About 15 years ago, we replaced our electric stove and range, which was breaking, with a gas stove and range. I prefer cooking on gas. In addition to the oven and cooktop, we had a gas furnace, water heater and clothes dryer. To be fair, >80% of the electricity in Missouri at the time was generated with coal.The problem with natural gas is that it is ca. 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas, and there’s a lot of methane leakage in the lines that transport gas to its consumption points. But that’s not all:“In addition to those leaks, there’s a new worry, too: an increase in methane emissions from certain natural sources, especially tropical wetlands in the Congo, the Amazon, and Southeast Asia, likely the result of warmer, wetter
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Joel Eissenberg considers the following as important: atmospheric methane, climate change, global climate change, greenhouse gas
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In addition to the oven and cooktop, we had a gas furnace, water heater and clothes dryer. To be fair, >80% of the electricity in Missouri at the time was generated with coal.
The problem with natural gas is that it is ca. 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas, and there’s a lot of methane leakage in the lines that transport gas to its consumption points. But that’s not all:
“In addition to those leaks, there’s a new worry, too: an increase in methane emissions from certain natural sources, especially tropical wetlands in the Congo, the Amazon, and Southeast Asia, likely the result of warmer, wetter temperatures, ideal for methane-emitting microbes to thrive.
“That’s concerning because tropical wetlands are the largest natural source of methane, Jackson said, and as the planet continues to warm, wetland emissions are expected to rise. “But if and when they do start to go up, we have no tools for mitigating them or slowing those emissions down,” he said.
“That means “we have to pull that much harder” to reduce manmade emissions to compensate, said Gabrielle Dreyfus, chief scientist at the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development, who was not involved in the recent methane reports.”
There are additional inputs: beef consumption with the associated flatulence, and the melting of methane clathrates in the Arctic Ocean.
The only mitigating factor is that the half-life of methane in the atmosphere is shorter than for CO2. But the much greater potency means that cutting anthropogenic sources of methane is urgent.