TLDR - stop calling it natural gas. Call it what it is: methane.
Coal is natural - I don’t want to breath the smoke
Lead is natural - I would never use lead silverware
Box Jellyfish stings are natural - I’ll pass
Grizzly Bears are natural - I don’t want to fight one
fossil gas
Burning methane actually reduces it’s greenhouse has potential by turning it into CO2. Not saying we should expand extraction of methane if it leads to methane leakage, but if methane is going to go into the atmosphere anyways it would be climate friendly to capture it and burn it for heat or electricity. A Landfill near me collects the methane that the garbage produces and pipes it to greenhouses to burn for heat and CO2 that contribute to crop yields.
Yes, for methane which would have otherwise entered the atmosphere, as with landfill gas.
The big issue is that we’re extracting methane in order to burn it, so both the CO2 from burning it, plus the leaked methane along the way are causing additional warming.
One issue may be that there are a wide range of numbers for the relative warming potential of CH4 (methane), compared to CO2. Main reason is that this depends on the time horizon you care about - the shorter it is, the more methane counts. So it’s not such a big deal for long-term sea-level rise, as for earlier impacts such as ecosystems.
Moreover the relative warming potential CH4/CO2 inevitably changes over time, not because the science changes much, but as the atmosphere changes. The lifetime of methane in the atmosphere increases as its concentration rises, since it’s removed mainly by OH radicals of which there is a limited supply. While the warming effect of each new ton of CO2 decreases as its concentration rises, due to saturation of its absorption band in the infrared spectrum. Consequently, the ratio of these two keeps changing. In general, methane is getting relatively more important, not less.So long as people are extracting and burning, it’s a problem, irrespective of whether you’re thinking about the direct impact that methane leaks have, or whether you’re talking about the CO2 that results from burning the methane. It all needs to stay in the ground.