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In this Chapter we have reviewed the available literature to discuss how the changes in the atmospheric concentration of methane can affect the future of climate. There is an increasing interest in the exploitation of natural gas for the energy policy by all Countries. In fact its physical properties and its about constant chemical composition (as largely constituted by methane) recommend it to restrict pollutants during combustion processes and to give the best ratio between energetic content and CO2 emissions, with respect to all other oil derivatives and fossil sources. Moreover natural gas seems to promise more conspicuous reserves than oil, then assuring a “methane peak” more delayed in time than “oil peak”. However, during the last century, we were in the presence of an increasing accumulation of methane in the atmosphere, as never was occurred in the last 800,000 years. Note that methane is much more effective (25 times) as Green House Gas (GHG) than CO2. The main suspicion about the causes of this accumulation is charged on the leaks of gas that occurs during the extraction and management activities. On the other hands, the increasing accumulation of methane in the atmosphere could influence the future of the climate because of two dangerous effects: the first is the fast achievement of a no-return threshold, beyond which the Global Warming (GW) become out of human control. This is made easier by a non linear positive feedback, promoted by the increasing of the same GW on the dynamics of emission processes from the natural sources (destabilization of hydrates, stimulation of metabolic production by plants and animals, etc.). For these complex reasons it will need to know better and, if possible, to control the emission mechanisms by natural sources and, besides, to study how ameliorate the present extraction technologies or invent novel ones that will guarantee an about null gas leaks. That needs to prevent the threat for the future of next human generations. On these purposes we organized the presentation of this Chapter according to the following Sections.

The Role of Methane Emissions on Ancient and Present Climatic Changes