Vocabulary extension:

dispersion

breakdown

recycling

storage

sewage

fertilizer

depletion

shell mounds

rubble heaps

emit

noxious

fouled

decimating

concomitant

1. Translate:

1. The factory has been emitting black smoke from its chimneys, which is against the law. 2. Typhus fever decimated the school periodically. 3. The city authorities are concerned with the problem of the noxious wastes. 4. The storage of radioactive material has become a great problem today. 5. Chlorine is used in sewage treatment. 6. This exhausted soil needs fertilizing. 7. Recycling waste will sure contribute in environment protection. 8. Uncontrolled pollution is a serious breakdown between people and nature.

2. Use the Topical Vocabulary in answering the following questions:

1. What are the major environmental issues confronting human­ity today?

2. What is the global imperative for environment as you see it?

3. Why are many people concerned about ecology today? Why do we say that every man should be environment-conscious and environment-educated?

4. On what basis should the "man-na­ture "relationship function?

5. What are the steps undertaken by the governments (authorities) of many countries to protect envi­ronment?

6. What do you know about the practical results of the international cooperation in environmental protection?

7. How does the state control nature conservation and environmental pro­tection in our country?

8. What role should mass media play in en­vironmental protection?

9. Is there anything that an individual person can do about these problems?

10. How much does your country depend on nuclear power? Does it worry you?

11. What sort of waste do you recycle? Could you do more?

12. Is organic food just a fashion, or will it be the food of the future?

13. Would you ever join an environmental group like Greenpeace, or vote for a green party?

What Is Global Warming?

We call the result global warming, but it is causing a set of changes to the Earth's climate, or long-term weather patterns, that varies from place to place. As the Earth spins each day, the new heat swirls with it, picking up moisture over the oceans, rising here, settling there. It's changing the rhythms of climate that all living things have come to rely upon.

What will we do to slow this warming? How will we cope with the changes we've already set into motion? While we struggle to figure it all out, the face of the Earth as we know it—coasts, forests, farms and snow-capped mountains—hangs in the balance.

Greenhouse effect

The "greenhouse effect" is the warming that happens when certain gases in Earth's atmosphere trap heat. These gases let in light but keep heat from escaping, like the glass walls of a greenhouse.

First, sunlight shines onto the Earth's surface, where it is absorbed and then radiates back into the atmosphere as heat. In the atmosphere, “greenhouse” gases trap some of this heat, and the rest escapes into space. The more greenhouse gases are in the atmosphere, the more heat gets trapped.

Scientists have known about the greenhouse effect since 1824, when Joseph Fourier calculated that the Earth would be much colder if it had no atmosphere. This greenhouse effect is what keeps the Earth's climate livable. Without it, the Earth's surface would be an average of about 16◦C cooler. In 1895, the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius discovered that humans could enhance the greenhouse effect by making carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas.

Levels of greenhouse gases have gone up and down over the Earth's history, but they have been fairly constant for the past few thousand years. Global average temperatures have stayed fairly constant over that time as well, until recently. Through the burning of fossil fuels and other gas emissions, humans are enhancing the greenhouse effect and warming Earth.

Scientists often use the term "climate change" instead of global warming. This is because as the Earth's average temperature climbs, winds and ocean currents move heat around the globe in ways that can cool some areas, warm others, and change the amount of rain and snow falling. As a result, the climate changes differently in different areas.