Climate change
气候变化

Cold comfort
毫无作用的安慰

Arctic riches unlocked by global warming will not begin to make up for the costs of climate change
因全球气候变暖，北极解锁财富之源，却难以弥补气候变化造成的损失
Jun 16th 2012 | from the print edition
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Better get a pair of shorts
穿条短裤更爽！

A FLOATING MOUNTAIN of grey and white ice, castellated and crevassed like an Alpine ridge, the iceberg is vast: the size of two aircraft carriers, maybe more. Scale is hard to judge in the Arctic because of its ubiquitous icy-white backdrops.
一座漂浮着的灰白冰山，城堡般的外形布满了裂隙，好似阿尔卑斯山的山脊。这座冰山极其庞大，相当于两艘航空母舰的大小，也许更多；北极到处都充斥着一片纯白，要丈量其尺寸可不是件易事。

Yet much the biggest part of the iceberg—perhaps nine times the size of the visible part—is submerged and invisible. As it drags along the bottom of the Jakobshavn Fjord, this mass of ice could cause earth tremors. Were it to flip over, pressed by sea ice from behind, it might cause a tsunami.
然而这座冰山的绝大部分淹没在水下不可见，其大小也许是水上部分的九倍之多。如此大体积的冰山若从雅各布港冰川峡湾底部拖曳而过，可能造成地颤；如果它在身后海冰的逼迫下翻了个身，就有可能引发海啸。

The Arctic will retain its power to amaze for a long time. Yet it is now changing beyond the usual regional and annual variations in sea-ice formation, glacier melt and so forth. The Arctic is clearly melting. Its floating ice cap is shrinking and thinning and its glaciers are retreating. By the end of this century, maybe much sooner, there will be frequent Arctic summers with almost no sea ice at all.
在很长一段时间内，北极依旧会保持它的惊艳。但如今其海冰形成、冰川融化等速度早已超出此地区的年变化量。很明显，北极正在融化。漂浮的冰帽萎缩变小，冰川融化消失。到本世纪末，或更早的时候，北极的夏天海中也许再不会出现一丝冰块的痕迹。

In the balance
前途未卜
Why does this matter? For millennia man has been changing the landscape, hacking and burning forests and ploughing up grasslands. This is how societies have evolved and prospered. Why should the melting Arctic, a product of man-made global warming, be any different?
这有什么要紧呢？几千年来，人类一直在改造自然，砍伐树木，焚烧森林，开垦草原。这就是社会进化繁荣的道路。为什么正在融化的北极——人为的全球变暖的产物，要有任何不同呢？

For most people living there, it is not. Many welcome the changes. They certainly know what is happening. “No one in Greenland would think of climate change as a theory: it’s observation,” says Minik Rosing, a Greenlandic scientist. Yet many would prefer their winters a bit less chilly. They are also looking forward to the rich opportunities a warmer Arctic will open up in resource development, shipping and the service industries that will flourish around them.
对大多数居住在此的人们来说，的确没有任何不同，他们对这种变化表示欢迎。人们当然知道正在发生什么。一位格陵兰的科学家Minik Rosing 说：“在格陵兰，没有人会觉得气候变化是一种理论，这是明显发生在眼前的事。”然而很多人都更希望他们的冬天能少一些天寒地冻，同时他们也希冀着，一个更温暖的北极将有机会创造更多财富，如发展资源开发、海运、服务行业等等，让国家繁荣起来。

These new Arctic industries will not come about overnight and may well deliver less than their cheerleaders promise. Even as the ice recedes, the Arctic will remain extraordinarily cold, dark, remote, expensive and difficult to operate in. But Arctic oil could make a significant contribution to global supplies—maybe as much as 10% of the total. That will be of huge benefit to Arctic economies. So those greens who have set their hopes on the eco-attuned Inuit or Scandinavians taking a stand against Arctic warming are likely to be disappointed. The best hope is that Arctic governments will continue to develop the region as carefully and harmoniously as they have been doing in recent years.
北极的新工业不会在一夜之间出现，最终结果也可能远不如雀跃的领导们所承诺的那样好。就算冰块减少了，北极圈依旧极其寒冷、黑暗、偏远，在此发展经济既昂贵又艰难。然而北极的石油可以为世界石油供应做出显著贡献，有可能占总供应量的百分之十之多。这能为北极经济创造一笔巨大财富。因此那些将希望寄托在一向主张生态协调的因纽特人和斯堪的纳维亚人身上、设想他们会对北极变暖持反对态度的环保主义者可能会失望不已。若北极的ZF能继续像这些年一直做的那样小心而和谐地发展这一地区的经济，就是最好不过了。

That is no small thing. The Arctic is probably the arena where Russia interacts most usefully with the Western world. And all Arctic countries are opening their offshore areas to exploration with caution: for oil companies, the Arctic is one of the world’s most tightly regulated regions. All this is good, but it is not the main point.
这可不是一件无关紧要的小事。北极是俄罗斯与西方世界进行最有力合作的场所。所有北极地区国家都开放了他们的近海领域，谨慎地进行勘探工作；在石油公司界的眼中，北极可是世界上监管最严格的地区之一。这些都是好事，但并不是重点。

The impending enrichment of Arctic countries would not compensate for the costs of runaway Arctic warming. Arctic species, habitats and quite possibly whole ecosystems would be lost. No Arctic country—not even Russia, which has a poor history of conservation—could contemplate wreaking such environmental havoc unilaterally. Yet all are happy to profit from it. That makes the Arctic a textbook illustration of the commons-despoiling tragedy that climate change is.
北极的国家即将拥有的富足将无法弥补失控的北极增温的代价。北极物种、生态栖息地，甚至很有可能是整个生态系统都将消失。北极圈的国家中没有一个——甚至是过去一向保守的俄罗斯，能够考虑单方面制造如此严重的环境破坏。然而人们还是很高兴能从中获利。这将使得北极与气候变化一样，成为公地掠夺悲剧的典型例证。

The costs to the world are likely to be greater than those to the Arctic, however. Arctic glaciers—including the Greenland ice sheet—are melting and disintegrating faster than expected. If this were to continue over a couple of centuries, there would be a strong chance of catastrophic rises in sea levels; this alone might cost the world more than it stands to benefit from Arctic resources. As a symptom of global warming, moreover, the warming Arctic is indivisible from the manifold costs it will entail. The World Bank estimates the cost of adapting to climate change between 2010 and 2050 at $75 billion-100 billion a year; other estimates are higher.
然而，相比北极，全世界气候变暖的代价更为严重。北极冰川（包括格陵兰大冰原）融化崩解的速度超出预期，如果继续这样下去，不过几个世纪，海平面极有可能升高到灾变的程度。这一点所造成的代价就远比从北极资源获利的要多。然而北极作为全球变暖的明显症候地区，根本无法从许许多多的花费中脱身而出。世界银行估计2010至2050年间，每年为适应气候变化的支出将多达750亿到1000亿美元。其他机构估价更高。

Sooner or later such arithmetic is going to force governments to get serious about dealing with climate change. It is already clear what is required: policies to put an appropriate price on carbon emissions, through a tax or market-based system, that is sufficient to persuade polluters to develop and adopt cleaner technologies. These are already available, and so is the ingenuity needed to force down their costs and bring them to market. Indeed, it is evident in the Arctic: the technological feats that oil companies display there are inspiring.
迟早，这样的计算会迫使ZF不得不认真对待气候变化。需要做出的行动已然明了：出台相关政策，可通过税收途径或基于市场的体系，制定碳排放的合理价格；这足以使那些对环境造成污染的人们开发、适应更清洁的能源技术。这早已可以实现，可以减少能耗、面向市场的精巧装置也已存在。其实在北极，如今石油公司的技术成果显著，也是非常鼓舞人心的。

With prompt action, the worst outcomes of a warmer Arctic can still be avoided. The shrinking ice cap may find a new equilibrium. Most of the permafrost may remain frozen. But the Arctic will nonetheless be radically changed, to the detriment of a unique polar biome. This much is already inevitable.
只要迅速行动起来，北极变暖的最坏结果仍旧可以避免。不断萎缩的冰帽会找到新的平衡，永久冻结的土地也会保持冰冻。但是北极地区仍将彻底改变，独特的极地生物群系会收到伤害。这些已是无法避免的。

词语释义：
Ubiquitous:无处不在的
Earth tremors：地颤
Ice cap：冰帽，冰冠
Arena:活动场所、……界。eg. The political arena
Unilaterally:单方面的
Ice sheet：大冰原
Catastrophic:灾变的，悲惨的
Arithmetic:计算，算术