Natural gas development is allowing the United States to achieve carbon emission reductions no one thought possible even a few short years ago. The International Energy Agency indicates the U.S. has, incredibly, led all developed nations in reducing its carbon dioxide emissions since 2006. Some Cornell University natural gas opponents deny this reality and suggest it is also offset by methane emissions, but their theories have now been discredited almost everywhere.

We’ve heard a lot about carbon over the last several years and most of it has been to the effect the U.S. wasn’t doing enough to reduce emissions because it didn’t sign on to this or that agreement. Notwithstanding this criticism, our nation has been the one leading the charge among world nations in terms of actual results, due in no small part to the availability of an option many other countries lack – the ability to develop natural gas resources using hydraulic fracturing technology on a large scale.

Hydraulic fracturing technology is hardly new, but being able to combine it with horizontal drilling has increased efficiency tremendously and simultaneously made the U.S. a leader in both natural gas production and carbon emissions reductions; which is no coincidence. Some natural gas opponents out of Cornell University (Robert Howarth, Tony Ingraffea and Renee Santoro) would have the world believe it is one, though, and suggest methane emissions more than offset any gains. Using Park Foundation funding, they have speculated natural gas, over its production and use life cycle, somehow generates more total greenhouse gas emissions (carbon and methane) than coal, but the evidence contradicts their theory.

When Howarth, Ingraffea and Santoro came out with their theory natural gas was somehow the dirtiest source of energy in terms of total emissions over production and use life cycles, there was great excitement in the anti- natural gas world this might, finally, be the game changer they had repeatedly sought and about which natural gas opponents had cried wolf so many times.

http://eidmarcellus.org/marcellus-shale/us-leads-in-carbon-emission...