ice-nine

Patterned off of Norwegian ventures, a German research partnership is embarking on a sea voyage in Asia to seek out a substance called methane clathrate (DE), a natural gas hydrate buried, frozen by extreme pressure, under the ocean floors, cleft to the cliffs of continental shelves. Moving away from nuclear energy resources and dependence on traditional petroleum sources, interest is growing in these newly discovered reservoirs, once thought to only exist on comets, the Moon and such, but spectacularly complicated efforts to staunch the leak during the Deep Water Horizon catastrophe. These deposits, however, represent a huge carbon-sink, exceeding the storage capacity of forests and coral reefs, and perhaps we do not have the skill to neatly exploit these sequestered reserves without causing more run-away effects.