IELTS Forcast Reading Test 2025 - Q2 Test 5 with Practice Test, Answers And Explanation
Luyện tập đề IELTS Forcast Reading Test 2025 - Q2 Test 5 được lấy từ cuốn sách Forcast Test 2025 - Q2 với trải nghiệm thi IELTS trên máy và giải thích đáp án chi tiết bằng Linearthinking, kèm answer key và list từ vựng IELTS cần học trong bài đọc.
IELTS Forcast Reading Test 2025 - Q2 Test 5 with Practice Test, Answers And Explanation
Passage
❓ Câu hỏi passage 1
Question 1 - 4
Match each statement with the correct person, A-F.
List of Findings
A
Bill Phillips-Turner
B
Mike Berwick
C
Karen Benn
D
Brian Roberts
E
Tom Watters
F
Doug Crees
1
Mossman cane farming practices are close to an environmentally friendly model.
2
Financial return is not the only important factor for cane growers.
3
Cane sugar may not harm the environment as much as other crops do.
4
The local population would decline if the sugar-processing plant closed.
Question 5 - 8
Choose appropriate options A, B, C or D.
5
In the first paragraph, the writer says that the town is 'holding its breath' because
A
it has environmental problems.
B
its tourism business is threatened.
C
most of its people have left the town.
D
a key processing plant may shut down.
6
According to the writer, cane growers who refuse the government offer are expected to
A
expand their farms.
B
sell their land at a low price.
C
find jobs in other industries.
D
seek financial help from banks.
7
Which of the following did Bill Phillips-Turner find most difficult to do?
A
sell mill property
B
reduce spending on upkeep
C
lower mill workers' wages
D
cut the number of mill staff
8
Cane grower Doug Crees says that he
A
would prefer to grow cocoa.
B
wants to remain on his farm.
C
wants his family to live together.
D
will look for part-time work in town.
Question 9 - 13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
Choose
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
9
In 2004, the cost of producing sugar in Australia was similar to the selling price.
10
Farmers who accepted the Government offer have mostly moved to the city.
11
Fuel production is regarded as the most desirable alternative business for the sugar mill.
12
Tom Watters reduced his use of pesticides.
13
Environmentally friendly farming practices have been profitable for Tom Watters.
Passage
❓ Câu hỏi passage 2
Question 14 - 19
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the Reading Passage?
YES if the statement agrees with the information
NO if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
14
The average summer temperature in 2003 is almost 4 degrees higher than the average temperature of the past.
15
Global warming is caused by human activities.
16
Jones believes the temperature variation is within the normal range.
17
The temperature is measured twice a day in major cities.
18
There were milder winters rather than hotter summers.
19
Governments are building new high-altitude ski resorts.
Question 20 - 21
Answer the questions below using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR NUMBERS from the passage for each answer.
20
What are the other two hottest years in Britain besides 2003?
21
What has also influenced government policies like the hot summer in 2003?
Question 22 - 25
Complete the summary below using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.
22
The other two hottest years around the globe were
23
The ten hottest years on record all come after the year
24
This temperature data has been gathered since
25
Thousands of people died in the country of
Question 26
Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D.
26
Which one of the following can be best used as the title of this passage?
A
Global Warming
B
What Caused Global Warming
C
The Effects of Global Warming
D
That Hot Year in Europe
Passage
❓ Câu hỏi passage 3
Question 27 - 31
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
In following statements below, choose
YES if the statement agrees with the information
NO if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
27
Mahy and Knox have sometimes criticised each other’s work.
28
Mahy explores the traditional themes of New Zealand literature.
29
Mahy’s children’s books have been more popular than her teenage books.
30
Mahy is welcoming to interviewers.
31
Mahy is at ease speaking about her experiences.
Question 32 - 35
Complete the summary using the list of words, A-I, below.
Write the correct letter, A-I, in boxes on your answer sheet.
Theories about Mahy's style
Mahy's determination to earn a living from writing has encouraged her to find the ideas for her work in places. The stories themselves are set in locations that are . In terms of characterisation, almost all of her books feature unruly people, and very often an adolescent who possesses abilities. Finally, the endings of the stories tend to be .
A
disruptive and unpredictable
B
everyday
C
loveable
D
controversial
E
exotic and ordinary
F
isolated
G
unconfident
H
unsurprising but satisfying
I
magical
Question 36 - 40
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
Write the correct letter in boxes on your answer sheet.
36
What does the writer say about The Magician of Hoad?
A
It is partly based on true history.
B
It was restructured in the writing process.
C
It is quite different from conventional stories.
D
It does not reflect the usual themes of Mahy’s work.
37
According to the writer, Bubble Trouble
A
was first illustrated in 1991.
B
is written in plain language.
C
is an old favourite for many families.
D
has not been read aloud by Mahy before.
38
The writer’s purpose in the fifth paragraph is to
A
show how Mahy’s style has changed through generations.
B
criticise Mahy’s children’s stories for being repetitive.
C
describe how new media have changed entertainment.
D
illustrate Mahy’s popularity with generations of children.
39
According to the sixth paragraph, which of the following is true?
A
Readers sometimes do not finish Mahy’s books.
B
Mahy actively encourages feedback from readers.
C
Readers are necessary in order to complete a book.
D
Mahy does not realise how important she is to some readers.
40
What is the writer doing in the final paragraph?
A
Illustrating Mahy’s view of the world.
B
Comparing Mahy with another writer.
C
Correcting a misconception about Mahy.
D
Suggesting reasons for Mahy’s approach.
DOL IELTS Đình Lực
05/05/2026
📖 Bài đọc passage 1
Sweet Trouble
Problems in the Australian sugar industry
The Australian town of Mossman in the state of Queensland sits in a tropical landscape between the rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef. Eco-tourism is important there; more than 80% of Douglas Shire, of which Mossman is the administrative centre, is protected by World Heritage listing. But for most of the town’s history, forest and reef have been largely irrelevant: since the sugar mill was built in 1894, the town has relied on sugarcane. Now Mossman is holding its breath. For two years the mill used by all the farms has been close to bankruptcy. It is at the centre of the economic shocks that have shaken Australia’s sugar industry, and for lifetime farmers and a long list of cane industry workers a way of life will disappear if the mill closes. Mossman has roughly 160 growers, who now produce less than one million of the nation’s annual cane harvest of 30–40 million tonnes. But it is a microcosm of the industry. All across Australia, the cane-growing business is being squeezed between the pincers of economics and the environment.
The ten-year average return to sugar growers throughout the 1990s was about $350 a tonne. In early 2004, sugar prices plummeted, resulting in a 25-year-low average of around $232 a tonne. Although figures vary widely across farms and regions, that was about what it cost to grow a tonne of sugar in Australia. To forestall social and economic disaster, the Government offered more than $400 million to encourage growers to leave the industry. By the end of the year, 274 farmers had taken up the offer to leave, but another 1,000 are thought to be seriously considering it, allowing those remaining to buy the vacated land and improve their economies of scale.
Fourth-generation Mossman grower Bill Phillips-Turner is one who plans to fight on. ‘The consequences of losing the mill would be catastrophic,’ Bill says. ‘Sugar has a big economic multiplier effect: for every dollar generated from sugar, an additional $7 is generated in the wider community. Because of limited options around here, most people now employed by the industry would have to leave the area to find work.’ The farmer-shareholders have so far saved the mill by accepting substantial cuts to cane payments, but this has come at a big cost to everyone. As chairman of the board of the mill, Bill has presided over tough and unpopular decisions but the hardest was slashing the mill workforce. Assets were sold and management was outsourced. They have also worked hard to find new ways of doing business. Ethanol production, using sugar-based fuel, has potential, and co-generation, using cane waste to produce fuel, power, or generate electricity, is another possibility. However, the most preferred alternative is to create a future for the mill as a food factory, turning out quality sugar-based foods.
In addition to the economic struggle, there is the environmental one. The sugar industry has the reputation of being environmentally damaging, but it has some surprising supporters. Douglas Shire mayor, Mike Berwick, is a well-known environmentalist, and might be expected to be anti-cane. ‘There’s no question of the past damage it’s done to the reef through chemical and nutrient run-off,’ he says. ‘But there’s a formula for sustainable cane production and Mossman has nearly reached it.’ Another surprise endorsement for cane comes from the Queensland Environmental Protection Agency’s sugar liaison officer, Karen Benn. ‘I’m less worried about the effect of cane on the environment than I am about other agriculture,’ she says. ‘There are good growers everywhere, but at Mossman they seem to have taken up the challenges faster.’ For example, sediment run-off, previously one of the main environmental problems caused by cane growing, is now nothing like it once was, according to Dr Brian Roberts, co-ordinator of the Douglas Shire Water Quality Improvement Program. ‘North Queensland used to hold the record for soil loss,’ he says. ‘Now ... cane country is accumulating soil.’
However, these improvements have been achieved at a great cost to growers. Now in his 60s, Tom Watters has spent a lifetime on the same farm. Fourteen years ago, he was alerted to the fact his cane could be having an impact on the waterway on Mackay Creek, the narrow waterway that receives all his run-off, and so Tom planted a 5,000-tree buffer along the edge of the creek with rocks to prevent erosion, and began exploring methods that cause minimal soil disturbance. However, none of these costly initiatives has helped him get better cane prices. As his neighbour, Doug Cress, comments that ‘Economically, the [cane growing] doesn’t make much sense. But there’s more to life than money. It’s this addiction to the way of life that keeps many cane farmers growing an under-performing crop. “It’s a good lifestyle,” Doug says. “I spend eight months working on the farm and four months working with our kids while my wife works in town. I’ve been looking at alternative crops, like forestry and cocoa, and it turns out that working away from the farm is the best diversification we could do. However, I still don’t want to do that.”’
It is difficult to see how anyone can deal satisfactorily with the passing of a way of life. Cane farmers have been part of eastern Queensland for more than a century. But, despite the efforts they have put into fighting the good environmental fight, there is no guarantee that the new way of life evolving there will include cane.
🔥 Đáp án & giải thích 1
1
B
Giải thích chi tiết
☺️ Ứng dụng Linearthinking để giải quyết dạng bài Matching Names
Step 01: Read the question to understand main idea
Simplified: Mossman cane farming practices are close to an environmentally friendly model
Main idea: Mô hình canh tác mía ở Mossman ≈ thân thiện với môi trường (đã gần đạt chuẩn bền vững sinh thái).
-------
Step 02: Locate relevant information
🔍 Từ khoá: Mossman, cane farming practices, environmentally friendly model, close to.
→ Dựa vào các từ khoá trên → Tìm được trích dẫn ở đoạn 4
-------
Step 03: Read relevant information to understand (main + detail)
📌Trích dẫn:“‘There’s no question of the past damage it’s done to the reef through chemical and nutrient run-off,’ he says. ‘But there’s a formula for sustainable cane production and Mossman has nearly reached it.’” (Đoạn 4)
Simplified:
There’s a formula for sustainable cane production and Mossman has nearly reached it.
Main idea: Mike Berwick (một nhà môi trường) tin rằng Mossman đã gần đạt được mô hình canh tác mía bền vững, dù trước kia ngành này từng gây hại môi trường.
-------
Step 04: Compare meaning with meaning
Nội dung tìm được trong bài: Mike Berwick cho rằng Mossman đã gần đạt đến mô hình canh tác mía bền vững, thân thiện với môi trường.
Nội dung câu hỏi: Canh tác mía ở Mossman gần đạt mô hình thân thiện với môi trường.
It was the summer, scientists now realise, when global warming at last made itself unmistakably felt. We knew that summer 2003 was remarkable: Britain experienced its record high temperature and continental Europe saw forest fires raging out of control, great rivers drying to a trickle and thousands of heat-related deaths. But just how remarkable is only now becoming clear.
The three months of June, July and August were the warmest ever recorded in western and central Europe, with record national highs in Portugal, Germany and Switzerland as well as in Britain. And they were the warmest by a very long way. Over a great rectangular block of the earth stretching from west of Paris to northern Italy, taking in Switzerland and southern Germany, the average temperature for the summer months was 3.78°C above the long-term norm, said the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia in Norwich, which is one of the world's leading institutions for the monitoring and analysis of temperature records.
That excess might not seem a lot until you are aware of the context - but then you realise it is enormous. There is nothing like this in previous data, anywhere. It is considered so exceptional that Professor Phil Jones, the CRU's director, is prepared to say openly - in a way few scientists have done before - that the 2003 extreme may be directly attributed, not to natural climate variability, but to global warming caused by human actions.
Meteorologists have hitherto contented themselves with the formula that recent high temperatures are “consistent with predictions” of climate change. For the great block of the map - that stretching between 35-50N and 0-20E - the CRU has reliable temperature records dating back to 1781. Using as a baseline the average summer temperature recorded between 1961 and 1990, departures from the temperature norm, or “anomalies”, over the area as a whole can easily be plotted. As the graph shows, such is the variability of our climate that over the past 200 years, there have been at least half a dozen anomalies, in terms of excess temperature - the peaks on the graph denoting very hot years - approaching, or even exceeding, 2°C. But there has been nothing remotely like 2003, when the anomaly is nearly four degrees.
“This is quite remarkable,’ Professor Jones told The Independent. “It’s very unusual in a statistical sense. If this series had a normal statistical distribution, you wouldn’t get this number. The return period [how often it could be expected to recur] would be something like one in a thousand years. If we look at an excess above the average of nearly four degrees, then perhaps nearly three degrees of that is natural variability, because we’ve seen that in past summers. But the final degree of it is likely to be due to global warming, caused by human actions.”
The summer of 2003 has, in a sense, been one that climate scientists have long been expecting. Until now, the warming has been manifesting itself mainly in winters that have been less cold than in summers that have been much hotter. Last week, the United Nations predicted that winters were warming so quickly that winter sports would die out in Europe’s lower-level ski resorts. But sooner or later, the unprecedented hot summer was bound to come, and this year it did.
One of the most dramatic features of the summer was the hot nights, especially in the first half of August. In Paris, the temperature never dropped below 23°C (73.4°F) at all between 7 and 14 August, and the city recorded its warmest-ever night on 11-12 August, when the mercury did not drop below 25.5°C (77.9°F). Germany recorded its warmest-ever night at Weinbiet in the Rhine Valley with a lowest figure of 27.6°C (80.6°F) on 13 August, and similar record-breaking nighttime temperatures were recorded in Switzerland and Italy.
The 15,000 excess deaths in France during August, compared with previous years, have been related to the high night-time temperatures. The number gradually increased during the first 12 days of the month, peaking at about 2,000 per day on the night of 12-13 August, then fell off dramatically after 14 August when the minimum temperatures fell by about 5°C. The elderly were most affected, with a 70 per cent increase in mortality rate in those aged 75-94.
For Britain, the year as a whole is likely to be the warmest ever recorded, but despite the high temperature record on 10 August, the summer itself - defined as the June, July and August period - still comes behind 1976 and 1995, when there were longer periods of intense heat. “At the moment, the year is on course to be the third hottest ever in the global temperature record, which goes back to 1856, behind 1998 and 2002, but when all the records for October, November and December are collated, it might move into second place/' Professor Jones said. The ten hottest years in the record have all now occurred since 1990. Professor Jones is in no doubt about the astonishing nature of European summer of 2003. “The temperatures recorded were out of all proportion to the previous record," he said. “It was the warmest summer in the past 500 years and probably way beyond that. It was enormously exceptional."
His colleagues at the University of East Anglia's Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research are now planning a special study of it. “It was a summer that has not been experienced before, either in terms of the temperature extremes that were reached, or the range and diversity of the impacts of the extreme heat," said the centre's executive director, Professor Mike Hulme.
“It will certainly have left its mark on a number of countries, as to how they think and plan for climate change in the future, much as the 2000 floods have revolutionised the way the Government is thinking about flooding in the UK. The 2003 heatwave will have similar repercussions across Europe."
🔥 Đáp án & giải thích 2
14
Yes
Giải thích chi tiết
☺️ Ứng dụng Linearthinking để giải quyết dạng bài Yes / No / Not Given
Step 01: Read the question to understand (main idea + detail)
Simplified: The average summer temperature in 2003 is almost 4 degreeshigher than the average temperature of the past
Main idea: nhiệt độ trung bình mùa hè năm 2003 – cao hơn khoảng 4°C so với mức trung bình trong quá khứ → so sánh giữa năm 2003 và mức trung bình nhiều năm trước.
-------
Step 02: Locate relevant information
🔍 Từ khóa: “2003”, “average summer temperature”, “4 degrees higher", "the past"
→ Dựa vào các từ khoá trên → Tìm được trích dẫn ở đoạn 2
-------
Step 03: Read relevant information to understand (main + detail)
📌 Trích dẫn: “Over a great rectangular block of the earth stretching from west of Paris to northern Italy, taking in Switzerland and southern Germany, the average temperature for the summer months was 3.78°C above the long-term norm, said the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia in Norwich.” (Đoạn 2)
Simplified: The average temperature for the summer months was 3.78°Cabove the long-term norm
Main idea: Nhiệt độ trung bình mùa hè năm 2003 – cao hơn 3.78°C so với mức trung bình dài hạn → thể hiện mức tăng gần ~ 4°C so với quá khứ.
-------
Step 04: Compare meaning with meaning
Trong bài đọc: Nhiệt độ trung bình mùa hè 2003 cao hơn 3.78°C so với mức trung bình dài hạn (gần 4°C).
Trong câu hỏi: Nhiệt độ trung bình mùa hè 2003 cao hơn gần 4°C so với mức trung bình trong quá khứ.
⇒ ✅ Chọn: YES
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Lí do:
Chọn YES vì thông tin trong câu hỏi hoàn toàn trùng khớp về nội dung và độ chênh lệch với passage.
Nếu là NO, câu hỏi phải nói rằng “the average temperature was not higher” hoặc “was similar to the past”.
Nếu là NOT GIVEN, passage phải không có số liệu cụ thể để so sánh, nhưng ở đây thông tin 3.78°C được nêu rõ ràng.
In a career spanning some fifty years, Margaret Mahy has come to occupy a unique place in New Zealand writing with innovative fiction and original characterisation. In our solidly realist tradition, the linguistic fireworks of Mahy's children's fiction and the explorations of human behaviour at the heart of her supernatural teenage fiction stand gloriously alone. Mahy's clearest heir, I have always thought, is Elizabeth Knox—and maybe the true inheritance there is sheer singularity. Just as there is no one else like Knox in New Zealand writing, Mahy, too, has ventured into imaginative territory unknown to other local writers. So it was with great pleasure that I visited Mahy recently at her Governor's Bay home to talk about her new book. As with all journalists, she is generous to a fault with her time and attention; and, as always—despite her careful consideration of questions and thoughtful answers—I'm reminded she isn't truly comfortable making herself or her life the heart of any conversation.
Certainly, any consideration of the style of Mahy's novels and picture books throws up some irresistible theories. As a writer committed to supporting herself through her art, she has seldom had the time for formal research. Rather, it has been a matter of going out and finding inspiration from her immediate environment: the writing on the side of a bus; a spelling mistake in a note to herself, the similarity between a cat and a fur hat. But despite these sometimes mundane origins, the settings for her stories are delightfully varied, as these books celebrate the dramatic plot twists and unpredictability of adventures on the high seas or in Antarctica, and also in quite unassuming places like the library or even down the back of a chair at home. Mahy has a lifelong affection for characters who are agents of upheaval and disturbance. Her junior and picture books are peppered with pirates, robbers and lions, though they appear alongside librarians, mothers and children, working against comfortable stereotype. Her fictions often have at their heart a young adult burdened with special powers, such as the ability to cast spells in order to transform their world in supernatural and fantastical ways. Another common feature is that, while the conclusions of her tales are usually predictable, they leave the reader feeling absolutely complete, the moral questions resulting from our hero's powers having been resolved.
Many of these themes can be found in her new novel, The Magician of Hoad. The book was begun more than 15 years ago and envisioned as an 'entire' fantasy—one set in a fully imagined world with detailed history and complex tribal inter-relationships, a classical hero quest at its heart. The story ballooned at one point to 800 pages and has been through at least two substantial rewrites. Now half its original size, it is a fascinating read—an adventure, a romance, and a gold mine of Mahy literary preoccupations.
The other splendid Mahy publication this year is a re-issue of Bubble Trouble in a newly illustrated edition. This tongue-twister tale first appeared in 1991, was included in 100 New Zealand Poems (1993) and has been recited by Mahy at countless private and public functions. Perhaps more than any other work, Bubble Trouble is the Mahy that New Zealand children and their parents know so well, the rollicking story of a clown who serves up a joyous torrent of word play and unexpected rhyme.
Those connections are four or five deep now. I read The Lion in the Meadow in the School Journal in the late 1960s; my stepdaughter listened to The Boy Who Was Followed Home over and over in the 1970s; my own children sat very still mouthing The Great White Man-Eating Shark in the 80s and 90s; now in the 21st century, my grandchildren have heard Down the Dragon's Tongue, A Summery Saturday Morning and Dashing Dog many times.
Of course, readers are important to any working writer, but Mahy's espousal of the act of reading goes beyond that: a book is not properly finished, she has often said, until it has been read, because a reader brings something important to the book. So, doubtless out of need to build a market—she's not ignorant of her popularity—but also out of genuine care for that other dynamic part of the author-reader relationship, Mahy has, until recently, kept up a punishing schedule of public appearances.
Private conversation with Mahy has always been a wild ride—marvellous, in the true sense of the word, the product of a hungry head and an infinite capacity to be astonished. She races away at one stage to consult an encyclopaedia for L.M. Montgomery's date of death, and speculates about the 'real' Montgomery, creator of the ever-popular Anne of Green Gables. Although I'd come to talk about her new book, I couldn't help but be captivated by her infectious curiosity.
A few years ago, the writer David Hill told a funny story. Though his writing was, he often conceded, very different from Mahy's, he had been affected by her peculiarly alert way of looking at the world, particularly the mad, slippery life of language. Once, Hill said, in a motel room, a sign on a door caught his eye: "This door is alarmed." Mahy would like that, thought Hill. She would enjoy the comedy just below the surface of the formal warning; she would leap immediately to the possibilities for story and language play: "Yes, and this window is concerned, this light fitting is intimidated." His story was a wonderful comment on Mahy's vision.
🔥 Đáp án & giải thích 3
27
Not Given
Giải thích chi tiết
☺️ Ứng dụng Linearthinking để giải quyết dạng bài Yes / No / Not Given
Step 01: Read the question to understand (main idea + detail)
Simplified: Mahy and Knox have criticised each other’s work
-------
Step 02: Locate relevant information
🔍 Từ khóa: “Mahy”, “Knox”, “criticised", "work”
→ Dựa vào các từ khoá trên -> Tìm được trích dẫn ở đoạn 1.
-------
Step 03: Read relevant information to understand (main + detail)
📌 Trích dẫn: "Mahy's clearest heir, I have always thought, is Elizabeth Knox—and maybe the true inheritance there is sheer singularity. Just as there is no one else like Knox in New Zealand writing, Mahy, too, has ventured into imaginative territory unknown to other local writers."
Simplified: Mahy’s heir is Elizabeth Knox .
-> Mahy ventured into imaginative territory . Knox is unique too .
-------
Step 04: Compare meaning with meaning
Trong bài đọc:Mahy được xem là người truyền cảm hứng cho Knox; cả hai đều độc đáo -> không có chi tiết nào nói về việc họ phê bình tác phẩm của nhau.
Trong câu hỏi: Mahy và Knox đã từng phê bình tác phẩm của nhau.
=> ✅ Chọn: NOT GIVEN
-------
Lưu ý:
Nếu là YES: Bài đọc phải có thông tin rõ ràng rằng Mahy và Knox đã phê bình lẫn nhau.
Nếu là NO: Bài đọc phải nói ngược lại, rằng Mahy và Knox chưa bao giờ phê bình nhau.
The Australian town of Mossman in the state of Queensland sits in a tropical landscape between the rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef. Eco-tourism is important there; more than 80% of Douglas Shire, of which Mossman is the administrative centre, is protected by World Heritage listing. But for most of the town’s history, forest and reef have been largely irrelevant: since the sugar mill was built in 1894, the town has relied on sugarcane. Now Mossman is holding its breath. For two years the mill used by all the farms has been close to bankruptcy. It is at the centre of the economic shocks that have shaken Australia’s sugar industry, and for lifetime farmers and a long list of cane industry workers a way of life will disappear if the mill closes. Mossman has roughly 160 growers, who now produce less than one million of the nation’s annual cane harvest of 30–40 million tonnes. But it is a microcosm of the industry. All across Australia, the cane-growing business is being squeezed between the pincers of economics and the environment.
The ten-year average return to sugar growers throughout the 1990s was about $350 a tonne. In early 2004, sugar prices plummeted, resulting in a 25-year-low average of around $232 a tonne. Although figures vary widely across farms and regions, that was about what it cost to grow a tonne of sugar in Australia. To forestall social and economic disaster, the Government offered more than $400 million to encourage growers to leave the industry. By the end of the year, 274 farmers had taken up the offer to leave, but another 1,000 are thought to be seriously considering it, allowing those remaining to buy the vacated land and improve their economies of scale.
Fourth-generation Mossman grower Bill Phillips-Turner is one who plans to fight on. ‘The consequences of losing the mill would be catastrophic,’ Bill says. ‘Sugar has a big economic multiplier effect: for every dollar generated from sugar, an additional $7 is generated in the wider community. Because of limited options around here, most people now employed by the industry would have to leave the area to find work.’ The farmer-shareholders have so far saved the mill by accepting substantial cuts to cane payments, but this has come at a big cost to everyone. As chairman of the board of the mill, Bill has presided over tough and unpopular decisions but the hardest was slashing the mill workforce. Assets were sold and management was outsourced. They have also worked hard to find new ways of doing business. Ethanol production, using sugar-based fuel, has potential, and co-generation, using cane waste to produce fuel, power, or generate electricity, is another possibility. However, the most preferred alternative is to create a future for the mill as a food factory, turning out quality sugar-based foods.
In addition to the economic struggle, there is the environmental one. The sugar industry has the reputation of being environmentally damaging, but it has some surprising supporters. Douglas Shire mayor, Mike Berwick, is a well-known environmentalist, and might be expected to be anti-cane. ‘There’s no question of the past damage it’s done to the reef through chemical and nutrient run-off,’ he says. ‘But there’s a formula for sustainable cane production and Mossman has nearly reached it.’ Another surprise endorsement for cane comes from the Queensland Environmental Protection Agency’s sugar liaison officer, Karen Benn. ‘I’m less worried about the effect of cane on the environment than I am about other agriculture,’ she says. ‘There are good growers everywhere, but at Mossman they seem to have taken up the challenges faster.’ For example, sediment run-off, previously one of the main environmental problems caused by cane growing, is now nothing like it once was, according to Dr Brian Roberts, co-ordinator of the Douglas Shire Water Quality Improvement Program. ‘North Queensland used to hold the record for soil loss,’ he says. ‘Now ... cane country is accumulating soil.’
However, these improvements have been achieved at a great cost to growers. Now in his 60s, Tom Watters has spent a lifetime on the same farm. Fourteen years ago, he was alerted to the fact his cane could be having an impact on the waterway on Mackay Creek, the narrow waterway that receives all his run-off, and so Tom planted a 5,000-tree buffer along the edge of the creek with rocks to prevent erosion, and began exploring methods that cause minimal soil disturbance. However, none of these costly initiatives has helped him get better cane prices. As his neighbour, Doug Cress, comments that ‘Economically, the [cane growing] doesn’t make much sense. But there’s more to life than money. It’s this addiction to the way of life that keeps many cane farmers growing an under-performing crop. “It’s a good lifestyle,” Doug says. “I spend eight months working on the farm and four months working with our kids while my wife works in town. I’ve been looking at alternative crops, like forestry and cocoa, and it turns out that working away from the farm is the best diversification we could do. However, I still don’t want to do that.”’
It is difficult to see how anyone can deal satisfactorily with the passing of a way of life. Cane farmers have been part of eastern Queensland for more than a century. But, despite the efforts they have put into fighting the good environmental fight, there is no guarantee that the new way of life evolving there will include cane.
It was the summer, scientists now realise, when global warming at last made itself unmistakably felt. We knew that summer 2003 was remarkable: Britain experienced its record high temperature and continental Europe saw forest fires raging out of control, great rivers drying to a trickle and thousands of heat-related deaths. But just how remarkable is only now becoming clear.
The three months of June, July and August were the warmest ever recorded in western and central Europe, with record national highs in Portugal, Germany and Switzerland as well as in Britain. And they were the warmest by a very long way. Over a great rectangular block of the earth stretching from west of Paris to northern Italy, taking in Switzerland and southern Germany, the average temperature for the summer months was 3.78°C above the long-term norm, said the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia in Norwich, which is one of the world's leading institutions for the monitoring and analysis of temperature records.
That excess might not seem a lot until you are aware of the context - but then you realise it is enormous. There is nothing like this in previous data, anywhere. It is considered so exceptional that Professor Phil Jones, the CRU's director, is prepared to say openly - in a way few scientists have done before - that the 2003 extreme may be directly attributed, not to natural climate variability, but to global warming caused by human actions.
Meteorologists have hitherto contented themselves with the formula that recent high temperatures are “consistent with predictions” of climate change. For the great block of the map - that stretching between 35-50N and 0-20E - the CRU has reliable temperature records dating back to 1781. Using as a baseline the average summer temperature recorded between 1961 and 1990, departures from the temperature norm, or “anomalies”, over the area as a whole can easily be plotted. As the graph shows, such is the variability of our climate that over the past 200 years, there have been at least half a dozen anomalies, in terms of excess temperature - the peaks on the graph denoting very hot years - approaching, or even exceeding, 2°C. But there has been nothing remotely like 2003, when the anomaly is nearly four degrees.
“This is quite remarkable,’ Professor Jones told The Independent. “It’s very unusual in a statistical sense. If this series had a normal statistical distribution, you wouldn’t get this number. The return period [how often it could be expected to recur] would be something like one in a thousand years. If we look at an excess above the average of nearly four degrees, then perhaps nearly three degrees of that is natural variability, because we’ve seen that in past summers. But the final degree of it is likely to be due to global warming, caused by human actions.”
The summer of 2003 has, in a sense, been one that climate scientists have long been expecting. Until now, the warming has been manifesting itself mainly in winters that have been less cold than in summers that have been much hotter. Last week, the United Nations predicted that winters were warming so quickly that winter sports would die out in Europe’s lower-level ski resorts. But sooner or later, the unprecedented hot summer was bound to come, and this year it did.
One of the most dramatic features of the summer was the hot nights, especially in the first half of August. In Paris, the temperature never dropped below 23°C (73.4°F) at all between 7 and 14 August, and the city recorded its warmest-ever night on 11-12 August, when the mercury did not drop below 25.5°C (77.9°F). Germany recorded its warmest-ever night at Weinbiet in the Rhine Valley with a lowest figure of 27.6°C (80.6°F) on 13 August, and similar record-breaking nighttime temperatures were recorded in Switzerland and Italy.
The 15,000 excess deaths in France during August, compared with previous years, have been related to the high night-time temperatures. The number gradually increased during the first 12 days of the month, peaking at about 2,000 per day on the night of 12-13 August, then fell off dramatically after 14 August when the minimum temperatures fell by about 5°C. The elderly were most affected, with a 70 per cent increase in mortality rate in those aged 75-94.
For Britain, the year as a whole is likely to be the warmest ever recorded, but despite the high temperature record on 10 August, the summer itself - defined as the June, July and August period - still comes behind 1976 and 1995, when there were longer periods of intense heat. “At the moment, the year is on course to be the third hottest ever in the global temperature record, which goes back to 1856, behind 1998 and 2002, but when all the records for October, November and December are collated, it might move into second place/' Professor Jones said. The ten hottest years in the record have all now occurred since 1990. Professor Jones is in no doubt about the astonishing nature of European summer of 2003. “The temperatures recorded were out of all proportion to the previous record," he said. “It was the warmest summer in the past 500 years and probably way beyond that. It was enormously exceptional."
His colleagues at the University of East Anglia's Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research are now planning a special study of it. “It was a summer that has not been experienced before, either in terms of the temperature extremes that were reached, or the range and diversity of the impacts of the extreme heat," said the centre's executive director, Professor Mike Hulme.
“It will certainly have left its mark on a number of countries, as to how they think and plan for climate change in the future, much as the 2000 floods have revolutionised the way the Government is thinking about flooding in the UK. The 2003 heatwave will have similar repercussions across Europe."
3.78°Cabove the long-term norm
In a career spanning some fifty years, Margaret Mahy has come to occupy a unique place in New Zealand writing with innovative fiction and original characterisation. In our solidly realist tradition, the linguistic fireworks of Mahy's children's fiction and the explorations of human behaviour at the heart of her supernatural teenage fiction stand gloriously alone. Mahy's clearest heir, I have always thought, is Elizabeth Knox—and maybe the true inheritance there is sheer singularity. Just as there is no one else like Knox in New Zealand writing, Mahy, too, has ventured into imaginative territory unknown to other local writers. So it was with great pleasure that I visited Mahy recently at her Governor's Bay home to talk about her new book. As with all journalists, she is generous to a fault with her time and attention; and, as always—despite her careful consideration of questions and thoughtful answers—I'm reminded she isn't truly comfortable making herself or her life the heart of any conversation.
Certainly, any consideration of the style of Mahy's novels and picture books throws up some irresistible theories. As a writer committed to supporting herself through her art, she has seldom had the time for formal research. Rather, it has been a matter of going out and finding inspiration from her immediate environment: the writing on the side of a bus; a spelling mistake in a note to herself, the similarity between a cat and a fur hat. But despite these sometimes mundane origins, the settings for her stories are delightfully varied, as these books celebrate the dramatic plot twists and unpredictability of adventures on the high seas or in Antarctica, and also in quite unassuming places like the library or even down the back of a chair at home. Mahy has a lifelong affection for characters who are agents of upheaval and disturbance. Her junior and picture books are peppered with pirates, robbers and lions, though they appear alongside librarians, mothers and children, working against comfortable stereotype. Her fictions often have at their heart a young adult burdened with special powers, such as the ability to cast spells in order to transform their world in supernatural and fantastical ways. Another common feature is that, while the conclusions of her tales are usually predictable, they leave the reader feeling absolutely complete, the moral questions resulting from our hero's powers having been resolved.
Many of these themes can be found in her new novel, The Magician of Hoad. The book was begun more than 15 years ago and envisioned as an 'entire' fantasy—one set in a fully imagined world with detailed history and complex tribal inter-relationships, a classical hero quest at its heart. The story ballooned at one point to 800 pages and has been through at least two substantial rewrites. Now half its original size, it is a fascinating read—an adventure, a romance, and a gold mine of Mahy literary preoccupations.
The other splendid Mahy publication this year is a re-issue of Bubble Trouble in a newly illustrated edition. This tongue-twister tale first appeared in 1991, was included in 100 New Zealand Poems (1993) and has been recited by Mahy at countless private and public functions. Perhaps more than any other work, Bubble Trouble is the Mahy that New Zealand children and their parents know so well, the rollicking story of a clown who serves up a joyous torrent of word play and unexpected rhyme.
Those connections are four or five deep now. I read The Lion in the Meadow in the School Journal in the late 1960s; my stepdaughter listened to The Boy Who Was Followed Home over and over in the 1970s; my own children sat very still mouthing The Great White Man-Eating Shark in the 80s and 90s; now in the 21st century, my grandchildren have heard Down the Dragon's Tongue, A Summery Saturday Morning and Dashing Dog many times.
Of course, readers are important to any working writer, but Mahy's espousal of the act of reading goes beyond that: a book is not properly finished, she has often said, until it has been read, because a reader brings something important to the book. So, doubtless out of need to build a market—she's not ignorant of her popularity—but also out of genuine care for that other dynamic part of the author-reader relationship, Mahy has, until recently, kept up a punishing schedule of public appearances.
Private conversation with Mahy has always been a wild ride—marvellous, in the true sense of the word, the product of a hungry head and an infinite capacity to be astonished. She races away at one stage to consult an encyclopaedia for L.M. Montgomery's date of death, and speculates about the 'real' Montgomery, creator of the ever-popular Anne of Green Gables. Although I'd come to talk about her new book, I couldn't help but be captivated by her infectious curiosity.
A few years ago, the writer David Hill told a funny story. Though his writing was, he often conceded, very different from Mahy's, he had been affected by her peculiarly alert way of looking at the world, particularly the mad, slippery life of language. Once, Hill said, in a motel room, a sign on a door caught his eye: "This door is alarmed." Mahy would like that, thought Hill. She would enjoy the comedy just below the surface of the formal warning; she would leap immediately to the possibilities for story and language play: "Yes, and this window is concerned, this light fitting is intimidated." His story was a wonderful comment on Mahy's vision.
ventured into imaginative territory
Knox
is unique too
Trong bài đọc:Mahy được xem là người truyền cảm hứng cho Knox; cả hai đều độc đáo -> không có chi tiết nào nói về việc họ phê bình tác phẩm của nhau.
