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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.
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.
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.
Love Canal wasn't a mining site. And speaking of "responsible", Superfund is a demonstration that other parties can be colossally irresponsible as well.
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.'"
Centralia wasn't so much a product of the mine, but the fact that some genius decided to use ground immediately above an exposed coal vein (in an old strip mine pit, no less) as a landfill and BURN PIT, even after they were aware of the danger. This is a case of stupid people doing stupid things, not an actual mining disaster.
I've been assured that asteroid mining and 3D printing have solved all resource problems?
So, wait . . . I have an idea! We can just 3D print asteroids, and then mine them.
We'll then have renewable resources forever!
Take that, Koch Brothers!
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Love Canal wasn't a mining site.
Thank you, Captain Obvious. However I think the poster's point may have been that it's been historically difficult to hold corporations responsible for the messes they leave behind, and when you can't do that it means the public has to pay to clean them up.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
What makes you think that mining would cause some kind of release that hasn't happened despite all the normal disturbing of these clathrates? Do you think that suddenly the clathrates will explode when touched?
If this was in any way possible, it would have already happened from some other process.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
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.