能源学术英语综合教程2教师手册Unit4TB.pdfVIP

Unit 4 Energy and Future Listening and speaking Listening 1 1-4 F T F T 2 1) concentration 2) blanket 3) humanity 4) enhanced 5) underground 6) cycle 7) methane 8) exhausts 9) melt 10) more extreme Transcript In the video we will learn how the burning of fossil fuels has added extra carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, and we will see how this leads to climate change, human-induced climate change, or global warming. 1 We need to understand something about burning fossil fuels. Fossil fuels, like oil, coal and natural gas are the remains of the living things for millions of years ago. They ’re mainly composed of carbon with varying amounts of hydrogen. If you collect all the exhaust gases from your car during a journey and squash them into a bottle so that they can be weighed, compared with the weight of petrol burned, the exhaust gases will weigh much heavier, because oxygen from the air has been added. Here ’as bit of a petrol molecule ? H2CCH2. It joins with six oxygen atoms or three molecules to build up hydrogen oxide or water vapor and carbon dioxide, another two molecules. Before the world became industrialized by burning fossil fuels, carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere was about 0.28%, tiny compared with oxygen at 21% and nitrogen at 78%, but enough to keep us warm. Without this natural blanket of insulating gas, the earth would be too cold to support life as we know it. But this carbon dioxide releasedwhen fossil fuels burn adds to the existing carbon dioxide levels which are now nearly 50% higher than in pre-industrial times. Although we get a daily supply of heat from the sun, the earth normally loses this at night and in the cool seasons, so that the average temperature of the earth remains constant. But this status quo is starting to change. As h