Historically it was common to make a useful "town gas" which could be used to make heat and light in homes or factories. Often "coal gas" was the town gas used, you make it by processing coal, so, unsurprisingly, the carbon emissions are worse than coal. When it was discovered that the planet has a whole bunch of natural methane we could harvest that's a natural gas you can use instead. It's cheaper, it burns cleaner, once you discover it there's nothing not to like...

Coal gas is also poisonous and its density means it's inclined to lay in a room, so when e.g. Britons mostly cooked with coal gas ovens that's where you get the phrase "Put your head in the oven". The idea isn't that you could somehow suicide by cooking yourself, but instead that the poisonous gas will kill you.

These days if you have a gas oven (they're rarer) and try this it won't work, the gas isn't poisonous and will escape from most spaces - although you might if you're unlucky manage to collect the right amount of methane somewhere to cause an explosion.

The reduction in suicide from upgrading from town gas to natural gas is a success story and a model for other interventions. It showed very clearly that "displacement" isn't a big deal. People didn't go "Huh, my oven didn't kill me. Oh well I'll jump off a building". Thus, other interventions can be expected to be effective, such as anti-suicide fencing on bridges or platform screen doors at railway stations.

My house was built in 1914, which is fairly old for Portland. It's been heated by 5 different technologies:

1) Manufactured Gas, which I assume is the same as coal gas. The pipe for this is about 3 times as large as natual gas. 2) Wood chips (still a spot in the concrete floor where the "octopus" furnace (called because of the vents coming off it) sat. This was a byproduct of the timber industry. 3) Oil. The underground tank in the side yard was filled in. 4) Natural gas 5) Air heat pump powered by electricity (partially fed by solar panels)

I'm not sure of the exact order but I think that's basically correct, as the development of trucks meant it was possible to drop off a big bunch of wood chips or later a tankful of oil.

I've read that some towns are not allowing new natural gas connections because of pollution issues. With the explosion yesterday in Maryland and our problems keeping up infrastructure, it seems like a reasonable approach to me.

> I've read that some towns are not allowing new natural gas connections because of pollution issues. With the explosion yesterday in Maryland and our problems keeping up infrastructure, it seems like a reasonable approach to me.

Yes. In Britain there was a three way choice offered to central government towards the end of last century. They could discontinue household natural gas service (perhaps gradually over time) and shut the delivery network of pipes under roads across much of the country OR they could replace the entire network of cast iron pipes which are gradually failing so as to prevent explosions OR they could accept that gradually gas explosions would become more and more common as the pipes fail.

The last mile gas delivery is notionally in the hands of private company National Grid, because Tory ideology holds that this is better, but of course the private company exists only to collect profits, government must pay for all the inevitable costs of delivering the service, and thus had to make this decision. In the event they picked replacing all the pipelines, section by section ever since the cast iron gas pipes are being dug out of roads and replaced with plastic pipes expected to last many more decades.

Given that burning gas helps force climate change we don't want, in hindsight probably switching off the network would have been a wiser choice. The plastic pipes may last until say, 2100 but burning natural gas to heat UK homes in even 2050 will be very obviously stupid.

It's called natural gas because it's naturally occurring. The term was used long before humans understood the effects fossil fuels had on the environment.

Combustion of natural gas produces essentially only CO2 and H2O. Combustion of coal produces these, along with many other harsh molecules. Compared to coal-powered plants, they are a good thing.