- Industry: Broadcasting & receiving
- Number of terms: 5074
- Number of blossaries: 1
- Company Profile:
The largest broadcasting organisation in the world.
The name given to a graph published in 1998 plotting the average temperature in the Northern hemisphere over the last 1,000 years. The line remains roughly flat until the last 100 years, when it bends sharply upwards. The graph has been cited as evidence to support the idea that global warming is a man-made phenomenon, but some scientists have challenged the data and methodology used to estimate historical temperatures. (It is also known as MBH98 after its creators, Michael E. Mann, Raymond S. Bradley and Malcolm K. Hughes.)
Industry:Natural environment
Hummer is the brand name of a 4x4/off-road vehicle manufactured by General Motors and styled after the US military's high mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicle (HMMWV, or Humvee). The Hummer is widely criticised for its very poor fuel economy.
Industry:Natural environment
A hybrid car is one that has both a petrol engine and an electric motor and switches between them according to the driving conditions. It is different from a dual-fuel vehicle, which uses two types of liquid fuel.
Industry:Natural environment
Hydrocarbons are compounds made up of hydrogen and carbon only. All fossil fuels - such as coal, oil and gas - are hydrocarbons, until they are burnt when they mix with oxygen, creating (amongst other gases) CO2.
Industry:Natural environment
Hydropower (or hydroelectric power) is the generation of electricity using the power of falling water.
Industry:Natural environment
Incandescents are traditional lightbulbs that use a filament (a thin thread of metal, usually tungsten wire) inside a glass bulb that glows white hot as electricity passes through it. The filament is prevented from burning either by creating a vacuum inside the bulb or filling it with inert gas. They are far less energy efficient than fluorescents/CFLs or LEDs because most of their radiation is given off as heat rather than visible light.
Industry:Natural environment
Inert gases are those, including helium and neon, that are not normally chemically reactive. The inert gases argon and krypton are often used in sealed double glazing units because they don't conduct heat as well as air, so they provide better insulation.
Industry:Natural environment
A kilowatt-hour is an amount of energy equivalent to a power of one kilowatt (a thousand watts) running for one hour. The unit is commonly used on electricity meters. If you know how many kilowatt-hours of energy your household uses, you can translate this into kilograms of CO2 emitted by multiplying it by 0.527. A megawatt hour (MWh) is an amount of energy equivalent to the power of one megawatt (a million watts) running for one hour. Similarly, a gigawatt hour (GWh) is a billion watts for one hour, and a terawatt hour (TWh) is a trillion. While your domestic gas bill will be set out in kWh, the output for a power station, for example, will obviously be expressed in one of these much larger units.
Industry:Natural environment
A megatonne is one million tonnes. It is commonly used to describe the large amounts of CO2 emitted by power stations.
Industry:Natural environment
Action that will reduce man-made climate change. This includes action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or absorb greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Industry:Natural environment
