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15.Sharing the skies(575)

2024-4-3 10:42| 发布者: taixiang| 查看: 10| 评论: 0

摘要: .
 

Passage Fifteen

Sharing the skies

共享天空

1Wind turbines are friendlier to birds than oil-and-gas drillingBirders get nervous when they see landscapes covered in wind turbines. When the wind gets going, their blades can spin at well over 200km per hour.

相比于油气钻井,风力机对鸟类更加友好,见到一座座风力发电机矗立在大地上,观鸟者便担忧万分。风刮过时,风力机的叶片转速最高能达200公里/小时。

 

2It is easy to imagine careless birds getting chopped to bits. Campaigners often point to the possibility when opposing(objecting) the building of new wind farms.

人们很容易想象叶片会将不慎飞过的鸟类切成碎片。在反对新建风力发电厂的运动中,反对人士往往会着重指出上述可能性。

 

3No one doubts that wind turbines do indeed kill at least some birds. But a new analysis of American data, published in Environmental Science & Technology, suggests the numbers are negligible(insignificant), and have little impact on bird populations.

一些鸟类确实死于风力发电机叶片,对此没有人会怀疑。然而,在《环境科学技术》杂志发表的一项基于美国数据的新分析发现,因风力机而死亡的鸟类数量微乎其微,风力机对鸟类数量的影响十分微小。

 

4Wind power has expanded dramatically in America over the past 20 years, from 2.6 gigawatts of installed capacity on land in 2000 to 122 gigawatts in 2020. Many studies have analysed the effects in specific(given) locations(places) or on specific bird species. But few have looked at the effects on wildlife at the population level.

美国的风力发电在过去20多年间发展迅猛,从20002.6千兆瓦的陆地安装机容量增长到2020年的122千兆瓦。有很多研究已分析了风力发电机对特定位置或特定鸟类的影响。但很少有研究关注到对野生动物数量层面造成的影响。

 

5Enter Erik Katovich, an economist at the University of Geneva. Dr Katovich made use of the Christmas Bird Count, a citizen-science project run by the National Audubon Society, an American non-profit outfit(organization).

拿日内瓦大学经济学家埃里克·卡特维奇的研究来说,他充分利用了由美国非营利组织分支国家奥杜邦协会运作的一项名为圣诞节鸟类调查的公民科学项目。

 

6Volunteers count birds they spot over Christmas, and the society compiles the numbers. Its records stretch back over a century.

志愿者会在圣诞节期间计数看到的鸟类,协会则整理汇总这些数据,该记录活动已有超100年历史。

 

7Dr Katovich assumedreasonably, that if wind turbines harmed(damaged) bird populations, then the numbers seen in the Christmas Bird Count would drop in places where new turbines had been built.

卡特维奇教授对此进行合理假设若风力机损害了鸟类的数量,那么在圣诞节鸟类调查中新建风力机地区的鸟类数目应当下降。

 

8He combined bird population and species maps with the locations and construction dates of all wind turbines in the United States, with the exceptions of Alaska and Hawaii, between 2000 and 2020. He found that building turbines had no discernible effect on bird populations.

他将鸟类数量和种群地图同美国境内除阿拉斯加州和夏威夷州20002020年间所有风力机位置和建设数据相结合,发现风力机建造对鸟类数量产生的影响并不明显。

 

9That reassuring finding held even when he looked specifically at large birds like hawks, vultures and eagles that many people believe are particularly vulnerable to being struck.

很多人认为隼、秃鹫、雕等大型鸟类尤其易受风力机攻击,但卡特维奇教授在针对这类大型猛禽的研究发现也令人宽慰。

 

10But Dr Katovich did not confine(limit) his analysis to wind power alone. He also examined(researched) oil-and-gas extraction(exploitation). Like wind power, this has boomed in America over the past couple of decades, with the rise of shale gas produced by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, of rocks. Production rose from 37m cubic metres in 2007 to 740m cubic metres in 2020.

然而,卡特维奇教授并未将分析局限于风力发电。本课程出自他同时也研究了油气开采。同风力发电一样,油气开采在过去几十年在全美遍地开花,随着水力压裂岩石而产生的页岩气越来越多,产量从2007年的3700万立方米增加到2020年的7.4亿立方米。

 

11Comparing bird populations to the locations of new gas wells revealed an average 15% drop in bird numbers when new wells were drilled, probably due to a combination of noise, air pollution and the disturbance of rivers and ponds that many birds rely upon.

将鸟类数目同新开采的油气井位置相比,结果显示,开采新井时,鸟类数量平均下降15%,原因或许是噪音、空气污染,或鸟类依赖的河流、池塘受干扰。

 

12When drilling happened in places designated by the National Audubon Society as “important bird areas”, bird numbers instead dropped(declined) by 25%. Such places are typically migration hubs, feeding grounds or breeding(feeding) locations.

当钻探发生在国家奥杜邦协会指定的鸟类栖息重要区域时,鸟类数量则下降25%。这类区域通常是典型的候鸟迁徙栖息地、觅食地或者哺育地。

 

13Wind power, in other words, not only produces far less planet-heating carbon dioxide and methane than do fossil fuels. It appears to be significantly less damaging to wildlife, too.

换句话说,风力发电不仅比化石燃料排放更少的二氧化碳和甲烷等温室气体,而且对野生动物造成的伤害也显著的更低。

 

14Yet that is not the impression you would get from reading the news. Dr Katovich found 173 stories in major American news outlets reporting the supposed negative effects that wind turbines had on birds in 2020, compared with only 46 stories discussing the effects of oil-and-gas wells. Wind turbines might look dramatic. But their effect on birds is not.

但新闻里推送的内容可不会说这些。卡特维奇教授发现,2020年美国知名新闻媒体就风力机对鸟类造成的潜在负面影响报道篇目达173份,而对于油气开采产生的影响报道仅为46篇。风力发电机或许看似庞然大物,但对鸟类的影响实则不大。


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