"President Barack Obama’s plan to fight global warming underestimates pollution from natural gas, according to scientists studying how leaks affect the climate.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency this week proposed requiring power plants to cut greenhouse-gas emissions 30 percent from their 2005 levels by 2030, largely by burning natural gas instead of coal.

Researchers from Cornell University, Stanford University and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration agree with the EPA that natural gas emits about half as much carbon dioxide as coal when burned to produce electricity. The issue is that methane leaks while natural gas is being extracted, processed and transported, and methane causes more warming than equivalent amounts of carbon dioxide, they said."

Isaac Arnsdorf reports for Bloomberg News June 4, 2014. [2]