Will Undersea Hydrates Provide "Limitless" Energy and Solve Peak Oil? Exciting!

[The Cleaner]

i was unaware of this until I saw a special last night on PBS regarding the Bermuda Triangle. They also discussed undersea hydrates. I think it's exciting if they can figure a way to do it.

The Challenge of Many Lifetimes
The analogy must be made. Consider the hapless passengers in a lifeboat drifting in the Pacific Ocean with few provisions, and thinking, "Water, water everywhere, yet not a drop to drink." Here we are, occupants of Lifeboat Earth, struggling to provide sufficient fuel to meet the present and future demands of our industrial engines. We are surrounded by an almost unlimited quantity of clean, efficient natural gas, yet there is not a molecule available to burn.

Will gas ultimately be produced from gas hydrates? If so, then how will it be produced in a cost-effective manner? And who will succeed in unlocking this ice cage? Perhaps a student reading this page will be the person to unlock this puzzle, and help provide a nearly limitless amount of energy to the world!

Source: http://www.seed.slb.com/en/scictr/watch/gashydrates/how.htm

[dipsydoodle]

1. From the link you provided

"extraction would have to be done without contributing to the instability of the seafloor"
They were looking at extraction couple of years back off the coast of NC.
There seemed to a a risk of destabilising the continental shelf. Will be interesting to see if, in the future, extraction is done off the coast of another country "which doesn't matter quite as much as NC"

edit to include another link :
USGS investigations indicate that gas hydrates may cause landslides on the continental slope.

Seafloor slopes of 5 degrees and less should be stable on the Atlantic continental margin, yet many landslide scars are present. The depth of the top of these scars is near the top of the hydrate zone, and seismic profiles indicate less hydrate in the sediment beneath slide scars. Evidence available suggests a link between hydrate instability and occurrence of landslides on the continental margin. A likely mechanism for initiation of landsliding involves a breakdown of hydrates at the base of the hydrate layer. The effect would be a change from a semi-cemented zone to one that is gas-charged and has little strength, thus facilitating sliding. The cause of the breakdown might be a reduction in pressure on the hydrates due to a sea-level drop, such as occurred during glacial periods when ocean water became isolated on land in great ice sheets.
http://marine.usgs.gov/fact-sheets/gas-hydrates/title.html

[Double T]

2. 'WE' will still be burning fossil fuels and contributing to the ongoing........

severity of global warming. There has got to be another better way to power EVERYTHING without producing harmful emissions.

[GeorgeGist]

3. And the CO2 emissions...

will be exciting too.

Fossil Fuel Emission Levels
- Pounds per Billion Btu of Energy Input
Pollutant Natural Gas Oil Coal
Carbon Dioxide 117,000 164,000 208,000
Carbon Monoxide 40 33 208
Nitrogen Oxides 92 448 457
Sulfur Dioxide 1 1,122 2,591
Particulates 7 84 2,744
Mercury 0.000 0.007 0.016

[piedmont]

4. It still produces CO2 when you burn it

It's still a non-renewable resource
It may cause underwater landslides to extract it, thus creating tsunamis
We should be investing in tech to KICK our fossil fuel addiction, not to keep feeding it.

[bananas]

5. There are two problems with this

First, burning this for fuel will generate CO2 and increase global warming.
Second, global warming may cause this stuff to melt and evaporate on its own, releasing the methane to the atmosphere - methane is a much stronger greenhouse gas than CO2. They think this may have happened in the past - see "Ocean Burps and Climate Change" http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/schmidt_02/