Day reading Passage (Australian culture and culture shock)

8 
Bleach - 1) (n) 
a chemical used to make things pale or white, or to kill
2) 
(v) 
to make something pale or white, especially by using chemicals or the sun 
Example: She bleached her hair blonde.
Example: The wood had been bleached by the sun.

---

Outlook (n) 
(C2) - your general attitude to life and the world
Example: outlook on
Example: He’s got a good outlook on life.
Example: Exercise will improve your looks and your outlook.

---

Day 13
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading
Passage 1 below.
Temperature rising
The impact of global warming on tourism industry
The tourism industry depends to a large extent on good weather. The past few years have 
brought intense hurricanes, typhoons, torrential rains, heat waves and droughts. According 
to the World Meteorological Organization, 2004 was the fourth hottest year on record.
And while global warming, defined as human-driven climate change traced to the burning 
of fossil fuels such as oil, coal and natural gas, cannot be blamed for single-handedly 
wreaking such havoc, the scientific consensus is that it may intensify some weather 
events. For example, meteorologists attribute the back-to-back hurricanes in 2004 to a 
50-to-70-year natural cycle of increased hurricane activity. But hurricanes tend to become 
even more formidable on a warmer globe. Bill MacCracken, a scientist at the Climate 
Institute in Washington DC, likens the present climate to a pot of slowly boiling water on a 
stove. If you turn up the flame, you get more bubbles, but you can’t attribute one particular 
bubble to the increase in heat. He says, 'W e’re slowly going to be getting more extreme 
weather, but we can’t say that any particular type of weather is due to the changing 
climate.”
Tourism companies worldwide are starting to feel the financial effects of weather change.
In Scotland, higher winter temperatures have led several ski areas to diversify into summer 
leisure pursuits such as golf, and paragliding in the winter. A similar scenario is taking 
place in the European Alps. Robert Mills, of the United States Tourism Association, reports 
that in the upper Midwest of the United States, cooler summers and warmer winters have 
resulted in resort owners having to restrict outdoor sports such as swimming in lakes and 
ice fishing. And in the west of the United States, intense forest fires in recent years have 
limited public access to national and state parks. For the tourism industry, which generated 
US$578 billion in 2002, or seven percent of the world’s economy, the costs of extreme 
weather are high. Last year was the most expensive on record for the insurance side 
of the industry. “Weather and tourism go hand in hand” says Tim Warren, an adventure 
business consultant based in California. “If the weather is not co-operating, the impacts on 
profits are very real.”
One of the most impacted areas is the diving industry, whose very survival depends on the 
health of coral reefs. The Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network reports that 20 percent of 
the world’s reefs have been effectively destroyed by factors such as pollution, overfishing, 
diseases, and bleaching- the last directly related to a rise in water temperatures that 
essentially heats coral until it sheds algae that feed it, leaving it colorless. Even Australia’s 
Great Barrier Reef, with its 400 species of coral spanning 1,240 miles, hasn’t been spared.

---

Reading Passage 1
Scientists estimate that bleaching has affected significant areas of the Great Barrier Reef. 
“We hear tourists say, ‘this doesn’t look like the postcard or as it did three years ago’, “says 
John Rumney, manager of Undersea Explorer, a dive and research vessel that operates 
out of Queensland in Australia.
The ski industry has also felt the effects of climate change. A 2003 report by Brendan 
Stark, of the Global Environmental Program (GEP), predicted that downhill skiing could 
Disappear altogether at low-altitude resorts such as Kitzbuhel in Austria. Snowfall in the 
New England has decreased by 15 percent since 1953 and, perhaps more significantly, 
there are seven fewer days per annum with snow on the ground here than there were fifty 
years ago. While there is no concrete evidence that the warming in New England is due 
to the emissions of greenhouse gases, many scientists in the United States believe it is 
consistent with global warming. The ski industry has made great efforts to downplay the 
impact of climate change. However, less snow and more variable temperatures have had 
disastrous consequences for many smaller ski operators, who can only open for business 
when snow is on the ground. According to Michael Berry, president of the Denver-based 
National Ski Areas Association, ‘the reason why some small ski resorts aren’t around any 
more is because they decided they could not afford to install snow-making systems.” The 
best snowmaking in the world won’t save the industry if current trends continue.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, made up of some 2,000 scientists, 
estimates a rise of between two and 10.4 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100. As a result, GEP 
forecasts that the ski and tourism industry in Switzerland, for example, could eventually 
lose up to US1.6 billion annually. The outlook for other travel destinations is not much 
brighter. Scientists feel polar bears will die out within the next hundred years or so. James 
Wilson, of the Planet Travel Club, believes that in just 20 to 30 years, if people have not 
already had the opportunity to see the snows of Mt Kilimanjaro in Tanzania or visit the low- 
lying Maldive Island of the Indian Ocean, it will be too late because they will have gone too. 
Kyoto’s climate treaty, signed by more than 100 countries, required industrialized nations 
to reduce greenhouse gases by at least five percent. It is a step towards slowing the trend, 
but clearly much larger strides are necessary if the travel industry hopes to become less 
affected by the impact of global warming.

---

In boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet, write