Slashdot Mirror
Cautious Steps Toward Seabed Mining (maritime-executive.com)
mdsolar writes: The deep ocean was once assumed to be lifeless and barren. Today we know that even the deepest waters teem with living creatures, some of them thought to be little changed from when life itself first appeared on the planet. The deep ocean is also essential to the earth's biosphere. It regulates global temperatures, stores carbon, provides habitat for countless species and cycles nutrients for marine food webs. Currently stressed by pollution, industrial fishing, and oil and gas development, these cold, dark waters now face another challenge: mining. With land-based mineral sources in decline, seabeds offer a new and largely untapped frontier for mineral extraction, and companies are gearing up to mine a treasure trove of copper, zinc, gold, manganese, and other minerals from the ocean floor. Scientists, regulators, and mining companies are now collaborating on frameworks and strategies for mining the seabed responsibly. Cindy Van Dover, director of the Duke University Marine Laboratory and chair of the school's Division of Marine Science and Conservation, says that's encouraging, given that seabed mining appears to be inevitable.
I've been assured that asteroid mining and 3D printing have solved all resource problems?
History has shown that "responsible mining" is an oxymoron, with Centralia, Love Canal, and many other Superfund sites being examples of this.
Because in international waters, mining companies can do whatever they want with impunity. These "frameworks" will not be legally binding. Get ready for "depleted fisheries" part 2, electric boogaloo.
Can't be done "responsibly", the responsible thing is not to do it at all!!!!!!!!
says that's encouraging, given that seabed mining appears to be inevitable.
dumbass. "encouraging", "inevitable", those words don't mean what you think they mean.
Human greed will destroy us all. Sooner of later, these mega-corporations are going to discover that you can't eat money -- but of course by then it'll be too late. Even now, we deny what's happening globally.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Just dig a giant frickin' pit mine at the bottom of the ocean. You're welcome.
The ocean is big. I mean huge. Massive. A little mineral exploration isn't going to harm it at all. And as for land based deposits it would be more accurate to say that most easily mineable deposits are being used up- there are still many, but things like rocks, national parks and civil wars get in the way.
That's actually a good point about asteroid mining. This is in many ways similar: An expensive proposition to exploit resources in a harsh environment. Instead of no atmosphere, you have massive pressure. Instead of rockets, you have submarines. Both present major engineering challenges. Both would likely be done largely if not entirely by robots.
Will Space X reduce the cost of space travel to make asteroid mining economical? Do asteroids have mineral resources that are worth exploiting? Will techniques for undersea mining prove economical?
To some extent, the environmental concerns are the biggest difference between the two.
From about 1970-74, the CIA managed to convince the world that billionaire inventor Howard Hughes had decided to invest millions to mine “manganese nodules,” balls of heavy metals that lie on the ocean floor. It was a cover story for the ship Glomar Explorer to recover a soviet nuclear submarine from the bottom of the north pacific.
Except actually, it's not really inevitable. What is? That if we mine the seabed, we will fuck it up.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Fortunately I dislike all seafood, so it's all good. /s
Let's just use the nuclear radiation that pours over the earth incessantly. We're already almost as good at it as we are at burning through our finite resources. Where could we be if all the money dumped into fossil fuels was used for renewables?
the richest Unobtanium deposit within 200 clicks in any direction. I mean, look at all that cheddar.
Just what the oceans are needing!
Will Space X reduce the cost of space travel to make asteroid mining economical?
SpaceX is barely touching the problems for asteroid mining. They're just trying to get the cost to orbit to something manageable which is super important but just a first step in a long journey. They aren't dealing at all the practical problems of actually turning an asteroid into useful materials. There is a lot more to it than just getting into space.
Do asteroids have mineral resources that are worth exploiting?
Almost certainly they have valuable materials. However that doesn't mean they can be exploited economically.
Will techniques for undersea mining prove economical?
We're already doing undersea mining (oil and gas) so the answer is a pretty clear yes.
The ocean is big. I mean huge. Massive. A little mineral exploration isn't going to harm it at all.
Nonsense The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico a few years back would indicate otherwise. The ocean is big but it's also fragile in a lot of ways. It wouldn't be hard at all for us to cause some pretty catastrophic damage. We've already filled good portions of it with plastic and we're adding more daily. We've affected the temperature of the oceans and in some places the salinity. We've created massive dead zones thanks to agricultural runoff. The notion that the oceans are so big we can't harm them is clearly and demonstrably wrong.
But, if, like First Solar, you want to use CdTe instead of silicon, looks like your raw materials are also unconstrained.
No, I'm pretty sure this is just a cover story for recovering alien technology for sekrit undersea bases.
Looks like Howard Hughes is at it again....
But I can's see how "hoovering" huge swaths of ocean floor would not be extremely destructive to ecosystems unless they just did thin stripes that never touched areas where there was significant diversity or complexity in the distribution of that diversity. These larger more monotonous areas could be revisited on a time scale that allowed the complete recolonisation of the mined areas from the untouched areas, then another strip of the untouched area could be mined. The problem is that you can't trust the mining companies to decide where and when to mine and when to wait or stay away permanently. If they find an area is particularly rich in resources they will bias their research to allow it to be mined at the expense of protecting the biological diversity in the area.
However they could bore a vast network of tunnels 1 km or more below the ocean floor without having much impact on the biosphere. However they are not interested in that because of the costs, and the fact that they are really just after the rich nodules on the surface of the ocean floor, nodules that may have formed in part due to biological processes.
We can not even regulate the harm done by commercial fishing which is much easier to observe and regulate. We certainly can not control oil spills nor contaminants from runoff from our rivers and rainfall. So now I am supposed to believe that we can effectively regulate deep ocean mining which pretty much equals dredging the deep ocean bottoms. We can't even deliver lead- free drinking water to Flint. And now there is concern over lead pipes all over our nation. But worse yet the public is not aware of how much asbestos water pipes supply home drinking water as well as water used and sold as bottled water. So I say Bull Pucky to the entire notion of ocean mining.
Lets see how good of an idea they think it was after they dredge up some prehistoric radioactive dinosaur with an appetite for Japanese food.... or cities.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
... but if we develop the tech, the Chinese will use it to rape the ocean floor like they rape the fisheries.
They can neither confirm nor deny such information.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
we have thrown away so many items made from precious metals
we might not do so poorly searching for minerals in our very own landfills