Study Finds Methane Leaks Negate Benefits of Natural Gas-Powered Vehicles

Lasrick writes "Coral Davenport at the NY Times reports on a study to be published on Friday: '...a surprising new report...concludes that switching buses and trucks from traditional diesel fuel to natural gas could actually harm the planet's climate.' The report apparently documents that the leaks of methane that occur when drilling for natural gas more than make up for the climate change benefits of using natural gas as a transportation fuel. The report will be published Friday in the journal Science."

Comments

Re:Manipulative headline

[dbIII]

Very true - from the article:

The report’s authors conclude that the leaks can be reined in if oil and gas companies invest in technology to prevent methane from escaping into the atmosphere from gas wells and production facilities.

So more a message of "take care" instead of "abandon".

Surprise

[Kokuyo]

Being able to populate the planet with 8 billion people that are all able to travel at greater than walking speed is bound to have an impact.

You can bet your booty that if we invented a way to power our vehicles with unicorn farts, in some way the release of so many unicorn farts would, yet again, harm the environment.

Basically it's not about having no impact but about distributing and minimizing it.

By the way, what exactly is the thought behind replacing one fossil fuel with another?

Re:Manipulative headline

[Mashiki]

I'm oddly getting rather pissed at the manipulative headlines, followed by the "well it's bad anyway, we should simply not do it at all" mentality that seems to be permeating from environmentalist, but also academia. Now maybe I'm off in the wild, but it sure seems like their only solution is the dark ages, with 1/3 or less the number of humans. Because "it's the only way."