Oh yes, I've heard of this. Fears among climatologists are that if temperatures increase even moderately above minimum predictions these methane hydrates will start melting and releasing methane directly into the atmosphere. If this happens, they exacerbate the warming problem. Methane is a better greenhouse gas than co2, meaning it's more dangerous. Many scientists are afraid that if the ices start melting, it will create a feedback warming loop that will release even more methane. The scenario they fear leads to a mean average temperature above that of just co2 warming. Some have even speculated it's possible to trigger a runaway loop that leads to a Venus situation. While those are still speculations, overall it shows that releasing captured methane is a very bad idea. It is utterly irresponsible to consider mining these materials and putting more greenhouse gases into the air.
Funny. Up until your second to last sentence, I really thought you were giving reasons in support of harvesting.
If you're worried about the frost thawing and releasing the methane into the atmosphere (especially with a positive feedback), it seems prudent to burn it into water and CO2 (which already has to be dealt with) while it's still concentrated.
Whoa, how does that make sense though? The idea is to keep the methane hydrates nice and frozen at the bottom of the ocean. Not to release them into the atmosphere. Sure, 10 tons of pure methane is worse than 10 tons of CO2. But we don't want 10 tons of either extra gas in the atmosphere. Its kind of like being stranded on an island with 3 sandwiches. If you ration, you'll have food for longer. But to take your argument, you should eat them all right away because you'll be hungry eventually anyway.
At first I thought this was a garbage comment but it's actually a fairly clever reference. The article is about harvesting methane gas hydrates (which can be thought of as methane gas trapped in ice).
But I question the use of methane gas hydrates. There is no denying methane gas is one of the worse gas responsible for the green house effect. The article makes it seem like methane gas hydrates is a solution but in the end it's not a renewable source of energy. It would still be harvested and drilled for like oil and even though there's the trillions of cubic feet of gas to be had, one day it could run out.
Really? I thought knowledge of undersea gas hydrates was fairly common - just that retrieving them was cost-prohibitive.
That being said, is this really the solution to the fuel crisis? Acknowledging that we are running out of a fossil fuel should change behavior, not encourage more of the same.
There's some interesting but half-baked speculation that hydrates are responsible for some of the strange happenings reported in the Bermuda Triangle.
The idea is that the deposits will spontaneously burp up an enormous quantity of methane from time to time. This causes the ocean to turn into a foam that's much less dense than water: ships sink like rocks in the stuff.
Apparently it also causes some kind of ionization or static charge in the air that can cause navigation instruments to go haywire.
Oh yes, I've heard of this. Fears among climatologists are that if temperatures increase even moderately above minimum predictions these methane hydrates will start melting and releasing methane directly into the atmosphere. If this happens, they exacerbate the warming problem. Methane is a better greenhouse gas than co2, meaning it's more dangerous. Many scientists are afraid that if the ices start melting, it will create a feedback warming loop that will release even more methane. The scenario they fear leads to a mean average temperature above that of just co2 warming. Some have even speculated it's possible to trigger a runaway loop that leads to a Venus situation. While those are still speculations, overall it shows that releasing captured methane is a very bad idea. It is utterly irresponsible to consider mining these materials and putting more greenhouse gases into the air.
Oh yes, I've heard of this. Fears among climatologists are that if temperatures increase even moderately above minimum predictions these methane hydrates will start melting and releasing methane directly into the atmosphere. If this happens, they exacerbate the warming problem. Methane is a better greenhouse gas than co2, meaning it's more dangerous. Many scientists are afraid that if the ices start melting, it will create a feedback warming loop that will release even more methane. The scenario they fear leads to a mean average temperature above that of just co2 warming. Some have even speculated it's possible to trigger a runaway loop that leads to a Venus situation. While those are still speculations, overall it shows that releasing captured methane is a very bad idea. It is utterly irresponsible to consider mining these materials and putting more greenhouse gases into the air.
Just more proof that humanity is not destined for a malthusian end and that doomsday predictions based on lack of resources are misguided. People who claim that human needs grow exponentially and thus must eventually go unsatisfied fail to account for human ingenuity.
