Fill each blank with ONE suitable word. Write your answer in the numbered box provided below the passage. (0) has been done as an example.
Although the (0)________ in the global temperature by 4 per cent predicted by many scientists may not sound like much, it is the difference between (1)________ and the last Ice Age, when huge glaciers (2)________ Europe and most of Britain. Nobody knows exactly what would happen in a warmer world, (3)________ we do know some things. Heat a kettle and the water inside it expands. The temperature of the world has climbed more than half a degree this century, and the oceans have risen by at (4)________ 10 cm.
But just as it takes several minutes for a kettle to begin (5)________, so it may have taken the oceans thirty years to swell. This means that the global warming we are now (6)________ is a result only of the carbon dioxide we have dumped into the atmosphere up to (7)________ 1960s. Since then, the use of fossil (8)________ has increased rapidly. Scientists working for the United Nations and European governments have (9)________ warning that what the Dutch and the people of the East Anglia will need to do will be to build more extensive sea defences. Many of the world’s greater cities are at (10)________, because they are located at sea level. Miami, (11)________ entirely built on a sandbank, could be swept away. But the effects of (12)________ sea levels will be much worse for the developing countries. With a metre rise in sea levels, 200 million people could become (13)________.
There are other fears too, (14)________ to a recent United Nations report. The plight of the hungry in the northern Africa could (15)________, as rainfall in the Sahara and beyond is reduced by 20 per cent.
Although the (0)________ in the global temperature by 4 per cent predicted by many scientists may not sound like much, it is the difference between (1)________ and the last Ice Age
