TUVALU, a tiny country in the Pacific Ocean, has asked for help as it fears it will be swallowed up by the sea. Storms and huge waves are a constant threat and none of Tuvalu’s nine little islands is more than five meters above sea level, Salt water is already entering the country’s drinking water supply, as well as damaging plants that produce fruit and vegetable.【小题1】.

【小题2】. Venice, a historic city in Italy best known for its canals, has sunk about 24 cm over the past 100 years. Experts say that it will have sunk another 20-50cm by 2050. A century ago, St. Mark’s Square, the lowest point in the city, floodedd about nine times a year, Nowadays, it happens more than 100 times. While Venice is slowly sinking into the mud on which it stands, Tuvalu’s rising sea level is caused by global warming.The average global temperature has increased by almost 0.5 centigrade degrees over the past century; scientists expect it to rise by extra 1-3 degrees over the next 100 years.Warmer weather makes glaciersmelt, adding more water to the ocean. The warmer temperatures also make water expand, so it takes up more space, causing the sea level to rise. The sea level has risen about 10－25 cm in the last 100 years.【小题3】.

Through burning coal, oil and gas, people have been increasing the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, such as CO₂. This adds to the power of the greenhouse effect, making the planet even warmer. Many scientists believe that, if the warming is not stopped, there will be huge climate changes.【小题4】.

【小题5】, the sea will swallow up millions of homes and the world will be flooded with “climate refugees” looking for somewhere to live.

If you look at the dynamic “Global Temperatures” map on NASA’s website, you can see the historic temperature change over time across the planet as the timeline goes from 1880 to the modern day. By 2019, the entire planet is in red, orange, and yellow colors, indicating temperatures much higher than the historical average in every country and human inhabitance.

If the timeline went to 2023, the map would look even worse. That’s because the summer of 2023 was the hottest ever, according to ocean monitors. July was the hottest month in recorded history. Next July could be worse. Unless we do something quickly, we face dealing with more and more dangerous and expensive natural disasters in the future.

Forest fires sent smoke from Canada across the North American continent, causing New York City to have the worst air quality in its recorded history. Heavy rainstorms fell on Vermont and the Northeastern United States in just a couple of days in the middle of July, which exceeded the amount that area would usually receive in two months and caused extreme damage to homes and businesses. Around the same time, flash flooding in Bucks County, Pennsylvania — north of Philadelphia — killed nearly a dozen people.

Erich Fischer, a researcher specializing in climate studies at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, is concerned that natural disasters could get much worse in the future—and in ways we cannot predict. He called for a “strike for climate justice,” which actually took place on Sept. 15, 2023. “The strategy needs to be twofold (双重的) . We need to decrease carbon emissions as much as realistically possible. That is already happening with people using electric cars and other green technologies. At the same time, we also need to find ways to predict the risk of natural disasters ahead of time,” said Erich Fischer.

Used electronics are piing up fast: they are filling up landfills with dangerous pieces of waste. Some e-waste is relatively large, such as air conditioners; other e-waste is more unnoticed, such as smart labels that contain disposable batteries and other equipment.

“It’s these small batteries that are big problems,” says University of California, Irvine, public health scientist Dele Ogunseitan, who is a green technology researcher and adviser for major tech companies and was not involved in developing the battery. “Nobody really pays attention to where they end up.” Researchers at the Cellulose & Wood Materials Laboratory at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology are working to address this problem. Their new paper describes a water-activated paper battery developed from environmentally friendly materials that could eventually present a sustainable alternative to the more harmful batteries common in low-power devices.

The paper battery has the same key components as standard batteries but packages them differently. Like a typical chemical battery, it has a positively charged side and a negatively charged side. A traditional battery’s components are covered in plastic and metal; in the new battery, however, the positively and negatively charged sides are inks printed onto the front and back of a piece of paper. That paper is filled with salt, which dissolves (溶解) when the paper becomes wet. When the paper is dry, the battery is shelf-stable. Once the paper is wet, the battery starts working within 20 seconds. The new battery’s operating performance declines as the paper dries. When the scientists rewet the paper during testing, the battery regained function and lasted an hour before beginning to dry out again.

That future may not be so far off. It is hard to predict a time line for manufacturing such items at scale, but the head of the study says he is in contact with potential industry partners and believes these batteries could make their way into products within the next two to five years.