In message , Alastair McDonald
k writes

I'm pretty sure that physical chemists can tell you about the
thermodynamics of clathrate formation, and if they can tell you, it can
be modelled.

No, the idea of methane clathrate is still pretty new, and exactly how
they behave is not well known.

Well, they were certainly something we were taught about in the early
80s, and it's not as if I was the most attentive of students ! They
were regarded as a bit funky, but the temperatures and pressures at
which they formed were known, and in the intervening 20++ years I
imagine a few more experiments have been done on them, especially given
their importance to climate research.

New ?? I don't think so !


Moreover, their release is probably dependent on pressure and temperature.

Yes.


That means that one needs to know not only how fast global temperature
will rise, and how that will affect sea temperatures at the depths of
clathrates, but we also need to how fast sea levels will rise in order to
know the pressures at the depths of clathrates.

Agreed, but again, none of this stuff is new to modelling !


It is not the sort of thing you want to
talk about. You could be labelled as a crackpot!

Don't see why...

When you predict that the end of the world (as we know it) is coming
then you are labelled as a crackpot (or a Chicken Little)-!

Which is fine until the sky falls !


Cheers, J/.
--
John Beardmore