i agree, but i also dislike the term "natural gas" sure its natural just like everything in the universe is -- just a bit of greenwashing to go with our CO2 emissions
Saying that it is “greenwashing” is ridiculous. The gas is called natural because when it was discovered it came from nature, not from manufacturing by heating coal. This name is older than marketing or green politics and it is quite natural way to call this gas.
The obvious fix for this is better education and a good understanding of the meaning of words ind different contexts. It is a way better than broadly applying various labels to the point when they become completely void of any special meaning.
Greenwashing is an intentional effort to portray greenhouse gas emissions as safe by relativizing their contribution to the climate change. Calling natural gas natural according to an old tradition is not the same.
Would it be wrong of me to coin the terms Natural Organic Oil and Natural Coal? They are both, in fact, natural and organic after all. Adding a prefix like Natural or Organic definitely resonates with a lot of people and builds a perception that it’s “clean.” It’s not ridiculous to point out this fact, it was clearly chosen with intent to mislead. The problem with Oil and Coal is that it’s hard to sell it this way because they’re already widely known to be disastrous for the environment.
If you could do that in a letter exchange with Humphry Davy, Lavoisier or other scientist in 1750-1850, that would be fine, though they would probably ask why. There were scientific reasons for giving the name to natural gas (to differentiate from manufacturing process). Can you suggest any reason for your terms?
Anyway, if you would do it today, it is really hard to justify, not least because there exist new meanings of the words now and there exist already sufficiently good classifications. Context does matter.
its greenwashing in the sense that its a convenient historical term used to mislead the average (contemporary) punter that its ok for the environment. so it has less emissions than coal, doesnt make it safe... just call it gas and drop the natural.
If you think that the emphasis of the name "natural gas" over other just "gas" or other common terms for it isn't intentional, then you are quite naive.
Education does not change how these sorts of tricks affect our brains. Research has shown that using the term "Natural Gas" creates false impressions of the its environmental impact.
>If you think that the emphasis of the name "natural gas" over other just "gas" or other common terms for it isn't intentional, then you are quite naive.
Assumption about my personality doesn’t make your statement right or make sense. Of course it was intentional, just not the way you suggest here. The name “natural gas” exists in many languages, literally means “coming from nature” and is being used for centuries. Major suppliers outside USA use this name in contracts etc. Nobody is going to rename it just because American education system is so bad that people are getting confused.
>Education does not change how these sorts of tricks affect our brains. Research has shown that using the term "Natural Gas" creates false impressions of the its environmental impact.
Proof link? What factors were controlled in that research?
While the name was not coined as a form of greenwashing, the industry has a long history of greenwashing and outright lies. It is naive to think this industry hasn't considered what label to use for this product and how that affects public perception. It absolutely effects their efforts to dismiss for accurate alternative labels.
That's true, but the term itself is archaic; at the time (early 19th century) the most widespread gaseous fuel was coal gas, also known as "town gas" because we piped it to urban homes for lighting. There's not much need for the distinction anymore, plus "methane" aligns with the other trade names for other fossil gases (propane, butane).
The argument is that humans are part of nature and therefore anything made by humans is still natural.
I tend to agree with this - there is a dichotomy here, but it is "natural" vs. "supernatural" - not "natural" vs "synthetic". I think it would be fine if for most cases we simply said "man-made" vs "not man-made" as it succinctly describes the dichotomy we're aiming for.
The "greenwashing" here is that you _could_ call anything that's not a ghost or a god "natural" by a certain definition...
> The argument is that humans are part of nature and therefore anything made by humans is still natural.
Sure, if you completely disregard the context. “Natural” when talking in the context of humans is “nature vs man”.
A beaver dam is nature. The Hoover dam is man-made. If you want to red herring you could say “but man is part of nature” - there’s no point to doing so other than to argue semantics, but you could.
"Natural gas (also called fossil gas, methane gas or simply gas) is a naturally occurring mixture of gaseous hydrocarbons consisting primarily of methane in addition to various smaller amounts of other higher alkanes." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gas
Alright, so it goes by several names but it's sold to consumers as "Natural Gas". I'm not sure if it was green washing, but obviously the marketers were going for the most palatable name for consumers.
Natural gas was merely a name to differentiate between 'gasoline', short form 'gas' for many english speaking countries. And the name is valid, it's mostly in its natural form, compared to 'gasoline aka gas', which required loads of processing to create it from oil.
And the name comes from a time before most of the population had even heard of global warming, at a time before people cared about using fossil fuels. There was in no way any attempt to greenwash, because absolutely no one cared one iota back then!
And the same is true for being palatable. It was just fuel. There was no reason to make it sound better. This was the age when most homes were heated by heating oil, or wood, or coal even!
People didn't get "triggered" back then, not in the 1950s or whatever. No one really cared except in the most extreme of cases. The earliest marketing concern over a name I know of, is "canola" oil, created by Canadian research programs, first on market I believe in the 70s, which is rapeseed oil.
(Rapeseed oil was added to cattle feed before this, but was considered too bitter for people until processing improvements were developed.)
It was thought that women would associate rapeseed with rape, and not buy it. This was in North America, the rest of the world generally, at the time, just called it rapeseed oil.
> Natural gas was merely a name to differentiate between 'gasoline', short form 'gas' for many english speaking countries.
No, it has absolutely nothing to do with gasoline. Other languages, e.g. Russian, which don’t use the word gasoline also call it natural gas (coming from nature). This extra confusion is a late American thing.
There is a grain of truth in the previous speaker's comments.
"Naturally occurring gas" does not magically transform itself into energy. The process along the way from being a resource to being usable as energy is usually anything other than "natural" and "green."
It's because Americans use the term "gas" to mean the liquid fuel they put in their cars. In the UK it's just "gas".
It would be far better if we called it methane, but that's not really accurate either. It might contain ethane, propane, butane pentane and hexane. A lot of that stuff is condensed out before use, but not all.
People’s perceptions around the word “natural” has always been a bit unnatural to me. Plenty of things, good, bad, and every gradation in-between are “natural”, but the word itself got greenwashed somewhere along the way.
Having a few terms like “natural gas” as a way to counteract people’s perceptions of the niceness of “natural” isn’t so bad.
If only you folks would stop using the word “gas” for car fuel, which isn't a gas at all, then you could drop the prefix “natural” without confusion like in the rest of the world.
electric cars are greenwashing. not that CO2 is actually a problem, but if it were and it was even mildly urgent you would be rightly yelling for more natural gas. because that actually kills coal plants while electric cars are responsible for increased coal usage
Try to look beyond 10 years. Calling for more nat gas over anything else will just lead to 60% Nat gas and 0% coal in a decade. Ok, now what? Still 60% high emissions and ICE cars according to you. No, we should be yelling for solar, electric cars, wind, batteries, and nuclear. Our priority is not a half measure that helps a bit now but makes nat gas stick around even longer.
Policies like generation shifting encourage movement from coal to gas. They have been implemented in the US but were then undone by Trump and later declared unconstitutional by conservative supreme court justices.