Yes, but the various methane extraction methods are leaky, hydraulic fracking worst of all. So while you do burn some of it to produce less harmful CO2, a lot also escapes into the atmosphere.
Another interesting factor to consider is the residency time of the different gases. Methane breaks down fairly quickly, while CO2 needs to be sequestered, which is currently done quite slowly via biological processes. Methane is extremely bad in the short term, but measured over a long period (100 years) does in fact trap less heat.
However, we're not on a timeline where we can worry about 100 year effects. Our current warming trajectory will almost entirely destroy coral reefs in about 30 years, and estimates vary on the threshold for runaway effects (Methane calthrates, reduced primary production due to ocean acidification, etc) but the large majority of them are well below the 100 year threshold.
Tl;DR: Natural gas might cause less warming over a long period, but it causes more in the near term, and we're screwed if we don't fix things in the near term.
I bring up hydraulic fracking because it's the primary driver behind the renewed push for natural gas. The United States has suddenly become one of the most competitive producers of natural gas, so strong domestic forces are now lobbying for it.
The one application where natural gas does have a decent advantage is base-load grid energy generation. Renewables like wind and solar are variable, and we need controlled inputs with rapid responses to help integrate them into the grid. Gas turbines are the most responsive fossil fuel systems by a wide margin, so they serve a decent purpose there. This should only be viewed as a stop-gap until we develop grid-scale storage through EV networks and such though.
I would think that the producers are incentivized to reduce leaks to be able to sell more. Do you have any numbers on how leaky natural gas production is? What about for natural gas production from biomass?
That being said, you can think natural gas is great without thinking about CO2 at all. Switching to natural gas would eliminate dependence on oil from the Middle East, which ought to be a good thing.
You are only incentivized to reduce leaks if the profit from selling the additional natural gas is larger than the cost of reducing the leaks. It is difficult to track down all the leaks because you cannot see a leak with your eyes (like you can see oil leaking from a pipeline). The key difference is that it is much harder to stop a gas from leaking than it is to stop a liquid like oil from leaking.
Most of what I'm saying is coming from a lecture by Prof. Howarth at Cornell this past Fall.
His full slides are linked at [1]. His second lecture in the series [2] suggests upstream emissions
from a well are about 1.3%. That's not enough to justify significant investment in capture for production increases, but it's enough to do enormous damage to the environment. The first set of slides explains that damage reasonably well, but the TL;DR is that Methane screws us far more in the short term, and all the timelines that matter at this point are short term.
I don't have any information on biofuel production. I think it's an open question whether it's useful for grid-scale energy production -- again, gas turbines are wonderful base load generators -- but I'd be extremely hesitant to support it's use in transportation.
Oversea shipping is a challenging problem that may be served well by gas as a stop-gap, but long term it should move to compact nuclear reactors which use non-weaponizable fuel elements or new energy dense storage methods like lithium air batteries.
For ground transportation, it's really hard to justify anything other than direct electric vehicles at this point. The energy density of natural gas isn't that great relative to current Li-Ion packs when you consider tank weight, and any pure ICE vehicle has to deal with large braking losses, which EVs can recover trivially. The various flavors of hybrids are a decent solution, but I'm a huge proponent of the pure EV model with parked EVs doubling as a grid-scale storage solution.
Unless unprecedented carbon capture systems are discovered petrocarbon-based energy systems are not defensible in the medium to long term regardless of what flavor of market fuckery you try to bring to bear. The greenhouse effect isn't concerned with or impacted by geopolitics.
How do you propose vehicles operate without a carbon based fuel? Natural gas is cheaper at the low end for automotive transportation than electricity and it is the only feasible option for jet engines that does not involve oil. Let's not forget commercial shipping, which cannot operate on solar panels due to low surface area.
I consider eliminating demand for oil to reduce funding of terrorist attacks to be a higher priority than eliminating carbon based transportation. If you do not, then there is always production of natural gas from biomass, which makes natural gas carbon neutral:
For what it is worth, natural gas has a higher energy density per unit mass than gasoline, diesel and kerosene. Switching to it in transportation actually reduces energy requirements such that reductions in carbon dioxide output would be higher than the theoretical numbers:
Global atmospheric temperatures are an existential threat. International terrorism is not.
It might be worthwhile to check the assumption that halting warming will be possible while maintaining all of the transportation infrastructure we've grown accustomed to over the last 102 years. What sounds better to you, a working ecosystem or cheap airfare?
I will take the cheap airfare. I think you will find most of the world population would take the lower air fare too, regardless of what you say.
You can see your goals achieved with natural gas thanks to biomass conversion methods, but do not expect everyone to be as enthusiastic about eliminating CO2 emissions as you are. The most you will get is willingness to make things renewable for security or financial reasons.
Natural gas can both reduce the cost of air travel, which definitely can get people on-board and improve security by cutting demand for oil, which ought to matter to my fellow New Yorkers.
Let's hope technology pulls of a miracle before this flavor of myopic insanity destroys the planet. You do realize you just said that you'd rather be able to affordably fly than have a working biosphere, right? What were you planning on eating for the mid-flight snack? An arm rest?
The planet used to be warmer 600 years ago. Nature adapted to the lower temperatures. If temperatures rise, it will adapt to the higher temperatures, provided that they even happen.
The projections that claim temperature rises do not consider the inevitability of renewable energy. Renewable prices will drop over time while fossil fuel prices will increase over time. Eventually, fossil fuels will be more expensive and renewables will take over.
Even if the most severe predictions on the internet are true, there is no need to eliminate he use of carbon based fuels. Speeding up the transition to renewable carbon based fuel production would be more than sufficient.
I do not believe the projections because they do not consider the inevitability of renewable energy.
There might be some projections that don't take this into account (though I'm not aware of any). However, many consider "commitment", or the long term effects of what has already been done (for example, the CO₂ that's already been produced). I found the following article "What would happen to the climate if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases today?"[0] from 2014 useful in describing the situation with links to additional resources:
For two examples of projections taking the effects of differences in CO₂ emissions (which serve as an effective proxy for fossil fuel usage), here are two from resources linked from that article:
Charts showing different projections of relative CO₂ concentrations based on varying changes in CO₂ emissions[1]
Two global coupled climate models show that even if the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere had been stabilized in the year 2000, we are already committed to further global warming of about another half degree and an additional 320% sea level rise caused by thermal expansion by the end of the 21st century.[2]
Speeding up the transition to renewable carbon based fuel production would be more than sufficient.
Do you have references which support this claim? I'd be interested in reading about them if you do. Statements like this seem to sometimes be based on the assumption that market forces will be able to fix climate change issues, though I don't know whether you hold this position. The relationship between market forces and effects on climate change are not tightly coupled. The rate at which renewable energy sources replace fossil fuels is not directly proportional (inversely or otherwise) to atmospheric CO₂ concentration or global albedo or temperature or sea level.
From what we understand of human psychology, we don't intuitively grasp concepts on such a grossly non-human scale (both in time and space) such as climate change, just as quantum mechanics or relativistic physics can throw us for a loop. I should think it's much more difficult for the market as a whole to be efficient in reacting to effects on this scale as they are so much further removed from human intuition.
Another interesting factor to consider is the residency time of the different gases. Methane breaks down fairly quickly, while CO2 needs to be sequestered, which is currently done quite slowly via biological processes. Methane is extremely bad in the short term, but measured over a long period (100 years) does in fact trap less heat.
However, we're not on a timeline where we can worry about 100 year effects. Our current warming trajectory will almost entirely destroy coral reefs in about 30 years, and estimates vary on the threshold for runaway effects (Methane calthrates, reduced primary production due to ocean acidification, etc) but the large majority of them are well below the 100 year threshold.
Tl;DR: Natural gas might cause less warming over a long period, but it causes more in the near term, and we're screwed if we don't fix things in the near term.
I bring up hydraulic fracking because it's the primary driver behind the renewed push for natural gas. The United States has suddenly become one of the most competitive producers of natural gas, so strong domestic forces are now lobbying for it.
The one application where natural gas does have a decent advantage is base-load grid energy generation. Renewables like wind and solar are variable, and we need controlled inputs with rapid responses to help integrate them into the grid. Gas turbines are the most responsive fossil fuel systems by a wide margin, so they serve a decent purpose there. This should only be viewed as a stop-gap until we develop grid-scale storage through EV networks and such though.