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WILL THE EARTH BE LUCKY A THIRD TIME?According to one hypothesis, our planet was twice threatened with the fate of becoming a lifeless celestial body and thus sharing the lot of Venus and Mars, its neighbours in the solar system. Four and a half thousand million years ago, when the Earth’s atmosphere had just begun to form, a mere 50 C separated it from the fatal boundary beyond which begins the greenhouse effect which turned the surface of Venus into a seething inferno. Two thousand years later a mere +10 C saved the Earth from freezing under a blanket of ice such as that which covers Mars today. Now Mars, the Roman god of war, threatens to reign supreme on the Earth and turn it into an iceberg in space. The sad truth is that the transformation of the common home of all people into an icy desert may be brought about by man himself, who stands at the tree of life with a thermonuclear axe in his hands. Immense amounts of dust, soot, ash and smoke, thrown up into the Earth’s atmosphere by the monstrous force of thermonuclear explosions, would screen out the Sun for a long period of time, and screen it out from people forever. The heaven would turn upside down, so that cold would descend upon the Earth, while heat would be trapped in the upper layers of the atmosphere. All the continents would turn into Antarctic, but their snow and ice would be black. The rays of the Sun would take so long to reach the Earth that none of us would ever find out how long the nuclear winter would last… Such in general outline is the description of the thermonuclear Apocalypse, a description, handed down to us not by John the Apostle but computed by American scientists and later confirmed by their European colleagues. The prospect of a nuclear winter forces us all, both in the East and in the West. The only possible continuation of politics in our time is peace. People everywhere must learn the truth about nuclear war. According to UN experts, its very first explosions would instantly kill 200 million people and inflict grievous wounds on another 60 million. The probable overall number of victims of the first nuclear strikes would be 700–800 million civilians and Many Western specialists, including authoritative scholars, believe that our civilization may poison itself even without a nuclear war, that we may be suffocated by industrial wastes and wither away amid environmental degradation. The only source of funds for environmental protection is disarmament. Mankind can no longer live and act in the old way. The universal struggle against war is the only way to preserve peace. Only then we will be able to give a positive answer to the question: will the Earth be lucky for a third time? All of us, earthlings of the present generation, are a link in the chain of universal human progress. We are answerable both to our ancestors and to future generations. Our duty is not only to save the Earth from a thermonuclear catastrophe but also to begin, through the joint efforts of all states, to heal its wounds, to save it from another possible catastrophe – an ecological one.
TEXT-BASED ASSIGNMENTS
I. Interpret the meaning of the following correlated words: 1. To explode – explosion. 2. To transform – transformation. 3. To describe – description. 4. Ice – icy – iceberg. 5. Real – reality – unreal. 6. Nuclear – prenuclear. 7. Civil – civilians – civilization – civilize. 8. Science – scientists – scientific. 9. Life – lifeless. 10. Earth – earthlings.
ІI. Match the Ukrainian and English equivalents: 1. Neighbour a) попіл 2. Surface b) вибух 3. Ash c) жертви 4. Confirm d) сусід 5. Explosion e) поверхня 6. Victims f) підтверджувати 7. Civilian g) отруїти 8. Perish h) вижити 9. Survive i) цивільний 10. Poison j) загинути ІІI. Give English equivalents: термоядерний вибух, льодова пустеля, небесне тіло, розділити долю, ядерна війна, жорстока реальність, авторитетні вчені, пощастити, перетворитися на Антарктику, деградація довкілля, зберігати мир, мешканці Землі. ІV. Decide whether the statements are true or not: 1. The Earth will share the lot of Venus and Mars. 2. The thousand million years ago a mere +10 C saved the Earth from freezing under a blanket of ice. 3. The man himself may turn the Earth into an icy desert. 4. If all the continents would turn into Antarctic their snow and ice would be black. 5. There is no necessity for the people to know the truth about nuclear war. 6. The probable number of victims of the first nuclear strikes would be 7. Many Western specialists believe that our civilization may poison itself even without a nuclear war. 8. The universal struggle for war is the only way to preserve peace. 9. The earthlings of the present generation are answerable both to our ancestors and to future generations. 10. Our duty is to save the Earth from another possible catastrophe – an ecological one. V. Answer the following questions: 1. What does the title of the text suggest? 2. Under what conditions does the greenhouse effect begin? 3. Why is peace the only possible continuation of the politics in our times? 4. When would nuclear winter set down on our planet? 5. What is the cause of the environmental degradation? 6. Why cannot mankind remain passive in problems of preserving peace on our planet? 7. How can the Earth be saved from the ecological catastrophe? 8. Can mankind live and act in the old way? 9. What is the only way to preserve place? 10. What is our duty before our generations?
VI. Translate the text into English: У сонячній системі Марс та Венера – наші небесні сусіди. Усі знають, що вони безлюдні, бо їх поверхня вкрита льодом. Кажуть, що земля майже двічі була на межі катастрофи: спочатку від парникового ефекту, а потім від холоду. Чи пощастить їй втретє? Щодня пил, сажа та попіл попадають в атмосферу, не кажучи вже про ядерні вибухи та викиди в річки, моря та океани. Тобто людство може отруїти Землю навіть без ядерної війни. Якщо ми хочемо врятувати Землю, ми повинні дбати про її довкілля. VII.Read the following text, try to catch the plot of it, paying attention to the active vocabulary. Nuclear Winter Awaits Our environment is vitally connected with the problem of peace on our planet. The scientists consider that nuclear war could destroy mankind completely, for a large scale nuclear exchange could mean the extinction of the human race. The climatic, biological and environmental effects of a nuclear war might be horrible. An exchange of only a small fraction of warheads would produce «nuclear winter» in which smoke and soot would obscure the sunlight, the temperature would fall below freezing levels and global toxic smog would be created. That’s why there is no more important task today than to safeguard peace and prevent a nuclear catastrophe on the Earth which is our one and only home. In the world there have been stocked great masses of chemical and bacteriological weapons. Included are the most dreadful – the bacilli of Siberian ulcer and the plague. If any these weapons are used, the casualties will run into tens of millions. Mankind has no immunity against bacteriological weapons, and the use of chemical weapons will result in mass contamination of the area and its transfer to the rest of the planet, thus affecting the life of several generations. One would like to believe that common sense will prevail and none of these weapons of mass destruction will be used. If we fail to find ways to pool our efforts to do away with wars, if we fail to persuade people to take a different approach to ecological problems, then the chances are that we will be the last happy generation to live on the Earth.
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