Sinônimos (synonymous) são palavras que possuem sentidos parecidos. Nesta questão, é preciso encontrar qual alternativa apresenta palavras com ideias sinônimas, ou seja, parecidas.Observe o sentido de cada palavra:a) Deployed (implantado) - disturbed (perturbado)b) Undisputed (indiscutível) - irrefutable&nbsp;(irrefutável)c) Upheaval (reviravolta) - stagnation (estagnação)d) Unlock&nbsp;(destravar, desbloquear) - restrain (impedir, conter)e) Incumbent (incumbente) - unnecessary (desnecessário) Com base no texto e no sentido de cada palavra, é possível notar que tanto "undisputed" quanto "irrefutable" se referem a coisas que não são questionadas, refutadas. Desse modo, elas são os dois itens que expressam ideias sinônimas. Alternativa correta: Letra (B)

The resurgence in oil and gas production from the
 United States, deep declines in the cost of renewables
 and growing electrification are changing the face of
 the global energy system and upending traditional
5 ways of meeting energy demand, according to the
 World Energy Outlook 2017. A cleaner and more
 diversified energy mix in China is another major driver
 of this transformation.
 Over the next 25 years, the world’s growing
10 energy needs are met first by renewables and natural
 gas, as fast-declining costs turn solar power into the
 cheapest source of new electricity generation. Global
 energy demand is 30% higher by 2040 — but still
 half as much as it would have been without efficiency
15 improvements. The boom years for coal are over — in
 the absence of large-scale carbon capture, utilization
 and storage (CCUS) — and rising oil demand slows
 down but is not reversed before 2040 even as
 electric-car sales rise steeply.
20 WEO-2017, the International Energy Agency
 (IEA)’s flagship publication, finds that over the next
 two decades the global energy system is being
 reshaped by four major forces: the United States
 is set to become the undisputed global oil and gas
25 leader; renewables are being deployed rapidly thanks
 to falling costs; the share of electricity in the energy
 mix is growing; and China’s new economic strategy
 takes it on a cleaner growth mode, with implications
 for global energy markets.
30 Solar PV is set to lead capacity additions, pushed
 by deployment in China and India, meanwhile in the
 European Union, wind becomes the leading source of
 electricity soon after 2030.
 “Solar is forging ahead in global power markets
35 as it becomes the cheapest source of electricity
 generation in many places, including China and
 India,” said Dr Fatih Birol, the IEA’s executive director.
 “Electric vehicles (EVs) are in the fast lane as a result
 of government support and declining battery costs but
40 it is far too early to write the obituary of oil, as growth
 for trucks, petrochemicals, shipping and aviation
 keep pushing demand higher. The US becomes
 the undisputed leader for oil and gas production for
 decades, which represents a major upheaval for
45 international market dynamics.”
 These themes — as well as the future role of
 oil and gas in the energy mix, how clean-energy
 technologies are deploying, and the need for more 
 investment in CCUS — were among the key topics
50 discussed by the world’s energy leaders at the IEA’s
 2017 Ministerial Meeting in Paris last week.
 This year, WEO-2017 includes a special focus on
 China, where economic and energy policy changes
 underway will have a profound impact on the
55 country’s energy mix, and continue to shape global
 trends. A new phase in the country’s development
 results in an economy that is less reliant on heavy
 industry and coal.
 At the same time, a strong emphasis on cleaner
60 energy technologies, in large part to address poor air
 quality, is catapulting China to a position as a world
 leader in wind, solar, nuclear and electric vehicles and
 the source of more than a quarter of projected growth
 in natural gas consumption. As demand growth in
65 China slows, other countries continue to push overall
 global demand higher – with India accounting for
 almost one-third of global growth to 2040.
 The shale oil and gas revolution in the United
 States continues thanks to the remarkable ability of
70 producers to unlock new resources in a cost-effective
 way. By the mid-2020s, the United States is projected
 to become the world’s largest LNG exporter and a net
 oil exporter by the end of that decade.
 This is having a major impact on oil and gas
75 markets, challenging incumbent suppliers and
 provoking a major reorientation of global trade flows,
 with consumers in Asia accounting for more than
 70% of global oil and gas imports by 2040. LNG
 from the United States is also accelerating a major
80 structural shift towards a more flexible and globalized
 gas market.
 WEO-2017 finds it is too early to write the
 obituary of oil. Global oil demand continues to grow to
 2040, although at a steadily decreasing pace – while
85 fuel efficiency and rising electrification bring a peak in
 oil used for passenger cars, even with a doubling of
 the car fleet to two billion. But other sectors – namely
 petrochemicals, trucks, aviation, and shipping – drive
 up oil demand to 105 million barrels a day by 2040.
90 While carbon emissions have flattened in recent
 years, the report finds that global energy-related CO2
 emissions increase slightly by 2040, but at a slower
 pace than in last year’s projections. Still, this is far from
 enough to avoid severe impacts of climate change.

 “nuclear power plants” (paragraph 5)

Para compreender a que elemento textual "they" está se referindo, é importante ler atentamente o trecho em que ele está inserido: "Nuclear power plants take up far less space on the landscape than solar or wind farms (Frase 1), and they produce power even at night or on calm days (Frase 2)".De acordo com o trecho, as usinas nucleares (nuclear power plants) ocupam menos espaço que os parques solares ou eólicos (solar or wind farms), e elas (they) produzem mesmo à noite ou em dias calmos.Tendo em vista que o sujeito da Frase 1 é "nuclear power plants", é possível notarmos que "they", na Frase 2, recupera o sujeito da primeira frase, acrescentando outra informação sobre ele. Portanto, "they" se refere a "nuclear power plants". Alternativa correta: Letra (B)

1 President Joe Biden has set ambitious goals for
 fighting climate change: To cut U.S. carbon emissions
 in half by 2030 and to have a net-zero carbon economy
 by 2050. The plan requires electricity generation – the
 easiest economic sector to green, analysts say – to
 be carbon-free by 2035.

2 A few figures from the U.S. Energy Information
 Administration (EIA) illustrate the challenge. In
 2020 the United States generated about four trillion
 kilowatt-hours of electricity. Some 60 percent of that
 came from burning fossil fuels, mostly natural gas, in
 some 10,000 generators, large and small, around the
 country. All of that electricity will need to be replaced -
 and more, because demand for electricity is expected
 to rise, especially if we power more cars with it.

3 Renewable energy sources like solar and
 wind have grown faster than expected; together
 with hydroelectric, they surpassed coal for the first
 time ever in 2019 and now produce 20 percent of
 U.S. electricity. In February the EIA projected that
 renewables were on track to produce more than 40
 percent by 2050 - remarkable growth, perhaps, but
 still well short of what’s needed to decarbonize the
 grid by 2035 and forestall the climate crisis.

4 This daunting challenge has recently led some
 environmentalists to reconsider an alternative they
 had long been wary of: nuclear power.

5 Nuclear power has a lot going for it. Its carbon
 footprint is equivalent to wind, less than solar, and
 orders of magnitude less than coal. Nuclear power
 plants take up far less space on the landscape than
 solar or wind farms, and they produce power even
 at night or on calm days. In 2020 they generated as
 much electricity in the U.S. as renewables did, a fifth
 of the total.

6 But debates rage over whether nuclear should be
 a big part of the climate solution in the U.S. The majority
 of American nuclear plants today are approaching
 the end of their design life, and only one has been
 built in the last 20 years. Nuclear proponents are
 now banking on next-generation designs, like small,
 modular versions of conventional light-water reactors,
 or advanced reactors designed to be safer, cheaper,
 and more flexible.

7 “We’ve innovated so little in the past half-century,
 there’s a lot of ground to gain,” says Ashley Finan,
 the director of the National Reactor Innovation Center
 at the Idaho National Laboratory. Yet an expansion
 of nuclear power faces some serious hurdles, and
 the perennial concerns about safety and long-lived
 radioactive waste may not be the biggest: Critics
 also say nuclear reactors are simply too expensive
 and take too long to build to be of much help with the
 climate crisis. 

8 While environmental opposition may have been
 the primary force hindering nuclear development in
 the 1980s and 90s, now the biggest challenge may
 be costs. Few nuclear plants have been built in the
 U.S. recently because they are very expensive to
 build here, which makes the price of their energy high.

9 Jacopo Buongiorno, a professor of nuclear
 science and engineering at MIT, led a group of
 scientists who recently completed a two-year study
 examining the future of nuclear energy in the U.S.
 and western Europe. They found that “without cost
 reductions, nuclear energy will not play a significant
 role” in decarbonizing the power sector.

10 “In the West, the nuclear industry has substantially
 lost its ability to build large plants,” Buongiorno says,
 pointing to Southern Company’s effort to add two new
 reactors to Plant Vogtle in Waynesboro, Georgia.
 They have been under construction since 2013, are
 now billions of dollars over budget - the cost has more
 than doubled - and years behind schedule. In France,
 ranked second after the U.S. in nuclear generation, a
 new reactor in Flamanville is a decade late and more
 than three times over budget.

11 “We have clearly lost the know-how to build
 traditional gigawatt-scale nuclear power plants,”
 Buongiorno says. Because no new plants were built
 in the U.S. for decades, he and his colleagues found,
 the teams working on a project like Vogtle haven’t
 had the learning experiences needed to do the job
 efficiently. That leads to construction delays that drive
 up costs.

12 Elsewhere, reactors are still being built at lower
 cost, “largely in places where they build projects on
 budget, and on schedule,” Finan explains. China and
 South Korea are the leaders. (To be fair, several of
 China’s recent large-scale reactors have also had
 cost overruns and delays.)

13 “The cost of nuclear power in Asia has been a
 quarter, or less, of new builds in the West,” Finan says.
 Much lower labor costs are one reason, according
 to both Finan and the MIT report, but better project
 management is another.

 remarkable (paragraph 3) – extraordinary

Sinônimos são palavras que possuem significados parecidos. De acordo com o dicionário da Cambridge, a palavra remarkable se refere a algo notável ou especial. Desse modo, extraordinary se aproxima semanticamente de remarkable, na medida em que também pode se referir a algo especial e notável. A alternativa correta, assim, é a Letra (B).

Na frase extraída do quarto parágrafo do texto, existem dois pronomes relativos destacados em negrito: "who" e "which". A função dos pronomes relativos é conectar uma cláusula à substantivos mencionados anteriormente, oferecendo informação adicional sobre eles. 

O primeiro pronome, "who", é tipicamente usado para se referir a pessoas. No contexto da frase, "It was the Lydians, around 600 BC, who get credit for a critical step in this process: fashioning the first known coins", ("Foram os Lídios, por volta de 600 a.C., que recebem crédito por um passo crítico nesse processo: a criação das primeiras moedas conhecidas"), "who" refere-se a "the Lydians" (os Lídios), indicando que foram eles que receberam o crédito por essa ação. 

O segundo pronome relativo, "which", é utilizado para se referir a coisas ou objetos. A frase segue com: "which were made of a gold and silver alloy" ("que foram feitas de uma liga de ouro e prata"), onde ele especifica informações sobre "the first known coins" (as primeiras moedas conhecidas). 

Portanto, os pronomes "who" e "which" referem-se respectivamente a "the Lydians" e "the first known coins". Comparando com as opções da questão, a alternativa que corretamente identifica a referência de cada pronome é a letra D. 

Gabarito: Letra D

By Rich Beattie 
1 What we call “money” has always been a moving target. It changes appearance and value. Here are five key developments in the history of money that have impacted how we earn, save and spend today.

2 Cash Cows - Before humans had money, they had stuff. In ancient times, when you had stuff other people wanted, you bartered it for stuff you wanted. Around 9000 BC, the most popular commodities included things like cattle, sheep and camels. This was fine when people bartered close to home, but bulky creatures are cumbersome and difficult to transport. As people started to venture farther afield to trade, a more portable option became essential.

3 In 1200 BC people started using cowries—the shells of marine mollusks taken from oceans. They were recognized as precious, and their use spread across Asia, Africa, Oceania and Europe. Having been in use for centuries — even into the 20th century in some places—cowries win the prize as the world’s longest-running currency.

4 Three Coins in the Fountain - The issue with bartering became assigning value: Just how much was a cowrie or a cow worth? So, agreeing on the value of money became essential. It was the Lydians, around 600 BC, who get credit for a critical step in this process: fashioning the first known coins, which were made of a gold and silver alloy.

5 The metal used to make a coin—along with its weight—was important, as it denoted the money’s value. Moreover, as coins gained popularity, so did the idea of adorning them with locally inspired designs. Coins were money, but they now doubled as a historic record. Eventually, they took on even more uses: People flipped them to make decisions and tossed them into wells while making wishes. They may be used less in 2020, but coins have been an integral part of our culture for centuries.

6 The Paper Chase - Coins were obviously lighter and easier to transport than cows, but carrying bags of heavy metal still wasn’t very practical. China’s Tang Dynasty, in the seventh century, came up with a smart solution, namely, paper money. It was super-light and could feature even richer designs than coins, and it promised a certain amount of purchasing power.

7 Gold Rush - One of the problems, though, was that counterfeiters had great success with paper bills. The bigger problem came when governments faced economic crises; it was far too easy to print more paper money, which led to skyrocketing inflation. Paper needed a backup—something universally valued yet not easily replicated. Something like gold.

8 The “gold standard” let governments create a fixed price for this precious metal that was tied directly to the value of their currency. In the United States, the idea took root in the late 17th century, and it spread to Europe in the 19th century. But confidence in the gold standard crumbled during World War I, and it soon became apparent that in order to thrive, currencies needed the freedom to fluctuate dynamically against each other. The gold standard was dropped in the United States in 1933, and a global economy started to take shape.

9 The E-Buck Stops Here? - Cows, cowries, coins, paper, gold: Money has always had a physical presence. But today, it is quickly evolving into numbers that float through the ether. This modern era of money began in 1946 with the first bank-issued charge card. Credit cards followed some 12 years later, still related to dollars. However, technology, with cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, is changing the world’s definition of “money.” 

10 Now, social media companies and entire countries are considering digital currencies of their own. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence is growing eversmarter, and perhaps one day soon your budget and expenses will be managing themselves. The debate rages about exactly where we are headed, but with history as our guide, the one thing we can absolutely count on is the inevitability of change.

O uso da palavra destacada em negrito "though" no contexto da sentença "One of the problems, though, was that counterfeiters had great success with paper bills" é fundamental para identificar sua função gramatical na frase.

A palavra "though" é geralmente utilizada para introduzir uma ideia de contraste ou oposição. Ela serve para indicar uma informação que contrasta ou se opõe à ideia que foi apresentada anteriormente. No contexto específico do fragmento do texto, ela está situada após uma afirmação sobre um problema, sugerindo que há um contraponto ou uma consideração adicional que contrasta com uma declaração anterior ou com o contexto geral. Neste caso, indica que, apesar dos avanços representados pelo papel moeda, havia problemas significativos associados, como o sucesso dos falsificadores.

 

Nas alternativas apresentadas, temos:
<ul>
 <li>A) time: Não se relaciona com a ideia de tempo.</li>
 <li>B) addition: Não indica adição, mas contraste.</li>
 <li>C) condition: Não implica condição.</li>
 <li>D) emphasis: Não serve para dar ênfase, mas para mostrar contraste.</li>
 <li>E) opposition: Corretamente indica opção a outra ideia ou problema levantados antes.</li>
</ul>
 
Gabarito: Letra E

Questões de CESGRANRIO - Inglês - Elementos gramaticais