【导语】 自然不仅是慈爱的母亲，也是冷血的屠夫。
For many years，human beings have been trying to conquer nature，but never succeeded.What's more，sometimes nature gets angry.It shows its power and teaches human beings different lessons by various means，such as earthquakes，floods，hurricanes，sandstorms，typhoons，droughts，landslides，tornadoes，volcanoes，and so on.Any of them can lead to terrible catastrophes. For example，on March 11，2011，a huge earthquake hit Japan，resulting in a terrible tsunami afterwards.Many cars，ships and buildings were swept away by a tenmetrehigh wall of water. Thousands of people were confirmed dead.The total energy released by the quake was equivalent to the explosion of 6.7 trillion tons of TNT，about a thousand times the total power of all the world's nuclear weapons.Another event was the “huge volcanic eruption in Iceland” in 2010.It caused enormous damage to air travel across western and northern Europe because of the large quantities of volcanic ash.All of these things show how powerful nature is.
Compared with the great power of nature，human beings are so weak and even so helpless in face of the destruction caused by natural disasters.It would be unwise of us to fight against or even try to conquer nature.On the contrary，we should try to learn how to live with nature peacefully.
【词海拾贝】
1．conquer vt.征服；克服；攻克
2．lead to/result in 导致
3．confirm vt.证实；确认；批准
【问题思考】
True (T) or False (F)：
1．A flood can't lead to terrible catastrophes.( )
2．Human beings can conquer nature in the future.( )
答案：1.F 2.F
