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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What do Tizard and his partner hope to accomplish regarding cane toad eggs?
(a) Make them edible.
(b) Make them less abundant.
(c) Make the eggs impossible to fertilize.
(d) Make them hard to swallow.

2. What does Kolbert end the chapter wondering about all the burning trash, the acres of glass, the boxes of bumblebees, the vegetables raised on chemicals and captured carbon dioxide?
(a) Are there other plants like this one?
(b) How fast can this become reality everywhere?
(c) How can she get involved?
(d) Was it all totally cool or totally crazy?

3. Lackner and a friend, Christopher Wendt, met over beers and starting wondering what?
(a) Why humans are always screwing up.
(b) How long it would be until the earth died.
(c) Where the best beer is brewed.
(d) Why no one was coming up with big, crazy ideas anymore.

4. What could be used if a gene drive goes rogue?
(a) A CATCHA sequence.
(b) A CRISPR sequence.
(c) A GOTCHA sequence.
(d) A ROGUE sequence.

5. What problem is the Australian Animal Health Laboratory in Geelong, Australia trying to correct?
(a) Deforestation.
(b) The overpopulation of a non-native species of toad.
(c) Severe drought and wildfires.
(d) Non-native and invasive species of coral.

6. What does Mark Tizard want the general population to know about genetic modification?
(a) It is a new and possibly dangerous science.
(b) It is an exciting branch of bioengineering that needs to be further explored.
(c) It has been taking place forever, as we live in a genetically modified environment.
(d) It is scary but necessary.

7. What is it called when the rock from underground is brought up to meet the carbon dioxide, rather than the other way around?
(a) Chemical weathering.
(b) Enhanced weathering.
(c) Chemical scrubbing.
(d) Enhanced scrubbing.

8. What would Lackner and Wendt’s invention do?
(a) It would turn carbon dioxide to stone in a matter of days.
(b) It would create solar panels to power the world and scrub carbon from the atmosphere.
(c) It would send mankind to another planet.
(d) It would shoot small diamond particles into the stratosphere.

9. Who is Edda Aradóttir?
(a) One of the thermal engineers in Poland.
(b) A friend of Kolbert’s.
(c) The managing director of the geothermal plant.
(d) A solar geoengineer hired by Bill Gates.

10. The latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, showed that the majority of possibilities for keeping climate temperatures down require what?
(a) Negative emissions.
(b) Positive emissions.
(c) Solar geoengineering.
(d) Solar scrubbing.

11. Fifteen million tons of carbon dioxide were released by humans in 1776, while today that number is closer to what?
(a) 40 billion tons yearly.
(b) 40 million tons yearly.
(c) 40 trillion tons yearly.
(d) 40,000 tons yearly.

12. What is CRISPR?
(a) A collection of techniques used to make it easier to manipulate DNA.
(b) An air fryer.
(c) A technique for breeding species.
(d) A series of genetic testing.

13. Kolbert mentions that effects of the first few months of the coronavirus pandemic and how emissions dropped how much?
(a) 7%.
(b) 70%.
(c) 17%.
(d) 97%.

14. To what has gene-drive technology been compared?
(a) Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice.
(b) Kurt Vonnegut’s ice-nine.
(c) Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange.
(d) Steven King’s It.

15. What mammals were first experimented on with CRISPR and the gene drive?
(a) Mice.
(b) Toads.
(c) Rats.
(d) Birds.

Short Answer Questions

1. Global temperatures have increased how many degrees Fahrenheit since Watt’s day?

2. Are gene drives always beneficial for the species?

3. Kolbert tells the reader that geothermal plants are relatively clean but do produce what gases?

4. What is NOT one of the problems mentioned regarding cane toads?

5. According to Kolbert, who knows for certain how much hotter the world will get before out-and-out disaster becomes inevitable?

(see the answer keys)

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