International Green.view

102. Nothing new under the sun
Aug 17th 2009 From Economist.com

Anthropogenic global warming started when people began farming

102-1-478
IMAGINE a small group of farmers tending a rice paddy some 5,000 years ago in eastern Asia or sowing seeds in a freshly cleared forest in Europe a couple of thousand years before that. It is here, a small group of scientists would have you believe, that humanity launched climate change. Long before the Industrial Revolutionindeed, long before a worldwide revolution in intensive farming, the results of which kept humanity alivepeople caused unnatural exhalations of greenhouse gases that had an impact on the world's climate.
Much of what is known about recent ice ages comes from drilling into the ice at the planet's poles. This holds a chemical chronology of the Earth laid out by depth. There is evidence in this ice-core record of seven periods when the ice caps expanded, and each of them shows a steady decline in the level of greenhouse gases after the ice receded again. All, that is, but for the one which saw the rise of modern agrarian societies.

A. 어휘
anthropogenic 인간의 생존활동으로부터 연유하는, 인간 때문에 발생하는.
tend 돌보다, 손질하다. rice paddy 벼논. sow-sowed-sowed/sown 씨를 뿌리다.
freshly cleared forest 농사를 짓기 위해 나무를 베어 낸 新(신) 開墾地(개간지).
humanity 인류. launch 시작하다, 배를 진수시키다.
intensive farming 집약적 농업. exhalation 토해내기, 발산, 증발.
impact 영향, 충격, 격돌. poles 남극과 북극 지역. chronology 年代記(연대기), 연대.
evidence 증거. ice cap 만년설. expand 팽창하다. recede 물러나다. that is 즉.
but for=without ...이 없다면. agrarian 토지의, 농업의.

B. 구문
- All, that is, but for . . . modern agrarian societies.
cf. the one→ the period
[현대 농업사회의 출현을 지켜 본 시대 외에는 모든 시대(빙하가 쇠퇴한 시대)에 온실가스의 수준이 내려갔다.]

102-2-479
In Europe, slash-and-burn techniques for clearing forested land allowed the farming of crops that had spread from the Fertile Crescent. This practice loosed the forests' stored carbon into the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide. In eastern Asia a couple of millennia later there was a tenfold increase in the growth of rice as the region's principal foodstuff. That meant the destruction of vast grasslands, which released equally vast amounts of methanea gas far more efficient at trapping heat than carbon dioxide is.
The ice-core record shows that the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere made an anomalous upturn about 7,000 years ago, and that methane levels, which were also falling, began to increase about 5,000 years ago (see chart). These numbers correspond well with the rise of farming in Europe and Asia. This is not a new idea, but one of its proponents, Bill Ruddiman, a palaeoclimatologist at the University of Virginia, has recently refuted one of the main objections to it: that there were not enough people farming the land to have made a significant difference.

A. 어휘
slash 나무를 베다, 난도질하다. clear 開墾(개간)하다. forested land 산림지대.
fertile 비옥한. crescent 초승달, 초승달 모양의 땅, 빵.
the Fertile Crescent 메스포트미아의 초승달 모양의 비옥한 지역.
practice 慣行(관행), 실행. stored carbon (나무 속에)저장되어있는 탄소.
carbon dioxide 이산화탄소. millennia: millennium(천년)의 복수형.
tenfold 10 배. principal foodstuff 主食(주식). destruction 파괴.
release 배출하다. efficient 능률적인. trapping heat 열을 가두어 놓는 것.
anomalous 변칙적인, 異例的(이례적)인. correspond 일치하다, 相應(상응)하다.
proponent 제안자, 지지자. palaeoclimatologist 古(고)기상학자.
refute 論駁(논박)하다, 반박하다. objection 반대.

B. 구문
- Bill Ruddiman, a palaeoclimatologist at . . . made a significant difference.
[Virginia 대학의 古(고)기상학자인 Bill Ruddiman는 (기후변화에 대한 농업의 영향)그것에 대한 주된 반대 중의 하나를 최근에 반박하였다. 즉 지구의 기후에 영향을 주기에 충분할 만큼 농사를 짓는 사람이 많지 않았다는 주장에 반론을 제기하였다.]