Passage 3
Planet Earth was stricken by floods, drought and fire in 1997, a year which ended with the world's major polluters quarreling about ways to prevent further environmental disaster.
The 160 nations attending a UN conference on global warming, billed as one of the most vital ever held, finally reached a consensus on cutting greenhouse gas emissions through the next decade.
The climate was dominated in the latter part of the year by El Nino, a swelling of warmer water off the South American coast which affects global weather patterns. “I think for sure the most dramatic thing has been the El Nino phenomenon that has been experienced throughout the tropics,” said Jeffery Sayer, director-general of the International Centre for Forestry Research.
El Nino, called by Peruvian fisherman after the Christ Child because of its appearance around Christmas, is being blamed for widespread floods and drought in the tropics, and has affected other areas as well.
A major demonstration of the phenomenon was drought-intensified bush fires in Indonesia that spread a smog across large areas of Southeast Asia before badly-delayed rains started to fall in late November. Floods swept arid Somalia in East Africa, while the rain forests of Indonesia's Irian Java dried out and hundreds of tribes' people died from starvation and disease. Apart from El Nino, eastern and central Europe suffered the worst floods in living memory in early July, with over 100 people killed and many thousands of families displaced through the region and eastern Germany.
In the ancient Japanese capital of Kyoto, a UN gathering of 159 countries on global warming finally agreed on cutting greenhouse gas emissions through the next decade after 11 days of confused and uncontrolled negotiations. The conference accepted scientific evidence that heating of the Earth's surface by gases trapped in the atmosphere causes more and fiercer storms, expanding deserts, melting polar ice and raising sea levels which threaten to flood low-lying islands.
US Vice President Al Gore called the Kyoto agreement “a vital turning point” but added that more still needed to be done.
This passage mainly talks about ________.
通读全文可知本文主要描述了厄尔尼诺现象引起的一系列环境灾难，选项B最符合文章主旨要求，因此答案选B。
The word “polluter” (Par. 1) probably refers to those ________which have polluted the environment.
由下文第二段提到的“The 160 nations attending a UN conference on global warming”，160个国家参加联合国全球变暖会议，可以推测出第一段中polluter指的是“造成环境污染的国家”，因此答案选B。
In July, 1997, many families in eastern and central Europe were displaced because ________.
文章倒数第三段明确提到“eastern and central Europe suffered the worst floods in living memory in early July”，东欧和中欧在7月初遭受 了最严重的洪水灾害，造成了100多人死亡以及成千上万的家庭流离失所，所以本题答案选D。
Which of the following is NOT mentioned as the El Nino phenomenon?
结合文章第四段提到的“widespread floods and drought in the tropics”以及倒数第二、三段提到的“drought-intensified bush fires, fiercer storms, expanding deserts, melting polar ice and raising sea levels”可知厄尔尼诺现象包括洪水、干旱、沙漠等灾难，但没有提到地震，因此答案选D。
According to this passage, El Nino is mainly caused by ________.
从文章第二、三段可以清楚地知道造成厄尔尼诺现象的原因是温室气体的排放。A项在文中根本没有提及，C、D两项与厄尔尼诺现象一样，是温室气体的排放结果。因此，B项为正确答案。