I’m normally pretty skeptical of those who advocate drastically increasing the use of natural gas for electricity generation. My skepticism is largely due to nature of the domestic gas that is available. Most of the new natural gas discoveries in the United States are shale gas. Shale gas is difficult to get to, and requires an extraction process that involves leaking large quantities of undisclosed chemicals into water supplies.

With that being said, this is the type of natural gas procurement I can get behind:

Hundreds of trash trucks across California are rumbling down city streets using clean fuel made from a dirty source: garbage.

The fuel is derived from rotting refuse that San Francisco and Oakland residents and businesses have been discarding in the Altamont landfill since 1980. Since November, the methane gas created from decaying detritus at the 240-acre landfill has been sucked into tubes and sent into an innovative facility that purifies and transforms it into liquefied natural gas.

Almost 500 Waste Management Inc. garbage and recycling trucks run on this new source of environmentally friendly fuel instead of dirty diesel.

In a state that has passed the most stringent greenhouse gas reduction goals in the United States, the climate change benefits of this plant are twofold — methane from the trash heap is captured before entering the environment and use of the fuel produces less carbon dioxide than conventional gasoline.

“We’ve built the largest landfill-to-LNG plant in the world; this plant produces 13,000 gallons a day of LNG,” said Jessica Jones, a landfill manager for Houston-based Waste Management. “It will take 30,000 tons a year of CO2 from the environment.”

Driving past the giant pile of trash near my hometown in Ohio over the holidays, I wondered why they weren’t generating gas from the trash. It seems like a perfect match; the methane gas created naturally by the dump could probably fuel the dozens of garbage trucks they send out weekly, with plenty of gas left over to sell back to the local utility. I don’t know for certain, but I assume the investment made up front — especially considering the tax credits for retrofitting the garbage truck fleet — would pay itself off relatively quickly.

The wonders of clean natural gas:

“The water is so saturated with methane and other chemicals it is not to be used for human consumption,” said Bernice Angely, who’s had water trucked to her home 10 miles west of town since her well blew up in July 2007.

Petroglyph Energy Inc., a Boise, Idaho-based firm that has worked the rolling plains of the Raton Basin since 1999, suspended drilling until it can stem the methane. Colorado also is rewriting rules that had allowed Petroglyph to discharge water runoff from its drilling into streams and creeks.

Somebody is going to have to pay for that, right?

But Petroglyph says it’s not clear the drilling caused the methane leaks or prompted other area water wells to run dry. Eying what it calls an extremely promising natural gas field, it believes a shallow water formation tapped by area homeowners isn’t connected to a deeper one pumped by the company for its drilling operations.

Petroglyph chief operating officer Paul Powell also believes a growing number of new homes in the area could explain some of the dry water wells.

“We’ll do what we need to do,” Powell said, stressing that his firm is working with the state on a solution.

With a little luck the people of NYC won’t face the same fate.

(H/T Raw Story)

I don’t see anything even remotely controversial about this:

“Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. It puts enormous pressure on the world’s resources. A vegetarian diet is better.”

Or this:

He predicted that people’s attitudes would evolve until meat eating became unacceptable. “I think it’s important that people think about what they are doing and that includes what they are eating,” he said. “I am 61 now and attitudes towards drinking and driving have changed radically since I was a student. People change their notion of what is responsible. They will increasingly ask about the carbon content of their food.”

Everything Lord Stern said in the interview is true, as far as I can tell. But once Drudge blows the whistle, conservatives won’t let facts get in the way of their marching orders.

Here are a few early responses from conservative bloggers and pundits.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air:

I consider creeping elitism from horse’s asses a much more elitist threat than methane from cow’s butts.

Vladimir at Red State:

Hold on. If we eat less beef, pork and poultry, we’ll be eating a lot more beans, broccoli and cabbage, and producing a heck of a lot more methane ourselves. Since each fart is worth 23 times its weight in carbon dioxide, won’t we be accelerating Global Warming?

Andrew Stuttaford at National Review:

Dietary rules and restrictions are a part of many religions, so it’s at least consistent that Lord Stern, one of Britain’s most prominent climate alarmists, is making sure that his particular millennial cult is not left out.

It as almost as if these three folks had absolutely nothing of substance to say, but they went ahead anyway, since Drudge has the story on blast.

Via email from Friends of the Earth.

Friends of the Earth Statement on the Kerry-Boxer Draft Climate Bill

·         Offset Loopholes: The extensive use of unreliable offsets in this draft bill, up to 2 billion tons a year, seriously undermines the integrity of the already weak emissions cap and delays the health, environmental, and economic benefits of shifting to a low-carbon economy.

·         Markets Regulations: The bill would creative a massive, new and complex commodities market with almost no specifics on how that market would be regulated.

**Upon on a more thorough reading of the draft bill, we acknowledge that the Clean Air Act section of our previous statement was not an accurate reflection of the bill’s text.

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