Japan To Drill Seabed for 'Burning Ice'

What could possibly go wrong?

NAH, the article is plain nonsense in one sense.

Quite a number of years ago this matter made it to the cover page of the Scientific American, as I recall. A few inches long, newly discovered pink worms were living on this "methane ice" in the depth of the Mexican Gulf.

It forms anywhere in the ocean where temperature and pressure is right, somewhere a few hundred meters and a few thousand meters in depth. By volume, it is the largest deposit of methane on earth. It has the potential for the cleanest gas fuel for the longest time. Used that way, the end product is CO2 only, instead of methane.

Other than that, who cares?

Of course, if everything goes as planned then even deep sea drilling is safe as milk.

But there is always the possibility we don't have perfect control and something goes horribly WRONG.

Of course, if everything goes as planned..... sonny, in real life nothing goes exactly as planned. Usually, because the planner's lack of foresight. Learning from it is a different kettle of fish.

Following your prescription, nobody would do anything at all. Not old things, not new things, not nothings.

In medieval times cathedrals were built with imperfect knowledge. Most are magnificent, some collapsed because it. So, according your logic, they should not be built at all, none of it. Planner's lack of complete foresight is fully there.

Same is applicable to the Apollo program, more exactly to the whole space exploration.

Should that not be undertaken for the same reasons, either?!?

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Hint: methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas, than CO2, after methane is burned.

No, actually I'm fully on board with rushing ahead, just pointing out our tendency to fail to plan adequately. I have a record of extreme safety in the engineering of projects and systems and observe that there are often shortcomings in the world that create unnecessary chaos. If someone had just been a bit more insistent or a finance person had just been a bit less oriented to profit things might have been different. But basically, we know what the ultimate end game is it's for our little planet just not exactly when. Greed and hubris push us to go a little faster and cut more corners than might be best for the common good sometimes.

I think that perhaps the piece that gets missed is that as we ascend to play in realms where a catastrophic failure has global ramifications, a higher level of care is appropriate. When a building falls down, the effect is local. Not so with some of the scenarios we are now creating. I'm all for genetic engineering. I think the people who think we can suppress any type of technology are idiots. However, Genetic engineering is another area where there is the potential for at least regional and perhaps global consequences. We are a reckless race of people and should learn from past failures but I believe the curve is getting steeper and perhaps our recognition of that is lacking.