- Industry: Broadcasting & receiving
- Number of terms: 5074
- Number of blossaries: 1
- Company Profile:
The largest broadcasting organisation in the world.
A pesticide is a substance used to kill a pest, and in a farming context a pest is anything that attacks or competes with crops. Hence, there are many different types of pesticides: for example, insecticides kill insects, and herbicides kill weeds. The chemicals used in pesticides can sometimes be toxic to humans, however, so organic farming endeavours to use natural rather than synthetic substances as pesticides.
Industry:Natural environment
All turbines use kinetic (movement) energy to cause a bladed rotor to turn and so generate electricity. A wind turbine is a machine that captures the force of the wind. Often seen in remote, exposed coastal regions or offshore where wind speeds are greatest and most consistent, smaller versions can be installed on houses, but research suggests they may be useless, or even counter-productive, in urban settings.
Industry:Natural environment
Acid rain is simply rain with higher than normal acidity. Its main cause is emissions of nitrogen and sulphur compounds from burning fossil fuels to power transport, power stations, forest fires, fertiliser and industry.
Industry:Natural environment
Action that helps cope with the effects of climate change - for example construction of barriers to protect against rising sea levels, or conversion to crops capable of surviving high temperatures and drought.
Industry:Natural environment
A fund for projects and programmes that help developing countries cope with the adverse effects of climate change. It is financed by a share of proceeds from emission-reduction programmes such as the Clean Development Mechanism.
Industry:Natural environment
An aerator is a device that breaks the flow from your shower head (or other water supply) into a finer spray of droplets - so you get just as wet while using less water.
Industry:Natural environment
Air pollution usually refers to the presence of any chemical or particulate that alters the normal make-up of our atmosphere, causing direct threats to human health (such as breathing difficulties) or longer-term damage through its effects on our planet's ecosystem. Pollutants include smoke and dust, nitrogen oxides, methane, and the fumes from aerosol sprays and other solvents. Industrial processes and transport are major contributors to air pollution, but it can also be caused by natural processes such as forest fires and volcanoes. See also acid rain.
Industry:Natural environment
A mixture of two or more elements, at least one of which is a metal.
Industry:Natural environment
Man-made climate change - climate change caused by human activity as opposed to natural processes.
Industry:Natural environment
The atmosphere is the name for the mixture of gases surrounding the earth and retained there by the planet's gravitational pull - our air, in other words. The atmosphere comprises the troposphere, the stratosphere, the mesosphere and the thermosphere.
Industry:Natural environment
