Marine Gas Hydrates: Future Energy or Environmental Killer?

Marine gas hydrates are regard as a new energy in the 21st century with the characteristics of high energy density, huge amount of resources and cleaning. It has important significances for resources development, environmental protection and global climate changing. This large marine gas hydrate reservoir is further suggested as an important component of the global carbon cycle and as a future energy source. But its decomposition and release can lead to decrease the stability of seabed, causing submarine landslide. And its overflowed can intensify the greenhouse effect, interaction between which can lead to more serious ecological and environmental disasters. Due to the limitations of the occurrence mode and the technical level of marine gas hydrates, at present, the development and utilization of the resources are still tentative. How to use these future energy is a challenge, it must be considered the only way to protect biodiversity and vulnerable marine ecosystems effectively. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier B.V. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of International Materials Science Society.