U.K. fracking protest.
Credit: AshleyCooper/Barcrift Media
A new NASA study is one final nail in the coffin of the myth that natural gas is a climate solution, or a “bridge” from the dirtiest fossil fuels to low-carbon fuels like solar and wind.
NASA found that most of the huge rise in global methane emissions in the past decade is in fact from the fossil fuel industry–and that this rise is “substantially larger” than previously thought. And that means natural gas is, as many earlier studies have found, not a climate solution. (emphasis added)
Natural gas is mostly methane, a potent greenhouse gas. And methane emissions are responsible for about a quarter of the human-caused global warming we’re suffering today.
So scientists have been scrambling to figure out why methane emissions have been soaring in recent years after leveling off around the year 2000. The total methane in the air has been rising by 25 teragrams (27.5 million U.S. tons) a year, which NASA helpfully explains is the weight of some 5 million elephants.
