However, recent research indicates that shale-gas production (aka fracking) in the United States may have contributed more than half of all the increased emissions from fossil fuels globally. There continues to be debate around what has been responsible for the rise in global methane emissions since 2007, since different types of methane in the atmosphere can be difficult to quantify accurately. And that’s a major problem.Ī More Potent Problem Than Carbon in The Short-TermĪccording to National Geographic, “on a 20-year timescale, a methane molecule is roughly 90 times more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than a molecule of carbon dioxide.” And while over a several-hundred-years period carbon is the more potent gas, methane has been responsible for about a fifth of global warming despite staying in the atmosphere for a relatively short amount of time. While burning natural gas does emit less carbon than burning coal (though importantly, it does still emit plenty of CO2), fracking emits vastly more methane, primarily arising from leakage. By 2019, natural gas had overtaken both and was by far the top energy source in America.īut from the beginning, there was a big climate issue with fracking for natural gas as a bridge fuel: methane. Just 15 years ago, natural gas was the number three energy source in the US, narrowly trailing nuclear but well behind coal. This idea certainly made for good business. This idea of natural gas as a bridge fuel was pretty simple on the surface: these big companies said natural gas produces lower carbon emissions than coal and was more readily available than renewables like wind and solar energy, making it a supposedly sensible option for the country and our planet while we worked to ramp up use of clean energy sources. In December 2016, Revkin ended the blog and left Pace to return to full-time journalism as senior reporter on climate and related issues for the public-interest newsroom ProPublica.Ĭlick here for a narrated slide show on the roots of Revkin's journalistic journey.For years, energy companies have claimed that natural gas obtained through fracking was a cleaner alternative to coal. He won a National Academies Communication Award for Dot Earth in 2011 and Time Magazine named him one of the web's 25 top bloggers in The blog moved to the Opinion side of The Times in 2010 when Revkin left the Times staff to teach communication courses at Pace University. To balance human needs and the planet's limits. Dot Earth was created by Andrew Revkin in October 2007 - in part with support from a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship - to explore ways Those billions will be seeking food, water and other resources on a planet where humans are already Explore Chris Jordan’s constructed photographic quantifications of deforestation and plastic pollution and Juan Bernal’s tropical closeups for starters.īy 2050 or so, the human population is expected to pass nine billion. There’s more on Dot Earth about the role of photography in chronicling or examining humanity’s relationship with the environment. I think it is poignant how many of those words can be associated with our quest Things… death, blood, anger, evil, love, power, prestige, crime, or danger – depending on your cultural background. Of course red is a very powerful color, and creates one of the main graphical elements here. Then below the surface, we have layer upon layer of geological formation, shifts, fault lines, water sources, connections and cracks throughout.ĭepending on your views, you may see things becoming a bit of a mess below the surface. I see a horizon, and a giant drilling well going into the Earth. Graf’s mineralogical abstract here is titled “Fracked.” (Click here for another artist’s work using the actual Marcellus Shale being drilled and fractured for natural gas.) Here’s part of Graf’s description of what he saw in this photographed rock slice: ( I wrote short prose pieces to accompany some of the images in his book, “ Within the Stone.”) Programmer from the early days of Apple ( MacPaint was his creation) who in recent years has produced extraordinary photography in this same way. I find the results reminiscent of the work of Bill Atkinson, a But Graf also occasionally creates intriguing abstract photographs by zooming in tightly on polished surfaces of rocks and minerals. Much of his work is conventional scenic imagery On Thursday, I stumbled on the photograph at right on the blog of Mark Graf, a nature photographer from the Detroit area. Mark Graf A photograph of a cross section of rock that the photographer has interpreted as representing the drilling practice of hydraulic fracturing, also called fracking.
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