【英语语言学习】在灾难中幸存的生存技巧

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

 

The U.S. has done a lot to prepare for things like tornadoes¹ and hurricanes. But what about more extreme events? A major tsunami² or a large asteroid³ hurtling toward Earth? NPR's Jon Hamilton reports on what scientists are saying about those mega-disasters.

 

JON HAMILTON, BYLINE⁴: In the winter of 1861 and 1862, California endured a flood that's often described as biblical.

 

LUCY JONES: It rained for 45 days straight.

 

HAMILTON: Lucy Jones from the U.S. Geological Survey says the rain created a lake in the central valleys that stretched for 300 miles. She says the flood also transformed California.

 

JONES: It bankrupted the state, destroyed the ranching⁵ industry, drowned 200,000 head of cattle, changed California from a ranching economy to a farming economy.

 

HAMILTON: It was a classic mega-disaster. Jones told scientists at an American Geophysical Union conference in Washington, D.C. that she's been studying the event to prepare for the next big flood. She says the California deluge⁶ was caused by an atmospheric⁷ river, a ribbon of concentrated water vapor⁸ that can produce extreme storms.

 

JONES: They have the rain potential of hurricanes, or even more so because they go on for weeks. But they don't have as much wind, and they don't have the reputation that hurricanes have.

 

HAMILTON: Jones says meteorologists have learned to detect these atmospheric rivers. And she says California now has an extensive system of dams and flood control channels that didn't exist in the 1860s. So she says it should be possible to start releasing water before the system gets overwhelmed.

 

JONES: There's always something you can do to make it less of a disaster than it might otherwise be, if you've got enough information.

 

HAMILTON: Another threat from the skies comes in the form of asteroids⁹ and comets. An asteroid several miles across probably wiped out the dinosaurs¹⁰ 66 million years ago. But Lindley Johnson of NASA says an asteroid just half a mile across could create a global dust cloud.

 

LINDLEY JOHNSON: Causing the Earth's atmosphere to become opaque¹¹, and blocking out the sun and things like that.

 

HAMILTON: So Johnson says NASA has a simple strategy for big asteroids.

 

JOHNSON: Well, you find them before they find us, and that's the real driver behind NASA's current work.

 

HAMILTON: NASA has found more than 10,000 near-Earth objects. And Johnson says the agency has a plan to fend¹² off any big object headed our way.

 

JOHNSON: Hit it with something really hard and fast, and the change in velocity¹³ then would change the orbit enough so that it would not hit the Earth.

 

HAMILTON: The ocean can also produce mega-disasters. In 2004, a tsunami in the Indian Ocean killed more than 230,000 people. In 2011, another tsunami killed more than 15,000 people in Japan. Eddie Bernard of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says even Japan was overwhelmed by the damage.

 

EDDIE BERNARD: That exceeded their capacity to recover, because in many cases, the entire city was washed away. Tens of thousands are still living in government housing two years after the fact.

 

HAMILTON: Bernard says the result would been much worse in the U.S.

 

BERNARD: Japan was much better prepared, and they're recovering much easier than perhaps we would, because they've thought this thing through. For example, they restored their roads in a matter of weeks. For the communities that survived, they restored electricity within 10 days.

 

HAMILTON: A government study found that if a similar tsunami struck Oregon, some areas would lose electricity for months, and water for more than a year. Bernard says that's too long. People will leave, and businesses will fail unless communities find a way to minimize damage and restore services more quickly.

 

BERNARD: The communities that do something will survive, and the ones that don't will be ghost towns. It's that simple.

 

HAMILTON: The Oregon Legislature has been holding hearings this summer on how to make communities more resilient. Jon Hamilton, NPR News.

1 tornadoes   

n.龙卷风，旋风( tornado的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Tornadoes, severe earthquakes, and plagues create wide spread havoc. 龙卷风、大地震和瘟疫成普遍的毁坏。 来自互联网
• Meteorologists are at odds over the working of tornadoes. 气象学者对龙卷风的运动方式看法不一。 来自互联网

2 tsunami   

n.海啸

参考例句：

• Powerful quake sparks tsunami warning in Japan.大地震触发了日本的海啸预警。
• Coastlines all around the Indian Ocean inundated by a huge tsunami.大海啸把印度洋沿岸地区都淹没了。

3 asteroid   

n.小行星；海盘车(动物)

参考例句：

• Astronomers have yet to witness an asteroid impact with another planet.天文学家还没有目击过小行星撞击其它行星。
• It's very unlikely that an asteroid will crash into Earth but the danger exists.小行星撞地球的可能性很小，但这样的危险还是存在的。

4 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

5 ranching   

adj.放牧的

参考例句：

• They cleared large tracts of forest for farming, logging and ranching. 他们清除了大片的森林以经营农耕、采伐与畜牧。
• This is a trade center in a ranching and oil-producing region. 这是一个牧场与产油区的贸易中心。

6 deluge   

n./vt.洪水，暴雨，使泛滥

参考例句：

• This little stream can become a deluge when it rains heavily.雨大的时候，这条小溪能变作洪流。
• I got caught in the deluge on the way home.我在回家的路上遇到倾盆大雨。

7 atmospheric   

adj.大气的，空气的；大气层的；大气所引起的

参考例句：

• Sea surface temperatures and atmospheric circulation are strongly coupled.海洋表面温度与大气环流是密切相关的。
• Clouds return radiant energy to the surface primarily via the atmospheric window.云主要通过大气窗区向地表辐射能量。

8 vapor   

n.蒸汽，雾气

参考例句：

• The cold wind condenses vapor into rain.冷风使水蒸气凝结成雨。
• This new machine sometimes transpires a lot of hot vapor.这部机器有时排出大量的热气。

9 asteroids   

n.小行星( asteroid的名词复数 )；海盘车，海星

参考例句：

• Asteroids,also known as "minor planets",are numerous in the outer space. 小行星，亦称为“小型行星”，在外太空中不计其数。
• Most stars probably have their quota of planets, meteorids, comets, and asteroids. 多数恒星也许还拥有若干行星、流星、彗星和小行星。

10 dinosaurs   

n.恐龙( dinosaur的名词复数 )；守旧落伍的人，过时落后的东西

参考例句：

• The brontosaurus was one of the largest of all dinosaurs. 雷龙是所有恐龙中最大的一种。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Dinosaurs have been extinct for millions of years. 恐龙绝种已有几百万年了。 来自《简明英汉词典》

11 opaque   

adj.不透光的；不反光的，不传导的；晦涩的

参考例句：

• The windows are of opaque glass.这些窗户装着不透明玻璃。
• Their intentions remained opaque.他们的意图仍然令人费解。

12 fend   

v.照料（自己），（自己）谋生，挡开，避开

参考例句：

• I've had to fend for myself since I was 14.我从十四岁时起就不得不照料自己。
• He raised his arm up to fend branches from his eyes.他举手将树枝从他眼前挡开。

13 velocity   

n.速度，速率

参考例句：

• Einstein's theory links energy with mass and velocity of light.爱因斯坦的理论把能量同质量和光速联系起来。
• The velocity of light is about 300000 kilometres per second.光速约为每秒300000公里。