He's ALL for it. I can't believe it, but he is. And he keeps talking about clean coal. There is NO such thing.

...sounds silly, but ng is definitely way less polluting than coal. We have actually met our Kyoto goals on CO2 strictly because the falling price of ng made it economically advantageous for utilities to switch to ng from coal.
It is simply a fact that we will need ng as a transitional fuel. This is true globally, not just here. Something will need to be burned for the foreseeable future even if we get a majority of our energy from renewables. It's way better if that something is ng.

We could use Hemp oil. Fracking contaminates drinking water, not sure if the science is there for earthquakes yet. How do WE as a population see a natural gas leak? Do you think they will let us know the real effect of fracking, or get caught years later like we are all used to seeing when it is too late. We are gambling with water, and there isn't going to be enough of it as it is, so why even take a chance on it. Big corporations don't care about some small little town with contaminated water. They just move on to the next town.

Hemp oil is the way to go IMO. It's 100% safer than coal or natural gas.

http://www.youtube.com/user/alivefoods

The new NG plants are capable of spinning up and down very quickly, which is necessary to integrate highly variable renewable power sources into the grid.

You can do it with coal, but that is a much dirtier source of power. Nuclear plants are very poorly suited for that purpose. Hydro works well with highly variable power sources, but is limited in most areas.

If you look at Germany's experience, it's clear that fossil fuel plants will be very necessary for any realistic switch to substantial renewable (non-hydro) integration. And most have built out their standard hydro already.

DENA is struggling to come up with an economically viable German plan, but in the end, it's going to be either coal or NG that secures the grid supply. If you have to choose one, it's obvious why you choose NG over coal:
http://www.germanenergyblog.de/?p=10156

See: Cost-minimized combinations of wind power, solar power and electrochemical storage, powering the grid up to 99.9% of the time
Open Access Article
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378775312014759

Maybe we will come up with some magic bullet capability, but I will no longer accept models that violate real world experience.

It's time to start dealing with the real world issues if we want to actually switch to renewables.

for the natural gas industry to thrive. The natural gas (and fracking) industries have renewables to thank for getting their foot in the door, and lending them undeserved "green" creds.

Natural gas tycoons have capitalized on this marketing tactic for years.

The realistic alternative is GenIV nuclear.

is continued global warming leading to a decline in human numbers and activity resulting in reduced energy consumption.
Coming (very) soon to a civilization near you.

Build Gen IV now.

Which of course is quite suitable for those natural gas peaking plants.

So all new gas is going to be unconventional shale gases that require fracking. It's fucking insane what we're doing.