I have a theory: Western “emissions reductions” are a lie.

Recent studies have shown that true methane leakage from natural gas extraction and transportation can have a greater impact on total emissions than the burning of natural gas - with this factor accounted for, natural gas has minimal net reduction in emissions over coal. However, as far as I know, the studies used to calculate emissions reductions in the West have relied on far lower assumptions for methane leakage.

So, when the US spent the last few decades replacing their coal plants with natural gas plants, they actually failed to achieve anything despite the top line “reduction in emissions” from that switch. I believe that in the next decade, we’re going to get reports indicating that the big fossil fuel companies knew this all along and did nothing.

Edit:

CH4 has 30x the warming potential of CO2 over a 100 year period and 85x the warming potential of CO2 over a 20 year period. Burning of natural gas is widely considered to release half the emissions of coal. To equal coal over 100 years, you would need <3.3% leakage… But in the near term, you would need as low as <1.2% leakage. The EPA puts methane leakage at about 1.4% of production. Recent studies from Stanford measure 9% leakage over the Permian Basin in the US and from The Atmospheric Fund indicate a 2.7% leakage rate over Canada. Taking that worst-case number, 9%, that means American natural gas has a 20-year emissions footprint that is 320% that of coal.

Anyone working in gas transmission and distribution, please feel free to add further insight towards leakage there. I don’t have the bandwidth to do proper research into that. From what I remember, maintenance on gas lines is basically done by dumping everything in the lines out into the environment.

Libs will argue endlessly about exactly how MUCH damage will be done without realizing their energy should instead be spent on finding ways to stop it.

Of course that would cost shareholders their value so it’ll never happen

And my teacher called me dumb for asking “Won’t fixing the aerosol problem exacerbate global warming” whose dumb now Cassandra?

This is the best summary I could come up with:

While 1.5 degrees isn’t a magical tipping point for Earth’s demise, the United Nations has warned of severe and potentially irreversible consequences above that level.

Hansen and his colleagues analyzed paleoclimate data and the Earth’s energy imbalance to estimate that doubling carbon dioxide could lead to a whopping 4.8 degrees of warming compared with the preindustrial era.

Michael Mann, a professor of earth science at the University of Pennsylvania, posted a lengthy critique of the paper on his personal website.

“While I hold James Hansen to be one of the most (if not the most) important contributors to our modern scientific understanding of human-caused climate change, I feel that this latest contribution from Jim and his co-authors is at best unconvincing,” Mann wrote.

For decades, scientists have avoided providing any policy prescriptions for dealing with the problem of climate change, preferring to stick to science and data.

Hansen and colleagues call for a rising price or tax on carbon emissions, subsidies for renewables and nuclear power, and global cooperation on climate goals.

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