8/16/2019 Level 5 Session 1 2006 Tape Script
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LTE
London Tests of English
Session One: 2006
Tape Script
Level 5
L24850
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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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