Hello. I'm Professor Tony and Grafeef from Cornell University and President of Physician Scientist Engineers for Healthy Energy. Over the next few minutes, I'm going to summarize the best available science on the question of the intersection between natural gas and climate change. Methane. So why should we be concerned about methane? Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas and carbon dioxide. That means that a very small quantity of methane emitted into the atmosphere without being burned is very, very bad for climate change. Where does the methane come from? What you're seeing in this video in false color is the emission of large quantities of methane, natural gas, during the flow back period of a well that has just been hydraulically fractured. Everything that's yellow is methane, natural gas. As you can see, there's large quantities being emitted and those emissions occur over days. Hundreds of thousands of cubic feet of methane are being vented into the atmosphere to become a greenhouse gas, which over a short period of time is 100 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a climate change agent. This bubbling is occurring in a pool of water that's accumulated around the well head. This is methane and perhaps other hydrocarbon gases leaking from outside the well and getting into the atmosphere. This occurrence is not uncommon. Data from Pennsylvania in the last three years show that this kind of leaking occurs in about one out of every 20 brand new wells. Industry data shows over time that that kind of leakage begins to occur much more frequently as the wells age. So those are two examples by video of how methane is emitted into the atmosphere without being burned and becomes a very potent greenhouse gas. This graph shows that along many of the streets in Boston, the concentration of methane in the atmosphere is 10 to 15 times the background. Conclusion, the pipes are leaking. The pipes are leaking methane. How much leaks is a critical technical question? So we go to the recent literature. New recent results show that in Utah, up to 9 percent of all the methane being produced by gas wells out there was being leaked into the atmosphere. In Colorado, anywhere between 2.3 and 7 percent was being leaked into the atmosphere. We're going to see that shell gas is not the cleanest, not the least worst of all the fossil fuels. It's the dirtiest. It's the worst. So any transfer of using coal or oil to natural gas is going in the wrong direction. It's not helping climate change. It's making it worse. We have a choice. If we choose business as usual, increasing the rate at which we're burning fossil fuels, the computer models say we're on that purple line. And it says we're going to get into a danger zone where we've changed the temperature by 2 degrees centigrade by about the year 2045. James Hansen, perhaps the most famous of all climate scientists at NASA, has predicted that when we get to that 2 degree centigrade change, we're going to see 4 to 9 meter rises in the oceans around the world. That's not 100 years from now. It's only about 30 years from now. This photograph shows you black carbon, soot from a processing unit. It's emitting large quantities of black carbon into the atmosphere. So at all levels, an unacceptable amount of methane and black carbon are being produced because of shell gas activity. It's much more effective in the short term to fight climate change by reducing methane and black carbon than it is to reduce carbon dioxide. Obviously, we want to reduce all three. In the computer models say, had we begun to do that in 2010, we'd never get to that 2 degree centigrade temperature change. We'd give our kids and our grandkids a fighting chance. We don't have to increase the production of shell gas everywhere. There's a much better alternative. So in March of 2013, a group of engineers, scientists, economists, investment bankers published a paper which shows that there is a viable plan to convert New York state completely to the use of non-fossil fuels within 20 to 30 years. It's a peer-reviewed, referee journal publication paper. It's bona fide science. We own the wind. You own it. I own it. Everybody owns the wind. Same with sunlight. Same with water. We don't have to fight each other for it. It gives every country the opportunity for energy independence and energy security. And moreover, fuel cost is zero. Therefore, it is economically feasible to transform our energy sources in New York state entirely to wind, water, and solar in just two or three decades. It's economically feasible. It's technically feasible with the technologies that we have today. If Germany can do it, if Denmark can do it, other states and other countries can do it. We can as quickly as possible involve our legislators, our regulators, our investment banking community, and every individual citizen to get started on this. So, let me conclude by saying what I've already intimated, given a choice between shell gas and the inevitable emission of methane and black carbon from shell gas activities, which we now know will not make climate change stop or slow down. It will make it speed up. Or doing something that is obvious, wind, water, and solar, I'll conclude by saying again, we own the wind. We don't have to fight for it. Same thing with sun and water as energy sources. They will make us energy secure and energy independent. It's really up to each of us to begin to work in our own homes, in our own communities, to inform our legislators and our regulators from local level through state level to federal level, to recognize that carbon dioxide is not the only thing we should be concerned about. Methane is at least as important, and in some cases more important, in terms of quickly slowing down climate change.