| Library / English Dictionary |
FOSSIL FUEL
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Fuel consisting of the remains of organisms preserved in rocks in the earth's crust with high carbon and hydrogen content
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("fossil fuel" is a kind of...):
fuel (a substance that can be consumed to produce energy)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "fossil fuel"):
coal (fossil fuel consisting of carbonized vegetable matter deposited in the Carboniferous period)
gas; natural gas (a fossil fuel in the gaseous state; used for cooking and heating homes)
crude; crude oil; fossil oil; oil; petroleum; rock oil (a dark oil consisting mainly of hydrocarbons)
Context examples:
Dibenzo[a,e]pyrene is primarily found in gasoline exhaust, tobacco smoke and fossil fuels.
(Dibenzo[a,e]pyrene, NCI Thesaurus)
TRAP comes from the combustion of fossil fuels by motor vehicles.
(Pregnancy hypertension risk increased by traffic-related air pollution, National Institutes of Health)
Rather than running on fossil fuels, the artificial leaf is powered by sunlight, although it still works efficiently on cloudy and overcast days.
(‘Artificial leaf’ successfully produces clean gas, University of Cambridge)
A new study reports how the mechanism works: When fossil fuels are burned, sulfuric and nitric acid eventually fall back to earth in rain and snow, causing acidification of the soil.
(Previously unknown mechanism causes increased forest water use, National Science Foundation)
Acidification occurs when oceans absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) created by burning fossil fuels.
(Marine organisms in Southern Ocean will face shallower zone for life, National Science Foundation)
The researchers said it isn't clear how long Earth's land areas will be able to keep increasing carbon uptake in the face of ongoing deforestation and continued emissions of fossil fuels.
(World's forests increasingly taking up more carbon, National Science Foundation)
Airborne Particulate Matter is a broad class of materials and substances of minute size present in the air that originate from industrial manufacturing processes, automobile exhaust, forest fires, and fossil fuel combustion.
(Airborne Particulate Matter, NCI Thesaurus)
The South Pole has shown the same, relentless upward trend in carbon dioxide (CO2) as the rest of world, but its remote location means it’s the last to register the impacts of increasing emissions from fossil fuel consumption, the primary driver of greenhouse gas pollution.
(South Pole is last place on Earth to pass global warming milestone, NOAA)
Still, the amount of methane emitted from Amazon trees is just half that emitted by humans, according to the authors — whether in the form of emissions from landfills, the meat industry, or burning fossil fuels.
(Amazon trees are major source of methane emission, SciDev.Net)
The global ocean absorbed 34 billion metric tons of carbon from the burning of fossil fuels from 1994 to 2007 — a four-fold increase to 2.6 billion metric tons per year when compared to the period starting from the Industrial Revolution in 1800 to 1994.
(Global ocean is absorbing more carbon from fossil fuel emissions, NOAA)
