Insight Plus - Part 3 – Global Warming | Текст песни

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• Part 3 – Global Warming

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Jackie: Welcome to BBC Learning English dot com and another chance to hear Insight
Plus - a series, first broadcast in 2001 that looks at the language of issues you hear
about in the news. The earth is in danger. And some say the greatest threat is
global warming. Today, in Insight Plus Lyse Doucet looks at the language used to
report on global warming.
Lyse: Global warming is the steady increase in the earth’s temperature. More and more
scientists believe that is what’s causing chaotic weather around the world – the
hurricanes, droughts, storms, high tides that are striking more and more countries.
The earth has never been hotter. Its average temperature is now the highest since
scientists began measuring it 600 years ago. Since the middle of the 19th century,
global temperatures have risen by 0.5 degrees Celsius. That may not sound like
much but the difference between our temperature and an ice age is only about six
degrees.
The earth has seen major changes in climate before. But most scientists agree this
period is different. Many believe the present changes are caused by our own
activities, by the way we live. If that doesn’t change, many forms of life on our
planet may not survive.
In November 2000, delegates from more than 150 countries gathered in The
Hague in the Netherlands to discuss how to combat global warming. There was
great disagreement, mainly between the United States and other industrialised
nations, about what could and should be done. But everyone agreed on the need
for action based on mounting scientific evidence that humans are to blame.
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The evidence is stacking up, pointing towards mankind playing a very important part of that
influence, and that's something we couldn't have said three or five years ago. The calculations
are certainly suggesting that global warming is more important than we thought.
Lyse: We know the earth is a hotter place. And it’s caused by the build-up of greenhouse
gases like carbon monoxide and methane. Like the glass on a greenhouse, these
gases let in the sun’s heat but they stop it from getting out. So the surface of the
earth slowly becomes warmer. These gases have always existed naturally in the
earth’s atmosphere. But we are now burning more and more fossil fuels – we’re
using more oil and coal, and wood too as we cut down more trees.
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We're now increasingly confident that a large part of the warming that we've seen over the past
50 years or so is down to human activity - this burning of fossil fuels, increases of carbon
dioxide and methane and so on. The evidence is stacking up, pointing towards mankind playing
a very important part of that influence, and that's something we couldn't have said three or five
years ago.
Lyse: It’s our cars, our workplaces, even in our homes - everywhere we use energy - is
releasing or emits gases so the greatest polluters are the most industrialised
countries. The United States, for example, in the year 2000, was emitting nearly a
quarter of the world’s greenhouse gases, but it only has about four per cent of the
world’s population. It’s under growing pressure from the rest of the world to find
ways to cut its emissions.
And it’s not just the United States. In 1997, in Kyoto, Japan, more than 100
countries signed a protocol or agreement to cut their greenhouse gas emissions.
We’ll hear just what was in that protocol from Corinne Podger of the BBC’s
science unit - listen out for the word emissions in the phrase emission of gases -
which gases are being released?
Clip
The Kyoto Protocol emerged from the UN Conference on Climate Change held three years
ago in Japan. Parties to the protocol agreed to reduce emissions of gases like carbon dioxide
and methane...
...