A Quote by Thomas Friedman

Natural gas emits only half the carbon dioxide of coal when burned, but if methane leaks when oil companies extract it from the ground in a sloppy manner - methane is far more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide - it can wipe out all the advantages of natural gas over coal.

Thomas Friedman

Quote Topics

Advantages Burned Carbon Carbon Dioxide Coal Companies Extract Far Gas Greenhouse Ground Half Leaks Manner Methane More Natural Natural Gas Oil Oil Companies Only Out Over Potent Sloppy Than Wipe

Quote Author

Thomas Friedman
American - Journalist
Born: July 20, 1953

We have to slow down the emissions of carbon dioxide and methane from coal burning, oil and eventually natural gas... And the best ways to do that are energy efficiency and a switch to renewables.

Ramez Naam

Burning carbon-based substances like oil, gas, and especially coal, produces billions of tons of extra carbon dioxide each year. Methane gas from cows and pigs and other animals on our large farms ends up in the atmosphere as well, trapping more of the sun's energy as heat.

Bill Nye

Today, natural gas now outstrips coal as the leading provider of electricity in America. If this is as big as people believe it is, natural gas will soon be powering trucks and marine ships. Maybe even standard commercial cars that people use at home through compressed natural gas, other gas to liquids. The potential is there for more energy independence by America and a reliance on cleaner fuel - natural gas emits half as much as coal, in terms of carbon emissions. That's a real bounty.

Thomas Friedman

Of course methane is a fossil fuel, but as long as it is burned efficiently and fugitive emissions of methane gas are minimised, it is a less harmful fossil fuel than coal and oil and is an important way-station on the global journey towards low-carbon energy.

Mark Walport

There's no question that natural gas is a lot better than coal or oil, in the sense that natural gas produces less carbon per unit of energy produced.

Katharine Hayhoe

Burning fossil fuels emits carbon dioxide. And carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that traps heat in the atmosphere. There is no debate about that. The link is as certain as the link between smoking and cancer.

Christine Todd Whitman

Soils could also be giving up their carbon stores: evidence emerged in 2005 that a vast expanse of western Siberia was undergoing an unprecedented thaw. The region, the largest frozen peat bog in the world, had begun to melt for the first time since it formed 11,000 years ago. Scientists believe the bog could begin to release billions of tonnes of methane locked up in the soils, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide. The World Meteorological Organisation recently reported the largest annual rise of methane levels in the atmosphere for a decade.

David Adam

One of the reasons the United States has actually been reducing its emissions in recent years is actually that there's been a boom in natural gas. It's displacing coal. It emits less carbon dioxide when you burn it. This is not really an Obama policy. It's just something that happened because of technology and the free market.

Chris Mooney

Here's the problem - carbon dioxide doesn't contribute to smog and isn't a health threat. All of this is being done because some people believe carbon dioxide is causing global warming, and that preventing carbon dioxide from entering the air is the only answer. Never mind that there is still an ongoing scientific debate about global warming itself, and that some respected climate scientists believe that methane is a better target, California legislators have locked their sites on carbon dioxide.

Kenneth P. Green

I think the mother of all arguments against eating meat now is the climate change argument. Methane is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and when we eat meat we wipe away many of the good things that we do when we try to create greener and more sustainable practices in the rest of our lives. So if you add the concern for climate change with other concerns that were there. I think the case for vegetarianism is pretty overwhelming.

Dale Jamieson

The transition from coal, oil, and gas to wind, solar, and geothermal energy is well under way. In the old economy, energy was produced by burning something - oil, coal, or natural gas - leading to the carbon emissions that have come to define our economy. The new energy economy harnesses the energy in wind, the energy coming from the sun, and heat from within the earth itself.

Lester R. Brown

Carbon dioxide is unusual because it doesn't go through the usual three phases of matter, from solid to liquid to gas, but it goes straight from solid to gas. The volume of the gas is much greater than the volume of the solid. When a solid turns into a gas, we say it sublimes. The process is sublimation.

Robert Winston

Our leaders must get to grips with the huge risk that carbon dioxide emissions pose to the economy and the environment. As we know, carbon dioxide is a long-lived gas. It hangs around.

Jose Angel Gurria

We've recognized that natural gas would be the fastest-growing of the conventional fuels: oil, natural gas, coal. And so, we see the important role that natural gas will play globally and, more importantly, the important role it will play in the U.S. in terms of meeting future energy demand.

Rex Tillerson

The simplest way to remove carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, is to grow plants - preferably trees, since they tie up more of the gas in cellulose, meaning it will not return to the air within a season or two. Plants build themselves out of air and water, taking only a tiny fraction of their mass from the soil.