While optimism has helped to galvanize support for a global energy transition, a degree of realism is necessary as well. It will likely be decades before a full global energy transition can take place, and in the meantime, the most effective way to reduce emissions would be to control consumption. This is a process that faces financial, technological, and social hurdles, and predicting how long it will take is a near-impossible task. The energy transition may have begun, but there is a very long way to go before fossil fuel dominance is truly challenged.
Reporting from inside a power plant helped to tell the dramatic story of decision-making when the lights went out.
When a huge earthquake and tsunami struck Japan on March 11, 2011, devastating towns and triggering nuclear meltdowns in Fukushima, a stunned world watched the chaotic struggle to contain the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.
A growing number of cities are looking at restricting the use of gas in new buildings to reduce climate emissions. But some states are considering laws to block those efforts, with backing from the natural gas industry. Today, NPR science correspondent Dan Charles takes us on a tour of three cities where this is playing out.
The major currents in the Atlantic Ocean help control the climate by moving warm surface waters north and south from the equator, with colder deep water pushing back toward the equator from the poles. The presence of that warm surface water plays a key role in moderating the climate in the North Atlantic, giving places like the UK a far more moderate climate than its location—the equivalent of northern Ontario—would otherwise dictate.
But the temperature differences that drive that flow are expected to fade as our climate continues to warm. A bit over a decade ago, measurements of the currents seemed to be indicating that temperatures were dropping, suggesting that we might be seeing these predictions come to pass. But a few years later, it became clear that there was just too much year-to-year variation for us to tell.