Questões de Concursos

A deep freeze this week in the Lone Star state, which relies on electricity to heat many homes, is causing power demand to skyrocket. At the same time, natural gas, coal, wind and nuclear facilities in Texas have been knocked offline by the unthinkably low temperatures.

“The extreme cold is causing the entire system to freeze up,” said Jason Bordoff, director of Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy. “All sources of energy are underperforming in the extreme cold because they’re not designed to handle these unusual conditions.”

The ripple effects are being felt around the nation as Texas’ prolific oil-and-gas industry stumbles.

It’s striking that these power outages are happening in a state with abundant energy resources. Texas produces more electricity than any other US state — generating almost twice as much as Florida, the next-closest, according to federal statistics.

Wind power is also booming in Texas, which produced about 28% of all the US wind-powered electricity in 2019, the EIA said. But the problem is that not only is Texas an energy superpower, it tends to be an above-average temperature state. That means its infrastructure is ill-prepared for the cold spell currently wreaking havoc. And the consequences are being felt by millions.

Critics of renewable energy have pointed out that wind turbines have frozen or needed to be shut down due to the extreme weather.

Even though other places with colder weather (like Iowa and Denmark) rely on wind for even larger shares of power, experts said the turbines in Texas were not winterized for the unexpected freeze.

But this is not just about wind turbines going down. Natural gas and coal-fired power plants need water to stay online. Yet those water facilities froze in the cold temperatures and others lost access to the electricity they require to operate.

It’s too early to definitively say what went wrong in Texas and how to prevent similar outages. More information will need to be released by state authorities. Still, some experts say the criticism of wind power appears overdone already. “In terms of the blame game, the focus on wind is a red herring. It’s more of a political issue than what is causing the power problems on the grid,” said Dan Cohan, associate professor of environmental engineering at Rice University.

The energy crisis in Texas raises also questions about the nature of the state’s deregulated and decentralized electric grid. Unlike other states, Texas has made a conscious decision to isolate its grid from the rest of the country.

That means that when things are running smoothly, Texas can’t export excess power to neighboring states. And in the current crisis, it can’t import power either.

Internet: <www.cnn.com> (adapted).

Texto para as questões 36 e 37

Two in every three people on the planet–some 4 billion in total–are "excluded from the rule of law." In many cases, this begins with the lack of official recognition of their birth: around 40% of the developing world?s five-yearold children are not registered as even existing.
Later, people will find that the home they live in, the land they farm, or the business that they start, is not protected by legally enforceable property rights. Even in the rare cases when they can afford to go to court, the service is poor. India, for example, has only 11 judges for every 1million people.
These alarming statistics are contained in a report from a commission on the legal empowerment of the poor, released on June 3rd at the United Nations. It argues that not only are such statistics evidence of grave injustice, they also reflect one of the main reasons why so much of humanity remains mired in poverty. Because they are outside the rule of law, the vast majority of poor people are obliged to work (if they work at all) in the informal economy, which is less productive than the formal, legal part of the economy.

The Economist, June 7th 2008.

Questions 41 and 42

Read the text below to answer questions 41 and 42:

Guide Dogs

During World War I, a doctor at a German hospital was treating a blind patient when a fact called his attention. The doctor left his dog with the patient and when he returned he noticed the positive way that man and dog were interacting. He concluded that such dogs could be trained to assist blind people and started to teach the animals to do just that. Dorothy Eustis, a wealthy American dog trainer, heard of these guide dogs, hired some of the German trainers and opened an institute in New Jersey to make this use of the dogs widespread.
(Fonte:Adapted from http://twotrees.www.50megs.com)