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Kennett argues that much of the geological research community has turned a blind eye to the evidence of methane hydrate's role in climate change. "It's a paradigm problem. The community is not prepared at this time to make a paradigm shift," he says. "[Climate change] is the biggest issue of our time. I think we need to look at this."

He suggests we start by taking a cold, hard look at the Arctic, where a great deal of methane hydrate exists in permafrost and under the continental shelf. Because of the extreme cold, hydrates are stable at shallower depths in the Arctic than anywhere else on Earth. Warm up the Arctic a bit, and these shallow hydrates will be the first to come apart, Kennett warns. "Is this already happening? Are we living in it now?"

Kennett has valid reasons for wondering. Inside the Arctic Circle, the ocean is reportedly bubbling like a freshly uncorked magnum of Dom Perignon. In September, scientists aboard a Russian research vessel described methane gas fizzing up from the seabed in several areas of the Arctic. Just a few days later, British scientists exploring the ocean west of the Norwegian island of Svalbard reported hundreds of these methane plumes.

It all sounds pretty ominous, but researchers aren't ready to attribute the recently observed methane bubbles in the Arctic to melting hydrates. Scientific reports of the plumes have not yet been published or peer-reviewed. Although Kennett is fearful of a methane catastrophe, he's not yet sure this is it. "I need to be convinced," he says.

He's not the only one. For one thing, says Archer, "there weren't observations before, so it's hard to say if it's a new phenomenon." Perhaps methane has been sputtering up from the Arctic for decades, with no one around to see it. What's more, many potential sources of methane exist. As bacteria break down thawing organic matter, they release the gas as a byproduct. "There's all this juicy organic carbon preserved in these areas," Archer points out. "These methane escapes could be from decomposing peat."

Ruppel, too, is a long way from ringing any alarm bells over the Arctic bubbles. "Perhaps people are jumping to conclusions before the story is really clear in the Arctic," she says. "My suspicion is that almost all of that methane has nothing to do with gas hydrates."

But let's imagine, for the sake of argument, that the Arctic gas plumes do turn out to be from methane hydrates. Does that mean it's curtains for life as we know it? Not necessarily.

Bush Sin 1: Blew hot air on global warming

By refusing to agree to mandatory greenhouse gas emission reductions, the Bush administration gave major developing nations, such as China and India, carte blanche to do the same. After all, why should these growing economies do anything about global warming when the one of the world's biggest greenhouse gas polluters and richest nations couldn't be bothered?

"The most shameful thing we've done of all is to walk away from the international debate on climate, which has crippled the debate and caused everyone else in the world to think that we're hypocritical and deluded," says Bill McKibben, author and climate activist. "The Chinese have all the coal they need to destroy the atmosphere by themselves to get rich, and we have no moral objection as to why they shouldn't just go ahead and burn it, because that's precisely what we did."

They don't call it global warming for nothing. The result: eight precious years wasted in the fight against global warming as we watched carbon-dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere shoot up, while scientists' predictions about the speed and severity of global warming became increasingly dire.

Obama mission

Signal that the United States will change its shameful record on global warming -- even before taking office. Attend the international climate talks in Poznan, Poland, this December, and electrify the rest of the world with a promise that the U.S. is serious about reducing greenhouse gases. That could set the stage for the major climate negotiations to come in Copenhagen, Demark, in December 2009, when a climate treaty to succeed Kyoto needs to be hammered out.

Last Saturday, I went to a concert by a club called Project Global Cooling (PGC). Under the guidance of Clay Burell, its advisor, PGC is a global club held in 6 other countries around the world. The PGC concert was not only held in Korea, but in other countries, all dedicated to stopping global warming, and encourage “global cooling” (Hence, the name). It was held at a place called The Spot in a place near Hongik University in central Seoul. The lineup consisted of Rated-E, Jeong Joo, Poppa Midnight, Kong 151, E.X.Plosive, Dog Soup, and ABC Analysis.

Photo credits to Annie Park

Though there were many students and people that attended the crowd, the crowd was seemed mainly indifferent most of the concert, as the concert attendance was mainly supplied by the incentive of extra credit, instead of passion and fervor for music.