If we really cared about the warming component of climate change, we would stop funding natural gas and dump all the money we would have spent on natural gas infrastructure on renewables. We would roll back the ship fuel sulfur ban (which has a cooling effect) and rely on corrective measures for pollution problems in exchange for preventative measures for warming problems.
Because of methane leakage and other factors, natural gas is only a net-positive effect over coal in terms of greenhouse effect somewhere between 20 to 100 years down the line (imo reasonable estimates put this at around 40-50 years). Until then, natural gas has a more significant warming effect than coal because of obscenely high rates of methane leakage during transmission and distribution (which are underreported by relevant agencies to the order of 2-5x).
There is no one solution to climate change, but the question now is whether we care about it as the only problem or just one of a myriad of problems caused by human activity.
We will only care about it once the rich have divested from all the assets that will become worthless if we truly recognized the significance of what’s happening.
If we really cared about the warming component of climate change, we would stop funding natural gas and dump all the money we would have spent on natural gas infrastructure on renewables. We would roll back the ship fuel sulfur ban (which has a cooling effect) and rely on corrective measures for pollution problems in exchange for preventative measures for warming problems.
Because of methane leakage and other factors, natural gas is only a net-positive effect over coal in terms of greenhouse effect somewhere between 20 to 100 years down the line (imo reasonable estimates put this at around 40-50 years). Until then, natural gas has a more significant warming effect than coal because of obscenely high rates of methane leakage during transmission and distribution (which are underreported by relevant agencies to the order of 2-5x).
There is no one solution to climate change, but the question now is whether we care about it as the only problem or just one of a myriad of problems caused by human activity.
We will only care about it once the rich have divested from all the assets that will become worthless if we truly recognized the significance of what’s happening.