(The latest in a series of posts relating to the environment, Bethlehem’s Climate Action Plan, and Bethlehem’s Environmental Advisory Council)
Bruce Haines is a Lehigh graduate who returned to Bethlehem after a 35-year career at USSteel. He put together a 12-member Partnership to rescue the Hotel Bethlehem from bankruptcy in 1998 and lives in the historic district.
Gadfly:
I truly respect Breena Holland & enjoy debating our polar opposite positions on virtually everything EXCEPT bad government in Bethlehem, where we come together on local issues.
Clearly I have not been brainwashed in school by liberal faculty pushing for control over our lives by using climate change as a vehicle for such control.
Climate science has evolved from the Global cooling scare in the 70’s/80’s to global warming at the turn of the century to simply climate change more recently as the facts failed to support their mantra along this road.
Climate change has been occurring for thousands of years as a natural phenomenon, including global warming ending the ice age long before fossil fuels were ever conceived.
The fossil fuel industry does not deserve demonization & to deny that natural gas isn’t more favorable to Breena’s cause vs coal or oil is simply bizarre.
While we will continue to differ on this subject, I will continue to look forward to working with Breena where we can find common ground. Defending neighborhood preservation or bad economic development decisions by our local government officials will bond our otherwise diverse opinions.
Bruce
Festival UnBound
Ten days of original theatre, dance, music, art and conversation designed to celebrate and imagine our future together!
October 4-13
I don’t want to have a big debate on climate science, but I might be able to resolve some of the confusion about natural gas. Just this morning, I was working with a student at Lafayette looking at just this question, and we found the answer at the Energy Information Administration.
When it is burned, natural gas has far lower GHG emissions than other fossil fuels, so it is marketed as a ‘clean’ fuel. Unfortunately, the ‘upstream emissions’ — from the wellhead, transmission pipelines & compressor stations, and even the gas mains that deliver it to homes — are, on average, higher than the combustion emissions.
According to the Cornell engineers who studied this in detail, the total emissions from natural gas rival those of coal.