by Christopher Mims. The climate story on natural gas is gnarlier than ever. First there was a paper from Robert Howarth of Cornell claiming that natural gas from fracking is worse than coal, as far as net warming effect on the earth. Now the Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) has fired back, sort of, with a report that seems to have already been in progress when Howarth published his. NETL says that when natural gas is used to produce electricity, it results in 50 percent less greenhouse-gas emissions than coal over a 20-year time horizon, and 54 percent less when looked at over a century. This is good news for those who would like to see us use natural gas as an immediate,

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