
A secret on the ocean floor - jjp
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/deep_sea_mining
======
Pigo
_" Bram Murton, a geologist with the UK’s National Oceanography Centre, says
that if all the cars on Europe’s roads are electric by 2040, and if they use
the same kind of batteries as the Tesla Model 3, that would require 28 times
more cobalt than is produced right now."_

 _" At the moment more than 60% of all cobalt comes from the Democratic
Republic of Congo. For decades allegations of corruption and human rights
abuses have swirled around parts of its mining industry."_

 _" And with renewable power like wind and solar being installed at a frantic
pace, every turbine and every panel also requires key metals."_

I'm always wondering why more people aren't concerned about the production of
these materials we need for all the clean energy, electric cars, and more
iPhones. Is it just that it's not as bad as the oil production? Or do people
really think we'll be mining asteroids in a few years?

~~~
phlowbieuq
I'm hardly ever an optimist, but I believe that this kind of situation is
exactly what the saying "Necessity is the mother of invention" applies to. I
am 100% confident that Elon has an entire team of material scientists at Tesla
working on alternatives to these rare materials.

~~~
Pigo
I sure hope so. I'm definitely not against these new technologies. I'm just
honestly not that informed on where these materials come from generally, and
if there are any reasonable plans to source them better or replace them.

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ccozan
In short: a almost romantic cold-war story of a mission to recover a sovier
submarine triggers an interest of mining the deep ocean floor.

Not actual until the whole world is moving to an electrical future where raw
materials such as copper, cobalt, zinc, etc are in shortage, or suspect of
child work, thus an option of mine the ocean floor.

This has other drawbacks, such as destroying the ecology of the deep ocean
floor, possibly wiping out species that we might not even know.

------
pasta
_" We’ve drilled the ocean floor for oil and gas, scarred it with trenches for
communications cables, poisoned it with old radioactive waste and chemical
weapons, and polluted its remotest corners with a blizzard of discarded
plastic. So, is mining a step too far?"_

 _" I put that question to Sir David Attenborough at the launch of his series
Blue Planet II. When he sees our video of the giant machines being readied in
Papua New Guinea, he is aghast. “It’s heartbreaking,” he says."_

This sums it up for me. Our greed is sad.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
I'm not so sure. What's happened to the ocean floor is a tiny, tiny fraction
of what we've done to the land. Its just invisible, which in my mind lets
people's imaginations run free. A few cable trenches? We've got two or three
crossing the lot _my house_ is on, not to mention 3 billion other people's
lots. Mining? This ocean-floor stuff won't be a patch on what the US has done
to the southwest, nor what Russia's done in the Arctic. As for landfills,
every city, town and berg has one. I can't dig a shovel of dirt from my field
without finding a plastic fragment.

So, not to say its all good, but its just so remote from what should be our
true concerns.

~~~
nerdponx
_But the hydrothermal vents host thriving communities of marine life - snails,
worms and shrimp that have evolved to cope with very specific conditions.

In some cases these creatures are extremely rare, which is why the prospect of
deep sea mining is highly controversial._

You can't say the same for the earthworms and dandelions harmed by digging a
trench in the yard in New England.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
We're largely unaware of the millions of extinct insects etc that humanity
extinguished in our conquest of the 7 continents. Suffice it to say, all those
that evolved on land for very specific conditions are long gone. Except for
those we're bulldozing today without noticing.

------
ideonexus
It's hard not to see this from all sides: the saddening loss of biodiversity,
the world's desperate need for these metals, and the needs of poor countries
to exploit their natural resources to rise up in the world. At first I was
horrified by the mining technique being described here, and then the article
got into all the United Nations protections and regulations surrounding this
process.

It's encouraging to know the world will be monitoring this as it happens.
Often forgotten about American history is how badly we had to destroy our own
environment before we took action to make things better. Much of our country
was turned into barren wasteland as all the trees were cut down for industry,
and it took FDR deploying a literal army of tree-planters to bring the forests
back. I think we are watching the same history repeat in China now as they
deploy tree-planters along their growing deserts.

So we'll watch this new environmental front. We'll read stories about
companies breaking the rules and listen to pundits decry government
regulations that protect snails over jobs. Hopefully we'll strike a balance
and survive long enough to make asteroid-mining profitable and maybe take all
of this off-world where such environmental conflicts don't exist.

~~~
deanCommie
I'm much less optimistic than you. The amount of willful cognitive dissonance
on display here is staggering.

> “Where we’ll be operating, it’s cold and dark,” says one senior Nautilus
> executive. “There are no tuna there, they need entirely different conditions
> near the surface of the ocean.”

I expect nothing less from the mining executive to dismiss concerns that the
ocean's ecosystems are directly connected.

> "For Michael Lodge, secretary general of the International Seabed Authority,
> a UN body set up to manage deep sea mining, there’s a clear case for
> pressing ahead. “Are we going to continue to develop huge mines that destroy
> villages, alter rivers, pollute water courses, take thousands of years to
> restore, remove whole mountains? You don’t have any of that with deep seabed
> mining.”"

But this one is from the UN body itself that you are talking about monitoring
this. This man just finished saying "pollute water" in the previous sentence
then proceeded with the claim that this doesn't occur with deep seabed mining?
How can people claim this with a straight face?

I don't want to come off as naive. The article is very good at explaining the
consumer needs driving this development. 8 billion people with smartphones and
4 billion electric cars does not scale.

On the other hand, there are also hundreds of millions of people that rely on
fish for their protein. Are we willing to risk destroying our oceans to save
our land?

~~~
jimmy1
> On the other hand, there are also hundreds of millions of people that rely
> on fish for their protein. Are we willing to risk destroying our oceans to
> save our land?

Plenty of fish you can eat that live in tanks of water. Who says they need to
come from the ocean?

~~~
ideonexus
Maybe it was the tone of your comment that got you downvoted, but there's an
important point here. Fish farming is a crucial tool in preserving our oceans.
We can't keep taking fish from the open seas; we need to set up dedicated
farms to grow what we need.

------
binarray2000
I wonder, if USIC (US intelligence community) has used billionaires in the
1970s to cover up their secret operations, if they do it today?

~~~
chatmasta
I would imagine this is _very_ common. I also wonder if there are
"billionaires" who aren't even actual billionaires, just CIA operatives with
legends slowly built up around them through the years.

------
el_don_almighty
Humans do not need to mine the ocean. The proven reserves of existing mines
and future projects are more than enough for decades. Anyone who says
otherwise is only looking to save a dollar and will cut costs on environmental
sustainability. The USA is sitting on millions of tons of copper while
watching other countries mine it out of theirs. We could supply the whole
world for decades on our own if we wanted to restore our mining industry.

But there's no real economic need for US minerals.

I would argue there might be a strategic need for them, but not an economic
one.

There is certainly no economic imperative to mine the ocean floor in the face
of the potential environmental harm it may cause.

I question it's morality on the basis of balancing mankind's needs versus our
calling to manage our resources properly.

Wouldn't this money be better spent recycling e-waste where the copper and
gold content is significantly higher and the environmental impact is
demonstrably positive?

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sandworm101
So those vents, the ones covered in crabs, worms and all the other living
things, are going to be ground up into slurry? Didn't Monty Burns try
something like this?

A mile down might seem far, but that's where sperm whales and elephant seals
feed. This will come back to haunt us.

~~~
Finnucane
Why do you say that? Mining companies have a long and honorable history of
responsible environmental stewardship.

~~~
jacquesm
I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume you meant that sarcastically.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=rio+tinto+environmental+dama...](https://www.google.com/search?q=rio+tinto+environmental+damage)

For just one example. Resource extractors of all kinds are among the worlds
biggest polluters and destroyers of habitats and entire eco systems.

~~~
marcosdumay
I don't think there is any other interpretation possible for the GP. I don't
think we should adopt the habit of postpending a "\s" everywhere, at least not
on HN.

~~~
whicks
I agree wtr to the GP, but in general I disagree. You can never really be
certain.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law)

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bubbleHead
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_submarine_K-129_(1960)#...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_submarine_K-129_\(1960\)#Alternative_theories_on_Project_Azorian)

~~~
megy
> But the US had given the command and control system for nuclear weapons to
> the Russians

But what does this mean? Why would they give it to the russians, and why would
the russians accept it?

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graycat
With all the concerns in the OP, the many questions, many calls for more
research, the speculations of disasters, the lack of lots of solid, detailed
information, etc., where the UN, etc. can be involved doing much of anything
on the ocean floor will be blocked for decades.

But there is an alternative: Use the TIFO method -- try it and find out.

So, pick some spots on the ocean floor. It's a huge ocean with lots of
candidate spots.

At some of these spots, take a census of what is there. Gather some worms,
crabs, shrimp, nodules, parts of hydrothermal vents, etc. Admit that these are
not exhaustive or comprehensive but just samples.

Then at some of these spots where took the census, do the mining. Leave the
other spots as _controls_.

Then take another census. Compare the mined spots with the controls. See what
the changes and upsides and downsides are.

Since some of the candidate spots for mining are in the waters of sovereign
countries and, thus, largely out of the control of the US, likely some of this
TIFO work will be done and not blocked by the UN, etc.

Maybe then we will begin to find out.

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eisvogel
I like how the eco footprint is compared to a graphical depiction of Prominent
Hill mine in SA. I used to code telemetry on site there.

------
nhylated
Related: Radioloab episode on the Glomar explorer and how the Glomar clause
('neither confirm nor deny') was born out of it.
[http://www.radiolab.org/story/confirm-nor-
deny/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/confirm-nor-deny/)

------
arikalmen
This is still a CIA plot. Don't be fooled by the geology

