Reply #55: Not so

[ThomWV]

Look, all hydrates are is methane trapped in the matrix of frozen water that is ice. It forms under very specific conditions but it is not just chunks of ice laying all over the ocean floor. Buried under deep water sediment off shore and its is virtually everywhere under the tundra. As I mentioned above it also forms in the crooks of pipe lines if all the moisture isn't removed from gas that is being pumped under high pressure. This stuff has been well known for a long time and if there were a way to mine or drill for it virtually every utility in the country would be powered by natural gas - but so far there is no good way to retrieve it. But at any rate its absurd to say its just laying all over the ocean floor. There might possibly be some chunks exposed in some very deep trenches, but even that is mighty unlikely. We used to have some of the very first samples of it ever brought up by a drilling rig at a lab I worked at for about 20 years. We funded something on the order of $50~100 million in research on how to get to the stuff before Congress cut our funding for it.