Comprehension:
Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions that follow.
Everything we associate with the rejuvenation of life is intertwined with the seasons. Think of holidays and harvests, festivals of tunes and tinsel, altered ocean currents heaving with young fish. Remember the skies suddenly agleam with vibrant visitor-birds or beaches hosting turtles born and birthing there. All beings on Earth are shaped by the seasons—which makes unnatural changes in these crucial cycles concerning. Consider how summer in western countries now stretches to half the year while winter has shrunk, withdrawing its draperies of snow. Spring has lengthened, bringing in more pollen and invasive species, while in the east, the monsoon is more erratic, spewing rains of wild velocity. Summers have grown unbelievably hot—and we all know that choking ‘smog season’, months of dense air pollution covering us like a filthy blanket.
Natural seasons come from Earth orbiting the sun—the closer we get, the warmer we feel, the farther we go, life gets colder. However, these changing climes—unending summers, chopped-up winters, howling typhoons—are courtesy of us. The Anthropocene is the era of human impacts reshaping Earth, with one main cause: the more we burn fossil fuels, the more greenhouse gases— carbon, sulfur, methane—are emitted. These block our planet’s natural processes of releasing heat into space, trapping it within. As the planet heats—we are now 1.5 degrees hotter than preindustrial times—it collapses.
Thus, melting Arctic ice has reached a record low alongside massive glacial retreat in Antarctica. As the oceans swell, water is absorbed by winds unleashing this as ‘unseasonal’ rain. This wonky water cycle also spurs droughts—dry months burst into wildfires, reducing Amazon forest and Hollywood studio equally to smoke and dust. In the relentless logic of the Anthropocene, nothing is wasted—hence, that smoke and dust return somewhere as a ‘season of smog’. Yet, there are solutions.
Which of the following is not the result of human intervention with nature?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 2
The correct answer is Option (2) → Coming of natural seasons
The passage states that "Natural seasons come from Earth orbiting the sun". They are a natural process, not the result of human action.
Why the Other Options are Incorrect?
Option 1: Unending summers — Incorrect. True in the passage: the passage lists "unending summers" among the changing climes that "are courtesy of us".
Option 3: Chopped-up winters — Incorrect. True in the passage: "chopped-up winters" are in the same list.
Option 4: Howling typhoons — Incorrect. True in the passage: "howling typhoons" complete that list of changes caused by us.