This is unironically something I'd love to do. Not just to see what humanity will be like in a thousand years (if they're still around). I want to watch the sun blow up, galaxies merge, and black holes die. Spectator mode with fast forward, basically.
Honestly, better than gas. Like, yah, natural gas has lower co2 per unit of power at the power plant, but there’s methane leaking all along the supply chain, a green house gas 40 times more potent than Co2.
between 5-10% of the methane that comes out of a well ends up leaking somewhere along the line. To make the heating effect even break even with coal the leak rate would have to be closer to 1%.
Not advocating to keep burning coal, just saying that what we’ve been replacing it with is worse. I’d rather we keep a coal plant open and wait for an opportunity to replace with with a non-carbon emitting power source than build a shiny new gas plant that’s going to be kept around for at least 20 years.
Ng has half the CO2 and pretty much eliminates the others like NOx, SOx, PM, etc. Yes leaking can be an issue but there's obvious incentive to not have leaks, you can place power plants close to the ng source, etc. Coal can never be clean.