[originaltext]Interviewer(W) Robert Ballard(M)Now, listen to Part One of t

Interviewer(W)     Robert Ballard(M)
Now, listen to Part One of the interview.
W: Hello and welcome to Fresh Dialogues. Today I’m interviewing Robert Ballard, ocean explorer and discoverer of the Titanic. Thank you for joining us. Dr. Ballard, I want to thank you very much for being on Fresh Dialogues today.
M: Pleasure to be here.
W: A question came up last night about global warming and you had a bidirectional answer. Can you explain what you meant by that? You’re not worried about the planet?
M: I’m not worried about the earth.(1)There have been times in earth’s history, in the Cretaceous period, for example, 90 million years ago, when it was a lot warmer than it is now. There were no glaciers, there wasn’t an ice cube on the planet, sea level was much higher. We’re just the latest bad thing, maybe, that’s happening to the earth. So, I’m not really worried about the earth’s survival.
W: What about mankind?
M:(2)I worry about mankind. Sometimes I see this tombstone that says "the human race came and went but it was politically correct. " As a scientist I am not politically correct. My job is not to be politically correct. My job is to call it as I see it.(3)And I see that the biggest problem the human race has is that there are too many of us. You can’t have uncontrolled population growth. And then to take that population growth and multiply it times our footprint. Everyone wants to be an American and that would be the worst thing in the world if everyone imitated us, because we consume so much. An important thing for Americans to do is to drop their footprint.
W: Are you talking specifically about their carbon footprint?
M: Exactly.
W: Are you saying there is a human element to global warming?
M:(4-1)Absolutely. I mean, we’re in a natural cycle. The real argument is how much of this is a natural cycle and how much is added by humans. Hey folks, it’s both. Whenever you have a tremendous controversy, both sides tend to be right and wrong.(4-2/5)You do have the natural warming between ice ages like the one that we’re experiencing, but you are increasing the seriousness of it with the human footprint. The concern most people have is that we can’t do much about the natural cycle, but we can do a lot about the human cycle. What people are worried about is if you steepen it too much, evolution can’t keep up and you get extinction. You don’t have adaptation to change, you have extinction and I think that’s what people are really worried about: they do see extinction.
This is the end of Part One of the interview. Questions 1 to 5 are based on what you have just heard.
1. Why is the interviewee not really worried about the earth’s survival?
2. What is Robert worried about more?
3. According to Robert, what is the biggest problem for the human race?
4. According to the interviewee, which is the CORRECT statement about global warming?
5. What is the relationship between human element and global warming in Robert’s eyes?