Methane Hydrate May Lead To Extinction of Mankind

I guess not many of us actually know what is methane hydrate. I do not want my blog to be too lengthy, so I will briefly explain about it. Methane hydrate or also known as methane clathrate is a frozen lattice-like substance, which can be found underlying our oceans and polar permafrost in huge amount. This crystalline combination of a natural gas and water looks remarkably like ice but burns if it meets a lit match. For more details about this substance, do read it from Wikipedia or Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory websites.

The reason this substance capture my attention to share it with you is not of its special features such can it can be burn in ice form but the potential of this substance to wipe out mankind. Yes, I am not kidding if we keep on contributing to global warming. It's not a joke.

Methane is a powerful green house gas which has a global warming potentil (GWP) of 62 over 20 years and 21 over 100 years (IPCC, 1996; Berner and Berner, 1996; vanLoon and Duffy, 2000). The sudden release of large amounts of natural gas from methane hydrate deposits has been hypothesized as a cause of past and possibly future climate changes. Events possibly linked in this way are the Permian-Triassic extinction event. Recent research carried out in 2008 in the Siberian Arctic has shown millions of tons of methane being released with concentrations in some regions reaching up to 100 times above normal.

Why is this a concern to us? Methane gas is not very stable in the atmosphere, which they literally converted to carbon dioxide which have a longer shelf life. If we did not play our part in order to reduce global warming, it might lead to the ocean's temperature increase, which later causing the methane hydrate to melt. The consequences, it triggers a positive feedback mechanism where it increases carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and lead to severe green house effect. You may read this in Discovery News on "Gas Releases Helped End Ice Ages" to know more how this may cause catastrophic effect to us.

Below is a video from YouTube about methane hydrate. Do watch it as it is a very informative.


Hope this blog does aware us about the importance of reducing global warming. I'm blogging about this in conjunction with the Earth Hour. It's part of my contribution to make an awareness to all of us. Lets save our Mother Earth in order to save ourselves. Salvation is in our hand. You may want to visit some of the websites that I have link it. Do visit some of this relevant site below too:
1) Jasa Eco official website or Jasa Eco blog
2) Earth Hour