Energy-industry officials from across the Rockies kicked off a three-day conference Monday by promoting natural gas, a cleaner-burning fossil fuel, as a weapon against increasing greenhouse-gas levels.
The annual conference by the Denver-based trade group Colorado Oil and Gas Association opened with a panel discussion of climate change. Besides normal industry discussions, four more sessions dealing with climate change and reducing carbon dioxide emissions are scheduled today and Wednesday.
Focusing on climate change makes sense to Fred Julander, founder and president of Julander Energy Co. and the trade group’s conference chairman. He acknowledged the public’s heightened concern about climate change and believes the gas industry should tout its advantages as a cleaner-burning fuel.
“Natural gas will help solve climate change because there’s less (carbon dioxide) in its emissions,” Julander said.
Companies using new technology to tap the Rockies’ vast reserves of gas in more environmentally sensitive ways can lead the way as the nation looks at reducing greenhouse gases, he added.
Most scientists agree that human-caused increases of heat-trapping gases, much of that from burning fossil fuels, is heating up the globe, triggering wide variations in weather.
“I think we’re much more a part of the solution than we are part of the problem,” Julander said.
Burning natural gas emits about half the carbon dioxide of coal and about a quarter the carbon of petroleum, according to the federal Energy Information Administration.
“Natural gas is many ways is cleaner than many fossil fuels,” said Jeremy Nichols, head of the Denver-based Rocky Mountain Clean Air Action.
But Nichols said even though burning natural gas releases less carbon dioxide, its other emissions, including methane, create problems. He said he believes lessening climate change ultimately will require reducing the use of all fossil fuels.
And while some industry officials appear ready to pitch natural gas as part of the answer to climate change, others don’t seem ready to concede that fossil fuels are part of the problem.
aps from experts on the panel in the opening session of the conference ran the gamut.
Caspar Ammann, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, said the only viable explanation for the dramatic global warming of the past few decades is the greater volume of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels. He said the data don’t support arguments that more intense solar activity or more water vapor are to blame.
Arthur “Art” Green, the retired chief geoscientist for Exxon Mobil Exploration Co., and M. Ray Thomasson, president of Thomasson Partner Associates and a former manager with Shell Oil, contended current temperature increases aren’t that large compared with historic increases.
Both urged more careful scientific study of global warming.
“There’s a little bit of shortness of breath and gasping and ‘Oh my god, we’re all going to die,”‘ Green said, to scattered applause.
But Bob Raynolds, a research geologist at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, said public perception of climate change is at “a huge tipping point,” with mainstream news magazines and publications featuring cover stories on it.
“The popular literature is full of this information and with every passing day and with every drip of melting ice the public is increasingly aware,” Raynolds said.
