美国国家公共电台 NPR As The Climate Warms, Companies Scramble To Calculate The Risk To Their Profits

 

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

The threat from climate change is so massive, so apocalyptic¹, it can be hard to wrap your head around. Companies are now trying to change that by pinpointing² those risks. Some of them are turning to high-tech³ tools for answers. Here's NPR's Dan Charles.

DAN CHARLES, BYLINE⁴: The company Ingredion makes, as you might guess, ingredients - starches⁵ and sugars and all kinds of manufactured food.

BRIAN NASH: From soft drinks to beers to frozen meals.

CHARLES: This is Brian Nash, Ingredion's director of sustainability. The company makes these products from special kinds of corn.

NASH: I mean, we use millions and millions of metric tons of corn around the globe.

CHARLES: Lots of things can go wrong in the supply chain - bad weather, broken machinery⁶. But lately, Brian Nash's corporate⁷ bosses have been asking him to look at a new kind of risk - what might go wrong in a warmer planet.

NASH: And that could be anything where climate change is impacting the crops that we purchase to water availability driven by climate change.

CHARLES: He says lots of companies are doing the same thing because investors⁸ are worried.

NASH: Any publicly traded company, I think, is under increasing pressure from the investment community to articulate what we see as our upcoming climate risk.

CHARLES: Companies are now looking for experts to help them figure it out. And the Danish engineering firm Ramboll, which built its reputation designing bridges and ways to manage traffic, sensed an opportunity. And so did one of the firm's scientists, Sue Kemball-Cook.

SUE KEMBALL-COOK: I raised my hand because that jibed⁹ with my past experience, and I just jumped at the chance to get back into doing this.

CHARLES: Years ago, she'd been an academic researcher working on computer models of the global climate. She loved it.

KEMBALL-COOK: The feeling of being able to simulate something that's in the atmosphere and really seeing it unfold in front of you was thrilling.

CHARLES: These simulations, climate models, really can give businesses information about future risks, she says. Here's how they work.

KEMBALL-COOK: So a climate model in many ways is like a weather model.

CHARLES: A weather model is what generates those videos you see on TV weather forecasts - storms moving across the map. It's basically a computer program that takes current weather conditions and calculates how forces like heat or air pressure will drive winds and temperatures over the next few hours or days. Climate models are just bigger. They factor in forces, like rising levels of greenhouse gases which trap more heat or changing currents in the ocean. But still, you're starting with current conditions and just turning the model loose, letting mathematical equations calculate weather decades into the future.

KEMBALL-COOK: You know, you'll see storms form at sea and then come ashore¹⁰ over California.

CHARLES: Now, every time you run one of these models from a slightly different starting point, the weather plays out differently. But if you run them over and over, collecting all these possible versions of the future, you do get a sense of what's the new normal - normal highs and lows, normal rainfall - and how that's different from what we're used to now. Sue Kemball-Cook and her colleagues at Ramboll are trying to boil that down into estimates of particular risks in particular places - like, here you'll see more flooding; here you'll have trouble growing corn.

Katie Lieschke, a consultant¹¹ at Ramboll, who helped create this tool called HazAtlas says the sales pitch is pretty simple.

KATIE LIESCHKE: It's really easy to make the point that, as our climate changes, we're getting increased damages from events like flooding and wildfire. This tool helps people prepare for that future.

CHARLES: But they still have to convince businesses that this tool can deliver information that's specific and accurate enough to help them make decisions. Ingredion, that company that makes food ingredients, is not yet convinced. The company worked with Ramboll to see what the models might say about Ingredion's supply of corn in the future. It decided¹² the results were still too vague and uncertain, at least for now. But Ingredion's executives also say if these tools for predicting climate risk get better, there will be a huge demand for them.

Dan Charles, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF NIFTY EARTH'S "AURA")

1 apocalyptic   

adj.预示灾祸的，启示的

参考例句：

• The air is chill and stagnant,the language apocalyptic.空气寒冷而污浊，语言则是《启示录》式的。
• Parts of the ocean there look just absolutely apocalyptic.海洋的很多区域看上去完全像是世界末日。

2 pinpointing   

准确地找出或描述( pinpoint的现在分词 )； 为…准确定位

参考例句：

• The difficulty of pinpointing primitive and derived characters remains. 要正确地指出原始性状和次生性状仍然感到困难。
• Pinpointing the true source of power in Japan is a notoriously slippery task. 要准确指出日本真正的权力来源，是一项非常困难的任务。

3 high-tech   

adj.高科技的

参考例句：

• The economy is in the upswing which makes high-tech services in more demand too.经济在蓬勃发展，这就使对高科技服务的需求量也在加大。
• The quest of a cure for disease with high-tech has never ceased. 人们希望运用高科技治疗疾病的追求从未停止过。

4 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

5 starches   

n.淀粉( starch的名词复数 )；含淀粉的食物；浆粉v.把（衣服、床单等）浆一浆( starch的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• You should avoid sugars and starches. 你应避免吃糖和含淀粉的食物。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Cotton and rayon yarns are most often sized with water-insoluble starches. 棉和人造丝纱多用不溶于水的淀粉上浆。 来自互联网

6 machinery   

n.(总称)机械，机器；机构

参考例句：

• Has the machinery been put up ready for the broadcast?广播器材安装完毕了吗？
• Machinery ought to be well maintained all the time.机器应该随时注意维护。

7 corporate   

adj.共同的，全体的；公司的，企业的

参考例句：

• This is our corporate responsibility.这是我们共同的责任。
• His corporate's life will be as short as a rabbit's tail.他的公司的寿命是兔子尾巴长不了。

8 investors   

n.投资者，出资者( investor的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• a con man who bilked investors out of millions of dollars 诈取投资者几百万元的骗子
• a cash bonanza for investors 投资者的赚钱机会

9 jibed   

v.与…一致( jibe的过去式和过去分词 )；（与…）相符；相匹配

参考例句：

• She jibed his folly. 她嘲笑他的愚行。 来自互联网

10 ashore   

adv.在(向)岸上，上岸

参考例句：

• The children got ashore before the tide came in.涨潮前，孩子们就上岸了。
• He laid hold of the rope and pulled the boat ashore.他抓住绳子拉船靠岸。

11 consultant   

n.顾问；会诊医师，专科医生

参考例句：

• He is a consultant on law affairs to the mayor.他是市长的一个法律顾问。
• Originally,Gar had agreed to come up as a consultant.原来，加尔只答应来充当我们的顾问。

12 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。