The free pass that frackers and natural-gas handlers have gotten on their climate-changing methane emissions is really starting to stink to high hell. We told you in February about the results of a meta-analysis of 20 years worth of scientific studies, which concluded that the EPA underestimates the natural-gas industry’s climate impacts by 25 to 75 percent, due to methane leakage from its gas drilling operations and pipelines. Methane, the main component of natural gas, is a potent greenhouse gas. Two scientific studies published in the past month reveal that the problem is far worse than that.
