"Lärm" is loud, annoying noise of some kind. If you live next to a construction site or busy street, you might be bothered by "Lärm". "Geräusch", on the other hand, can refer to any sort of sound. It could be quiet or loud, and doesn't have to be bothersome. You can use it to comment on the character of the sound, like "dumpfes/kratzendes/schwaches Geräusch". In short, everything that you hear makes a "Geräusch", but only loud, annoying things make "Lärm".

To be honest, 4 of these words are interchangeable in most cases. A "peninsula" is a general term for land projections into water that pretty much every native speaker would know. "Foreland" and "headland" are not terms that are used where I grew up, but seem to be synonymous. According to Wikipedia, a "Cape" is a large projection that marks a significant change in the shape of the coast. That's obviously a very subjective definition, and I suspect a lot of capes are called capes because that's just what someone decided to call it. "Promontory" is a word I had never heard before. This seems to be a technical term in the field of geography for a relatively steep transition between high land and low land. It doesn't necessarily need to be on the ocean. They can be inland as well. I would suggest sticking to peninsula for most cases, and use cape when cape is in the name of the geographic feature you're talking about.

This is obviously somewhat subjective, and I'd say that all four examples you list are correct and, most importantly, would be understood. The only one I think I generally wouldn't use is "Mars is near" in the context you've given. For me, "near" gives the impression that something is approaching and will arrive at the speaker's location, or at least that it can be reached from the speaker's location. In the sense that you're viewing Mars from Earth and it will never arrive at your location, this sounds a little strange in my mind. However, if I were in a space ship and Mars was approaching to within a short distance, I would say something like "Mars is near" or "We are near Mars". "The enemy is close" and "The enemy is near" both sound the same to me, probably because the enemy will eventually arrive at your location.

Greenhouse gas emissions

Two charts are depicted. The first one shows the usage of energy from by Australian households. It is noticeable that most of the energy is spend spent for heating in general and, with the greatest consumption for water heating specifically. These two fields of applications claim account for more than three-quarters of the energy usage, whereas cooling amounts to solely (Solely implies that something is "alone" in some way. Your message is more of "a very small amount" than "alone". I would choose "merely" here.) two percent. Lightening Lighting also represents only a small proportion of energy usage. The second chart features the greenhouse gas emissions (Grammatically, this is correct, but stylistically it sounds strange. You should be more detailed here. Are these greenhouse gas emissions for the entire planet? Where/how was it measured? How is it related to Australia and the other graphic?). The sectors (this word assumes a pie chart) of the two graphics match mostly closely except for the heating. Heating is the largest sector in the first graphic, but, in comparison to the other emission sources, it emits only few greenhouse gases. (Saying "emits only few greenhouse gases" sounds like it emits very few TYPES of gas (i.e. just CO2, no methane or other gases), while other sources emit multiple types of gas that contribute to the greenhouse effect. I'd prefer to write something like "... it contributes relatively little to greenhouse gas production.")

I assume you're referencing pie charts here. It's kind of hard to tell exactly what you mean without seeing the graphics. Even with the charts to look at, it might help to use some more precise wording.

The author is saying that the critics who favor Douglas Sirk's style consider the enjoyment of soap operas to be, in effect, a sign of bad taste and low intelligence. The fans of soap operas are overwhelmingly female, so the author believes that the critics are implicitly saying women have mindless bad taste because women are more likely to watch soap operas. The author is clearly opposed to this point of view, and believes that the critics are being degrading to females in order to position themselves as people with good taste.

1) "Take it up a notch" means to increase the intensity or quality of something. A few examples: - If you're playing in a band and a bandmate says "let's take it up a notch", that means they want to play faster, louder, or more energetically somehow. - If you're cooking food with someone, and they say "let's take it up a notch", that means they want to make it more spicy or more flavorful. The meaning is a visual reference to some sort of switch or knob with multiple settings. They often have marks or "notches" to indicate levels, like volume level or temperature. "Let's take it up a notch" implies that you want to turn the metaphorical (or actual) knob to a higher setting. 2) "Happy-go-lucky" means someone or something is very cheerful and unconcerned about negative things. A happy-go-lucky person is always happy and doesn't worry. A happy-go-lucky book/film or something similar has a very light-hearted theme and doesn't discuss serious topics. 3) This is generally phrased as "putting two and two together". This means that someone has discovered the answer to some puzzle or complex situation and fully understands now. It can also have the meaning that something has been hidden from that person; "putting two and two together" means they figured out that they've been misled or discovered clues and now know the secret that was hidden to them. An example: - "No one has told John that he will lose his job, but I think he's put two and two together." This implies that John has seen other clues to indicate that he will lose his job, and he is now pretty sure that it will happen even though no one has explicitly told him.

Your example sentence actually has two parts. The first is a normal clause, with no object. The second is an infinite clause. In an infinite clause, the verb always goes at the end. The objects and any other modifiers come before. Examples: "Ich fange an, Deutsch zu lernen." "Er hat versucht, mir die Tasche zu klauen." Infinite clauses that consist of more than just "zu + verb" should be separated with a comma. This will make it clear which words belong to the infinite clause, and which to the preceding part of the sentence.