If you leave a loaded weapon lying around, it is bound to go off sooner or later. Snow- covered northern Europe heard the gunshot loud and clear when Russia cut supplies to Ukraine this week as part of a row about money and power, the two eternal battlegrounds of global energy. From central Europe right across to France on the Atlantic seaboard, gas supplies fell by more than one-third. For years Europeans had been telling themselves that a cold-war enemy which had supplied them without fail could still be depended on now it was an ally (of sorts). Suddenly, nobody was quite so sure.
Fearing the threat to its reputation as a supplier, Russia rapidly restored the gas and settled its differences with Ukraine. But it was an uncomfortable glimpse of the dangers for a continent that imports roughly half its gas and that Gerard Mestrallet, boss of Suez, a French water and power company, expects to be importing 80% of its gas by 2030 much of it from Russia. It was scarcely more welcome for America, which condemned Russia’s tactics. And no wonder: it consumes one-quarter of the world’s oil, but produces only 3% of the stuff. Over the coming years, the world’s dependence on oil looks likely to concentrate on the Middle East, particularly Saudi Arabia. Russian oil had seemed a useful alternative.
Fear of the energy weapon has a long history. When producers had the upper hand in the oil embargo of 1973-74, Arab members of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) cut supply, sowing turmoil and a global recession. When consumers had the upper hand in the early 1990s, the embargo cut the other way. After Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, the world shut in 5m barrels a day (b/d) of production from the two countries in an attempt to force him out.
With oil costing $60 a barrel, five times more than the nominal price in 1999, and spot prices for natural gas in some European and American markets at or near record levels, power has swung back to the producers for the first time since the early 1980s. Nobody knows how long today’s tight markets will last. "It took us a long time to get there and it will take us a long time to get back," says Robin West, chairman of PFC Energy in Washington. A clutch of alarmist books with titles such as "The Death of Oil" predict that so little oil is left in the ground that producers will always have pricing power. The question is how worried consumers should be. What are the threats to energy security and what should the world do about them The answers suggest a need for planning and a certain amount of grim realism, but not for outright panic.
Which of the following can be inferred from the text
A:Worry of the energy weapon is of a long history in the snow-covered northern Europe. B:The dispute with Ukraine was resolved without any delay and gas supply was restored. C:The risks for a gas-importing continent were exposed in the recent Russian- Ukrainian incident. D:Russian gas had long appeared to be a beneficial alternative.
In almost all cases the soft parts of fossils are gone for ever but they were fitted around or within the hard parts. Many of them also were attached to the hard parts and usually such attachments are visible as depressed or elevated areas, ridges or grooves, smooth or rough patches on the hard parts. The muscles most important for the activities of the animal and most evident in the appearance of the living animal are those attached to the hard parts and possible to reconstruct from their attachments. Much can be learned about a vanished brain from the inside of the skull in which it was lodged.
Restoration of the external appearance of an extinct animal has little or no scientific value. It does not even help in inferring what the activities of the living animal were, how fast it could run, what its food was, or such other conclusions as are important for the history of life. However, what most people want to know about extinct animals is what they looked like when they were alive. Scientists also would like to know. Things like fossil shells present no great problem as a rule, because the hard parts are external when the animal is alive and the outer appearance is actually preserved in the fossils.
Animals in which the skeleton is internal present great problems of restoration, and honest restorers admit that they often have to use considerable guessing. The general shape and contours of the body are fixed by the skeleton and by muscles attached to the skeleton, but surface features, which may give the animal its really characteristic look, are seldom restorable with any real probability of accuracy. The present often helps to interpret the past. An extinct animal presumably looked more or less like its living relatives, if it has any. This, however, may be quite equivocal. For example, extinct members of the horse family are usually restored to look somewhat like the most familiar living horses — domestic horses and their closest wild relatives. It is, however, possible and even probable that many extinct horses were striped like zebras. If lions and tigers were extinct they would be restored to look exactly alike. No living elephants have much hair and mammoths, which are extinct elephants, would doubtless be restored as hairless if we did not happen to know that they had thick, woolly coats. We know this only because mammoths are so recently extinct that prehistoric men drew pictures of them and that the hide and hair have actually been found in a few specimens. For older extinct animals we have no such clues.
According to the third paragraph, which of the following is true
A:A fossilized animal’s appearance is usually restored accurately. B:It is difficult to restore some fossilized animals because they had no external parts. C:The prehistoric elephants are hairless. D:An extinct animal does not definitely looked like its living relatives.
Text 2
In almost all cases the soft parts of
fossils are gone for ever but they were fitted around or within the hard parts.
Many of them also were attached to the hard parts and usually such attachments
are visible as depressed or elevated areas, ridges or grooves, smooth or rough
patches on the hard parts. The muscles most important for the activities of the
animal and most evident in the appearance of the living animal are those
attached to the hard parts and possible to reconstruct from their attachments.
Much can be learned about a vanished brain from the inside of the skull in which
it was lodged. Restoration of the external appearance of an extinct animal has little or no scientific value. It does not even help in inferring what the activities of the living animal were, how fast it could run, what its food was, or such other conclusions as are important for the history of life. However, what most people want to know about extinct animals is what they looked like when they were alive. Scientists also would like to know. Things like fossil shells present no great problem as a rule, because the hard parts are external when the animal is alive and the outer appearance is actually preserved in the fossils. Animals in which the skeleton is internal present great problems of restoration, and honest restorers admit that they often have to use considerable guessing. The general shape and contours of the body are fixed by the skeleton and by muscles attached to the skeleton, but surface features, which may give the animal its really characteristic look, are seldom restorable with any real probability of accuracy. The present often helps to interpret the past. An extinct animal presumably looked more or less like its living relatives, if it has any. This, however, may be quite equivocal. For example, extinct members of the horse family are usually restored to look somewhat like the most familiar living horses — domestic horses and their closest wild relatives. It is, however, possible and even probable that many extinct horses were striped like zebras. If lions and tigers were extinct they would be restored to look exactly alike. No living elephants have much hair and mammoths, which are extinct elephants, would doubtless be restored as hairless if we did not happen to know that they had thick, woolly coats. We know this only because mammoths are so recently extinct that prehistoric men drew pictures of them and that the hide and hair have actually been found in a few specimens. For older extinct animals we have no such clues. |
A:A fossilized animal’s appearance is usually restored accurately. B:It is difficult to restore some fossilized animals because they had no external parts. C:The prehistoric elephants are hairless. D:An extinct animal does not definitely looked like its living relatives.
Text 3
If you leave a loaded weapon lying
around, it is bound to go off sooner or later. Snow- covered northern Europe
heard the gunshot loud and clear when Russia cut supplies to Ukraine this week
as part of a row about money and power, the two eternal battlegrounds of global
energy. From central Europe right across to France on the Atlantic seaboard, gas
supplies fell by more than one-third. For years Europeans had been telling
themselves that a cold-war enemy which had supplied them without fail could
still be depended on now it was an ally (of sorts). Suddenly, nobody was quite
so sure. Fearing the threat to its reputation as a supplier, Russia rapidly restored the gas and settled its differences with Ukraine. But it was an uncomfortable glimpse of the dangers for a continent that imports roughly half its gas and that Gerard Mestrallet, boss of Suez, a French water and power company, expects to be importing 80% of its gas by 2030 much of it from Russia. It was scarcely more welcome for America, which condemned Russia’s tactics. And no wonder: it consumes one-quarter of the world’s oil, but produces only 3% of the stuff. Over the coming years, the world’s dependence on oil looks likely to concentrate on the Middle East, particularly Saudi Arabia. Russian oil had seemed a useful alternative. Fear of the energy weapon has a long history. When producers had the upper hand in the oil embargo of 1973-74, Arab members of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) cut supply, sowing turmoil and a global recession. When consumers had the upper hand in the early 1990s, the embargo cut the other way. After Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, the world shut in 5m barrels a day (b/d) of production from the two countries in an attempt to force him out. With oil costing $60 a barrel, five times more than the nominal price in 1999, and spot prices for natural gas in some European and American markets at or near record levels, power has swung back to the producers for the first time since the early 1980s. Nobody knows how long today’s tight markets will last. "It took us a long time to get there and it will take us a long time to get back," says Robin West, chairman of PFC Energy in Washington. A clutch of alarmist books with titles such as "The Death of Oil" predict that so little oil is left in the ground that producers will always have pricing power. The question is how worried consumers should be. What are the threats to energy security and what should the world do about them The answers suggest a need for planning and a certain amount of grim realism, but not for outright panic. |
A:Worry of the energy weapon is of a long history in the snow-covered northern Europe. B:The dispute with Ukraine was resolved without any delay and gas supply was restored. C:The risks for a gas-importing continent were exposed in the recent Russian- Ukrainian incident. D:Russian gas had long appeared to be a beneficial alternative.
Some sufferers will quickly be restored to perfect health, ______ others will take a longer time.
A:which B:where C:when D:whereas
After smashing the Gang of Four, our country ______ to order out of chaos.
A:was restored B:restored C:has restored D:restores
After smashing the Gang of Four, our country ______ to order out of chaos.
A:was restored B:restored C:has restored D:restores
After smashing the Gang of Four, our country ______ to order out of chaos.
A:was restored B:restored C:has restored D:restores
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