August was one of the nastiest months I can remember: torrential rain; a hailstorm or two; cold, bitter winds; and mists. But we are accustomed to such weather in England. Lord Byron used to say that an English summer begins on July 31 and ends on Aug. 1. He called 1816 "the year without a summer." He spent it gazing across Lake Geneva, watching the storms, with 18-year-old Mary Shelley. The lightening flickering across the lake inspired her Frankenstein, the tale of the man-made monster galvanized into life by electricity. This summer's atrocious weather tempted me to tease a Green whom I know. "Well, what about your weather theory now?" (One of the characteristics of Greens is that they know no history.) He replied: "Yes, this weather is unprecedented. England has never had such an August before. It's global warming, of course." That's the Greens' stock response to anything weather-related. Too much sun? "Global warming." Too little sun? "Global warming." Drought? "Global warming." Floods? "Global warming." Freezing cold? "Global warming." I wish the great philosopher Sir Karl Popper were alive to _ the unscientific nature of global warming. He was a student when Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity was first published and then successfully tested. Einstein said that for his theory to be valid it would have to pass three tests. "If," Einstein wrote to British scientist Sir Arthur Eddington, "it were proved that this effect does not exist in nature, then the whole theory would have to be abandoned." The idea that human beings have changed and are changing the basic climate system of the Earth through their industrial activities and burning of fossil fuels--the essence of the Greens' theory of global warming--has not much basis in science. Global warming, like Marxism, is a political theory of actions, demanding compliance with its rules. Those who buy in to global warming wish to drastically curb human economic and industrial activities, regardless of the consequences for people, especially the... The writer of the passage is probably _ . A) one of the "Greens" B) an American C) not quite a believer in Global Warming D) an environmentalist
C
At dawn on Friday, May 19, 1780, farmers in New England stopped to wonder at the pink color of the sun. By noon the sky had darkened to midnight blackness, causing Americans, still in the painful struggle of a prolonged war of independence, to light candles and tremble at thoughts of the Last Judgment. As the birds quieted and no storm accompanied the darkness, men and women crowded into churches, where one minister commented that "The people were very attentive." John Greenleaf Whittier later wrote that "Men prayed, and women wept; all ears grew sharp . . ." A recent study of researchers, led by Richard Guyette from the University of Missouri's Tree Ring Laboratory, has shown that vast forest fires in the Algonquin Highlands of southern Ontario and elsewhere in Canada brought this event upon New England. The scientists have discovered "fire scars" on the rings for that year, left when the heat of a wildfire has killed a part of a tree's cambium . Evidence collected also points to a drought that year. An easterly wind and low barometric pressure helped force smoke into the upper atmosphere. "The record fits pretty close," says Guyette. "We had the right fuel, the drought. The conditions were all there." Lacking the ability to communicate quickly over long distances, Americans in 1780 remained in the dark about the event, which had disappeared by the next day. Over the next several months, the papers carried heated debates about what brought the darkness. Some were the voices of angry prediction, such as one Massachusetts farmer who wrote, "Oh! Backsliding New-England, attend now to the things which belong to your peace before they are forever hid from your eyes." Others gave different answers. One stated that a "flaming star" had passed between the earth and the sun. Ash, argued another commentator. The debate, carried on throughout New England, where there were no scientific journals or academies yet, reflected an unfolding culture of scientific enquiry already sweeping the Western world, a revolution... What can be the best title for the text? A) New England's dark day. B) Voices of angry prediction. C) There is no smoke without fire. D) Tree rings and scientific discovery.
A
(Q).
Let us begin by saying what causes our dreams. Our dreams do not come from another world. They are not messages from some outside source .They are not a look into the future, either. All our dreams have something to do with our feelings, fears, longings, wishes, needs and memories. If a person is hungry, or tired, or cold , his dreams may include a feeling of this kind. If the covers on your body, such as a quilt or a blanket, have slipped off your bed, you may dream that you are sleeping on ice or in snow. The material for the dream you will have tonight is likely to come from the experience you have today. So the subject of your dream usually comes from something that has effect on you while you are sleeping(feeling of cold, a noise, a discomfort, etc.)and it may also use your past experiences and the wishes and the interests you have now. This is why children are likely to dream of fairies, older children of school examinations, hungry people of food, home-sick soldiers of their families and prisoners of freedom. To show you how this is happening while you are asleep and how your needs and wishes can all be joined together in a dream, here is the story of the experiment. A man was asleep and the back of his hand was rubbed with a piece of soft cotton. He would dream he was in hospital and his charming girlfriend was visiting him, sitting on the bed and feeling gently his hands! There are some scientists who have made a special study of why we dream, what we dream and what those dreams mean. Their explanation of dreams, though a bit reasonable, is not accepted by everyone but it offers an interesting approach to the problem. They believe that dreams are mostly expressions of wishes that did not come true. In other words dreaming is a way of having your wishes carried out. Some scientists' explanation of dreams_. A) is not widely accepted though a bit reasonable B) gives an exact description of our life C) provides us with information of dreams D) is of no use for us
(A).
A