Speaking:

Exercise 7. Make an abstract of two texts, using key vocabulary and tell about:

1. the reasons of floods;

2. the consequences of tsunami and flood waters;

3. the possibility to avoid damages;

4. the opportunity to safe people;

5. the danger in the water–damaged areas;

6. safety measures in cleanup work zones.

Checklist for Section IV

1. How is the verb to be as the modal one is translated into Russian?

2. What part of speech is formed by the suffix – ous?

3. How is it possible to oppose to the damaging action of tsunami?

4. Why is it dangerous to work in flooded areas?

Section V

Grammar: Nominative Infinitive Construction.

Word-formation: suffix –ist.

Speaking: Drought disaster.

Learn the pronunciation and meaning of the words:

to leap over	прыгать, перепрыгивать (через что-либо)
swirl	водоворот, кружение
swirling wind	вихрь
to whip	гнать, подгонять
scrub	кустарник, поросль
to parch	[pɑ:tʃ] иссушать, палить, жечь (о солнце)
peninsula	[pI'nInsjulə] полуостров
dwarf	[dwɔ:f] oстанавливать (развитие), уменьшать на вид (зри- тельно)
blaze	пламя
barely	просто, едва, лишь
to exacerbate	[eks'æsə:beIt] обострять, усиливать
fragile	['frædʒaIl] хрупкий, слабый
long-term	долгосрочный
spell	короткий промежуток времени
to enhance	[In'hɑ:ns] увеличивать, усиливать
baking	палящий
scalding	[skɔ:ldIŋ] обжигающий, жгучий

Vocabulary development: word building:

Exercise 1. Translate the original and derivative words:

Verb	noun (abstract)	noun (person)	adjective
to fight	-	fighter	-
-	ecology	ecologist	ecological
to environ	environment	-	environmental
to investigate	investigation	investigator	-
to resist	resistance	-	resistant resistible / resistive
to supply	supply	supplier	-
to decline	declination	-	-
to govern	government	governor	governmental

Text a European Sahara?

The great desert has leaped over the Mediterranean. Is climate change to blame – or man and his works? It looked and felt like hell. Swirling winds whipped flames along a 17–kilometer front of pine-forest scrub parched by the fiercest drought on the Iberian Peninsula in 60 years. A dozen firefighters, dwarfed by the massive blaze, fought the flames amid smoke, heat, and the blackening countryside of one of the regions in Spain. Before they could turn to flee, the fire swept over them. Eleven men and women died; the twelfth barely survived. The hurricane of fire was very big.

With historic droughts and dozens of fires ranging from Portugal to Greece, it isn’t hard to imagine an apocalyptic future for southern Europe, almost as if the vast Sahara Desert were reaching out across the Mediterranean. If this merely a long, hot summer, or are these the initial symptoms of enduring climate change, exacerbated by overpopulation and overdevelopment of a fragile ecological landscape?

The Desert Watch project, led by the European Space Agency, reports that 300.000 square kilometers of Europe’s Mediterranean coast – an area larger than Britain – with a population of 16.5 million, is threatened by “desertification”. The Spanish minister of Environment warned about a long–term decrease in rain and an increase in temperatures: “the beginning of a long cycle” of extreme drought. The head of the University of Valencia’s Desertification Investigation Center says, that while severe dry spells may be a normal component of Europe’s climate, a weakening of the soil’s resistance to drought among other things, along with human factors, are enhancing the risks of desertification.

The word “desertification”, in Europe, essentially means that the land itself dies and becomes agriculturally unproductive, even if people still build apartments on it or, indeed, greenhouses. And as with the broader debate on global warming there is plenty of room for error when it comes to long–term forecasts. Remember the killer summer heat wave of 2003, when thousands of elderly French died. That was the most intense in the 150 years of accurate weather history. This year’s baking drought hasn’t brought the same record heat – as yet.

Before the end of the century, summer temperatures in Italy are expected to increase by 7 to 8 degrees Celsius, according to the international panel on climate change. Such changes would transform everything from natural ecosystems – which can change dramatically with a tiny temperature variation – to basic water supplies, agriculture and tourism. Rainfall is expected to decline by 15 percent on average and 40 percent in the scalding summers before the end of the century. Experts warn that sea levels could rise as glaciers melt, even affecting the Mediterranean. Warmer weather and changing climates could bring Malaria to Europe. And in North Africa the situation will surely be worse, as governments have far fewer resources with which to prepare for the future.