If Methane Hydrates ever become viable as an energy source...

Would DUers promote their extraction, being that they would entail offshore 'ocean mining' ?

The Mother Lode of Methane
http://www.sciencenews.org/pages/sn_arch/11_9_96/bob1.htm

I can't see any good coming of it.

we would essentially need to strip mine the ocean floor; environmental concerns aside.

...all 6.5 billion humans less the 6.0 millionaires up to flatulent recovery units and place everyone on a steady diet of highly gaseous foods. Now that would work!

If the millionaires could be encouraged to participate, based on their diet of caviar and goose liver pate', the methane collections double be doubled.

:)

...ownershit society and the republican fundamental value of "shit is money".

I know a good source of those... wet farts.

Methane is natural gas.

When you expand a very high pressure (or liquefied) gas into a low pressure medium you get "Joule-Thomson Cooling" which freezes the water around it.

If a liquid natural gas tank is opened up in deep water - you get the same "Methane Hydrate" -- there are some Coast Guard "Marine Safety Engineering Bulletins" on this. Has to do with a sunken LNG tanker releasing "Methane Hydrate" - and as the "Methane Hydrate" comes out of the sea and "pops", natural gas is released (trapping Coasties and Fire Fighters in burning LNG).

""Given their worldwide distribution and their very large quantities, they make a very attractive energy source, provided that one can bring the gas up at somewhere near market price," MacDonald says. The cost of accessing hydrates has served as a barrier in the past, but some energy-hungry nations lacking conventional fossil fuels are extremely interested in future use of hydrates.

Japan plans to drill exploratory wells in the next few years, first on land in Alaska and then in Japanese waters. The Japanese National Oil Company is currently negotiating with the U.S. and Canadian governments to conduct experimental drilling of hydrate deposits near Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, in early 1998. They hope to have more success than the nations and commercial companies that tried to extract frozen methane in Canada, Alaska, and Siberia during the 1970s and 1980s""

if methane hydrates, with vast quantities of natural gas potential, being close to already existing Canadian natgas pipelines, can become viable, and if offshore ocean mining can become viable, oil companies--who realistically have only until about 2040 until proven reserves run out entirely--can switch over to become drilling/extracting companies for a new source of energy. They already have the expertise. And the 'fuel cell' cars are already being geared up to provide power based either directly from fossil fuels like natgas/methane or hydrogen produced from natgas/methane.

DUers would object due to 'strip mining the ocean' and also potentially hazardous conditions. Can these be overcome ?

just do a Joule-Thomson expansion of LNG into water - from below - so that the Methane Hydrate bubbles up and "pops" releasing methane. (That was a Coast Guard project - for determining the risks of LNG super tankers - back in the late 1960's).

If it is cold enough you get superheated gas in a tough ice shell.

It is like the natural gas that percolates up from coal seams. Just evidence that there is natural gas close to the floor of the sea. Not some new, undiscovered source of hydrocarbons - or some new fuel.

http://marine.usgs.gov/fact-sheets/gas-hydrates/title.html

Hydrates store immense amounts of methane, with major implications for energy resources and climate, but the natural controls on hydrates and their impacts on the environment are very poorly understood.

Gas hydrates occur abundantly in nature, both in Arctic regions and in marine sediments. Gas hydrate is a crystalline solid consisting of gas molecules, usually methane, each surrounded by a cage of water molecules. It looks very much like water ice. Methane hydrate is stable in ocean floor sediments at water depths greater than 300 meters, and where it occurs, it is known to cement loose sediments in a surface layer several hundred meters thick.

The worldwide amounts of carbon bound in gas hydrates is conservatively estimated to total twice the amount of carbon to be found in all known fossil fuels on Earth.

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From reading the page, there are some dangers associated with MH mining and use.

so fast you wouldn't ever have great-grandchildren. Please fight methane hydrates if they ever do become viable.