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本文选自《经济学人》4月29期Leaders板块，难度不大。通过这一篇文章，我们将学到一下几个方面的内容：

1.      北极冰川融化和气候变暖的关系(1/2段)

2.      气候变暖的原理(3/4/5段)

3.      北极冰川融化的后果(6/7/8段)

4.      提出措施(9/10段)



The Arctic as it is known today is almost certainly gone

我们今天所熟知的北极几乎已经一去不复返了

On current trends, the Arctic will be ice-free in summer by 2040”

按照目前的趋势，到2040年，北极的夏天将再无冰川

• 注意一个介词搭配：on current trends照这样下去

外刊中还会经常遇见的一个搭配：按照...的标准，by the standards of...

名词+free 举个例子：无烟区smoke-free area

THOSE who doubt the power of human beings to change Earth’s climate should look to the Arctic, and shiver. There is no need to pore over records of temperatures and atmospheric carbon-dioxide concentrations. The process is starkly visible in the shrinkage of the ice that covers the Arctic ocean. In the past 30 years, the minimum coverage of summer ice has fallen by half; its volume has fallen by three-quarters. On current trends, the Arctic ocean will be largely ice-free in summer by 2040.

那些质疑人类改变地球气候的巨大能力的人应该看看北极的现状，并且感到不寒而栗。没有必要专门查阅研究关于气温和大气中二氧化碳浓度的记录。覆盖北冰洋的冰川不断缩小，全球气候变暖的过程一目了然。在过去的三十年里，夏季冰川的最低覆盖率下降了50%，体积下降了75%。按照目前的趋势发展下去，到2040年，北冰洋基本上将再也没有夏季冰川。

• Pore的本义是毛孔，气孔；做动词是研究，打量的意思

Pore over认真研究  eg. She is always poring over her books她总在埋头看书。

原文让我联想到另一个外刊常用表达：look no further than 只需…

举个例子 We need to look no further than common sense to disprove his statement. 我们只需用常识就能推翻他的看法。

• The process在翻译的时候要指代明确，如果只处理成这个过程，容易让人不知所云。

Climate-change sceptics will shrug. Some may even celebrate: an ice-free Arctic ocean promises a shortcut for shipping between the Pacific coast of Asia and the Atlantic coasts of Europe and the Americas, and the possibility of prospecting for perhaps a fifth of the planet’s undiscovered supplies of oil and natural gas. Such reactions are profoundly misguided. Never mind that the low price of oil and gas means searching for them in the Arctic is no longer worthwhile. Or that the much-vaunted sea passages are likely to carry only a trickle of trade. The right response is fear. The Arctic is not merely a bellwether of matters climatic, but an actor in them .

气候变暖怀疑论者对此不以为然。有些人甚至可能拍手叫好：没有冰川的北冰洋意味着打通了一条亚洲太平洋沿岸和欧洲美洲大西洋沿岸的航运捷径，还有可能勘探到地球上尚未开采的五分之一的石油和天然气资源。这样的看法大错特错。可别忘了，石油和天然气价格如此之低，在北冰洋进行勘探这些资源已不再划算。还有被大肆鼓吹的海上航道可能只会带来微不足道的货流量。对这一现状的正确回应是感到害怕。北冰洋不仅仅是气候状况的风向标，也是其中的起作用因素。

• Will的替代词：往好的发面发展：promise 例如本文  译为将会带来

往坏的方面发展：threaten 将会引起 后都可接to do sth

• Much-vaunted 的同义词：much-hyped/advertised 大肆鼓吹的，夸大的

• Bellwether 同义词：herald/harbinger/forerunner 先导，兆头，风向标

• 行文多用四字格

The current period of global warming that Earth is undergoing is caused by certain gases in the atmosphere, notably carbon dioxide. These admit heat, in the form of sunlight, but block its radiation back into space, in the form of longer-wavelength infra-red. That traps heat in the air, the water and the land. More carbon dioxide equals more warming—a simple equation. Except it is not simple. A number of feedback loops complicate matters. Some dampen warming down; some speed it up. Two in the Arctic may speed it up quite a lot.

地球目前正在经历的全球气候变暖是大气中的一些气体造成的，尤其是二氧化碳。这些气体以太阳光的形式吸收热量，但是阻碍了这些气体以更长波长的红外线辐射回太空。这就将热量聚集在了空气，水和大地上。二氧化碳越多意味着变暖的程度更大———这是—个简单的等式。但背后的原理可不简单。一系列的反馈回路让情况更加复杂。其中一些能够抑制气候变暖，另一些却会加快气候变暖。北冰洋的两个反馈回路可能会大大加快气候变暖的步伐。

• Dampen 本义弄湿，引申为抑制，控制，减弱 常见搭配：dampen one’s enthusiasm打消兴致/ dampen down
• 总结 表达抑制,阻碍的词：dampen/stifle/hamper/stunt/deter/impede/hinder/drag/hold back

One is that seawater is much darker than ice. It absorbs heat rather than reflecting it back into space. That melts more ice, which leaves more seawater exposed, which melts more ice. And so on. This helps explain why the Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the planet. The deal on climate change made in Paris in 2015 is meant to stop Earth’s surface temperature rising by more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels. In the unlikely event that it is fully implemented, winter temperatures over the Arctic ocean will still warm by between 5° and 9°C compared with their 1986-2005 average.

首先，海水比冰川颜色深得多。海水吸收了热量而不是将热量反射到太空中去。这就使得更多的冰川融化，带来更多海水，进而融化更多的冰川。以此类推，就不难解释为何北冰洋比地球其他地区气候变暖的速度都要快。2015年在巴黎达成的关于气候变暖的协定旨在把全球平均气温较工业化前水平升高幅度控制在2℃内。就算这一协定得到全面落实，和1986-2005年平均气温相比，北冰洋的冬季气温仍然会上升5° 到 9°C。

• In the unlikely event that从句：万一，假如（表示可能性极低）

The second feedback loop concerns not the water but the land. In the Arctic much of this is permafrost. That frozen soil locks up a lot of organic material. If the permafrost melts its organic contents can escape as a result of fire or decay, in the form of carbon dioxide or methane (which is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. This will speed up global warming directly—and the soot from the fires, when it settles on the ice, will darken it and thus speed its melting still more.

第二个反馈回路和海洋无关，而和大地有关。北冰洋大部分都是永久冻土层。冰冻的土壤锁住了大量了有机物质。如果永久冻土层融化了，那么里面的有机物质就会由于火或者腐烂，以二氧化碳或甲烷（甲烷是一种比二氧化碳更强大的温室气体）的形式释放出来。这就直接加快了气候变暖，而且大火中的烟尘一旦落到冰川上，会让冰川变得更黑，于是更进一步加快了冰川融化。

A warming Arctic could have malevolent effects. The world’s winds are driven in large part by the temperature difference between the poles and the tropics.”

“If the Arctic heats faster than the tropics, this difference will decrease and wind speeds will slow—as they have done, in the northern hemisphere, by between 5 and 15% in the past 30 years. Less wind might sound desirable. It is not. One consequence is erratic behaviour of the northern jet stream, a circumpolar current, the oscillations of which sometimes bring cold air south and warm air north. More exaggerated oscillations would spell blizzards and heatwaves in unexpected places at unexpected times.

北极地区气候变暖会带来恶虐的影响。风向在很大程度上是由极地地区和热带地区的温差决定的。如果北极比热带地区变暖的速度快，温差就会缩小，风速放缓。在过去三十年里，北半球风速已经减缓了5%到15%。风速变小听起来不无可取之处，事实却不然。导致的后果之一是北部高空急流的异常，这是一种环极圈的气流，它的振动有时将冷空气带到南部，将暖空气带到北部。振动幅度过大会引发暴风雪和热浪，发生的时间和地点都无法预料。

• 这一段讲两个词根：mal-不好的

malnutrition营养不良 malpractice玩忽职守，不法行为 malfunction 发生故障

• Circum-周围，环绕

 circumspect 小心谨慎的，考虑周密的  (circum+spect看→到处看→小心谨慎)

circumnavigate 环游世界 (circum+navigate航行)

Circumvent避免，回避；包围，环绕 (circum+vent走→绕圈走→回避)

circumscribe受制于，限制 (circum+scribe写→规定范围→限制)

• 熟词僻义spell :意味着 spell disaster/end/success/opportunity for sb

Spell out提出

Ocean currents, too, may slow. The melting of Arctic ice dilutes salt water moving north from the tropics. That makes it less dense, and thus less inclined to sink for the return journey in the ocean depths. This slowing of circulation will tug at currents around the world, with effects on everything from the Indian monsoon to the pattern of El Niño in the Pacific ocean.

同样，洋流也会减速。北极冰川融化稀释了从热带低地区流向北部的海水，海水密度变小，在回流的途中就不太可能沉入海洋深处。海水循环的减慢会影响到世界各地的洋流，从印度洋季风到太平洋厄尔尼诺现象，不一而足。

• Tug:拖拽，拉 在这里引申为影响，意思是海水循环的减慢也会让洋流减慢

• 背景知识补充：厄尔尼诺现象：厄尔尼诺（西班牙语：El Niño），又称圣婴现象，与另一现象南方涛动合称为ENSO。是秘鲁、厄瓜多尔一带的渔民用以称呼一种异常气候现象的名词。 主要指太平洋东部和中部的热带海洋的海水温度异常地持续变暖，使整个世界气候模式发生变化，造成一些地区干旱而另一些地区又降雨量过多。

The scariest possibility of all is that something happens to the ice cap covering Greenland. This contains about 10% of the world’s fresh water. If bits of it melted, or just broke free to float in the water, sea levels could rise by a lot more than today’s projection of 74cm by the end of the century. At the moment, the risk of this happening is hard to assess because data are difficult to gather. But loss of ice from Greenland is accelerating.

可能出现的最坏情况和格陵兰岛冰盖有关。覆盖格陵兰岛的冰盖中含有全世界淡水资源的10%。要是其中的一部分开始融化，或者释放出来漂浮在海洋中，那么到本世纪末，海平面上涨的幅度将大大超出今天所做出的74厘米的预测。目前，这种情况发生的风险很难评估，因为很难收集到相关数据。但是格陵兰岛冰盖减少的步伐正在加快。

What to do about all this is a different question. Even if the Paris agreement is stuck to scrupulously, the amount of carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere, together with that which will be added, looks bound eventually to make summer Arctic sea ice a thing of the past. Some talk of geoengineering—for example, spraying sulphates into the polar air to reflect sunlight back into space, or using salt to seed the creation of sunlight-blocking clouds. Such ideas would have unknown side-effects, but they are worth testing in pilot studies.

我们怎样应对现状又是另一个问题了。即使巴黎协定严格落到实处，大气已有的二氧化碳数量，加上未来可能增加的数量，最终还是会让北极夏季冰川退出历史舞台。有人提出地球工程—举个例子，把硫酸盐撒播到极地的空气中，让它将太阳光反射回太空，或者用盐来制造阻碍阳光的云层。这些想到会带来未知的副作用，但是值得作为试点研究进行测试。

• Stick to=be committed to 坚持做某事
• Make sth a thing of the past/make sth obsolete

The hard truth, however, is that the Arctic as it is known today is almost certainly gone. Efforts to mitigate global warming by cutting emissions remain essential. But the state of the Arctic shows that humans cannot simply undo climate change. They will have to adapt to it.

然而，残酷的现实是我们今天所熟知的北极已一去不复返了。通过减少温室气体排放来减缓气候变暖仍至关重要。但是北极的现状已然表明人类无法消除气候变暖，只能努力去适应。

• Mitigate: minimize the effect of sth减缓

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