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Fossil methane
(lemmy.world)
Yes, I know it's not technically just methane, but methane is its primary constituent.
"Fossil gas" is also probably a suitable term, but I like "fossil methane" because it gets that spooky chemical name benefit.
That's why I specified fossil methane, the stuff we're getting out of the ground to burn in power plants. I'm all for burning non-fossil methane (e.g., from compost piles) for reducing the impact of those.
Still, stating it's 40 times more potent than carbon dioxide also feels deceptive. While it's technically true, it's not a fair comparison. I'd like to clarify here, that I'm not defending gas as an energy source. I don't own a gas stove or anything in that regard.
I know what you mean, but methane leaks are a real problem, so while combusting it produces mostly CO2, all the infrastructure and pipelines bringing the gas to where it's burnt leak a loooot of methane. And methane is overall the second-most responsible greenhouse gas in anthropogenic climate crisis (after carbon dioxide), although a big chunk of that methane is from industrial animal agriculture of course.
That's what I mean. The biggest source of methane and therefore one of the biggest contributor to climate change is cattle. Which could be considered "natural", but even if we deny it that label, as it is clearly man-made, we wouldn't refer to it as fossil fuel. I'm not sure how much of an impact those methane leaks have on the climate compared to the steady release of agricultural gas, but I bet it's not exactly helping.
But the thing is nobody is calling cow farts "natural gas"; they call them "methane". Even the wikipedia page for "natural gas" refers solely to the fossil fuel we get out of the ground:
I think the key distinction is that "natural gas", as a term, only actually refers to the fossil fuel. That is, "natural gas" != "methane".
The meme is about stopping saying "natural gas" — i.e., the fossil fuel, not other non-fossil sources of methane — and instead calling it "fossil methane". Given we already call cow farts methane and landfill emissions methane, calling the fossil fuel form of methane "fossil methane" seems fitting to me. That way we have overall methane, then we can specify source by saying "fossil methane" or "landfill methane" or "agricultural methane" and so forth.