Advocates for natural gas drilling have trumpeted its environmental benefits as an alternative to the coal that produces most of America's electricity, noting that natural gas emits about half the amount of carbon dioxide when burned as coal does.(via Global Warming Policy Foundation)
But a new study sheds doubt on that claim, finding that a shift from coal to natural gas would in fact accelerate the planet's rising temperatures before slightly reducing them. Tom Wigley of the National Center on Atmospheric Research found that swapping the two fuels would increase global temperatures over the next four decades by about a tenth of a degree.
"From the CO2 perspective, gas is cleaner, but from the climate perspective, it gets complicated," said Wigley.
Wigley's study does not dispute the fact that natural gas produces far less carbon dioxide, a key culprit in pushing temperatures steadily upwards. But coal also gives off sulfates and other particles that dissipate more quickly than coal fumes and effectively reflect sunlight away from the earth, cooling rather than warming. Those particles do increase air pollution and the likelihood of acid rain, but from a global warming perspective they are a source of relief.
Friday, September 16, 2011
Global Warming Paradox of the Week
From International Business Times:
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4 comments:
Science is so wonderful!
It can prove just about anything its funders want it to prove.
It's making theology look more rigorous.
Global dimming.
Al Gore is the biggest cause.
>> Science is so wonderful!
It can prove just about anything its funders want it to prove.
That, sir, is NOT Science.
It is Politics, warping the information Science provides to manipulate Policy.
Do not conflate the two activities. The latter is a total betrayal of what Science IS.
In fact, it reduces "That Which Is Called Science" to the same level of reliability as Theology, at which point it no longer IS Science.
It is much like the aphorism assigned to Lincoln:
"If I call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have? The answer is four. Calling a tail a leg does not make it a leg."
Calling Politically Motivated Bovine Excreta "Science" does not make it Science.
The liberal left is slowly destroying EVERYTHING that the West has inherited from Greek Culture via the Renaissance.
They are a #$%$%&^%$^&%$^&#$#$%&$%^ CANCER eating away at this culture.
Deny them the opportunity by grasping what Science IS as well as all the other things they do to undermine our capacity for rational behavior and action.
Rrrrrrrrrr....!
>:-(
OBH - I just love how you correct me by restating my position in 5 times as many words.
Actually, proper scientific method can't PROVE anything. It proposes a hypothesis and attempts to disprove it. It expects a hypothesis to make a testable prediction.
Accumulated failures to disprove those predictions wins respect for the hypothesis but not "proof" in the Euclidian sense.
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