Industrialized Cyclist Notepad


The Carbon Fallacy

Chris Martenson, smart about energy, busts the O administration for its disingenuous claims about lowering carbon emissions with natural gas:

To claim credit for lowered carbon emissions due to natural gas and then also support the idea of exporting LNG (where fully 25% of the base energy is combusted in order to simply liquefy the product) is hypocritical. These are two ideas that work against each other.  Either you use natural gas wisely and efficiently as you move away from coal resources and claim a carbon credit for these actions, or you support throwing 25% of natural gas’ energy right into the atmosphere just to cool it for transport.  

So it’s a fallacy to imply that exporting natural gas will help lower carbon emissions. In all honesty, total emissions will most likely be higher than otherwise – because let’s be realistic; the most likely path is for humanity to burn up all the natural gas and then burn up the coal next.

Further, where the U.S. carbon emissions have gone down due to less coal being burned, that happy circumstance resulted in Europe doing exactly the opposite:

[…]

Does natural gas help to lower carbon emissions?  No, it merely pushes the carbon emissions elsewhere while the U.S. feasts on relatively cheap natural gas domestically.  The only thing that lowers carbon emissions is NOT burning coal, natural gas, or petroleum – collectively.

via The Obama Administration's Policy on LNG Makes No Energy Sense | Peak Prosperity.

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