Prepare to invade Bangladesh: American Chemists study methane hydrate

distributions.

"The greatest amounts of methane in hydrate form are
predicted to be located in the Arabian Sea, the western
coast of Africa, and near Peru, Chile, and Bangladesh.
In total, we predict 1.2 X 10^17 m^3 of methane expanded
to STP exist as seafloor hydrates, which is three orders
higher than conventional worldwide natural gas reserves
estimated to be 1.5 X 10^14 m^3.60 Considering only
the continental margins, we estimate a value of 4.4  1016 m3 of methane expanded to STP. Our gas hydrate
estimate is based on the in situ and proximate production
of methane from seafloor organic matter; however,
methane production from deeper sources that have
greater filling of the pore space, because of large fluxes
of methane,61 have not been included, because of the
paucity of data.

When methods to accurately predict
methane fluxes from deep within the seafloor are
available, that information can be used to predict the
additional amount of methane in hydrates above that
predicted here...
Acknowledgment. Financial support of this research
was provided by the division of Basic Energy
Sciences of the U.S. Department of Energy (Contract
No. DE-FG02-85ER13436) and the U.S. National Science
Foundation (Award No. EEC 0085461)."



(Quotation edited to fix scientific notation.)

This article will be in the journal Energy and Fuels in the March edition.

Our government is hard at work keeping us abreast of whose stuff we need to steal at the point of a gun (or missle).

In this sense, I'm not much of an American Chemist.

We'll have returned the planet to the state it was when life began.

Unfortunately, most living things on Earth nowdays can't live in that sort of environment.

potential.

Look here at table 3: http://yosemite.epa.gov/oar/globalwarming.nsf/UniqueKeyLookup/SHSU5BUM9T/$File/ghg_gwp.pdf

Check out gases like carbon tetrafluoride with it's 50,000 year atmospheric life-time and it's global warming potential of 6500 to 1 with respect to CO2. Check out Sulfur hexaflouride with a 3200 year lifetime and a GWP of 23,900 relative to CO2.

We got lots of 'em.

That doesn't mean it's going to be of any use to us.