Thursday, March 1, 2012

Natural gas is a bridge fuel to nowhere


Another major study finds confirms natural gas is a bridge fuel to nowhere
A must-read new study by climatologist Ken Caldeira and tech guru Nathan Myhrvold (!) makes clear the world’s only plausible hope to avert catastrophic temperature rise this century is aggressive deployment of zero-carbon technologies and conservation.
The Institute of Physics news release explains:
… technologies that offer only modest reductions in greenhouse gases, such as the use of natural gas and perhaps carbon capture and storage, cannot substantially reduce climate risk in the next 100 years.
Delaying the rollout of the technologies is not an option however; the risks of environmental harm will be much greater in the second half of the century and beyond if we continue to rely on coal-based technologies.
Read it at Climate Progress

2 comments:

jeg3 said...

Looks like the GHG concerns may be a day late and a dollar short:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120301143735.htm

With the hydrocarbon industry assisted by some environmental groups on the take (wonder who else?):
http://atomicinsights.com/2012/02/smoking-gun-sierra-club-admits-donations-targeting-a-natural-gas-competitor.html

And the fear mongering:
http://bravenewclimate.com/2012/03/02/the-fukushima-question-how-close-did-japan-really-get-to-a-widespread-nuclear-disaster/

Luckily there is the other nuclear:
http://energyfromthorium.com/2012/03/01/appg-thorium/

And carbon sequestration (just need to scale up):
http://www.biochar-international.org/

GLH said...

I heard just last night on CNBC the president and CEO of Joy Global say that this year alone China and India are building coal fired power plants that equal one third of the installed generation capacity of the US. Things are not looking good.