http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/feed/a52586-2000jan31.htm
is a nice article from the Washington Post on the effort to make Lake
Nyos safer, along with
an amusing idea for getting electric power from the dissolved gas. A
little bright spot in the middle (well, northwest) of Cameroon. :)
I'll stop now.
"Michael M. Butler" wrote:
>
> Hmm, nope, the Web tells me that I'm thinking of Lake Nyos, and that was
> C02, suddenly released when the lake overturned after prolonged
> degassing of subsurface magma to the deepest parts of the lake.
>
> This web thing can be pretty cool.
>
> "Michael M. Butler" wrote:
> >
> > Methane hydrates were a complete surprise to me! I did a search on
> > methane crystal ocean
> > with google and got a slew of cool websites, including
> > http://www.ocean.washington.edu/people/grads/vbhat/ocean450/workshop/g3_prog.html
> >
> > Thanks, Phil!
> >
> > MMB
> >
> > > The methane crytals really are there, in vast abundance, but were only
> > > fairly recently identified as such, because it's hard to get them to the
> > > surface intact. There has been a lot of speculation since their discovery
> > > that they might serve as a useful energy supply in the near future,
> > > comparable in total ergs to natural gas, but there is also the worry that
> > > the layers might not be all that stable...
> >
> > Whew. Isn't there a story about some methane event (not sure if it's
> > methane hydrates or not)
> > with some lake, where evidence suggests that a sudden burp did seriously
> > bad things to the local ecology (a mass-die-off, IIRC)?
> >
> > Hmm, better fire up google again...
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