The problem with the EPA’s math doesn’t concern the burning of natural gas, which produces less carbon dioxide than other fossil fuels (but way more than solar panels or wind turbines). The problem is in the leaky systems that extract and transport the fuel.
The EPA relies on 1990s estimations to calculate the climate-warming effects of the natural gas industry. A new paper published in the journal Science concludes that the EPA is severely underestimating the amount of natural gas that leaks into the atmosphere during drilling, processing, and distribution.
And those leaks are important, because natural gas is basically just methane. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, responsible for perhaps a fifth of global warming since the 18th century. Levels of methane detected in the atmosphere have been rising rapidly since 2007, although scientists aren’t quite sure why. Some of it appears to be oozing out of the ground, in some cases because global warming is breaking down icy sheaths that had helped keep it in place, but the livestock and fossil fuel industries are also playing major roles.
America’s Natural Gas System Is Super-Leaky, and That’s Bad News for the Climate
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