Reduce Carbon Dioxide Emissions
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that the exhaust gases from your carduring a journey are squashed into abottle and weighed compared with theweight of petrol used how much do youthink the exhaust gases will weigh muchlighter about the same or much heavierthan the petrol pause the video tillyou’ve thought of your answer well theanswer is that there will be muchheavier because you have added oxygen tothe petrol releasing carbon dioxide intothe atmospherewhen we burn any fossil fuel we alwaysput extra carbon dioxide into the airbecause the fuels contain carbon theprincipal element making up livingthings so here’s another question likeall other animals we breathe out carbondioxide from the respiration of our foodbut why does this carbon dioxide not addto the carbon dioxide in the atmospherepause the video till you’ve thought ofyour answer the answer is that thiscarbon dioxide is part of the naturalcarbon cycle it came from your food saybread which got its carbon from theatmosphere when it was growing as awheat plant let’s see where the peopleof the world get their energy 200 yearsago we got our energy from biofuelstraditional energy sources that haddriven directly or indirectly by the daytime energy from the Sun fire woodburning in air to heat our homes andcook our food grass and air for animalsto respire gaining energy to pull ourplows and carriages our own food whichwe joined with oxygen to give us energyto use our muscles nowadays burningthese fossil fuels with oxygen has freedhalf the world from being limited by thesolar energy but there are still manypeople who live only with biofuels woodfor cooking and heating and muscle powerfor farming and transport we use fossilfuels about equally for generation ofelectricity mostly coal transport mostlyoil and heating and industrial usesmostly natural gasto reduce our carbon dioxide emissionswe must burn fossil fuels moreefficiently and try to replace them withalternatives efficiency filamentlightbulbs use a hundred units ofelectricity to produce just three unitsof light we should replace them eitherby fluorescent bulbs which use only sixunits or LEDs which transform almost ahundred percent of the electricity intolight using only three units ofelectricity to produce the three unitsof light trains and trams can generateelectricity as they brake instead ofwasting the kinetic energy as heat whenthey stop for Motor Vehicles we cancontinue to improve the number ofkilometers driven per litre and we candrive more slowly and carefully withless use of the brakes our homes shouldbe well insulated especially the roof sowe waste less fuel in the winter in hotcountries houses should be built so thatthey are naturally cooled to save on airconditioning better still is to replacefossil fuels with alternatives manycountries already use hydroelectricitywhich is generated from falling waterand therefore solar-powered and we areseeing wind turbines and solar panelsbeginning to make an impact onelectricity supply research into energyfrom the tides and waves is producinguseful results – and there is nuclearenergy France generates 85% of itseletricity this way which does notrelease carbon dioxide but we do have toconsider the problem of safe disposal ofnuclear waste if we replace coal whichis almost pure carbon by natural gaswhich is methane ch4 as a fuel forelectricity generation half the oxygenused will join with a hydrogen ratherthan carbon so our emissions of carbondioxide will be halved this is theargument given for developing so-calledfracking for natural gas which wouldreplace coal in power stations and wecan use our muscles more walking andriding a bike for short journeys so tosummarize in order to reduce the amountof carbon dioxide we release into theatmosphere we need to reduce ourreliance on fossil fuels I makeour process is more efficient and byreplacing the fossil fuel withalternative energy sources by generatingelectricity from the wind waves waterfrom the wind