Environmentalists are not keen about the prospect of opening up multiple methane hydrate mines. "We cannot afford to burn more than a small fraction of traditional gas resources, much less mine new frontiers," complains oceanographer and climate change scientist Jeremy Leggett. "Thinking of burning methane hydrates is like opening a Pandora's box knowing a murderous and quite probably genocidal genie lurks within it," he says.

One problem is that "much more methane escapes during the production and processing of natural gas than had previously been realized," Darley says. Methane is 20 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, so a mere 3 percent rate of leakage from ever-lengthening gas pipelines can undermine the environmental benefits of burning it instead of oil. According to the latest available EPA figures, pipelines and wells in the U.S. leaked around 1.5 percent of their methane into the atmosphere in 2000. Worldwide, leaky gas pipelines and other gas infrastructure could be spewing as much as 2.3 percent, according to the International Energy Agency.

Texas A&M University oceanographer Ian MacDonald has spent his career diving under the Gulf of Mexico's towering oil rigs, studying the orange and white bacterial mats and 6-foot-tall tube worm colonies that feast on yellowed mounds of methane hydrates. He thinks exploiting the giant resource to feed the world's thirsty machines is a good idea. "The more gas we can use the better, if we have to use fossil fuels," he says. "If gas hydrate could accomplish that, I would be all for it."

But a pedestrian matter such as fuel is nothing compared to the grander mysteries of methane hydrates, MacDonald says.

"If it turns out that there is as much carbon in hydrate as we think there is," MacDonald says, "the discovery with respect to the climate and the carbon cycle is one of those paradigm-shifting things." Whether or not tomorrow's industries chug on gas from methane hydrates, "the real mystery of hydrates," he says, "is that this huge pool of carbon, over geologic time, can't stay as it is."

Over the last half century, carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases have warmed the deep oceans that encase methane hydrates by about three-tenths of a degree, according to the latest figures from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. If the deep seas warm by 2 degrees Celsius, the depth that hydrates require to remain stable increases from 550 meters to 800 meters, according to the American Association of Petroleum Geologists.

Without a corresponding tidal wave of extra water to hold them in check, the hydrates will transform into silvery bubbles once again, offering up their powerful, heat-trapping methane to the water column and the ever-thickening blanket of gases poaching the planet.

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