Lots of good conversation occurring in this post, but I wanted to call out a bit of nuance on the study that is being glossed over.

The study author’s argument isn’t against methane or even fracking per se. Its against the extra pollution from EXPORTING methane by ships.

I would paraphrase the study author’s position more clearly as: “A ship full of coal produces less pollution than a ship full of liquid methane because of all the leakage and energy needed to make that ship full of methane then back to burnable natural gas”

While the study author does call out leaks and inefficiencies in the extraction of methane, the numbers at that point don’t make coal more attractive. His contention on that only comes when you have to do all the extra work and energy to make it exportable, then consumable at the other side.

The original study is here in PDF form