評論
打印
Now, I wanted to see the pole itself, and some eight hours after we met the submarine, we were crashing through that ice, surfacing, and then I was standing in an eerily beautiful snowscape, windswept and sparkling white, with the horizon defined by little hummocks, or "pressure ridges" of ice that are pushed up like tiny mountain ranges when separate sheets collide.
現(xiàn)在，我想看看北極本身。在我們進(jìn)人潛艇大約八小時(shí)后，潛艇撞碎那片冰層，浮出 水面。然后，我站在一幅有點(diǎn)神秘可怕的美麗的雪景之中，大地被風(fēng)吹掃得白茫茫一片，閃 閃發(fā)光。地平線上勾畫出一個(gè)個(gè)小冰丘的輪廓，或稱之為冰的“壓力脊”，這些冰脊是在分 開的冰層互相撞擊時(shí)擠出來的小山脈。
But here too, CO2 levels are rising just as rapidly, and ultimately temperature will rise with them-indeed, global warming is expected to push temperatures up much more rapidly in the polar regions than in the rest of the world.
但是在這里，二氧化碳的含量也以同樣快的速度上升，最終氣溫將隨之升高，的確，預(yù)料地球轉(zhuǎn)暖將使氣溫上升的速度在極區(qū)要比在世界上其他地區(qū)快得多。
As the polar air warms, the ice here will thin; and since the, polar cap plays such a crucial role in the world's weather system, the consequences of a thinning cap could be disastrous.
隨著地極大氣轉(zhuǎn)暖，這里的冰將變薄。由于地極冰帽在世界的氣象系統(tǒng)中起著如此決 定性的作用，冰帽變薄的后果可能是災(zāi)難性的。
Considering such scenarios is not a pure1y speculative exercise.
我考慮到可能出現(xiàn)這樣一些情況并不完全是憑空猜測。
Six months after I returned from the North Pole, a team of scientists reported dramatic changes in the pattern of ice distribution in the Arctic, and a second team reported a still controversial claim (which a variety of data now suggest) that, overall, the north polar cap has thinned by 2 percent in just the last decade.
我從北極回來六個(gè)月后，一隊(duì)科學(xué)家的報(bào)告說，北極的冰的分布情況發(fā)生了引人注目 的變化，而后來又去了一隊(duì)科學(xué)家，他們在報(bào)告中提出了一個(gè)仍然有爭論的說法（現(xiàn)在各種不同的數(shù)據(jù)資料都表明這個(gè)說法是正確的），即總的來說，僅在過去的十年里北極冰帽就比 以前薄了百分之二。
Moreover, scientists established several years ago that in many land areas north of the Arctic Circle, the spring snowmelt now comes earlier every year, and deep in the tundra below, the temperature of the earth is steadily rising.
此外，幾年前科學(xué)家們就已經(jīng)證實(shí)，在北極圈以北的許多陸地區(qū)域，春天雪融化成水 一年比一年早。而且在凍土帶地下深處，地溫正在逐步上升。
As it happens, some of the most disturbing images of environmental destruction can be found exactly halfway between the North and South poles -precisely at the equator in Brazil-where billowing clouds of smoke regularly blacken the sky above the immense but now threatened Amazon rain forest.
說來也巧，有些最令人不安的破壞環(huán)境的景象就在南北極之間的正中地帶—正好在 巴西的赤道—在那里，滾滾煙云日復(fù)一日地把那一望無際但如今已受到威脅的亞馬遜雨林的上空染黑。
