Why natural gas beats wind power and other “green” experimental energy technologies

At Hot Air:

Lost in the debate over fracking and drilling to extract natural gas in the US and abroad rather than pursuing supposedly clean renewables is this: natural gas is actually greener. New Geography’s Matt Ridley starts off by asking which view homeowners would prefer — a modest gas well or a towering, noisy commercial windmill — and then explains that choosing wind means you get both (via NewsAlert):

....Thanks to fracking and other adaptations of well-developed technology, we can now access vast pools of methane.  That’s not just in the US either, but all over the world.  Instead of running out of so-called fossil fuel (Ridley writes that the origin of this methane may be much older), we’re now looking at centuries of supply.  That has created consternation in central Asian nations like Iran and Russia, which had hoped to corner the market on natural gas in the Eastern Hemisphere, and with the enviros of the Western Hemisphere, who had hoped that it become so expensive that it would make the higher costs of wind and solar more competitive....

Read the whole thing.