
The potential of deep-sea mud as a source of rare-earth elements (2018) - weregiraffe
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-23948-5
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sanqui
I wonder what would be the impact of any mining operations on deep sea
wildlife. The article doesn't seem to discuss this.

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drugme
The fact that the authors don't (when they surely must be aware) makes you
wonder if they're on the take somehow.

Or have been pressured into silence.

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zenexer
If you click on the authors' names, you'll get enough info to roughly
determine their areas of expertise. Based on a few names I clicked, it sounds
as though they're focused more on brainstorming potential solutions for energy
and resource shortages than evaluating the environmental impacts of those
solutions. They'll probably leave the latter part to their peers who are more
qualified to make such assessments.

There's no argument that environment impact needs to be evaluated--that's just
not what these particular people are qualified to assess. It's unlikely that
the entirety of academia will avoid discussing the potential consequences of
these ideas. Those who are qualified to do so will.

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sillyquiet
nah, let's go hunt for rare-earth elements left over from the creation of the
solar system out where we aren't in danger of stressing an already stressed
ecosystem.

Let's pay the tremendous up-front costs of lifting mining operations out and
reap the long (caveat: very long) term benefits of doing so.

edit: In case that came across as sarcasm, I am in dead earnest. Whatever the
relative costs of so-called asteroid mining versus deep sea mining, the
ecological cost tips the balance waaay in the favor of asteroid mining. It's
just that we'd have to have a longer-term mindset than we currently do.

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danmaz74
Just for the sake of discussion, I'll say that sending anything into space
also creates a lot of pollution on Earth (just think about all the energy
necessary to build and power our rockets). Mining asteroids would still have
an ecological impact - higher, lower, I don't know. But something to keep in
mind.

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sillyquiet
This is very true, but my thinking is that cost is almost all front-loaded -
once we get equipment up there to accomplish the mining, the launches in
support would not be terribly frequent, I think, right?

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danmaz74
That's possible, depending on how much fuel will the operation consume when in
space - and where it will come from. At the moment, I think we would need to
send the fuel to move all cargo from Earth. Being able to create it directly
in space would change everything, of course.

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okket
I'm no expert, but is lifting stuff from the deep sea not exorbitantly
expensive? The word 'costs' does only appear twice in the article, and there
it talks only about potential reducing costs by separating the mud with a
hydrocyclone (1) on the sea floor...

(1)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrocyclone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrocyclone)

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jessaustin
Mining is also quite expensive. Conceptually, the process for lifting from the
deep ocean is quite a bit simpler: attach the load to an airtight bag, and
release a little bit of air into the bag. The load will float to the surface.
There would still be a process involved in getting compressed air to the deep,
but it might be simpler than boring holes in the earth.

Of course, it's still likely that the costs involved mean this idea wouldn't
work in today's market conditions. That doesn't mean that conditions would
never change...

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Retric
Quite a bit of mining involves picking stuff up off the ground. The worldwide
mining industry is surprisingly small due to it’s high efficiency.

Across all materials from coal, diamonds, salt, copper, etc it all adds up to
just ~600billion per year in revenue and profit margins that jump all over the
pace from year to year.

PS: Rare earth minerals are also generally discarded. It’s the effort to
remove them from ore that’s the issue not finding them.

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jeffreyrogers
Pretty cool, but worth noting that most rare-earths aren't actually that rare
and supply shortages tend to be because of the long delay in ramping up mine
production. We aren't close to running out of any metals/minerals the last I
heard. I'd be interested in seeing the economics of mining this mud compared
to more traditional methods.

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tzfld
I'd be more interested to see how economy reacts if a massively used resource
going to be depleted.

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Cthulhu_
We've been getting warned about reaching peak oil / diminishing oil
production, but so far that hasn't happened yet as far as I know (that moment
has been postponed again because of the highly destructive fracking process)

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jayalpha
Peak-a-Boo [https://cassandralegacy.blogspot.com/2018/05/rare-earth-
depl...](https://cassandralegacy.blogspot.com/2018/05/rare-earth-depletion-
non-solution-for.html)

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eponeponepon
This has a slight air of the manganese nodule seabed mining that was
propagated as cover for the Glomar Explorer expedition...

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MarkSummer
Ha, agree. This is an amazing story if you haven't read about it:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Azorian](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Azorian)

The kind of thing that kind of makes you second guess the "whacky" conspiracy
crackpots.

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robinduckett
Yes, let's anger Poseidon. That's a good idea.

