I wonder how many of these bubbles are harvestable into useful fuel? Prevent a crisis and stockpile fuel at the same time? Obviously it's nicer if we could get everyone to sign the Kyoto treaty but ...
Take ocean clathrates, for example. At a certain point, the ocean may become warm enough to destabilize them. What do we do in that case? Put up collection tents over the ocean that are millions of square kilometers large? The problem just doesn't seem tractable.
But who knows? I'm certainly not the sort of engineer that is qualified to answer these questions.
that ignores the whole CH4 being a short term problem thing though...