Natural gas has a hidden problem

Various websites and news outlets are jumping on the natural gas bandwagon in the wake of the roiling nuclear crisis in Japan. This is understandable. Whenever there's a crisis pundits, shallow wonks, and journalists like to plump up their statesmanlike creds, looking murkily into the future. Today's NYT article on statements from various pundits, including some of the policy people in conservative think tanks, lauds the potential for natural gas, especially in the US, where fracking has accessed large new reserves. And finally here's a climate friendly fuel that conservatives can love.

I hate to rain on anyone's parade, but...

This is definitely "shallow" wonking: putting forward policy notions without understanding all the downsides.

The really big concern we need to take into account is that natural gas is the primary feedstock for nitrogen fertilizer production, via the Haber-Bosch process. If we expand the use of natural gas for electricity, heat, and transportation, we may well reduce climate emissions, but we will also necessarily reduce the availability of nitrogen fertilizer in decades to come. One of the many failures of market systems is that Adam Smith's invisible hand doesn't sense price signals from several decades in the future. Right now the price of natural gas is conditioned primarily by the price of extraction, and secondarily by the prices of close substitutes like coal, oil (heat oil, since we don't use much liquid fuel for electricity production), and nuclear power.

Accordingly, gas is currently quite cheap. Meanwhile, the US and Canada are the "Saudi Arabia" of grain production. We literally feed the world. But we do it on the back of the Haber-Bosch process, and natural gas is the primary sponsor of all that agricultural fertility.

Other, more natural nitrogen-cycling systems, including crop rotation and manure are available, but most manure comes from grain fed animals in feedlots and CAFOs, while crop rotation necessarily results in a reduction in grain production. Until we can develop a successful food system that doesn't require such massive energy inputs, we are going to need that natural gas very badly indeed. Food prices are already high because of the price of oil inputs. They will get higher yet in years to come if natural gas becomes the primary feedstock for electricity.

For this reason, we're going to have to persevere through this nuclear crisis, and find a way to educate the public about reactor safety. Particularly, we need to teach them about new ideas in atomic energy, the so-called "fourth generation" nuclear systems, involving liquid sodium cooling, or thorium, much safer and even fail-safe formats like the Hyperion, all of which involve cutting edge American technology, and would never give rise to the kind of "core-melt" event that took place at Fukushima, (and Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island).

So, for once, I'm on the side of The Guardian's George Monbiot, who has gone against the grain to blog in favor of nuclear power today, swimming uphill against a torrent of hysterical media nonsense.

Although not quite for the same reasons. Monbiot cites the need for base load, which is also a concern. But I think food security is a greater one.

What I call shallow wonking is endemic in our society, especially when a crisis makes pundits and journalists feel like they need to have answers, stat. But the energy business is complex and doesn't simplify easily.

There are all these tricky details, see, which take years to learn about.