Going to methane hydrate

The technology of mining methane hydrate is moving ahead with government research money combined with investments from private companies. The gas is trapped on the ocean floor about 2,500 feet down where the pressure and cold temperature have frozen the gas surrounded by ice. When carbon dioxide is pumped into the mushy mass the methane is released and the carbon dioxide is captured. Experiments in Alaska and Japan have proved successful in extracting the gas while sequestering the carbon dioxide. The government just gave a 40 million dollar grant to a Texas University to perform similar experiments in the Gulf of Mexico. There are vested interest in the current methods of mining oil and gas and these companies have lots of money tied up in equipment so there will be a transition period in moving toward the hydrate mining. The use of mining hydrate while simultaneously capturing carbon dioxide is the answer to climate change so moving in this direction makes sense. This process eliminates the need for fracking and all of the associated problems. There will be time for this transition since global temperatures have leveled out, the oceans are rising at the moderate rate of one tenth inch per year, the Arctic Ice is coming back and the Antarctic ice is at record levels. It seems the earth has been given a reprieve from the dire predictions of just a few years ago and the pathway to solve the problem of climate change is clearly laid out. Big oil, like Brick and Mortar stores, will be forced by technology to either change or go out of business but dinosaurs don’t die easily.