2020年6月英语四级模拟题：长篇阅读匹配

2020年6月英语四级模拟题：长篇阅读匹配

2020年6月英语四级模拟题：长篇阅读匹配

Being Objective on Climate Change

st week，Craig Rucker,a climate-change skeptic and the executive director of a nonprofit organization called the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow(CFACT)，tweeted a quotation supposedly taken from a 1922 edition of the Washington Post：“Within a few years it is predicted due to ice melt the sea will rise＆make most coastal cities uninhabitable．”The intent，of course，was to poke fun at current headlines about climate change．

B.Rucker’s organization is a member ofthe Cooler Heads Coalition，an umbrella organization operated by the Competitive Enterprise Institute，a nonprofit that prides itself on its opposition to environmental ists．Rucker himself is part of a network of bloggers，op-cd writers，and policy-shop executives who argue that climate change is

either a hoax or all example of left-wing hysteria．Surfacing old newspaper clips is one of their favorite games．They also make substantive arguments about climate policy,but the sniping may be more effective．There is no stronger

rhetorical tool than ridicule．

C.In this case，Ruckcr’s ridicule seems misplaced．After spending a few minutes poking around online，1 was able to find both the Washington Post article and the longer SourCe material that it came from—a weather report issued by the U．S．consul in Bergen，Norway,and sent to the State Department on october 1 0，1 922．The report didn’t say

anything about coasts being inundated．This isn’t surprising．Scientists wete smart back then，too,and they knew that melting sea ice wouldn’t appreciably raise sea levels．any more than a melting ice cube raises the level of water in a glass．

D.Rucker ultimately corrected his tweet once commenters pointed out the misquote．Through Twitter,he informed me that he had taken the line from a Washington Times op—ed by Richard Rahn，a senior fellow at the Cato Institute．When I contacted Rahn’s office．a press representative acknowledged that Rahn had copied the quote from other bloggers and columnists；the fabricated sentence appears in articles at reason．corn and texasgopvote．corn．The fabricated line seems to have been inserted around 2020．but the original article has been circulating online since 2007．

E. The statement about rising sea levels aside，1 922 really was a strange period in the Svalbard archipelago．the area described by the weather report．The islands lie halfway between Norway and the North Pole,at a latitude that puts them several hundred miles farther north than

Barrow,alaska．“The Arctic seems to be warming up．”the report read．In August of that year,a geologist near the island of Spitsbergen sailed as far north as eighty-one degrees．twenty．nine minutes in ice-free water．This was highly unusual．The previous several summers had likewise been warrn．Seal populations had moved farther north，and formerly unseen stretches of coast were now accessible．

F.What are we to take from this historical evidence?A central tenet for Rucker and his colleagues is mat today’s