With roaring ships, hammering oil drill, industrial fishing and coastal construction, humans have strongly influenced the underwater soundscape (声音景观) over the past couple of hundred years — in some cases posting a threat to whales, dolphins and other ocean creatures. Until recently, underwater sound pollution had not attracted the same attention. Now, a new paper published in the journal Science lays out the impacts, demonstrating that noise pollution can be just as harmful to the ocean environment as other kinds of pollution.

Even the cracking of glaciers and any drop of rain falling on the water’s surface can be heard deep under the sea. Sea life uses sound to study their habitat, and to keep in communication with each other. They also use sound by listening to know something about their environment.

“It’s a long-lasting problem that certainly weakens the animals all the way from individuals to populations,” says lead author Carlos M. Duarte, distinguished professor at Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), “We are hoping that this report will not only reveal elements of how humans impact the ocean through sound pollution, but that it will also bring the topic to the attention of policymakers who will be able to act based upon the very real solutions.”

Marine (海洋) ecologist Kirsten Thompson of the United Kingdom’s University of Exeter, who was not involved in the study, said the report could not have come at a better time. “It summarizes the fact that we are in this new phase of human-caused noise in our oceans that is having a dramatic impact on different species.” What matters most, she notes, is the fact that the paper “doesn’t just point at the problem, it shows how to solve it.”

Unlike plastic pollution or fertilizer runoff, noise pollution will not take years to fix. The moment we switch our noise off the impact disappears, Duarte says, pointing to marine life surveys conducted around April 5, 2020. Having the world use more renewable energy would lessen the need to drill for oil and gas. The international team of researchers also called for a global regulatory framework for measuring and managing ocean noise.

The UK has been taking various kinds of measures to increase its use of renewable energy. 【小题1】

Recent statistics have shown that 2017 is the greenest year the UK has ever had for electricity production, with its first coal-free day since the 19th century. 【小题2】The UK's power system is now the fourth cleanest in Europe and the seventh in the world.

【小题3】 Currently, less than 7 per cent of the UK's electricity is produced via coal. The country is also trying to cut the use of gas to meet the target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. 【小题4】   It said,"We have never been cleaner or greener, and we are on target for an even better year in 2018.''

It added, 【小题5】 But we are at last facing up to the challenge. We are turning our backs on using fossil fuels and embracing a new, clean future''.

Scientists in Mexico say they may have found a way to cut the production of methane, a gas linked to rising temperatures on the Earth’s surface. The scientists say their method may help reduce the methane released by cows, one of the main producers of the gas.

When talking about global warming, many people think of carbon dioxide, another heat-trapping gas. Methane is an even more powerful heat-trapping gas. Cows are known to produce high levels of methane when they eat and process food.

Researchers at the Autonomous University of the State of Mexico are studying how a cow’s diet affects the production of methane. The researchers are using a specially designed machine to measure the effect. The scientists use the machine to try to capture the animal’s breathing to examine the methane released.

Most of the gas is released when cows belch. The digestive bacteria in a cow’s stomach causes the animal to send out the gas through its mouth. There are an estimated 1.3 to 1.5 billion cows in the world. Each animal releases as much as 120 kilograms of methane per year. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reports that, whenever measured in pounds, the effect of methane on climate change is more than 25 times greater than carbon dioxide over a 100-year period.

As it is difficult to capture the gas released by cows for use as energy, one way to lessen its release is to change their diet. Scientists in some countries are looking for ways to decrease cow methane. But while they are trying different plants and chemical compounds, those products would be too costly and difficult to bring to Mexico.