509
9/4/2023 (#15 this year)
Good job! You managed to survive1 your tests and the heat. Boy2, it has been hot
recently. I don’t know how you studied when it was that hot. My brain melted and I
couldn’t learn anything new. Haha. I think we are going to have to get used to this,though. As the global average temperature3 slowly warms up, we will have more andmore hot days. I think that in ten years we will be longing for4 the days when it never
got higher than 36℃. I wouldn’t be surprised if we start to get temperatures over 40℃
in the next decade. I wish there was something I could do, but I don’t know what. We
need to act together as a global community.
9 differences

Last week’s answer

Something you didn’t know about Loch Ness:
1. “Loch” is a Scottish word that means “lake”.
2. It is called Loch Ness because it is fed by the River Ness.
3. It is 37 km long, has an area of 56 km2, and is 230 m deep at its deepest point.
4. There is an artificial island5 in the middle of the loch called Cherry Island. It is anartificial island that was built during the Iron Age6.
5. The water is not very clear because it contains a lot of peat7.
6. I went there once with my family. My Dad and Grandad caught rainbow trout8 in theloch that they barbecued. My brother and I played in a giant field of bluebells 9. I havenever seen so many bluebells in my life.

Largest Hunt for Nessie
The largest ever hunt
for Nessie, the Loch Nessmonster took place thisweek. Loch Ness is a large
lake in Scotland. It is very
deep and for a long timepeoplehave
been
convinced that a monster
lives in the lake. A huge
tourist industry has sprungup around it. Everybody has
a different idea of what the monster could look like. Some people think it could
be an enormous eel10, other people think it might be a dinosaur that got cutoff when the seas shrank and cut Loch Ness off from the sea. People have been
looking for the monster in the lake for over a hundred years. The story of themonster began over a thousand years ago, but it only really became popularwhen newspapers started looking for sensationalistic11 stories to sell copies.
Since then, the number of sightings has increased. Every photograph evertaken of Nessie has been shown to be a hoax or a dog carrying a stick, butpeople still believe there is a monster hidden in the lake. In the 1990s, a boatwith sonar equipment scanned all of the bottom of the lake and didn’t findanything. Last Saturday and Sunday, over 300 people went to the lake to havea look for Nessie.
They had boats, asubmarine, cameras,
and they livestreamed
the whole invent.
They were very eagerto find proof, but they
didn’t find anything.
Maybe Nessie heard
them coming and hid
in a cave.
1.survive 生き残る 2.boy わあ 3.global average temperature 世界平均温度 4.long for ほ
しがる 5.artificial island 人工島 6.Iron Age 鉄器時代 7.peat 泥炭 8.rainbow trout ニジ
マス 9.bluebell ブルーベル 10.eel ウナギ 11.sensationalistic 扇情的なWorld record
This is an interesting world record. NASA has several transporters that they use to movetheir rockets and mobile launchers to and from the launchpad. They are called crawlertransporters. They are enormous vehicles, and crawler-transporter 2 has been given theworld record for the heaviest self-poweredvehicle. It weighs 2,721 tons, which is the sameas 13 747 planes! It is 40 m long, 35 m wide, and8 m high. It can only move at about 1 km perhour, so it takes about 7 hours to get the rocket
and launcher into place. It can carry up to 8,000
tons and it uses 300 liters of gasoline perkilometer. The tracks (wheels) on each corner
are adjustable1 because the rocket must staylevel2. The crawler uses a laser to adjust thetracks and stay perfectly level. 30 engineers,technicians3, and drivers travel on the vehicle tooperate it. Both crawlers were made in 1965
and, apart from a few updates, they are nearly
60 years old. I would love to see one of these inaction and then watch a launch of one of therockets.

If you don’t like the road you arewalking, start paving another one.
4– Dolly Parton

One thing we can do to help the environment
I’m starting a new series. It was so hot last week that I think we havebroken the planet. Every week I’m going to try to find one thing we can doto help with the environment. It seems like such a big problem, and I feellike I can’t do anything to help as an individual. But of course I can. There
are many things we can do. I’m going to try to list one of them a week.
#1 Cut food waste4.
Around the world, people waste 2.5 billion tons of food every year. 30% of
all food that is produced is thrown away, which works out as an average of
100 kg per person per year. This is much higher in developed countries5 than
it is in developing countries6. We have enough food that we can waste it.
How much food do you throw away? Why is that a problem? If we throw
away 30% of all our food, that means we need to produce 30% more foodthan we really need. Food production has an enormous impact on theenvironment.
・It is responsible for 25% of all of the greenhouse gases7 emitted everyyear. Almost half of that comes from animals, especially cows. Large areasof rainforest have been cut down to make space for grazing8 beef cattle. The
rest is transport, packaging, food processing, and growing the food for theanimals to eat.
・Food production uses a huge amount of water. 1 kg of beef needs 15,415
liters of water. 1 kg of rice needs 2,497 liters of water. 1 apple needs 822
liters. If you throw an apple away because it is old, that’s nearly 1,000 litersof water.
・ Growing only one crop on a farm can destroy the ecosystem9. The
fertilizers10 and pesticides11 that farmers use kill insects and animals, andwash into rivers where they kill fish.
If we try not to waste any food, or only buy as much food as we need,farmers will grow less and it is one thing we can do to help.
1.adjustable 変更できる 2.level 平らな 3.technician 技術者 4.waste むだ
5.developed country 先進国 6.developing country 発展途上国 7.greenhouse gas 温室
ガス 8.graze 草を食う 9.ecosystem 生態系 10.fertilizer 肥料 11.pesticide 殺虫剤