Level 5 Session 1 2006 Tape Script

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LTE

London Tests of English

Session One: 2006

Tape Script

Level 5

L24850



RUBRIC: Hello everyone! Today’s test is the London Tests of English LevelFive. The theme of this test is Energy. This test lasts two hoursand fifty-five minutes. There are five tasks. Tasks One and Two

are listening. You must listen to the tape and write your answersin this booklet. Good luck!

Task One: Energy Audit

You are doing some research into energy and the environment.You hear a radio talk in which an environmentalist describescarrying out an “energy audit” to calculate his own energy useand its effects on the environment. Listen to the talk andcomplete the sentences below.

You will hear the talk twice. Do as much as you can the first timeand finish your work the second time.

For each statement, put a cross in the box next to the optionwhich best completes the sentence. The first one is an example.

You have one and a half minutes to look at the statements.

[ONE AND A HALF MINUTE PAUSE]

Listen carefully, the talk starts now.

[TONE/BEEP]

[FIVE SECOND PAUSE]

I'm an environmentalist, and for over a decade, I’ve been working

for "sustainability" on a personal and political level. It stands to

reason, then, that my everyday life must be energy efficient. I am,

after all, supposed to be setting an example. I recycle all my cans,

bottles and paper. I use energy-efficient light bulbs. I try not to fly

too much, and feel guilty when I do. And so on.

But what difference am I actually making? I've told myself for years

that I must be making less of an environmental impact than most

people. But is that true? And if not, what can I do about it?

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There was one way to find out: I decided to submit myself to an

energy audit, using one of the many tools on the internet. This

allows you, in a few minutes, to calculate roughly how much energy

you use every year, and how it compares with sustainable targets.

It's worryingly easy to use - so much so that I hesitated for several

hours before starting. The consequences of getting the wrong answer

made me nervous. But it had to be done.

First came home energy bills: electricity and gas. This required some

digging around. Ferreting out my last electricity bill and searching

through the bits I never read, I discovered that our household uses

about 286 kilowatt hours of electricity per month. Whatever that

means. Then there was the gas bill. How many therms do I use a

month? What is a therm? This takes some working out, but in it goes.

Relieved that I was able to ignore oil, coal and wood, I moved to the

next category: transport.

First, car use. As a non-car owner who cycles almost everywhere, I

was feeling pretty smug. Buses and trains followed: mostly journeys

to London. Then came the big one, the one that could blow it all out

of the water: plane flights, the fastest-growing contributor to

climate change. How many miles do I fly a year? I've deliberately

never thought about it, partly because I'm aware that it’s far too

many. I set to work calculating the miles flown over the past 12

months. The results were unpleasant. September: return flight to

Australia, my girlfriend's home country. Gulp. It's about 10,000

miles. Each way. December: return flight to Cyprus, where my

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parents live. Another 4,500 miles. Total: 24,500 miles.

Next came "industry and commerce". This is a category we might not

even think of, yet around half of the country’s carbon emissions

come from supporting our everyday lifestyles - the energy used to

grow and transport food, make clothes and so on. I came out with a

figure of about 2.5 tonnes of carbon a year.

And suddenly a figure appeared. My personal carbon usage over the

year was 25.5 tonnes. Average carbon usage is about nine tonnes per

person, 11 with flights. Mine was more than double. There must be

some mistake. I trawled back over the figures but the total

remained. Disaster. No one would take me seriously again.

So what was the problem? In a word, flights. My trips produced 21

tonnes of carbon. Take them out and my annual budget is less than

half the national average. Assuming I wanted to see my parents

again, and left one flight to Cyprus in, I would total about nine: not

so good, but about average. So that's it, then: no more flights to

Australia and I'll be OK.

Except this is not the whole picture. According to the Climate

Information Network, even nine tonnes per person is likely to be way

above a sustainable budget. They suggest around 2.5 tonnes each is

closer to a sustainable target.

So what do I do? For a start, I never fly again: 21.3 tonnes of carbon

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less every year. Still not enough. I sell my computer, buy second-

hand clothes and food produced locally. Stop using trains . . . It's

getting silly, but scary. This all shows how over-dependent we are on

carbon-based energy, and how we are going to have to beat this

dependency, fast. One thing is certain: if every "environmentalist" is

like me, we've got a bigger problem than we thought we had.

[FIVE SECOND PAUSE]

RUBRIC: You will now hear the talk again.

[TONE/BEEP]

[REPEAT RECORDED TEXT]

[FIVE SECOND PAUSE]

RUBRIC: That is the end of Task One. Now go on to Task Two.

Task Two: Climate Change

RUBRIC: Later you hear a radio interview in which the presenter, TerryDavis, is talking to Dr Elizabeth Jones, an expert on climate.Listen to the interview and complete the notes below. You shouldnot need to use more than three words. The first note is anexample.

You will hear the interview twice. Do as much as you can the firsttime and finish your work the second time.

You have one minute to look at the notes.

[ONE MINUTE PAUSE]

Listen carefully, the interview starts now.

[TONE/BEEP]

[FIVE SECOND PAUSE]

TD: Doctor Jones, how can we have confidence in projections of climate

a hundred years ahead when it’s hard enough to say what the

weather will be like tomorrow?

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EJ: Well, the point is that climate and weather are two different things.

Weather refers to temperatures, rain and wind on a given day at a

particular place. Climate reflects a long-term average, sometimes

over a very large area. Averages are easier to estimate than the

specific characteristics of weather. For example, although it’s

notoriously difficult to predict if it will rain or the exact

temperature of any particular day at a specific location, it is more

predictable that on average, in a certain area, it will be colder in

December than in July. And scientists now have access to climate

models which are sophisticated enough to be able to recreate past

climates, which adds to our confidence that projections of future

climates are accurate.

TD: OK, but we’ve had times in the past when we’ve had rapid warming

without disasters, so why can’t we cope with future warming?

EJ: Yes the Earth experienced rapid warming at the end of the last

glacial period, but for the last 10,000 years our climate has been

pretty stable. During this period, the world's population has grown

tremendously. Now, many heavily populated areas, such as urban

centres in low-lying coastal zones, are much more vulnerable to

climate shifts.

TD: Even if the Earth is warming, can we be sure how much of the

warming is caused by humans? Couldn’t it just be the increased

intensity of the sun?

EJ: Well yes, the sun's intensity does vary. In the late 1970s,

sophisticated technology was developed that can directly measure

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the sun's intensity, and these measurements show that in the past 20

years the sun's variations have been very small. Indirect measures of

changes in the sun's intensity since the beginning of the industrial

revolution show that the variations do not account for all the

warming that occurred in the 20th century and that the majority of

the warming was caused by an increase in human-made greenhouse

gas emissions. Most scientists now agree that most of the warming

over the last 50 years is due to human activities, not natural causes.

TD: I read that there will be an average temperature increase of about

one and a half to five and a half degrees over the next century.

EJ: That’s one of several projections. It sounds small, but even small

temperature changes can lead to large climate shifts. For example,

it has been calculated that the average temperature difference

between the end of the last ice age and today is very small, in fact

only about five degrees. The impacts associated with the deceptively

small change in temperature can be seen everywhere. Glaciers are

melting, spring is arriving earlier, mountain tops are losing their

snow, hurricanes are occurring more often.

TD: I also read recently that the oceans absorb most of the extra carbon

dioxide.

EJ: They absorb some, but since the Industrial Revolution, the burning

of fossil fuels like coal and oil has put about twice as much carbon

dioxide into the atmosphere than is naturally removed by oceans and

forests. Today, carbon dioxide levels are 30% higher than pre-

industrial levels, probably at the highest level in the past 20 million

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years. Carbon dioxide created by burning fossil fuels like oil and coal

can stay in the atmosphere for as long as 200 years. So even if we

stopped producing it today, it would take centuries for amounts of

carbon dioxide to come down to what it was in pre-industrial times.

We need to act now.

TD: So, how much do we need to reduce emissions by to avoid disaster?

EJ: There are various predictions and different definitions of disaster.

One of the latest studies projects that if carbon dioxide

concentrations are capped at 450 parts per million, major climate

disruptions may be avoided, although some damage may be

unavoidable. But measures need to be taken now. We can’t afford to

delay, we risk grave consequences for human society.

TD: Well, thank you very much for coming in this afternoon. It was very

interesting and I’m sure it’s given listeners a lot of food for thought.

[FIVE SECOND PAUSE]

RUBRIC: You will now hear the interview again.

[TONE/BEEP]

[REPEAT RECORDED TEXT]

[FIVE SECOND PAUSE]

RUBRIC: That is the end of the listening tasks. The other tasks test yourreading and writing of English. Now go on to Task Three.

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Level 5 Session 1 2006 Tape Script

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