Coal Is Bad

Liquefied coal is worse than gas.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Researchers and officials concerned about global warming have focused on oil usage, but scientists on Wednesday said liquefied coal could have a greater affect on global climate change.

Global warming scenarios are based on oil reserves, but those reserves will have less impact on global climate than the extent to which liquefied coal replaces oil and gas, scientists said at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.

"Oil and gas by themselves don't have enough carbon to keep us in the dangerous zone for very long by themselves, but that's assuming we do something about coal," Pushker Kharecha, a researcher for the U.S. space agency NASA and Columbia University in New York.