Ditch Natural Gas Before It Ditches You

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Ditch Natural Gas Before It Ditches You is all about the dangers of natural gas. The episode highlights the many dangers of natural gas, from explosions to fires.

Natural gas is a mix of different hydrocarbons, mainly methane. It's found in rock formations deep below the earth's surface, where it formed from the remains of plants and animals over millions of years. We developed techniques to extract it from there, and have done so for decades, and global output has constantly gone up ever since. In the early 2000s, refined processes, like fracking, allowed companies to access previously untapped reserves. Especially in the US, the world's biggest gas producer, this sparked a real boom. And behind this boom, there was one big promise, that natural gas could clean up the power sector. "If you burn gas, natural gas, that is methane, you get half the CO2 emissions of burning coal."