As I mentioned in another post on this topic, that “might” is doing a TON of heavy lifting in Higg’s argument.
AFAIK, no countries have stepped up to say they’d shut down coal fired plants if only they could get hold of more natural gas. China usually comes up in this conversation, but they already have a pipeline with Russia that supplies natural gas, and AFAIK it isn’t even at capacity yet. If China really wanted to replace coal with natural gas, they’d be doing it now with Russian gas, and wouldn’t have to wait the decade-plus it would take to get the infrastructure built to ship Canadian natural gas to them.
If Higgs draws a dick on his forehead I might give him $100. I probably won’t, and have never discussed any plans to do so, but who knows? I might!
With fugitive emissions, methane is worse than coal. A coal leak just turns into a regular ol rock on the side of the railway. A methane leak is very hard to detect and releases much more GHG potential than even the burning of that coal.
I’m not advocating for coal, just saying they’re both shit and we really shouldn’t even be having this conversation.
Agreed — I think replacing coal with natural gas is just a half-step that mostly benefits those with natural gas to sell, and just delays the overall transition.
But of course the people arguing for natural gas don’t care about that, so it’s easier to challenge them on the fact that they’re also inventing some pipe dream without evidence that if we could get gas to China that they’d suddenly be all for converting (or shutting down) coal fired plants — when there is _no evidence for that anywhere, and where they could be doing that today if they really wanted to.
Unburnt methane in the atmosphere is about 85 times worse than CO2.
Methane extraction and pipelines already leak a shitton of methane. Liquifying methane releases more methane while cooling it to -160°C. Shipping methane releases more methane. Warming the methane back up to gaseous state releases more methane. Then you’ve got to pipe the methane again, which, you guessed it, releases more methane.
Beyond all that, the USA is the OPEC of methane, and we can never be anywhere close to a minor player; beholden to the activities of other exporters.
For more information in a fun format, here’s Rollie Williams:
It’s amazing how they’ve twisted “frack for more and more natural gas” into a green policy. Honestly I don’t think even the stupidest voters will buy that.
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Fracking earthquakes and these people STILL want to sacrifice the water table to sell dinosaur farts.
As I mentioned in another post on this topic, that “might” is doing a TON of heavy lifting in Higg’s argument.
AFAIK, no countries have stepped up to say they’d shut down coal fired plants if only they could get hold of more natural gas. China usually comes up in this conversation, but they already have a pipeline with Russia that supplies natural gas, and AFAIK it isn’t even at capacity yet. If China really wanted to replace coal with natural gas, they’d be doing it now with Russian gas, and wouldn’t have to wait the decade-plus it would take to get the infrastructure built to ship Canadian natural gas to them.
If Higgs draws a dick on his forehead I might give him $100. I probably won’t, and have never discussed any plans to do so, but who knows? I might!
With fugitive emissions, methane is worse than coal. A coal leak just turns into a regular ol rock on the side of the railway. A methane leak is very hard to detect and releases much more GHG potential than even the burning of that coal.
I’m not advocating for coal, just saying they’re both shit and we really shouldn’t even be having this conversation.
Agreed — I think replacing coal with natural gas is just a half-step that mostly benefits those with natural gas to sell, and just delays the overall transition.
But of course the people arguing for natural gas don’t care about that, so it’s easier to challenge them on the fact that they’re also inventing some pipe dream without evidence that if we could get gas to China that they’d suddenly be all for converting (or shutting down) coal fired plants — when there is _no evidence for that anywhere, and where they could be doing that today if they really wanted to.
Natural gas is just methane (97%)
Burning methane is better than coal.
Unburnt methane in the atmosphere is about 85 times worse than CO2.
Methane extraction and pipelines already leak a shitton of methane. Liquifying methane releases more methane while cooling it to -160°C. Shipping methane releases more methane. Warming the methane back up to gaseous state releases more methane. Then you’ve got to pipe the methane again, which, you guessed it, releases more methane.
Beyond all that, the USA is the OPEC of methane, and we can never be anywhere close to a minor player; beholden to the activities of other exporters.
For more information in a fun format, here’s Rollie Williams:
https://www.youtube.com/v/K2oL4SFwkkw?version=3
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/v/K2oL4SFwkkw?version=3
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
It’s amazing how they’ve twisted “frack for more and more natural gas” into a green policy. Honestly I don’t think even the stupidest voters will buy that.