14 ms·

Natural gas is not at all "roughly as bad as coal for climate". There is a lot of research indicating this, so I will just point to one article: https://www.sm

by lacker 7y ago

Natural gas is not at all "roughly as bad as coal for climate". There is a lot of research indicating this, so I will just point to one article: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/natural-gas-really-better-coal-180949739/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/natural-gas-re... Natural gas isn't the ultimate solution, of course, but it's a mistake to treat it the same as coal.

jorblumesea 7y ago
> If too much methane leaks during production, though, the benefits will be lost Right in the sub title. Are you willing to bet that methane leaks are poorly tracked or an "honor system"? I am.
- reaperducer 7y ago
  Having lived in coal mining country, and visited a coal mine, I'm not. Methane and other gasses that leak during coal mining are carefully monitored and tracked because they're a hazard not only to the safety of the miners, but to the entire operation. An explosion can kill dozens, destroy the mine, and leave it burning for decades. But I will state that I'm an outsider in this field, and I suspect you are, too. Perhaps someone with direct knowledge can comment more authoritatively.
  - pyrale 7y ago
    This quote applies to fracking operations.
  - aalleavitch 7y ago
    It's closely tracked when it's something that could seriously impact the ability of the operation to continue producing revenue. But what about when it's simply an environmental externality? Some contaminated water supplies can be conveniently swept under the rug, who's going to know and if they do how are they going to prove that you did it? Much better not to keep records on that type of thing and look the other way.
  - jellicle 7y ago
    Having a noxious gas sensor in a coal mine is not at all the same as tracking methane emissions from a fracking operation, which can occur over many square miles of the surrounding countryside (the whole point is to fracture underground rocks containing hydrocarbons, which then seep to the surface). Trump administration is currently getting rid of all rules about methane emissions, so producers will have zero legal requirement in the USA to track, identify, report on, or prevent any methane leaks.
  - jorblumesea 7y ago
    Are you seriously comparing a noxious gas in a closed mine to methane leaks from fracking?
- johndbeatty 7y ago
  Note that the Environmental Defense Fund is planning to launch MethaneSAT in 2022 to monitor methane emissions. Data will be open. https://www.edf.org/climate/space-technology-can-cut-climate-pollution-earth https://www.edf.org/climate/space-technology-can-cut-climate...
rconti 7y ago
I didn't even need to control-F it as I was preparing to do, it was in the subheadline. > If too much methane leaks during production, though, the benefits will be lost
acidburnNSA 7y ago
The subtitle in the article you link is exactly my point. At the moment, we are just now getting better at tracking methane leaks. No one knows for sure how much is leaked from the infrastructure. It may easily be just as bad or worse than coal, and is absolutely "roughly" as bad as coal. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/12/climate/texas-methane-super-emitters.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/12/climate/texas... Take the average IPCC meta-analysis numbers [1] at face value: 820 gCO2-eq/kWh for coal, 490 for gas. Those are both extraordinarily high. This is because they both combust carbon in the presence of oxygen to form energy and CO2. They're both very high-carbon fuel sources. If we are trying to reduce carbon emissions, we need to build things that do not combine C + O2 to make CO2 + energy. Options with less than 50g CO2-eq/kWh (in decreasing order of emissions) include solar (41), geothermal (38), hydro (24), tidal (17), nuclear (12), and wind (11). [1] https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ipcc_wg3_ar5_annex-iii.pdf https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ipcc_wg3_ar5... Given this situation it makes no sense to switch from coal to gas for the sake of the climate. Both endpoints have wholly unacceptably high carbon. If you build a bunch of $2B shiny new gas facilities, as we are doing today, utilities will want to run them for decades. And gas companies are portraying themselves as climate heros, and people are believing them because emissions are going down (again, towards an unacceptable final destination). To me it seems crazy.
- scarmig 7y ago
  The perfect is the enemy of the good. Natural gas is roughly half as bad as coal, and it's an easy win, compared to the alternatives. It's also better in terms of particulates. If we sit around waiting for reduction of energy use and increase in renewables to save us, we are screwed. Gotta take what we can get for now, and continue fighting for even better solutions.
  - acidburnNSA 7y ago
    > The perfect is the enemy of the good. In this case, high-carbon (coal and gas) is the enemy of low-carbon (wind/solar/tidal/hydro/nuclear/geo). I said this in another thread, but switching from terrible to awful is not something we should take as what we can get. The starting point and the end point are unacceptable in a coal to gas transition. No point celebrating that. For example, fracked gas is so cheap that it's starting to cause near zero-carbon nuclear plants to close early. Unlike gas, nuclear plants are actually low carbon (12 gCO2-eq/kWe vs. 490 for gas). Thus, fracked gas being cheap and not considered the high-carbon fuel it is is preventing us from reaching our climate goals. This is really serious stuff.
SilasX 7y ago
Burning natural gas is definitely better than burning coal. But unburned natural gas is a much worse GHG than CO2, so if they leak too much when extracting, it could cancel the “climate savings”. (Would still probably mean less noxious air though.)
- jcampbell1 7y ago
  Unburned methane oxidizes into CO2 in about 10 years, where as excess C02 persists pretty much indefinitely. Calling natural gas "much worse" is misleading. Over a longer horizon, it is about the same as C02.
  - DennisP 7y ago
    Methane doesn't entirely oxidize to CO2 in ten years. It has a half-life, so it gradually tails off. The net warming impact of methane over 100 years is 34 times higher than the warming impact of CO2: https://unfccc.int/news/new-methane-signs-underline-urgency-to-reverse-emissions https://unfccc.int/news/new-methane-signs-underline-urgency-... Over just twenty years, the impact of methane is substantially higher than that: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-bad-of-a-greenhouse-gas-is-methane/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-bad-of-a-gree... This matters, because the big concern with climate is exceeding a tipping point, where natural feedbacks like ice melt, emissions from melting permafrost, and forest fires cause the planet to warm several degrees further with no more help from us. We see that happening several times in geological history, where small amounts of warming kick off a positive feedback cycle that adds several more degrees. Warming over the next few decades will pretty much determine whether that happens to us. After fifty years, hopefully we'll have a zero-carbon economy, but if we've already tipped into a warming cycle by then, it won't matter.
pier25 7y ago
> Natural gas isn't the ultimate solution, of course, but it's a mistake to treat it the same as coal. OTOH considering we need to reach negative emissions asap it's a mistake to invest (or have invested) in fracking.
- scarmig 7y ago
  Specifying that the choice is between zero emissions and bust, and then rejecting intermediate solutions, is a sure way to get bust.
  - pier25 7y ago
    Progressively moving investments and subsidies to renewables is the intermediate solution, not fracking.
    - scarmig 7y ago
      That can and must happen in parallel with replacement of coal with cleaner sources of energy, even if they involve emissions. Full decarbonization can't in any sense be considered an intermediate solution, because there's not even a small working example of it anywhere in the world or any plausible proposal to get from here to there on the timescale we need to avoid disaster.
      - pier25 7y ago
        > Full decarbonization can't in any sense be considered an intermediate solution I agree, but progressively moving to renewables is not full decarbonization either. Energy production is not the only source of emissions: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data#Sector https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss... And even if it was, best case scenario it will take a couple of decades to switch away from fossil fuels. > there's not even a small working example of it anywhere in the world or any plausible proposal to get from here to there on the timescale we need to avoid disaster Yes but we are in uncharted territory. We don't know how to do it but humanity has to find a way and fracking is certainly not part of where we need to go. The sensible decision would have been to invest in renewables instead of fracking. Fracking has been a total waste of money even ignoring all the environmental problems it is causing. James Hansen talked to congress about climate change in the 80s, it's not like this is a new issue.
kerkeslager 7y ago
I've gotta say, people linking articles they clearly didn't read is one of my least favorite things about HN.
- andrewbinstock 7y ago
  Completely agree. But I find that it happens not just on HN, but on other high-quality boards as well. (It would be improper of me to make the remark without confessing that I've done this a few times myself.)
devy 7y ago
Methane could be MUCH WORSE than coal considering the potency of the greenhouse gas and unknown and undetected leaks, such this one recently happening in Ohio: https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/12/ohio-gas-well-accident-last-year-released-surprising-amount-of-methane/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/12/ohio-gas-well-accide... The leak damage is reported to be as bad as many countries do in a year.
StuffedParrot 7y ago
...assuming we have any skill at maintaining infrastructure, and looking around this country we really don’t. Look at the oil pipeline leaks just in the last year.

by lacker 7y ago

jorblumesea 7y ago

> If too much methane leaks during production, though, the benefits will be lost Right in the sub title. Are you willing to bet that methane leaks are poorly tracked or an "honor system"? I am.

reaperducer 7y ago
Having lived in coal mining country, and visited a coal mine, I'm not. Methane and other gasses that leak during coal mining are carefully monitored and tracked because they're a hazard not only to the safety of the miners, but to the entire operation. An explosion can kill dozens, destroy the mine, and leave it burning for decades. But I will state that I'm an outsider in this field, and I suspect you are, too. Perhaps someone with direct knowledge can comment more authoritatively.
- pyrale 7y ago
  This quote applies to fracking operations.
- aalleavitch 7y ago
  It's closely tracked when it's something that could seriously impact the ability of the operation to continue producing revenue. But what about when it's simply an environmental externality? Some contaminated water supplies can be conveniently swept under the rug, who's going to know and if they do how are they going to prove that you did it? Much better not to keep records on that type of thing and look the other way.
- jellicle 7y ago
  Having a noxious gas sensor in a coal mine is not at all the same as tracking methane emissions from a fracking operation, which can occur over many square miles of the surrounding countryside (the whole point is to fracture underground rocks containing hydrocarbons, which then seep to the surface). Trump administration is currently getting rid of all rules about methane emissions, so producers will have zero legal requirement in the USA to track, identify, report on, or prevent any methane leaks.
- jorblumesea 7y ago
  Are you seriously comparing a noxious gas in a closed mine to methane leaks from fracking?
johndbeatty 7y ago
Note that the Environmental Defense Fund is planning to launch MethaneSAT in 2022 to monitor methane emissions. Data will be open. https://www.edf.org/climate/space-technology-can-cut-climate-pollution-earth https://www.edf.org/climate/space-technology-can-cut-climate...

rconti 7y ago

I didn't even need to control-F it as I was preparing to do, it was in the subheadline. > If too much methane leaks during production, though, the benefits will be lost

acidburnNSA 7y ago

The subtitle in the article you link is exactly my point. At the moment, we are just now getting better at tracking methane leaks. No one knows for sure how much is leaked from the infrastructure. It may easily be just as bad or worse than coal, and is absolutely "roughly" as bad as coal. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/12/climate/texas-methane-super-emitters.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/12/climate/texas... Take the average IPCC meta-analysis numbers [1] at face value: 820 gCO2-eq/kWh for coal, 490 for gas. Those are both extraordinarily high. This is because they both combust carbon in the presence of oxygen to form energy and CO2. They're both very high-carbon fuel sources. If we are trying to reduce carbon emissions, we need to build things that do not combine C + O2 to make CO2 + energy. Options with less than 50g CO2-eq/kWh (in decreasing order of emissions) include solar (41), geothermal (38), hydro (24), tidal (17), nuclear (12), and wind (11). [1] https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ipcc_wg3_ar5_annex-iii.pdf https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ipcc_wg3_ar5... Given this situation it makes no sense to switch from coal to gas for the sake of the climate. Both endpoints have wholly unacceptably high carbon. If you build a bunch of $2B shiny new gas facilities, as we are doing today, utilities will want to run them for decades. And gas companies are portraying themselves as climate heros, and people are believing them because emissions are going down (again, towards an unacceptable final destination). To me it seems crazy.

scarmig 7y ago
The perfect is the enemy of the good. Natural gas is roughly half as bad as coal, and it's an easy win, compared to the alternatives. It's also better in terms of particulates. If we sit around waiting for reduction of energy use and increase in renewables to save us, we are screwed. Gotta take what we can get for now, and continue fighting for even better solutions.
- acidburnNSA 7y ago
  > The perfect is the enemy of the good. In this case, high-carbon (coal and gas) is the enemy of low-carbon (wind/solar/tidal/hydro/nuclear/geo). I said this in another thread, but switching from terrible to awful is not something we should take as what we can get. The starting point and the end point are unacceptable in a coal to gas transition. No point celebrating that. For example, fracked gas is so cheap that it's starting to cause near zero-carbon nuclear plants to close early. Unlike gas, nuclear plants are actually low carbon (12 gCO2-eq/kWe vs. 490 for gas). Thus, fracked gas being cheap and not considered the high-carbon fuel it is is preventing us from reaching our climate goals. This is really serious stuff.

SilasX 7y ago

Burning natural gas is definitely better than burning coal. But unburned natural gas is a much worse GHG than CO2, so if they leak too much when extracting, it could cancel the “climate savings”. (Would still probably mean less noxious air though.)

jcampbell1 7y ago
Unburned methane oxidizes into CO2 in about 10 years, where as excess C02 persists pretty much indefinitely. Calling natural gas "much worse" is misleading. Over a longer horizon, it is about the same as C02.
- DennisP 7y ago
  Methane doesn't entirely oxidize to CO2 in ten years. It has a half-life, so it gradually tails off. The net warming impact of methane over 100 years is 34 times higher than the warming impact of CO2: https://unfccc.int/news/new-methane-signs-underline-urgency-to-reverse-emissions https://unfccc.int/news/new-methane-signs-underline-urgency-... Over just twenty years, the impact of methane is substantially higher than that: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-bad-of-a-greenhouse-gas-is-methane/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-bad-of-a-gree... This matters, because the big concern with climate is exceeding a tipping point, where natural feedbacks like ice melt, emissions from melting permafrost, and forest fires cause the planet to warm several degrees further with no more help from us. We see that happening several times in geological history, where small amounts of warming kick off a positive feedback cycle that adds several more degrees. Warming over the next few decades will pretty much determine whether that happens to us. After fifty years, hopefully we'll have a zero-carbon economy, but if we've already tipped into a warming cycle by then, it won't matter.

pier25 7y ago

> Natural gas isn't the ultimate solution, of course, but it's a mistake to treat it the same as coal. OTOH considering we need to reach negative emissions asap it's a mistake to invest (or have invested) in fracking.

scarmig 7y ago
Specifying that the choice is between zero emissions and bust, and then rejecting intermediate solutions, is a sure way to get bust.
- pier25 7y ago
  Progressively moving investments and subsidies to renewables is the intermediate solution, not fracking.
  - scarmig 7y ago
    That can and must happen in parallel with replacement of coal with cleaner sources of energy, even if they involve emissions. Full decarbonization can't in any sense be considered an intermediate solution, because there's not even a small working example of it anywhere in the world or any plausible proposal to get from here to there on the timescale we need to avoid disaster.
    - pier25 7y ago
      > Full decarbonization can't in any sense be considered an intermediate solution I agree, but progressively moving to renewables is not full decarbonization either. Energy production is not the only source of emissions: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data#Sector https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss... And even if it was, best case scenario it will take a couple of decades to switch away from fossil fuels. > there's not even a small working example of it anywhere in the world or any plausible proposal to get from here to there on the timescale we need to avoid disaster Yes but we are in uncharted territory. We don't know how to do it but humanity has to find a way and fracking is certainly not part of where we need to go. The sensible decision would have been to invest in renewables instead of fracking. Fracking has been a total waste of money even ignoring all the environmental problems it is causing. James Hansen talked to congress about climate change in the 80s, it's not like this is a new issue.

kerkeslager 7y ago

I've gotta say, people linking articles they clearly didn't read is one of my least favorite things about HN.

andrewbinstock 7y ago
Completely agree. But I find that it happens not just on HN, but on other high-quality boards as well. (It would be improper of me to make the remark without confessing that I've done this a few times myself.)

devy 7y ago

Methane could be MUCH WORSE than coal considering the potency of the greenhouse gas and unknown and undetected leaks, such this one recently happening in Ohio: https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/12/ohio-gas-well-accident-last-year-released-surprising-amount-of-methane/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/12/ohio-gas-well-accide... The leak damage is reported to be as bad as many countries do in a year.

StuffedParrot 7y ago

...assuming we have any skill at maintaining infrastructure, and looking around this country we really don’t. Look at the oil pipeline leaks just in the last year.