VSTEP Reading Mock Test 15

THE SENATE

The U.S. Senate is the upper house of Congress. Unlike the House of Representatives, the Senate consists of two senators for each state, regardless of that state's population. This ensures equal representation for each state. Hence, there are 100 Senators.

Senators serve six year terms, however, senate elections are held every two years to ensure that no state ever holds an election in which both Senate seats are in contention. Elections are held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November in even-numbered years. Senators must be thirty years of age, a citizen of the United States for the prior nine years, and must live in the state they seek to represent. Much of the work done in the Senate is performed in committees. 16 standing committees, each with a specific jurisdiction (such as foreign relations, judicial review, or finance) edit, amend, and consider bills related to those jurisdictions.

Powers exclusive to the Senate include the approval of treaties as a condition to their ratification, and the approval of federal judges and cabinet members as a condition of their appointment. The Senate also tries impeachments.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

The U.S. House of Representatives is one of the two houses of Congress. Unlike the Senate, a state’s number of representatives is based on its population. States with large populations have more representatives than states with small populations. The state of California, America ’s most populous state, currently has 55 representatives. There are 435 total representatives and each serves a two-year term. Like the Senate, the House of Representatives performs much of its legislative work in committees. The House of Representatives has 20 standing committees. Much like the Senate committees, these committees meet to review, amend, edit, and consider bills specific to a certain jurisdictions such as agriculture, revenue, or foreign relations.

The top officer of the House of Representatives is referred to as the Speaker of the House. He or she is elected by other members of the House and has substantial powers including choosing the order in which other representatives speak, choosing members of conference committees, and choosing which committees reviews specific bills. Representatives must be 25 years old, a U.S. citizen for seven years, and a resident of the state they wish to represent.

Much like the Senate, the House of Representatives has exclusive powers including the right to impeach (an impeachment is a legal statement of charges against an official. The Senate only has the power to try impeachment), to initiate revenue bills (those involving money), and to elect the president in the case of an electoral tie.

No one can calculate the quantity of solid waste that has been dumped in the world’s oceans, but the total certainly exceeds many millions of tons. For example, from 1880 to 1895, 75 percent of the solid waste from New York City was dumped untreated into the Atlantic Ocean. Although it is now prohibited by law, the dumping of solid waste, including wastewater sludge, industrial waste, and high - level radioactive waste were common in the United States until 1970. Cruise ships and huge floating fishing factories still regularly dispose of their solid waste products directly into the ocean.

The earth naturally recycles water and refreshes the land in what is called the hydrological cycle. The hydrological cycle not only renews the supply of water, but cleans it as well. The process begins as heat from the sun causes sea water, 97 percent of the earth’s total water reserve, to evaporate and form clouds. Because water evaporates at lower temperatures than most pollutants, the water vapor that rises from the seas is relatively pure and free of the contaminants, which are left behind. Next, water returns to us as rain, which drains into streams and rivers and rushes toward the sea.

Chemicals, petroleum products, and other dangerous substances such as radioactive materials remain in the ocean, polluting it permanently. The polluted ocean water kills fish or makes them dangerous to eat, posing health problems for those who consume them. It kills the tiny sea creatures that are the source of food for larger fish, sharks, and whales. It also spoils a source of great beauty and pleasure when some solid waste is thrown onto beaches during storms. Discharged petroleum products are frequently found on beaches and they not only ruin the beach, the petroleum residue kills hundreds of shore birds. Nonpoint pollutants are dumped into lakes, rivers, and streams that may be far away from any ocean. However, these pollutants flow, eventually, into the oceans. They can come from a variety of sources, from road salt to agricultural pesticides. One source of nonpoint pollution is runoff from farming, including fertilizers, manure, and pesticides. Another source is industrial runoff, including heavy metals, phosphorous, and many other chemicals. Urban runoff (oils, salts, various chemicals) and atmospheric fallout of airborne pollution are other sources of nonpoint pollutants that reach the oceans. This includes water and waste from sinks, toilets, washing machines and bathtubs. The problem with this type of waste is that it provides massive amounts of nutrients for water plants such as algae, so that they grow rapidly. This sudden growth causes concentration or algae blooms, which use up the oxygen in the water. As the oxygen level of the water declines, many organisms suffer and die, and the ocean ecosystem is radically altered. This can be prevented by the installation of waste treatment plants that prevent waste from entering the sea, but such facilities do not exist in many poorer countries.

WILD WEATHER

British people are famous for always talking about the weather, but there’s a good reason why we do. The British Isles are located in a place where two huge weather systems meet and, it often seems, do battle. Even so, strange things have been happening in recent years, as they have been in many other places around the world. There can’t be many people that haven’t been affected by weather that was hotter, wetter, drier or wilder than the weather they are used to. This article, based on an article by Peter Miller from the September 2013 issue of National Geographic Magazine, looks at what is happening to our weather.

What is happening to our weather?

One weekend in May 2010, Nashville in the USA was expecting a few centimeters of rain. Two days later, 33 centimeters had fallen and eleven people had died in the resulting floods.

There’s been a change in the weather. Extreme events like the Nashville flood – described by officials as a once-in-a-millennium occurrence – are more frequent than before. Also in 2010, 28 centimeters of rain fell on Rio de Janeiro in 24 hours, causing mud slides that buried hundreds of people. And record rains in Pakistan led to flooding that affected more than 20 million people. The following year, floods in Thailand left factories near Bangkok under water, creating a worldwide shortage of computer hard drives. Meanwhile, severe droughts have affected Australia, Russia and East Africa. Deadly heat waves have hit Europe, leaving 35,000 people dead in 2003. Financial losses from such events jumped 25 percent to an estimated $150 billion worldwide in 2011.

What’s going on? Are these extreme events signals of a dangerous, human-made change in the Earth’s climate? Or are we just going through a natural run of bad luck? The short answer is: probably both. On the one hand, the most important influences on weather events are natural cycles in the climate. Two of the most famous weather cycles, El Niño and La Niña, originate in the Pacific Ocean and can affect weather patterns worldwide. But something else is happening too: the Earth is steadily getting warmer, with significantly more moisture in the atmosphere. The long-term accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is trapping heat and warming up the land, oceans and atmosphere. As the oceans warm up, they produce more water vapour and this, in turn, feeds big storms, such as hurricanes and typhoons.

And yet, there are ways of dealing with the effects of such extreme events. After 2003, French cities set up air-conditioned shelters for use in heat waves. In the 2006 heat wave, the death rate was two-thirds lower.

‘We know that warming of the Earth’s surface is putting more moisture into the atmosphere. We’ve measured it. The satellites see it,’ says climatologist Jay Gulledge. Another scientist, Michael Oppenheimer, agrees. We need to face up to that reality, he says, and do the things we know can save lives and money.