4 ms·
i agree, but i also dislike the term "natural gas" sure its natural just like everything in the universe is -- just a bit of greenwashing to go with our CO2 emi
by globalnode 3y ago
i agree, but i also dislike the term "natural gas" sure its natural just like everything in the universe is -- just a bit of greenwashing to go with our CO2 emissions
- zyl1n 3y agoWhat does natural gas have to do with greenwashing? It is naturally occurring gas; different from other hydrocarbon gas that is man-made.
- SapporoChris 3y ago"Natural gas (also called fossil gas, methane gas or simply gas) is a naturally occurring mixture of gaseous hydrocarbons consisting primarily of methane in addition to various smaller amounts of other higher alkanes." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gas Alright, so it goes by several names but it's sold to consumers as "Natural Gas". I'm not sure if it was green washing, but obviously the marketers were going for the most palatable name for consumers.
- b112 3y agobut obviously Predicated upon what? Natural gas was merely a name to differentiate between 'gasoline', short form 'gas' for many english speaking countries. And the name is valid, it's mostly in its natural form, compared to 'gasoline aka gas', which required loads of processing to create it from oil. And the name comes from a time before most of the population had even heard of global warming, at a time before people cared about using fossil fuels. There was in no way any attempt to greenwash, because absolutely no one cared one iota back then! And the same is true for being palatable. It was just fuel. There was no reason to make it sound better. This was the age when most homes were heated by heating oil, or wood, or coal even! People didn't get "triggered" back then, not in the 1950s or whatever. No one really cared except in the most extreme of cases. The earliest marketing concern over a name I know of, is "canola" oil, created by Canadian research programs, first on market I believe in the 70s, which is rapeseed oil. (Rapeseed oil was added to cattle feed before this, but was considered too bitter for people until processing improvements were developed.) It was thought that women would associate rapeseed with rape, and not buy it. This was in North America, the rest of the world generally, at the time, just called it rapeseed oil.
- scotty79 3y ago> but was considered too bitter for people also toxic
- ivan_gammel 3y ago> Natural gas was merely a name to differentiate between 'gasoline', short form 'gas' for many english speaking countries. No, it has absolutely nothing to do with gasoline. Other languages, e.g. Russian, which don’t use the word gasoline also call it natural gas (coming from nature). This extra confusion is a late American thing.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- hanniabu 3y agoIt's often dubbed as "clean energy"
- efnx 3y agoThe argument is that humans are part of nature and therefore anything made by humans is still natural. I tend to agree with this - there is a dichotomy here, but it is "natural" vs. "supernatural" - not "natural" vs "synthetic". I think it would be fine if for most cases we simply said "man-made" vs "not man-made" as it succinctly describes the dichotomy we're aiming for. The "greenwashing" here is that you _could_ call anything that's not a ghost or a god "natural" by a certain definition...
- tw04 3y ago> The argument is that humans are part of nature and therefore anything made by humans is still natural. Sure, if you completely disregard the context. “Natural” when talking in the context of humans is “nature vs man”. A beaver dam is nature. The Hoover dam is man-made. If you want to red herring you could say “but man is part of nature” - there’s no point to doing so other than to argue semantics, but you could.
- tadfisher 3y agoThat's true, but the term itself is archaic; at the time (early 19th century) the most widespread gaseous fuel was coal gas, also known as "town gas" because we piped it to urban homes for lighting. There's not much need for the distinction anymore, plus "methane" aligns with the other trade names for other fossil gases (propane, butane).
- ivan_gammel 3y agoNatural gas is not pure methane, it’s a mix.
- _the_inflator 3y agoThere is a grain of truth in the previous speaker's comments. "Naturally occurring gas" does not magically transform itself into energy. The process along the way from being a resource to being usable as energy is usually anything other than "natural" and "green."
- ivan_gammel 3y agoSaying that it is “greenwashing” is ridiculous. The gas is called natural because when it was discovered it came from nature, not from manufacturing by heating coal. This name is older than marketing or green politics and it is quite natural way to call this gas.
- shkkmo 3y agoThe origin of the term doesn't mean that the term isn't an effective form of greenwashing that creates false perceptions around its harmful effects.
- nicoburns 3y ago"natural gas" is a historical term, to contrast with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_gas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_gas
- ekianjo 3y ago> "natural gas" Gas can be created by many other means (combustion, chemistry, etc). Natural gas means it's gas that is found "as is" without any kind of synthesis.
- iraqmtpizza 3y agoelectric cars are greenwashing. not that CO2 is actually a problem, but if it were and it was even mildly urgent you would be rightly yelling for more natural gas. because that actually kills coal plants while electric cars are responsible for increased coal usage
- reducesuffering 3y agoTry to look beyond 10 years. Calling for more nat gas over anything else will just lead to 60% Nat gas and 0% coal in a decade. Ok, now what? Still 60% high emissions and ICE cars according to you. No, we should be yelling for solar, electric cars, wind, batteries, and nuclear. Our priority is not a half measure that helps a bit now but makes nat gas stick around even longer.
- iraqmtpizza 3y ago[flagged]
- UncleMeat 3y agoPolicies like generation shifting encourage movement from coal to gas. They have been implemented in the US but were then undone by Trump and later declared unconstitutional by conservative supreme court justices.
- skrebbel 3y agoIf only you folks would stop using the word “gas” for car fuel, which isn't a gas at all, then you could drop the prefix “natural” without confusion like in the rest of the world.
- SllX 3y agoPeople’s perceptions around the word “natural” has always been a bit unnatural to me. Plenty of things, good, bad, and every gradation in-between are “natural”, but the word itself got greenwashed somewhere along the way. Having a few terms like “natural gas” as a way to counteract people’s perceptions of the niceness of “natural” isn’t so bad.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- weebull 3y agoIt's because Americans use the term "gas" to mean the liquid fuel they put in their cars. In the UK it's just "gas". It would be far better if we called it methane, but that's not really accurate either. It might contain ethane, propane, butane pentane and hexane. A lot of that stuff is condensed out before use, but not all.