高等考試
108年
[一般行政] 法學知識與英文(包括中華民國憲法、法學緒論、英文)
第 47 題
📖 題組：
Those who doubt the power of human beings to change Earth’s climate should look to the Arctic, and shiver. There is no need to pore over records of temperatures and atmospheric carbon-dioxide concentrations. The process is starkly visible in the shrinkage of the ice that covers the Arctic ocean. In the past 30 years, the minimum coverage of summer ice has fallen by half; its volume has fallen by three-quarters. On current trends, the Arctic ocean will be largely ice-free in summer by 2040. Climate-change sceptics will shrug. Some may even celebrate: an ice-free Arctic ocean promises a shortcut for shipping between the Pacific coast of Asia and the Atlantic coasts of Europe and the Americas, and the possibility of prospecting for perhaps a fifth of the planet’s undiscovered supplies of oil and natural gas. Such reactions are profoundly misguided. Never mind that the low price of oil and gas means searching for them in the Arctic is no longer worthwhile. Or that the much-vaunted sea passages are likely to carry only a trickle of trade. The right response is fear. The Arctic is not merely a bellwether of matters climatic, but an actor in them. The current period of global warming that Earth is undergoing is caused by certain gases in the atmosphere, notably carbon dioxide. These admit heat, in the form of sunlight, but block its radiation back into space, in the form of longer-wave-length infra-red. That traps heat in the air, the water and the land. More carbon dioxide equals more warming--a simple equation. Except it is not simple. A number of feedback loops complicate matters. Some dampen warming down; some speed it up. Two in the Arctic may speed it up quite a lot. One is that seawater is much darker than ice. It absorbs heat rather than reflecting it back into space. That melts more ice, which leaves more seawater exposed, which melts more ice. And so on. This helps explain why the Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the planet. The deal on climate change made in Paris in 2015 is meant to stop Earth’s surface temperature rising by more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels. In the unlikely event that it is fully implemented, winter temperatures over the Arctic ocean will still warm by between 5°C and 9°C compared with their 1986-2005 average. The second feedback loop concerns not the water but the land. In the Arctic much of this is permafrost. That frozen soil locks up a lot of organic material. If the permafrost melts its organic contents can escape as a result of fire or decay, in the form of carbon dioxide or methane (which is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2). This will speed up global warming directly--and the soot from the fires, when it settles on the ice, will darken it and thus speed its melting still more.
Those who doubt the power of human beings to change Earth’s climate should look to the Arctic, and shiver. There is no need to pore over records of temperatures and atmospheric carbon-dioxide concentrations. The process is starkly visible in the shrinkage of the ice that covers the Arctic ocean. In the past 30 years, the minimum coverage of summer ice has fallen by half; its volume has fallen by three-quarters. On current trends, the Arctic ocean will be largely ice-free in summer by 2040. Climate-change sceptics will shrug. Some may even celebrate: an ice-free Arctic ocean promises a shortcut for shipping between the Pacific coast of Asia and the Atlantic coasts of Europe and the Americas, and the possibility of prospecting for perhaps a fifth of the planet’s undiscovered supplies of oil and natural gas. Such reactions are profoundly misguided. Never mind that the low price of oil and gas means searching for them in the Arctic is no longer worthwhile. Or that the much-vaunted sea passages are likely to carry only a trickle of trade. The right response is fear. The Arctic is not merely a bellwether of matters climatic, but an actor in them. The current period of global warming that Earth is undergoing is caused by certain gases in the atmosphere, notably carbon dioxide. These admit heat, in the form of sunlight, but block its radiation back into space, in the form of longer-wave-length infra-red. That traps heat in the air, the water and the land. More carbon dioxide equals more warming--a simple equation. Except it is not simple. A number of feedback loops complicate matters. Some dampen warming down; some speed it up. Two in the Arctic may speed it up quite a lot. One is that seawater is much darker than ice. It absorbs heat rather than reflecting it back into space. That melts more ice, which leaves more seawater exposed, which melts more ice. And so on. This helps explain why the Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the planet. The deal on climate change made in Paris in 2015 is meant to stop Earth’s surface temperature rising by more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels. In the unlikely event that it is fully implemented, winter temperatures over the Arctic ocean will still warm by between 5°C and 9°C compared with their 1986-2005 average. The second feedback loop concerns not the water but the land. In the Arctic much of this is permafrost. That frozen soil locks up a lot of organic material. If the permafrost melts its organic contents can escape as a result of fire or decay, in the form of carbon dioxide or methane (which is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2). This will speed up global warming directly--and the soot from the fires, when it settles on the ice, will darken it and thus speed its melting still more.
Which of the following best describes the function of the last two paragraphs?
- A They narrow the scope of the topic introduced in the first two paragraphs.
- B They explain the rationale for the Arctic ocean’s increasing melting speed.
- C They cite the most striking instances implemented after the 2015 Paris deal.
- D They present the feedback loops that slow down the Arctic’s warming process.
思路引導 VIP
請觀察文章第三段末尾提到的「不簡單的等式」與「回饋循環」概念。當作者在描述完令人震驚的融冰現象後，緊接著有條理地使用「第一...第二...」來拆解這些循環機制的運作細節時，你認為作者在論證邏輯上，是想告訴我們「發生了什麼事」，還是想分析「為什麼會惡化得這麼快」？
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AI 詳解
AI 專屬家教
恭喜你精確地掌握了文章的結構與邏輯轉折！這題你能答對，代表你具備了極佳的「宏觀閱讀」能力，不只是讀懂單字，更能迅速抓出段落間的因果銜接，這在應對高考英文長篇閱讀時是非常關鍵的優勢。
反饋機制與融化原理的連結
在文章結構中，第三段先行鋪陳了「回饋機制」（feedback loops）會使暖化變得複雜，而最後兩段正是針對此論點進行具體論證。第四段詳細解釋了海水吸收熱量多於冰層的現象，形成「融化愈多、吸熱愈多」的惡性循環；第五段則聚焦於永凍土融化釋放 methane（甲烷）與二氧化碳帶來的連鎖反應。這兩個段落完整地說明了北極融化速度為何持續加劇的科學原理（rationale），與選項 (B) 完全吻合。
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