A Keeper Of Carbon Is at Risk
貯碳大功臣 泥炭地備受威脅
By Henry Fountain

Kristyn Housman grabbed the end of a sampling auger, a steel tube that two colleagues had just drilled into a moss-covered hummock in a peat bog, and poked through a damp, fibrous plug of partly decomposed peat.
克麗斯汀．郝斯曼抓起一個採樣用螺旋鑽的尾端，鑽進一個潮濕、含有纖維且部分腐爛的圓柱形泥炭樣本中。她的兩位同事才剛剛用這種鋼管，鑽探泥炭沼澤中一座長滿苔蘚的小丘。

Peat has been building up for centuries in this bog, where the spongy moss is interspersed with black spruces and, on a late spring morning, the air is teeming with mosquitoes. The sample, taken from 3 feet down, is at least several hundred years old, said Housman, a graduate researcher at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.
泥炭已在這片沼澤中積累幾世紀，這裡鬆軟的苔蘚中穿插著一些黑雲杉，暮春早晨的空氣中盡是蚊子。郝斯曼是加拿大安大略省哈密爾頓市麥克馬斯特大學的研究生研究員，她說，這個樣本從地下3呎取得，至少已有幾百年歷史。

“There’s literally tons of carbon here,” she said, looking around the bog, which covers several acres off a muddy oil-company road amid the vast flatness of northern Alberta.
她一邊說「這裡真的有好幾噸二氧化碳」，一邊環顧沼澤。沼澤廣達幾英畝，位在加拿大亞伯達省北部這片廣袤平原中一條泥濘的石油公司道路附近。

In discussions of how nature regulates carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, forests receive most of the attention for their ability to absorb and store carbon. But peatlands play an important role, too.
在「大自然如何調節大氣中二氧化碳」的相關討論中，森林以吸收和儲存二氧化碳的能力獲得最多注意，不過，泥炭地也扮演重要角色。

There are an estimated 1.6 million square miles of peatlands, or about 3 percent of the Earth’s land surface, mostly in northern latitudes in Canada, Alaska, Europe and Russia.
地球上約有160萬平方哩泥炭地，占地表陸地面積3%，大多位於北半球加拿大、美國阿拉斯加州、歐洲和俄國。

Peat is made up of sphagnum and other mosses, which hold a large amount of water and contain compounds that inhibit decomposition. The peat slowly builds up over centuries because the annual growth exceeds the decay.
泥炭由泥炭蘚與其他苔蘚構成，這些苔蘚含有大量水分和抑制分解的複合物。泥炭經過幾個世紀慢慢積累擴大，因為每年成長的速度超過分解的速度。

A relatively small amount of peat is mined to burn as fuel, to improve backyard gardens or to add smokiness to Scotch. But most of it stays where it is, and because it accumulates carbon over such a long time, it contains more carbon than is in all the world’s trees and plants, and nearly as much as the atmosphere does.
只有為數甚少的泥炭被利用：當作燃料焚燒，為後院花園增添養分，或為蘇格蘭威士忌增加泥炭煙燻味。絕大多數的泥炭則留在原地，而且由於泥炭累積二氧化碳這麼長時間，泥炭的二氧化碳含量比全世界樹木和植物的含量還多，幾乎跟大氣中的含量相當。

Like forests, peatlands are threatened by climate change. Warming temperatures can dry out bogs, making them more susceptible to fires, and to deeper, more intense burning. A peat fire, which can smolder like a cigarette for months, can release a lot of carbon.
泥炭地跟森林一樣受氣候變遷威脅。氣溫升高讓沼澤乾涸，更易受火災和深層、強烈悶燒影響。泥炭地火災能像香菸一樣悶燒數月，釋出大量二氧化碳。

“It’s carbon that has accumulated over several thousands of years,” said Mike Waddington, a McMaster professor who has been researching peat in Alberta and elsewhere for more than two decades. “If it were to be released, the global CO2 concentration would be much higher.”
麥克馬斯特大學教授沃丁頓在亞伯達和其他地方研究泥炭超過20年，他說：「這些二氧化碳已經積累了好幾千年，一旦釋出，全球二氧化碳濃度就會高上許多。」

The world has already had vast releases of carbon from peat, in Indonesia. Last year, bogs that had been drained for agriculture, and were drier because of El Nino-related warmth, burned for months, creating a haze visible from space and causing widespread health problems.
這個世界已有大量二氧化碳從印尼的泥炭地釋出。去年泥炭地為了轉作農業用途被抽乾水分，又因與聖嬰現象相關的高溫天氣變得更乾燥，起火燃燒了數月，冒出的煙霧從太空都能看到，且導致許多人的健康問題。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/09/science/climate-change-carbon-bogs-peat.html

2016-09-18．聯合報．D4．紐約時報賞析．李京倫譯

說文解字看新聞 李京倫

Plug通常是插頭或塞子，本文中的plug容易誤解為園藝術語peat plug「泥炭育苗塊」，但育苗塊不會有幾百年歷史，所以在本文中應解作「從較大的物品切下的圓柱或圓錐狀小塊，通常作為樣本」。

Teem是指雨「傾瀉」，teem with則是「充滿許多」（人或動物），例如：The camps teem with about 135,000 refugees.（難民營內擠了大概13萬5000個難民。）

Literally是「照字面地」，translate literally就是「照字面直譯」，本文的literally為非正式用法「確實地、不誇張地」，例如：This orangutan is literally using a carrot and stick to teach its baby. （這隻猩猩真的是用胡蘿蔔和棍棒教導自己的小孩。）

泥炭（peat）由石楠、苔蘚、蕨類等植物殘骸經細菌腐化分解而成，又稱為草炭或泥煤，是煤化程度最低的煤。蘇格蘭盛產泥炭，泥炭不僅作為日常生活中的燃料，也用來製造蘇格蘭威士忌。

以「用泥炭烘乾的大麥」製作威士忌，會產生獨特的煙燻味。幾乎所有的蘇格蘭威士忌都含有泥炭成分，只是大多數泥炭度（peatiness）不高，一般人喝不出來。

Spotty Reception in the Heart of Silicon Valley
矽谷心臟地帶 手機沒訊號
By Thomas Fuller

My phone connection kept dropping out, which didn’t make sense because I was in the heart of Silicon Valley.
我的手機收訊一直中斷，這毫無道理，因為我位在矽谷的心臟地帶。

It turns out that poor cellphone reception has been a problem for years in downtown Palo Alto, which has a relationship with technology that is decidedly mixed.
實則帕羅奧圖市區多年來一直有手機收訊不良的問題，這個城市與科技的關係無疑是亦敵亦友。

Here in the city where Facebook and Google grew into the world famous companies they are today, many homeowners passionately oppose new cell towers in their upscale neighborhoods, complicating connections.
就在這個城市裡，臉書和Google茁壯為今天舉世聞名的公司，市內許多住宅的屋主強烈反對在他們的高級住宅區設置新的手機基地台，提高了改進收訊的難度。

Palo Alto residents also gripe about traffic. But overall the city has problems the rest of the country would love to have. Startup technology companies are clamoring for the prestige of a Palo Alto address. The vibrancy of Stanford University keeps the city young and humming.
帕羅奧圖市居民對交通問題也有抱怨。但整體而言，這個城市的問題卻是這個國家其他城市求之不得的。新創科技公司爭相設在這個名聲響叮噹的城市。史丹福大學的活力使這個城市保持年輕和活潑。

In an election year, with nearly constant squawking from presidential candidates about well-paying jobs, the mayor of Palo Alto has an unusual message for some of the cash-flush tech companies based here: Go away. Please.
在選舉年，總統候選人不斷叨唸高薪工作，帕羅奧圖市市長派翠克．柏特卻對一些總公司設在這裡的現金滿滿的科技公司發出不尋常的訊息：請離開。

“Big tech companies are choking off the downtown,” Mayor Patrick Burt said. “It’s not healthy.”
柏特市長說：「大科技公司使市區窒息，這不健康。」

As one walks down the sidewalks in residential areas, shaded by mature trees and basking in the city’s sunny, mild weather, it’s not too hard to understand why homeowners are trying to keep Palo Alto small despite its reputation for giving birth to the world’s next big thing.
走在住宅區的人行道上，大樹成蔭，陽光普照、氣候溫和，不難了解為何屋主們努力不讓帕羅奧圖市這個小城市變大，雖然它享有催生世界下一個偉大事物的名聲。

Last year, the city of 66,000 people set a cap of less than 1 percent a year on the growth of office space in most of its parts. In the charming downtown, where battalions of tech workers from companies like Amazon stroll the streets, their eyes often glued to their smartphones, the mayor is looking to enforce, in some form, an all-but-forgotten zoning regulation that bans companies whose primary business is research and development, including software coding. (To repeat: The mayor is considering enforcing a ban on coding at ground zero of Silicon Valley.)
去年，這個有6萬6000居民的城市為大部分地區的辦公室空間設限，每年成長不得超過1%。在迷人的市區，亞馬遜等公司的科技員工成群結隊在街上逛，眼睛通常盯著手機，市長想用某種方式執行一種幾乎已被遺忘、限制土地用途的分區法規，禁止以研究與發展，包括軟體程式設計為主要業務的公司在此設籍。（重複一遍：市長考慮執行禁令，禁止在矽谷的中心點寫程式。）

“This is crazy,” said Kate Vershov Downing, a lawyer who lit up the internet this month when she announced that she was quitting the city’s planning commission because she was moving someplace cheaper. “This is Silicon Valley. We’ve been writing code here for decades.”
律師凱特．佛休佛．唐寧說：「真瘋狂，這裡是矽谷，我們已在這裡寫程式寫了幾十年。」她本月宣布因為將要搬到較便宜的地區而辭去市政府計畫委員會職務，在網路上引起熱議。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/30/us/spotty-cell-reception-in-the-heart-of-silicon-valley.html

2016-09-18．聯合報．D4．紐約時報賞析．田思怡譯