No, I am not referring to the Eocene Max.
This is a pending problem with the Methyl Hydrates (Frozen Methane) that exists in huge masses under the permafrost in Canada and Siberia. Well, with the warming of the Arctic, there is melting of the permafrost which exposes the Methyl Hydrates and will cause them too, to melt. An Atmospheric catastrophe will ensue. Sorry earth.
Should we use Natural Gas as a bridge to take us to the next fuel source? It is a fossil fuel, but it is the cleanest fossil fuel. Hydrogen is not the solution. We could immediately change our transportation systems to run on CNG if there existed an infrastructure of stations.
The problem is this... We have Corporations that have a stranglehold on our transportation system. They make a lot of money on refining oil to gasoline. Methane needs little refinement (typically it is just run through a drying process). The amount they can make on Methane is not as much as Gasoline, they have built a huge infrastructure based on processing oil and delivery of gasoline. They will not let this be abandoned. In the meantime we add 28 lbs of CO2 to the atmosphere for every gallon of gas we burn! The oil companies do not care. They actually cap wells when they are looking for oil and find Methane, why, because they cannot make as much money on Methane as they can on oil!
I am sorry that you live somewhere the Honda Civic is not sold, I think that they are only available in New York and California, but ask your Honda dealer about it, demand will create supply. It is a great vehicle, I just turned 100k miles in 3 years and a month, and it is the cleanest combustion vehicle on the road.

 

thanks for the tip about the honda dealer. im prob not going to be able to afford my own car for alteast another decade (hopefully lesser). but we get loads of cars with cng kits fitted in them, even though thats not the same thing.

while methane seems like a viable alternative to oil, it would still need to address the big question - how efficient is it as a source of fuel? i read up a little about methane hydrates on the web and learnt its becoming popular even though its drilling is a potentially dangerous process.


but in the long run, we still need to shift to energy sources cleaner than methane and natural gas. currently, methane and other non-CO2 gasses make up for 40% of green house gasses. and..."undersea landsides triggered by volcanoes that occurred more than fifty million years ago resulted in the release of methane hydrate, contributing to global warming that lasted tens of thousands of years"

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...d=aiUsVKaqDA7g