Electronics & Semiconductors

Developing thermally evaporated environment-friendly semiconductors

Semiconductors are indispensable products in our lives, used in everything from smartphones and computers to vehicles. However, their development increasingly poses a problem: as semiconductors improve in terms of function ...

Energy & Green Tech

Portugal bets all on renewables after abandoning coal

As the UN steps up calls to make the switch to renewable energy to fight the global climate emergency, Portugal is among the first European Union countries to abandon coal.

Energy & Green Tech

Batteries, community spirit help California fight heat wave

Dire predictions of blackouts in California during a fearsome heat wave this month never came to pass, with technology—and a dose of community spirit—helping the creaking grid through its most testing period ever.

Energy & Green Tech

Hawaii quits coal in bid to fight climate change

The last bits of ash and greenhouse gases from Hawaii's only remaining coal-fired power plant slipped into the environment this week when the state's dirtiest source of electricity burned its final pieces of fuel.

Engineering

Climate-friendly metal production: Why is it difficult?

Most people know that metals are made from ore, but how do we make gold from gravel? That's the process we must understand to be able to make the metal industry climate friendly. Here are some alternatives for CO2-free metal ...

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Greenhouse gas

Greenhouse gases are gases in an atmosphere that absorb and emit radiation within the thermal infrared range. This process is the fundamental cause of the greenhouse effect. Common greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere include water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone. In our solar system, the atmospheres of Venus, Mars and Titan also contain gases that cause greenhouse effects. Greenhouse gases greatly affect the temperature of the Earth; without them, Earth's surface would be on average about 33°C (59°F) colder than at present.

Human activities since the start of the industrial era around 1750 have increased the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The 2007 assessment report compiled by the IPCC observed that "changes in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and aerosols, land cover and solar radiation alter the energy balance of the climate system", and concluded that "increases in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations is very likely to have caused most of the increases in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century".

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA