Read on Twitter
I feel like there’s maybe too much effort on Climate Twitter to get people to use new terms (“climate fires,” “fossil gas,” etc.) that basically no one is ever going to use.
One way you know that everyone isn’t gonna start calling it “fossil gas” is that labor unions and civil rights groups are not exactly anti-gas (HT @AmyAHarder) https://www.axios.com/civil-rights-leaders-natural-gas-d87e27de-b206-47bd-ac4e-d46e3da4f3b6.html
Anyway natural gas consumption is a growing source of fossil fuel emissions in the US but if not for the shale revolution emissions would be a lot higher
Also while natural gas is better than coal from a carbon perspective than coal it’s even better on SOx/NOx/PM2.5 https://www.nber.org/papers/w25339
In 2013 we wrote a report on how natural gas was driving emissions declines, compatible with wind/solar deployment, better for CCS than coal, and not the main driver of nuclear’s troubles https://thebreakthrough.org/articles/coal-killer
It’s true that wind/solar are catching up to natural gas in terms of emissions displaced from coal in the US. Almost like natural gas is a bridge fuel or something.
Obviously the natural gas “bridge” has to end at some point but that depends more on innovation in wind/solar/nuclear/CCS/batteries/advanced fertilizers/chemical feedstock alternatives more than anything else.
