Year 2, Month 4, Day 21: If You Hadn’t Said Anything, Ma’am, I Would Have Sworn It Was The Horse

The Pennsylvania Patriot-News runs an article on the recent study by Cornell University scientists showing that natural gas extraction is really really really bad for the planet:

Natural gas from shale deposits such as the Marcellus has a bigger greenhouse gas footprint than coal, according to a study by researchers at Cornell University.

The peer-reviewed study concludes, “The large green house gas footprint of shale gas undercuts the logic of its use as a bridging fuel over coming decades, if the goal is to reduce global warming.”.

Disappointing, to be sure. But hardly surprising when you come to think about it for more than a few seconds. Sent April 12:

The climatic consequences of natural gas extraction are clearly more severe than we have been told for years, but this information should be surprising only to those who believe that the extractive industries are both inherently clean and inherently ethical. They are, of course, neither, as the repeated misconduct of oil and coal corporations has demonstrated. America’s energy policy has long touted natural gas as an energy source which contributes less to the greenhouse effect than other fossil fuels; the Cornell study should be a corrective influence on our national thinking. But there is a great distance between “should” and “will.” Instead of a new energy economy based on the realities of climate change and Peak Oil, we’ll probably get more of the same — our politicians have a long and sordid history of ignoring ideologically inconvenient facts, as witness the rejection of climate science by the entire Republican party.

Warren Senders