegetation

Мес т о захоронения от ходов - landfill

Учебно е и зд а ни е

Кн яж ева Ел енаА л екс андровна

П ЕРЕВО Д ТЕК СТО В Э К О Л О ГИ Ч ЕСК О Й Н А П РА ВЛ ЕН Н О СТИ

Учебное пос обие дл я вузов

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