Questões de Inglês

Climate change: warm words and cool waters

There is a serious debate about why observed temperatures

have not kept pace with computer-modelled predictions

September 1, 2013

Editorial The Guardian

Last week’s report that the current “pause” in global warming could be linked to cyclic cooling in the Pacific will be interpreted by climate sceptics as evidence that global warming isn’t happening, and by politicians as a reason to forget about climate change and carry on with business as usual. Both responses would be dangerously wrong. 

There is no serious argument within climate science about the link between carbon dioxide levels and temperature. Between 1970 and 1998 the planet warmed at an average of 0.17C per decade, and from 1998 to 2012 at 0.04C per decade. Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, however, continued to rise and are now higher than at any time in the last 800,000 years. Twelve of the 14 warmest years on record have occurred since 2000; the last two years have been marked by catastrophic floods in Australia and recordbreaking temperatures in the US; and the loss of north polar ice has accelerated at such a rate that climate modellers expect the Arctic Ocean to be routinely ice-free in September after 2040. 

There is, however, a serious debate about why the observed temperatures have not kept pace with computermodelled predictions and where the heat that should have registered on the global thermometer has hidden itself. One guess – supported by some sustained but still incomplete research – is that the deep oceans are warming: that is, the extra heat that should be measurable in the atmosphere has been absorbed by the sea. This is hardly good news: atmosphere and ocean play on each other, and any stored heat is 44 to be returned to the atmosphere sooner or later, in unpredictable ways. The real lesson from the latest finding is that there is a lot yet to be understood about how the planet works, and precisely how ocean and atmosphere distribute 45 from the equator to the poles. 

(www.theguardian.com. Adaptado.)

Climate change: warm words and cool waters

There is a serious debate about why observed temperatures

have not kept pace with computer-modelled predictions

September 1, 2013

Editorial The Guardian

Last week’s report that the current “pause” in global warming could be linked to cyclic cooling in the Pacific will be interpreted by climate sceptics as evidence that global warming isn’t happening, and by politicians as a reason to forget about climate change and carry on with business as usual. Both responses would be dangerously wrong. 

There is no serious argument within climate science about the link between carbon dioxide levels and temperature. Between 1970 and 1998 the planet warmed at an average of 0.17C per decade, and from 1998 to 2012 at 0.04C per decade. Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, however, continued to rise and are now higher than at any time in the last 800,000 years. Twelve of the 14 warmest years on record have occurred since 2000; the last two years have been marked by catastrophic floods in Australia and recordbreaking temperatures in the US; and the loss of north polar ice has accelerated at such a rate that climate modellers expect the Arctic Ocean to be routinely ice-free in September after 2040. 

There is, however, a serious debate about why the observed temperatures have not kept pace with computermodelled predictions and where the heat that should have registered on the global thermometer has hidden itself. One guess – supported by some sustained but still incomplete research – is that the deep oceans are warming: that is, the extra heat that should be measurable in the atmosphere has been absorbed by the sea. This is hardly good news: atmosphere and ocean play on each other, and any stored heat is 44 to be returned to the atmosphere sooner or later, in unpredictable ways. The real lesson from the latest finding is that there is a lot yet to be understood about how the planet works, and precisely how ocean and atmosphere distribute 45 from the equator to the poles. 

(www.theguardian.com. Adaptado.)

Climate change: warm words and cool waters

There is a serious debate about why observed temperatures

have not kept pace with computer-modelled predictions

September 1, 2013

Editorial The Guardian

Last week’s report that the current “pause” in global warming could be linked to cyclic cooling in the Pacific will be interpreted by climate sceptics as evidence that global warming isn’t happening, and by politicians as a reason to forget about climate change and carry on with business as usual. Both responses would be dangerously wrong. 

There is no serious argument within climate science about the link between carbon dioxide levels and temperature. Between 1970 and 1998 the planet warmed at an average of 0.17C per decade, and from 1998 to 2012 at 0.04C per decade. Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, however, continued to rise and are now higher than at any time in the last 800,000 years. Twelve of the 14 warmest years on record have occurred since 2000; the last two years have been marked by catastrophic floods in Australia and recordbreaking temperatures in the US; and the loss of north polar ice has accelerated at such a rate that climate modellers expect the Arctic Ocean to be routinely ice-free in September after 2040. 

There is, however, a serious debate about why the observed temperatures have not kept pace with computermodelled predictions and where the heat that should have registered on the global thermometer has hidden itself. One guess – supported by some sustained but still incomplete research – is that the deep oceans are warming: that is, the extra heat that should be measurable in the atmosphere has been absorbed by the sea. This is hardly good news: atmosphere and ocean play on each other, and any stored heat is 44 to be returned to the atmosphere sooner or later, in unpredictable ways. The real lesson from the latest finding is that there is a lot yet to be understood about how the planet works, and precisely how ocean and atmosphere distribute 45 from the equator to the poles. 

(www.theguardian.com. Adaptado.)

Will we ever… understand why music makes us feel good?

19 April 2013

Philip Ball

No one knows why music has such a potent effect on our emotions. But thanks to some recent studies we have a few intriguing clues. Why do we like music? Like most good questions, this one works on many levels. We have answers on some levels, but not all. 

We like music because it makes us feel good. Why does it make us feel good? In 2001, neuroscientists Anne Blood and Robert Zatorre at McGill University in Montreal provided an answer. Using magnetic resonance imaging they showed that people listening to pleasurable music had activated brain regions called the limbic and paralimbic areas, which are connected to euphoric reward responses, like those we experience from sex, good food and addictive drugs. Those rewards come from a gush of a neurotransmitter called dopamine. As DJ Lee Haslam told us, music is the drug. 

But why? It’s easy enough to understand why sex and food are rewarded with a dopamine rush: this makes us want more, and so contributes to our survival and propagation. (Some drugs subvert that survival instinct by stimulating dopamine release on false pretences.) But why would a sequence of sounds with no obvious survival value do the same thing? 

The truth is no one knows. However, we now have many clues to why music provokes intense emotions. The current favourite theory among scientists who study the cognition of music – how we process it mentally – dates back to 1956, when the philosopher and composer Leonard Meyer suggested that emotion in music is all about what we expect, and whether or not we get it. Meyer drew on earlier psychological theories of emotion, which proposed that it arises when we’re unable to satisfy some desire. That, as you might imagine, creates frustration or anger – but if we then find what we’re looking for, be it love or a cigarette, the payoff is all the sweeter. 

This, Meyer argued, is what music does too. It sets up sonic patterns and regularities that tempt us to make unconscious predictions about what’s coming next. If we’re right, the brain gives itself a little reward – as we’d now see it, a surge of dopamine. The constant dance between expectation and outcome thus enlivens the brain with a pleasurable play of emotions. 

(www.bbc.com. Adaptado.)

Will we ever… understand why music makes us feel good?

19 April 2013

Philip Ball

No one knows why music has such a potent effect on our emotions. But thanks to some recent studies we have a few intriguing clues. Why do we like music? Like most good questions, this one works on many levels. We have answers on some levels, but not all. 

We like music because it makes us feel good. Why does it make us feel good? In 2001, neuroscientists Anne Blood and Robert Zatorre at McGill University in Montreal provided an answer. Using magnetic resonance imaging they showed that people listening to pleasurable music had activated brain regions called the limbic and paralimbic areas, which are connected to euphoric reward responses, like those we experience from sex, good food and addictive drugs. Those rewards come from a gush of a neurotransmitter called dopamine. As DJ Lee Haslam told us, music is the drug. 

But why? It’s easy enough to understand why sex and food are rewarded with a dopamine rush: this makes us want more, and so contributes to our survival and propagation. (Some drugs subvert that survival instinct by stimulating dopamine release on false pretences.) But why would a sequence of sounds with no obvious survival value do the same thing? 

The truth is no one knows. However, we now have many clues to why music provokes intense emotions. The current favourite theory among scientists who study the cognition of music – how we process it mentally – dates back to 1956, when the philosopher and composer Leonard Meyer suggested that emotion in music is all about what we expect, and whether or not we get it. Meyer drew on earlier psychological theories of emotion, which proposed that it arises when we’re unable to satisfy some desire. That, as you might imagine, creates frustration or anger – but if we then find what we’re looking for, be it love or a cigarette, the payoff is all the sweeter. 

This, Meyer argued, is what music does too. It sets up sonic patterns and regularities that tempt us to make unconscious predictions about what’s coming next. If we’re right, the brain gives itself a little reward – as we’d now see it, a surge of dopamine. The constant dance between expectation and outcome thus enlivens the brain with a pleasurable play of emotions. 

(www.bbc.com. Adaptado.)

Will we ever… understand why music makes us feel good?

19 April 2013

Philip Ball

No one knows why music has such a potent effect on our emotions. But thanks to some recent studies we have a few intriguing clues. Why do we like music? Like most good questions, this one works on many levels. We have answers on some levels, but not all. 

We like music because it makes us feel good. Why does it make us feel good? In 2001, neuroscientists Anne Blood and Robert Zatorre at McGill University in Montreal provided an answer. Using magnetic resonance imaging they showed that people listening to pleasurable music had activated brain regions called the limbic and paralimbic areas, which are connected to euphoric reward responses, like those we experience from sex, good food and addictive drugs. Those rewards come from a gush of a neurotransmitter called dopamine. As DJ Lee Haslam told us, music is the drug. 

But why? It’s easy enough to understand why sex and food are rewarded with a dopamine rush: this makes us want more, and so contributes to our survival and propagation. (Some drugs subvert that survival instinct by stimulating dopamine release on false pretences.) But why would a sequence of sounds with no obvious survival value do the same thing? 

The truth is no one knows. However, we now have many clues to why music provokes intense emotions. The current favourite theory among scientists who study the cognition of music – how we process it mentally – dates back to 1956, when the philosopher and composer Leonard Meyer suggested that emotion in music is all about what we expect, and whether or not we get it. Meyer drew on earlier psychological theories of emotion, which proposed that it arises when we’re unable to satisfy some desire. That, as you might imagine, creates frustration or anger – but if we then find what we’re looking for, be it love or a cigarette, the payoff is all the sweeter. 

This, Meyer argued, is what music does too. It sets up sonic patterns and regularities that tempt us to make unconscious predictions about what’s coming next. If we’re right, the brain gives itself a little reward – as we’d now see it, a surge of dopamine. The constant dance between expectation and outcome thus enlivens the brain with a pleasurable play of emotions. 

(www.bbc.com. Adaptado.)