新东方背诵50篇——托福听力专用(8)

The concept of obtaining fresh water from icebergs that are towed to populated areas and arid regions of the world was once treated as a joke more appropriate to cartoons than real life. But now it is being considered quite seriously by many nations, especially since scientists have warned that the human race will outgrow its fresh water supply faster than it runs out of food.

Glaciers are a possible source of fresh water that has been overlooked until recently. Three-quarters of the Earth’s fresh water supply is still tied up in glacial ice, a reservoir of untapped fresh water so immense that it could sustain all the rivers of the world for 1,000 years. Floating on the oceans every year are 7,659 trillion metric tons of ice encased in 10000 icebergs that break away from the polar ice caps, more than ninety percent of them from Antarctica.

Huge glaciers that stretch over the shallow continental shelf give birth to icebergs throughout the year. Icebergs are not like sea ice, which is formed when the sea itself freezes, rather, they are formed entirely on land, breaking off when glaciers spread over the sea. As they drift away from the polar region, icebergs sometimes move mysteriously in a direction opposite to the wind, pulled by subsurface currents. Because they melt more slowly than smaller pieces of ice, icebergs have been known to drift as far north as 35 degrees south of the equator in the Atlantic Ocean. To corral them and steer them to parts of the world where they are needed would not be too difficult.

The difficulty arises in other technical matters, such as the prevention of rapid melting in warmer climates and the funneling of fresh water to shore in great volume. But even if the icebergs lost half of their volume in towing, the water they could provide would be far cheaper than that produced by desalinization, or removing salt from water.

把冰山拖到世界上人口稠密的地区和干旱地带，再从中获取淡水，这个想法曾一度被认为是一个笑话，更适合于卡通画，而非现实生活。然而现在，许多国家正相当认真地考虑这件事情，特别是在科学家们发出警告之后。科学家们认为人类将在耗尽粮食之前首先耗尽淡水资源。

冰川是一个直到最近以前一直被忽视的可能的淡水源。全球四分之三的淡水还锁在冰川的冰块中。冰川就是一个蓄水池，其中未开发的淡水量是如此巨大，足够支持 全世界的江河1000年。每年有7，659万亿公吨冰漂流在海洋中。它们包含在10，000座从极地冰帽中断裂出来的冰山中。这些冰山的90%以上来自南 极。