How much of a threat to global climate change is there still from sub-sea methane hydrate?
The existence of huge reservoirs of frozen methane hydrate around the world’s coasts is a relatively recent discovery and nobody knows quite how unstable it is or what it would take, today, to melt it. Scientists calculate that a global increase of 10°C might have been sufficient to release frozen methane hydrate during the Permian period but nobody knows whether that would be sufficient under today’s conditions. What is clear, however, is that should it be released, huge quantities of greenhouse gases would escape into the atmosphere and the world would very rapidly warm up.
