托福60秒新闻听力的原文.doc

20.Prediction of Global Warming High May Be Impossible Ben Franklin said that nothing’s certain but death and taxes. Today, scientists might add global warming to that list. But though most scientists are certain that more CO2 means a toastier globe, what they can’t pin down is how much warmer it’s going to get. If that sounds like a forecast only Heisenberg could love, well, too bad—that’s just the way it is. Or so say researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle in the October 26th issue of the journal Science. The researchers were working on equations to help climatologists get the most out of their climate models. The current models, run on decades worth of data, predict that we could be looking at a planet that’s 2 to 5 degrees warmer, although there’s a chance it could be closer to 10. What the researchers discovered is that no matter how much data the scientists feed into their models, they’re never going to get a more precise estimate of the high end than that. Perhaps the finding will encourage policymakers to act now, rather than calling for more data before making any decisions on the environment. Or the lack of definitive info about the worst case scenarios could give climate change skeptics an excuse to try to table any action. 21.First Land Vertebrates Probably Had Color Vision Look before you leap, the old adage has it. Well, it seems that the animals that first ventured out onto the land from the sea were well equipped to look when they made that leap. Researchers studied the retinas of the eyes of lungfish, which are thought to be the closest living relatives to the first vertebrates that lived on land. Lungfish use gills to take in oxygen, but can also breathe air if necessary. And they live in shallow freshwater habitats with a lot of light. So it would make sense that they could see pretty well in a nearly terrestrial environment. And indeed, DNA in the genes for visual pigments in the retinas of the lungfish turned out to be m