Important information you must know from CNN reports

Dear students,

The following articles are important news in the past few years. I hope you can benefit from them and grasp those crucial materials, applying them to your essays.

Good luck,
Christine

RUNNING ON EMPTY
Oil Consumption Jumps as World Supplies Dwindle

2004.09, CNN Anchor
We’re using more crude oil than ever before with no sign that demand will ease. That would be fine if supplies were endless, but it’s been decades since any new major oil fields were discovered. So the big question is: Will we run out? CNN’s Chris Huntington takes a look.

Chris Huntington, CNN Correspondent
Oil prices at record levels, global crude demand at an all-time high, and looming threats to the Middle-East oil fields have rekindled the long-running debate over just when the world will start to run out of oil.
David Goodstein, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology and author of Out of Gas, believes it will be sooner rather than later.

David Goodstein, Caltech Prof.
It probably will happen sometime in the next 10 to 20 years. It may have already begun.

Chris Huntington, CNN Correspondent
Even those less worried about supply say the oil markets have turned a corner.

Karen Matusic, Energy Intel. Group
We’re not running out of crude oil, we might be running out of cheap crude oil.

Chris Huntington, CNN Correspondent
Several factors are driving those fears. Global oil consumption is at a record 80 million barrels a day. The United States burns a quarter of that, but China’s demand is surging.
For now, global crude production is keeping pace while adding some to stockpiles. But there is very little slack in the system—only about 2 or 3 million barrels a day of spare production capacity. And almost all of that is in Saudi Arabia, where safety of that supply is now in question.
Then there is the big issue of just how much oil there was in the first place. The U.S. Geological Survey’s best estimate is that the Earth once held about 2.2 trillion barrels of recoverable oil. If that’s accurate, then in less than a century, we’ve burned through close to half of that original supply. Based on that, the International Energy Agency projects that global crude-oil production will most likely max out at around 2026 followed by a rapid decline.
Goodstein predicts a crisis with high inflation.

David Goodstein, Caltech Prof.
If we’re lucky, that will be the worst of it. Higher prices will prompt other hydrocarbons to be substituted for the oil, and we’ll muddle along somehow. If we are less lucky, we’ll have a repeat of what happened in 1973.

Chris Huntington, CNN Correspondent
Also adding to the supply concerns is the fact that there has been only one major oil discovery in the past 20 years. And the world’s second-largest oil company, Royal Dutch/Shell, recently admitted that it had greatly exaggerated its own crude reserves.

1937的能源危機
The energy crisis of 1973 resulted from an oil embargo imposed by the Arab members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (O.P.E.C.). O.P.E.C. sought to punish Western countries for their support of Israel in the October 1973 Yom Kippur War against Egypt and Syria. The embargo and price leveraging by O.P.E.C. sent shockwaves through the world economies that were felt through the remainder of the decade.


HI-TECH HELL
Do Computers and Gadgets Really Make Life Easier?

2004.10, CNN Anchor
Many of us turn to technology to help us find more leisure time. Cell phones, laptops, instant messengers, those were designed to free us from the workplace.
And has it worked? Has all this technology naturally hurt us in our pursuit of leisure time? Jim Bolden has this.

Jim Bolden, CNN Correspondent
Technology promises so much, but not necessarily more leisure time. In fact, if we aren’t spending time using technology, we’re spending time trying to get it to actually work.

Barry Fox, Technology Writer
Technology’s a nightmare.

Jim Bolden, CNN Correspondent
Barry Fox has written about technology for years, but thinks it hasn’t made our lives easier—far from it.

Barry Fox, Technology Writer
We’re trapped by technology and we’ve been sold—we’ve been sold a lie that technology makes life pleasant, leisurely, lovely.

Jim Bolden
So what has gone so horribly wrong? After all, technology does allow us more flexibility at work.

Madeleine Bunting, Author
The thing about the kinds of technologies that we’ve got now is that they’ve broken down what used to be a spatial differentiation between work, i.e., you went to work in an office or a factory and you came home again and the two were some distance apart—sometimes considerable distance apart. So, work was kind of limited, it had boundaries around it. Now we’ve dismantled all of that.

Jim Bolden, CNN Correspondent
If you think the mobile phone started that dismantling process, then you might say the Blackberry has obliterated the line. Blackberry begs to differ. It says its little wireless e-mailers actually give employees an extra half an hour a day of free time.

Charmaine Eggberry, Blackberry
I have, for example, many many staff members who have young families, who work for me. And what they have now is the flexibility to leave the office, to go home, to pick up their children, spend quality time with them, and then work on their items that are urgent, and let’s note that word “urgent”, when they want to, how they want to.

Jim Bolden, CNN Correspondent
Senior lawyers in this London firm say they couldn’t represent their clients well without the latest tech tools. But, there are limits.

Jonathan Wood, Lawyer
You are constantly trying to deal with your mobile phone ringing, e-mails coming on to your desk, faxes arriving, it’s—it’s constant intrusion.

Jim Bolden, CNN Correspondent
And even Barry Fox admits technology is very seductive.

Barry Fox, Technology Writer
I can only think it’s because what a computer can offer is so wonderful, so attractive, that we are prepared to put up with all the kind of nonsense that we do put up with.

Jim Bolden, CNN Correspondent
The best advice from those who make techno-gadgets and those who use them: Don’t forget, there is an OFF button.



THE BIG THAW
Global Warming Happening Faster Than Predicted

2005.01, CNN Anchor
It’s called global warming, when our planet heats up and melts the Arctic ice. Scientists have known about it for years.
But now, some reports are suggesting that global warming is occurring more quickly than expected. Sharon Collins has more.

Sharon Collins, CNN Anchor
You’ve heard the warnings before. But these latest studies make a stronger connection between pollution and global warming. And a report from the Pew Foundation says rising temperatures are already having a major impact on the U.S. scientists estimate at least one half of all wild species have been affected by climate change. In some cases, birds have stopped migrating and there are a number of species beginning to shift northward. It may not seem like a big deal, but experts say these slight fluctuations in nature could have dire consequences.

Dr. Camille Parmesan, University of Texas
[When] species shift around the globe, they start coming into contact with species that they normally haven’t been in contact with, then you get the potential for competitive interactions and we don’t often know what the outcome of that will be.

Sharon Collins, CNN Correspondent
The arctic region is especially sensitive. It’s warming much faster than other regions. And another study that looked at trends in eight nations says the Arctic melt will actually make global warming worse because there will no longer be as much ice to reflect the heat.

Dr. Robert Corell, Arctic Report Author
For the Arctic, this is particularly important because we know from evidence that there is really historic warming across the arctic when we look at it over the last, say, 10,000, or even 40,000 years.

Sharon Collins, CNN Correspondent
The warmer temperatures have both good and bad ramifications. Some scientists point out that the arctic thaw could make parts of Russia ice-free for months instead of weeks, improving the prospect of oil and gas development there. But on the other hand, a resulting sea level rise threatens island nations and coastal states like Florida. The question then becomes, what can we do about it.

Dr. John Christy, University of Alabama
All of the things that I have seen that should be done in terms of regulation and so on will have an effect on the climate so small we will not even be able to measure it. And so if those regulations are implemented, and we have no effect on the climate but they do have an effect on the economies, and the health and welfare of people, then that’s a cost that ought to be weighed.

Sharon Collins, CNN Correspondent
But many scientists disagree with the wait-and-see approach. They argue that, unlike natural solar warming from past decades, the man-made gases will continue to stay in the atmosphere and change the climate. Those arguing for immediate reduction of industrial gas say by virtue of doing nothing, we would be conducting a very risky experiment on Earth.