But the science is settled, right?

For once in a blue moon, a story about something that isn't as dire as first thought. There were fears (i.e. alarmism) that the methane locked at the bottom of the world's oceans could be brought to the surface by "global warming", but apparently, the science isn't as settled as some (Rudd, Wong, Gore, Hansen etc etc) would have us believe:

The concern has been that as the world gets warmer, some of the clathrates [methane compounds] would escape into the atmosphere and have a dramatic amplifying effect on global warming.

The CSIRO's Dr David Etheridge says the circumstantial evidence was not good.

"There's evidence in the long-term past, millions of years ago, that this may have occurred," he said.

"It is circumstantial evidence only. What we needed to know for the future is whether the warming that we are currently seeing and which will increase in the future will destabilise these clathrates."
...
"I think this confirms that source of methane, that potential source of methane, is more stable than we previously thought and that gives us some upper bounds to the future releases that we might expect with a warming world."

A non-alarmist article from the ABC? Heresy - that journo should be burnt at the stake!

Read it here.