Read the article and choose the best answers. 1. In news reports, the narrator has seen photographs of 2. What might happen in the future makes the narrator feel 3. The narrator says pollution 4. The narrator describes global warming as 5. According to the narrator, New York Is It All Bad? It seems everywhere | look these days there is bad news about what is happening on our planet. News reports show frightenin pictures of drought in parts of Africa, awful floods in New Zealand, anc the consequences of climate change in the Arctic and other polar areas. Perhaps even more frightening, however, are the images that I see in documentaries and films. Somehow the producers of these film about the environment make the problems facing the Earth seem ever more serious. If you have ever worried about what may happen to us over the next few decades — something I do all the time — there might be some good news ... for a change. Now, don't get too excited! Of course, we've still got a lot of problems and our world is not perfect. We know that pollution from factories, cars, power plants, homes and offices is a huge problem; it kills fish and plants and makes people unhealthy. In addition, we know that what some people are doing - cutting down trees in the Amazon rainforest, for example, or hunting illegally, which is called poaching — means that animals suffer. Through the actions of some, animals lose their homes and sources of food, and often become endangered or even extinct. Finally, we are all aware of what may be the worst problem of all — the Earth is getting warmer and warmer. Global warming, the increase in the Earth's temperature, is a scary fact, but what we have been seeing on the television and reading about in the newspapers might not be quite as bad as some experts believe. Among other things, global warming causes the planet's ice caps and ice sheets to melt. In the past, scientists thought that as ice sheets and ice caps in places like Greenland and other cold areas melted, they got more slippery. Their research showed that the more slippery the ice got, the faster it slipped into the sea, causing sea levels to rise very quickly. Now, however, Protessor Andrew Shepherd or une universty of Leeds has done another study and worked out that higher temperatures might not be as threatening to some ice sheets as once thought. He says the Greenland ice sheet is safer than studies have suggested. This is a very important discovery because, as we know, if an ice sheet melts, sea levels rise. Seventy percent of the people on the planet live on coasts. This means that melting ice will cause disastrous results for those living in some of the world's biggest cities like New York, London and Bangkok in Thailand. Professor Shepherd, who was the research leader on the Greenland project, did his study on an ice sheet that is about 1000 metres thick. If all of the ice sheet melts, sea levels will increase by an amazing, and very frightening, seven metres! However, on a happier note, Professor Shepherd says that this might take 3,000 years to happen if the only thing affecting the ice sheet is warm air temperatures. So much for the good news, here comes the bad part. Professor Shepherd says a bigger threat to people living on the Earth's coasts is the ice sheet in the west Antarctic. It has enough water in it to raise sea levels by six metres if it melts. Ice sheets melt quicker when they are in water, and a large part of the Antarctic ice sheet is in the sea. The Greenland ice cap, on the other hand, isn't as dangerous because most of it is on land. So, our next big challenge seems to find out what is raising the temperature of the oceans around the west Antarctic ice sheet. If it is the fault of the greenhouse effect and if we don't find a way to stop or slow it down, we're going to be in 'deep water' very soon. I really think it's time we did something before it gets too late, don't you?