- Industry: Broadcasting & receiving
- Number of terms: 5074
- Number of blossaries: 1
- Company Profile:
The largest broadcasting organisation in the world.
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
Microscopic particles suspended in the lower atmosphere that reflect sunlight back to space. These generally have a cooling affect on the planet and can mask global warming. They play a key role in the formation of clouds, fog, precipitation and ozone depletion in the atmosphere.
Industry:Natural environment
Biodiesel is fuel generated from vegetable oil that can be used pure or blended with regular diesel (diesel produced by refining crude oil) in conventional, unmodified diesel engines. It is not the same as waste vegetable oil, otherwise known as 'unwashed biodiesel', which requires engine modification.
Industry:Natural environment
Biodiversity (a contraction of the phrase biological diversity) means the variety of life on earth, or within one particular ecosystem, in terms of the number of distinct biological species present. Tropical rainforests, for example, support a huge variety of species, so are highly biodiverse, while polar regions are far less so. Scientists worry that deforestation, such as that associated with planting crops for biofuels, animal feed and human consumption is reducing biodiversity. See also monoculture.
Industry:Natural environment
Biofuel is a general term for fuel, including biodiesel, that is derived from biomass - living or recently dead organic matter. In general it is made from sugar, starch, vegetable oils or animal fats. Examples include bio-ethanol from energy crops such sugar cane, corn, palm oil, and rape seed.
Industry:Natural environment
Biomass is renewable organic matter that can be used as fuel. It is living or recently dead material - wood and other plant matter, or even animal waste. Fuel derived from biomass is known as biofuel. It does not include fossil fuels, which have formed - and stored their carbon - over millions of years. Because the CO2 released when biomass is burned is balanced by the CO2 absorbed during its production - and because new plant matter is re-growing and absorbing more CO2 all the time - it's regarded as carbon neutral.
Industry:Natural environment
The soot that results from the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels, biofuels, and biomass (wood, animal dung, etc.). It is the most potent climate-warming aerosol. Unlike greenhouse gases, which trap infrared radiation that is already in the Earth's atmosphere, these particles absorb all wavelengths of sunlight and then re-emit this energy as infrared radiation.
Industry:Natural environment
Climate change is the variation in the average global or regional climate as measured by yardsticks such as average temperature and rainfall. This variation is caused by both natural processes and human activity. Weather is what happens over days or even hours, whereas climate is the average weather measured over a longer period. Increasingly when people refer to climate change, however, they specifically mean the phenomenon of global warming.
Industry:Natural environment
