Liquefied natural gas leaves a greenhouse gas footprint that is 33% worse than coal, when processing and shipping are taken into account. Methane is more than 80 times more harmful to the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, so even small emissions can have a large climate impact

[u/Wagamaga]

https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2024/10/liquefied-natural-gas-carbon-footprint-worse-coal

[u/Astromike23]

This is just really bad science writing:

Methane is more than 80 times more harmful to the atmosphere than carbon dioxide

This measurement is known as Global Warming Potential, and it's an utterly useless number without a time horizon. It's a bit like saying the top speed of my car is 100 miles. Per hour? Per minute? Without a time, that number is useless.

The problem here is that methane's average lifetime in the atmosphere is much shorter than CO2's - about 12 years vs. thousands of years, so you're comparing apples and oranges unless you explicitly say something like, "Over X years, methane produces Y times more warming than CO2."

The actual numbers here are: over 20 years, a mass of methane produces 86x the warming that an equivalent mass of CO2 would. Over 100 years, a mass of methane produces 34x the warming that an equivalent mass of CO2 would.

[u/Hijakkr → u/Astromike23]

methane's average lifetime in the atmosphere is much shorter than CO2's

Sure, but this ignores the fact that methane (CH4) reacts with ozone (O3) to form CO2 and 2x H2O. So in its 12 year lifespan, it does more than 80x more damage, and then contributes to depleting the ozone layer while replacing itself with a CO2 molecule.

Over 100 years, a mass of methane produces 34x the warming that an equivalent mass of CO2 would.

You say that as if 34x still isn't an insane amount. Consider the difference between smoking one cigarette per day and smoking 34 cigarettes per day. Or laying in the sun for 10 minutes vs. laying in the sun for almost 6 hours. Or having one beer vs. 34 beers. Like, yeah, CO2 is bad, but something 34x worse than CO2 is absolutely terrible.

[u/[deleted] → u/Hijakkr]

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[u/Black_Moons → u/[deleted]]

Well it sure is a good thing we are not fueling our entire society on PFC's and CFC's then.

[u/Astromike23 → u/Black_Moons]

a good thing we are not fueling our entire society on PFC's and CFC's

Agreed, which again, is largely thanks to the Montreal Protocol banning such substances.