新视界大学英语综合教程1第8单元.ppt

;Warming up;Warming up;Warming up;Warming up;Warming up;;;Skimming;;Skimming;Skimming;Skimming;Ringing the changes 1 Hello boys and girls around the world, and a Happy New Year to you all! ; 2 It’s that time again when we ring out the old year, and ring in the new! (I expect that some of you don’t even know where that expression comes from. At midnight on New Year’s Eve, we used to ring the church bells to say farewell to the past and welcome to the future.) But this year, I want to share with you some of the worries I have about the environment. ;3 You see, I’ve just been talking to my dear old friend Father Christmas, who has just got back home to the North Pole after delivering all your presents. He told me that one of his reindeer hurt a leg this year and almost missed the Christmas deliveries. It happened in the spring when the ice, which is always very thick, turned out to be much thinner than we expected, and she almost fell through into the Arctic Ocean. ;4 Father Christmas also told me that his friends the polar bears have to walk much further to find solid ice and snow, and the Arctic birds have been leaving and coming back at unusual times of the year. It seems that the problem is climate change. ;5 It has become apparent to scientists from around the world that the gas, oil and coal, which we all use to stay warm, stay cool, and travel around, release lots of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere of the earth. This causes the sun’s heat to build up in the earth’s atmosphere, and is called the greenhouse effect. It’s leading to all kinds of change... and as we know, some change is for the worst. ;6 So the weather is changing, and instead of gentle rain, we now have violent storms, which flood coasts and valleys. Even some big cities, such as New York and London, and some countries, like the Maldive Islands, are under threat. In other places, there’s a shortage of rain for crops, so some people are going to starve. And some of our favourite animals,