A partial shift from coal to unconventional gas on a worldwide scale will continue to accelerate climate change for a significant amount of time, according to Tom Wigley of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). An increased reliance on gas would eventually reverse the warming trend but would only decelerate climate change by a few tenths of a degree. According to Wigley’s findings, that miniscule change will only feasibly occur sometime between 2050 and 2140, depending on the severity of fugitive methane from gas drilling, processing, and transport operations.
Tom Wrigley, senior research associate at NCAR, is due to publish these findings next month in the peer-reviewed journal
Climatic Change Letters. The journal recently received significant attention on this topic after publishing the striking findings of Professors
Robert Howarth and
Anthony Ingraffea. The Cornell University scientists performed
a lifecycle analysis of the major fossil fuels to discover that unconventional gas offers little to no climate advantage over coal.
The hotly contested findings sent a shock wave through the gas industry and environmental community alike, challenging the notion that the continent’s vast reserves of unconventional gas could or should serve as an alternative, interim fuel during the switch to a low-carbon economy. Wigley’s findings also pose a significant challenge to this assumption.
“Relying more on natural gas would reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, but it would do little to help solve the climate problem,” Wigley told
Science Daily. “It would be many decades before it would slow down global warming at all, and even then it would just be making a difference around the edges.”
