As the Maryland General Assembly debates whether to impose a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing to extract natural gas, a new study adds fuel to an already explosive debate over the climate impact of "fracking." Researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimated that between 4 percent and 9 percent of natural gas can leak into the atmosphere during extraction. These leaks could reduce or eliminate the fuel's advantage over coal as a "clean" fuel, from a climate perspective.
