Climate Change Meets American Agriculture (2/2)

慢速VOA,听写,英语,VOA ,气候,农业

Forests in the West, the Southwest and Alaska already have increases in fires, insect outbreaks and dead trees. But young forests on good soil will be more productive because of increased carbon dioxide levels.

At the same time, invasive plants will also grow faster and are likely to move northward. Recent research also suggests that weeds might get harder to kill with glyphosate, the most widely used plant killer in the United States.

The Department of Agriculture was the lead agency for the new report. Thirty-eight scientists from universities, national laboratories, nongovernmental organizations and federal service wrote it. They considered more than one thousand scientific publications.

The report was the strongest statement yet by the Bush administration that human activity is the main cause of climate change in the last fifty years. Carbon dioxide from the burning of oil, natural gas and coal is the main gas blamed for trapping heat in the atmosphere. The report says warming is very likely to continue in the United States during the next twenty-five to fifty years. And it says this is so even if future greenhouse-gas emissions are reduced.

参考译文：

美国西部、西南部以及阿拉斯加地区的森林的火灾、虫灾和树木死亡的现象已经不断恶化。然而对于生长在肥沃土壤上的年轻森林来说，二氧化碳水平的增加使它生长得更茂盛了。

与此同时，侵入性植物的生长也会变得更旺盛，而且会加重侵入性植物向北蔓延的趋势。 最近的研究表示：美国境内广泛使用的除草剂草甘膦将不会再那么管用了。

美国农业部是这份新报告的牵头机构。共有来自各个大学、国家实验室、非政府组织和政府服务机构的38位科学家参与了这份报告的编写。他们共参考了超过1000份的相关科学报告。

这份报告是布什政府时代发表的最有力的一份声明。这份报告说明了近50年来的气候变化的主要是由人类的活动引起的。 石油、天然气以及煤炭燃烧产品的二氧化碳是造成地球大气温室效应的罪魁祸首。这份报告还表示未来的25年乃至50年，美国的气候变暖仍将继续，而且即使未来减少温室气体的排放也不会改变这样的趋势。