Now, I wanted to see the pole itself, and some eight hours after we met the submarine, we were crashing through that ice, surfacing, and then I was standing in an eerily beautiful snowscape, windswept and sparkling white, with the horizon defined by little hummocks, or "pressure ridges" of ice that are pushed up like tiny mountain ranges when separate sheets collide.
现在，我想看看北极本身。在我们进人潜艇大约八小时后，潜艇撞碎那片冰层，浮出 水面。然后，我站在一幅有点神秘可怕的美丽的雪景之中，大地被风吹扫得白茫茫一片，闪 闪发光。地平线上勾画出一个个小冰丘的轮廓，或称之为冰的“压力脊”，这些冰脊是在分 开的冰层互相撞击时挤出来的小山脉。
But here too, CO2 levels are rising just as rapidly, and ultimately temperature will rise with them-indeed, global warming is expected to push temperatures up much more rapidly in the polar regions than in the rest of the world.
但是在这里，二氧化碳的含量也以同样快的速度上升，最终气温将随之升高，的确，预料地球转暖将使气温上升的速度在极区要比在世界上其他地区快得多。
As the polar air warms, the ice here will thin; and since the, polar cap plays such a crucial role in the world's weather system, the consequences of a thinning cap could be disastrous.
随着地极大气转暖，这里的冰将变薄。由于地极冰帽在世界的气象系统中起着如此决 定性的作用，冰帽变薄的后果可能是灾难性的。
Considering such scenarios is not a pure1y speculative exercise.
我考虑到可能出现这样一些情况并不完全是凭空猜测。
Six months after I returned from the North Pole, a team of scientists reported dramatic changes in the pattern of ice distribution in the Arctic, and a second team reported a still controversial claim (which a variety of data now suggest) that, overall, the north polar cap has thinned by 2 percent in just the last decade.
我从北极回来六个月后，一队科学家的报告说，北极的冰的分布情况发生了引人注目 的变化，而后来又去了一队科学家，他们在报告中提出了一个仍然有争论的说法（现在各种不同的数据资料都表明这个说法是正确的），即总的来说，仅在过去的十年里北极冰帽就比 以前薄了百分之二。
Moreover, scientists established several years ago that in many land areas north of the Arctic Circle, the spring snowmelt now comes earlier every year, and deep in the tundra below, the temperature of the earth is steadily rising.
此外，几年前科学家们就已经证实，在北极圈以北的许多陆地区域，春天雪融化成水 一年比一年早。而且在冻土带地下深处，地温正在逐步上升。
As it happens, some of the most disturbing images of environmental destruction can be found exactly halfway between the North and South poles -precisely at the equator in Brazil-where billowing clouds of smoke regularly blacken the sky above the immense but now threatened Amazon rain forest.
说来也巧，有些最令人不安的破坏环境的景象就在南北极之间的正中地带—正好在 巴西的赤道—在那里，滚滚烟云日复一日地把那一望无际但如今已受到威胁的亚马逊雨林的上空染黑。