[HN Gopher] Mining robot stranded on Pacific Ocean floor in deep...
___________________________________________________________________
Mining robot stranded on Pacific Ocean floor in deep-sea mining
trial
Author : giuliomagnifico
Score : 74 points
Date : 2021-04-29 11:52 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| monkeybutton wrote:
| I don't really know anything about geology so apologies if this
| is a naive question: Is the effort to mine under the ocean
| predicated on the belief that we only have access to ~29% of the
| precious metals / diamonds etc. because that's just how much of
| earth's surface isn't underwater?
| warmwaffles wrote:
| I know that mining methane hydrate off of the ocean floor has
| been a discussion. We would be wise to try and get that out and
| contain it / burn it before it is released into the atmosphere
| as pure methane.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| It's been forming there for a billion years. There's no
| hurry.
| vegetablepotpie wrote:
| Global warming is causing undersea methane to be released
| much faster than it has in the past.
|
| > For the second year in a row, his team have found crater-
| like pockmarks in the shallower parts of the Laptev Sea and
| East Siberian Sea that are discharging bubble jets of
| methane, which is reaching the sea surface at levels tens
| to hundreds of times higher than normal.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/oct/27/sleeping-
| gia...
| nitrogen wrote:
| The hurry is if warming temperatures cause it all to
| sublimate and release rapidly as gas, AKA the clathrate
| gun.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Its distribution is sparse and on the surface. Its been
| forming for a billion years. Conclusion: it's sublimating
| all the time and being replaced.
|
| If there's any danger, its from the billions of cubic
| meters under the ocean floor (the source of the nodules,
| seeping from underneath). More carbon than all the oil we
| ever burned in our civilization so far.
|
| Is that in any danger of accelerated release? I've not
| heard of that.
| vkou wrote:
| > Conclusion: it's sublimating all the time and being
| replaced.
|
| In the long-term, yes, it will eventually reach a steady
| state. In the long term, though, we'll all be dead.
|
| In the short-term, on timescales that human beings care
| about, no, we can release too much of it too quickly,
| before the system reaches a steady equilibrium. Methane
| has an atmospheric half-life measured in decades, so
| getting too much of it, too fast, can significantly spike
| temperatures.
| [deleted]
| tyingq wrote:
| There's this blurb from the company website:
|
| _" Polymetallic nodules are lumps of minerals that range in
| size from just a few millimeters to tens of centimeters and are
| found in the abyssal areas of the oceans basins of the world.
| Known deposits are found in various quantities around a water
| depth of 3500 to 6000 meters. They lie on a relatively flat
| seafloor of soft sediment in a large surface area. It is
| estimated that the nodules present in the Clarion Clipperton
| Fracture Zone (CCFZ) contain more nickel (Ni), manganese (Mn)
| and cobalt (Co) than all land-based reserves combined.
| Furthermore, they contain significant amounts of copper (Cu)
| and molybdenum (Mo) (1)."_
|
| https://www.deme-gsr.com/exploration/
| jcranmer wrote:
| There are a few factors pushing it, I think:
|
| * There's thought to be several regions of the seabed where the
| mining operation can basically just scoop up the top layer and
| get economically extractable ore out of it.
|
| * The seabed is international waters, not under the
| jurisdiction of any country. I know UNCLOS does prescribe some
| rules for deep-sea mining, but it wouldn't surprise me if some
| of the ambitions for mining here were based off of being able
| to dodge undesired (from the mining companies' perspective)
| national rules around mining, such as taxes or environmental
| regulations.
|
| * The ocean floor is a lot more of a dead zone than anything
| terrestrial. (That doesn't mean it's entirely dead). Again, I
| suspect many are hoping that environmental destructiveness in
| the seafloor goes much more unnoticed, because there's much
| less love for preserving microscopic Archaea species than
| fluffy birds or the like.
| sp332 wrote:
| It's true that it's in international waters, but there is an
| International Seabed Authority that administers the area. We
| can argue whether they should have allowed mining here, but
| it's not a naked land grab.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipperton_Fracture_Zone
| mistrial9 wrote:
| without research, my feeling is that it is not a fertile
| place, but instead a resting place for foul substances and
| toxins that settle. So the damage is not like a tank running
| through a forest, rather it is more like stirring up a foul
| soup
| flohofwoe wrote:
| I hope it's not just another cover story to get ahold of a sunken
| Russian submarine this time ;)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Azorian
| PLenz wrote:
| Ha! I see our brains are in sync!
| pjmorris wrote:
| 'Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story Of American Submarine
| Espionage', Sherry Sontag covers this story and a number of
| others of similar ilk.
| pelagic_sky wrote:
| Fascinating read! Thanks for that link.
| okprod wrote:
| The aliens from The Abyss are actually back
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Or if it is a sub, let's get it out of there to reduce marine
| pollution.
| baryphonic wrote:
| > Critics, including environmentalist David Attenborough, say
| seabed mining is untested and has a largely unknown environmental
| impact. Google, BMW, AB Volvo, and Samsung SDI have backed a call
| for a moratorium on deep-sea mining. > > Dr Sandra Schoettner,
| deep-sea biologist at Greenpeace, said: "Losing control of a
| 25-tonne mining machine at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean should
| sink the idea of ever mining the deep sea."
|
| Sheesh, I guess these particular environment activists can never
| allow anything new, since we don't know what impact it will have
| and any failure of any part of a system, no matter how repairable
| or minor, is _ipso facto_ proof that the project is a disaster.
| This would be like completely writing off SpaceX after a Starship
| tank rupture in a launchpad test.
|
| The article seems to indicate that this project is being done
| responsibly, with oversight and caution. Things will go wrong (as
| they have), but this wasn't some sort of catastrophic failure
| like Deepwater Horizon or something. I'm curious to see if they
| can extract these minerals without doing widespread environmental
| damage, and I think they should at least be given a chance to
| prove it or not.
| carapace wrote:
| > I think they should at least be given a chance to prove it or
| not.
|
| Why? What happens if they are not given that chance?
|
| I don't think there is any responsible way to mine the ocean.
| Not when Musk's rockets are about to open the "Final Frontier"
| for us. There is one (1) living planet in the entire known
| universe. But there are plenty of rocks and minerals and metal
| just floating around out there for the taking. No environment
| to damage, eh? (Well, I mean, the rockets pollute a bit. But
| overall they don't kill the oceans. That's the important bit.)
|
| You have to realize that it's not "environmentalists vs FOO",
| it's all of us vs. our own greed and stupidity.
|
| "The Earth!? That's where I keep all my stuff!" ~ the Tick
| xwolfi wrote:
| But I'm sure the environment can adapt too. I mean, it's not
| like anyone cared about preserving species and ecosystems
| before we arrived, catastrophic events happened, population
| of animales died and arose, for billions of years. Billions.
|
| So we're the latest catastrophic event, big deal. The earth
| will adapt as it always has and at least we can try to
| discuss our impact, unlike an asteroid or a syberian forest
| fire.
| fghthidudhmbdi wrote:
| Earth will only be habitable for less than 1 billion more
| years. We do not have any evidence of abstractly
| intelligent life forms outside of human beings. There is
| not enough time left for another intellect to evolve.
|
| Like it or not, if we do not successfully become a space-
| faring species, all life known in the universe will be
| wiped out.
| noxer wrote:
| >all life known in the universe will be wiped out.
|
| Is that a problem for you?
|
| And why would it not come to existence again somewhere
| eventually?
|
| Its interesting to think about such stuff but it really
| should not have an impact on decisions we make today
| because it just not possible to affect a so distant
| future (thousands of years) in a meaning full way.
|
| Just imagine humans 2000 years ago what could they have
| possibly done that would have had a positive
| environmental effect today. And that's just 2000 years
| ago.
|
| If you apply this to mining the see floor. Do you
| seriously think that if we today decide that human should
| not do this that it wont be done in 2000 years? I think
| is far more likely it just pushed a little back in time
| an insignificant little, maybe one human life maybe even
| two who knows but in 4021 no one cares if it started in
| the year 2021 or 2121 that's for sure.
|
| Also if you want our species to become multi planetary
| then the only logical thing to do is to use all resources
| available achieve this as soon as possible. If we used up
| the resources or have way more humans and no spear
| resources no one is going to achieve it anymore.
| moistbar wrote:
| Humans are never going to destroy the environment, only
| themselves.
| nerdponx wrote:
| My understanding is that marine ecosystems are interconnected
| and can be surprisingly sensitive, and that we humans depend on
| them mre than you'd think. It also makes sense to assume that
| deep-sea mining is damaging and disruptive by default. It
| therefore makes sense to be very very cautious about it.
|
| That's as far as I can wrap my head around it. Maybe there are
| people here with some expertise who can elaborate.
| bmitc wrote:
| When have environmentalists ever been listened to?
| emiliobumachar wrote:
| Nuclear power had huge setbacks due to environmental concerns
| accepted by a majority of the people. Also, the ban on
| supersonic flights over noise pollution.
| buran77 wrote:
| > can never allow anything new, since we don't know what impact
| it will have
|
| When they say "we don't know the impact" it's on a range from
| "pretty bad" to "disastrous". Mining _never_ had any kind of
| net positive impact on the environment so it 's not a matter of
| "hey, maybe we actually help the fish and wildlife by mining
| here".
| stuff4ben wrote:
| Humans as a whole have never had net positive impact on the
| environment either. Responsible deep-sea mining, with
| oversight and regulations in place should be allowed. Until
| we can determine the impact, I don't see why it should be
| banned outright.
| j-pb wrote:
| That's not how safety regulation works, where the burden of
| proof is on the potential offenders side.
|
| We don't allow random chemicals as food additives and drugs
| and recall them if they turn out to not be safe. We show
| that they're save before we allow them on the market.
| stuff4ben wrote:
| Exactly! How else do you prove deep sea mining is safe
| without trials like this?
| j-pb wrote:
| Ecological surveys. Disturbing a delicate ecosystem by
| driving a roomba the size of a bulldozer through it is
| one of those, "that's obviously gonna fuck things up",
| things where you just need to look at prexisting
| scientific data.
|
| Much like the question: "is eating half a kilo of table
| salt a viable cancer treatment?"
| buran77 wrote:
| > Until we can determine the impact, I don't see why it
| should be banned outright.
|
| Do you apply this philosophy in your life? If the risk was
| for you to take on yourself would you think the same way?
| Or only when the risk is to some far off people, in a far
| off land, or some future generation?
| stuff4ben wrote:
| This makes no sense. We perform trials to gather data,
| just like any scientist. That's what this is, not strip-
| mining the sea-floor outright. If the trials proved that
| this can be done in a responsible way, why not do it? But
| instead you just want to ban it without gathering any
| data at all.
| buran77 wrote:
| We've been mining for quite some time now. Have we ever
| been able to do it without major negative impact on the
| environment, at least in the easiest, most practiced of
| conditions? Mining "in a responsible way" is like "clean
| coal". It's a euphemism for something that still does a
| lot of damage but fills some pockets enough to call it
| whatever they want. The scientists are there just to
| minimize that damage.
| carapace wrote:
| > Humans as a whole have never had net positive impact on
| the environment either.
|
| It's not written in stone. Check out the story of the Loess
| plateu: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loess_Plateau#Agricul
| ture_and_...
|
| We destroyed it (it looked like a Lunar landscape) and then
| we regenerated it.
|
| > Until we can determine the impact, I don't see why it
| should be banned outright.
|
| You're inverting the logic: you don't set fire to the house
| and then "determine the impact" afterward.
|
| Keep in mind that the cure for cancer isn't down there,
| cheap fusion isn't down there, the fountain of youth isn't
| down there. We don't really need those minerals, we just
| want to make money. But the time when profit was more
| important than living healthy oceans has passed, surely?
| stuff4ben wrote:
| > It's not written in stone. Check out the story of the
| Loess plateu
|
| Which is why I said "as a whole". You pointed out a
| single example of when humans did a good thing for the
| environment, but as a whole (meaning all humans for all
| of history) we have had a net negative impact on the
| planet.
|
| Regarding determining the impact, you can't just outright
| ban something without knowing the impact. Which is why
| they're doing these trials. It's not wholesale strip-
| mining the sea floor, it's a test of technology to see if
| it can be done sustainably and with minimal negative
| impact to the environment.
|
| edit: formatting
| carapace wrote:
| > Which is why I said "as a whole". You pointed out a
| single example of when humans did a good thing for the
| environment, but as a whole (meaning all humans for all
| of history) we have had a net negative impact on the
| planet.
|
| Fair enough. (I'm usually the one pointing that out in
| these sorts of discussions. I just want to be clear that
| we can go the other way and foster life instead of just
| destroying it.)
|
| > you can't just outright ban something without knowing
| the impact.
|
| Why not?
|
| I mean, setting aside the argument that we already know
| that the impact will be bad, let's pretend that the last
| few centuries of examples haven't given us enough
| information to make informed predictions about how bad
| the "impact" will be.
|
| What are the consequences if we just banned marine
| mining?
|
| - - - -
|
| From my POV, you have to make the case that any mining on
| Earth _at all_ makes economic sense, given that there is
| only one living planet in the solar system, and there are
| lots of things to mine in space (where there are no
| living things, yet), and we have already heavily
| "impacted" the existing global ecosystem with our mining
| and agriculture.
|
| Look, if we're going to get through all this and become a
| successful space-faring species we have got to start
| taking the long view, and value things properly.
| stuff4ben wrote:
| So you predicate your argument on economic feasibility
| and then throw up "space mining"?!?! Not sure where to go
| with that. But look, I do want to get there, but even
| with all the Elon fanboi-ing in the world, we're not
| gonna get there in our lifetimes. At least 75-100 years
| out before it starts to make economic sense given current
| technology and risk/reward.
|
| So if the company behind the deep-sea mining robot didn't
| think it was economically feasible, they wouldn't have
| built it. Obviously it does make economic sense and the
| best way to determine the ecologic impact is to do
| trials. And I did mention earlier that government
| regulation should also be in place. I don't see why this
| is such a hard thing for people to grasp.
| carapace wrote:
| > So you predicate your argument on economic feasibility
| and then throw up "space mining"?!?!
|
| Absolutely. I'm a long-term thinker.
|
| From the long-term perspective the living Earth is
| incredibly valuable: the only source of _biomass_ in the
| known Universe. In contrast, whatever minerals are down
| there on the sea floor are as common as dirt in our local
| neighborhood (Sol and its planets and asteroids, etc.)
|
| It just doesn't make any sense to burn up our planet for
| short-term gains.
|
| What's the rush?
|
| > I do want to get there, but even with all the Elon
| fanboi-ing in the world, we're not gonna get there in our
| lifetimes. At least 75-100 years out before it starts to
| make economic sense given current technology and
| risk/reward.
|
| Okay, but doesn't that make it even more imperative that
| we take good care of the Earth, since we can't yet leave?
|
| > Obviously it does make economic sense...
|
| Only in the short-term, and only if the consequences can
| be ignored by the folks making money from it.
|
| > the best way to determine the ecologic impact is to do
| trials.
|
| Strong disagree. Both on principle, and on practical
| grounds. IANAOceanologist, but it seems to me that we
| know there will be impacts. This is not a scientific
| expedition, it's a prelude to destruction.
|
| Oklahoma has earthquakes now. Is it due to fracking? We
| don't actually know in any official or scientific sense.
| How could we determine that they are a result of fracking
| or not? The folks doing the fracking insist that it's not
| them.
|
| We know there are going to be impacts that affect the
| entire planet. The question is "How bad would the
| destruction be?" And the answer is "Don't destroy life
| for money."
| stuff4ben wrote:
| Guess we'll have to agree to disagree. ALthough I do
| agree with "Don't destroy life for money". Cheers, have a
| great rest of your day!
| moistbar wrote:
| >We don't really need those minerals, we just want to
| make money.
|
| They're battery materials. Batteries are important to
| ensuring the success of intermittent renewable energy
| sources.
| carapace wrote:
| Batteries are not a great idea.
|
| E.g. an electric car should use alcohol fuel and a small
| generator rather than fancy batteries.
|
| You can grow sugar crops, convert them to fuel
| (reclaiming the non-fuel parts), and then use that to
| power your infrastructure. It's carbon-neutral,
| environmentally sound (waaaaaaay more than batteries),
| and you can do it today. No sea mines required.
|
| The only downside is that you have to live within your
| solar power budget, but we have to do that anyway to
| counter global warming (until cheap fusion becomes a
| thing.)
|
| Here's a video of Vaclav Smil at Driva Climate Investment
| Meeting 2019 giving a talk called "Investing in a
| changing climate - what we can learn from historic energy
| transitions". https://youtu.be/gkj_91IJVBk The
| presentation is IMO very interesting, and the conclusion
| is sobering: "Only absolute cuts in energy use would
| work." ( https://youtu.be/gkj_91IJVBk?t=2283 )
|
| We are going to have to use less energy. We don't have to
| endure lower QoL but we do have to achieve our Quality of
| Life _more efficiently_.
| moistbar wrote:
| Electricity can come from whatever source you need.
| You're not tied to a specific fuel with batteries like
| you are with an ICE or would be with the
| alcohol/generator system you proposed. You can charge a
| Tesla off of an alcohol generator and have it drive the
| same as if you charged it with a diesel or petrol
| generator. The same can't be said about alcohol- or
| petrol-powered vehicles.
|
| Global catastrophe blocks out the sun? Fine, charge off
| nuclear. Nuclear generators destroyed by war or
| terrorism? Just use wind. The flexibility is what makes
| electric cars superior, and being able to store energy is
| what makes intermittent renewables like solar and wind
| viable when it's not sunny or windy outside.
|
| Most importantly, in a perfect world you'd only have to
| make the battery once. Some means of recycling dendrite-
| ridden lithium back into usable material would go an
| exceptionally long way as well.
|
| We gotta store excess power somewhere, though.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >Mining never had any kind of net positive impact on the
| environment.
|
| The environment would be in much worse shape if
| industrialization had been fueled with wood rather than coal.
|
| Poisoning a few watersheds in Asia for lithium and cobalt is
| far preferable to continued oil and coal extraction which
| would poison orders of magnitude more
|
| There's no good, just less bad and we don't know if undefined
| impact sea mining is less bad or more bad than the status
| quo.
|
| I'm inclined to think it's probably worse per amount of
| material moved than conventional mining but I suspect there
| may be a few niches where productivity per amount of material
| moved is sufficiently greater to have a lesser overall
| impact.
| buran77 wrote:
| > Poisoning a few watersheds in Asia
|
| There are plenty of ways to rationalize anything into
| making it seem fine or even great, at least by comparison.
| Just because it's framed in a binary manner where one
| option is clearly the worst doesn't make the other option
| _good_. It 's still a fallacy. Your cynicism might block
| you from realizing that mining for coal instead of cutting
| down trees doesn't make it "a net positive" for the
| environment, just a lower net negative.
|
| So I'm glad that we can agree on one thing though. Mining
| never had any kind of net positive impact on the
| environment.
| logifail wrote:
| > The environment would be in much worse shape if
| industrialization had been fueled with wood rather than
| coal
|
| Wouldn't a wood-powered industrialization period have
| incentivized the growing of trees?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Wouldn't a wood-powered industrialization period have
| incentivized the growing of trees?
|
| A wood-powered industrialization would have led to mass
| deforestation and then fallen over hard. (Or, more
| likely, switched fuels.)
| ncmncm wrote:
| > (Or, more likely, switched fuels.)
|
| That, in fact, occurred. Steel was produced using wood
| charcoal for millennia, denuding huge swaths of forest,
| which often became desert rather than growing back. Such
| deserts can sometimes be reclaimed by careful
| stewardship.
| ratsforhorses wrote:
| >Poisoning a few watersheds in Asia for lithium and cobalt
| is far preferable to continued oil and coal extraction.
|
| Seems very cynical and reductive..."a few watersheds"... if
| one was to replace the ravenous need of workers for privacy
| in new electric cars...seems like a lot of lithium...
| here's hoping for fast development of solid state
| batteries...
|
| but also, isn't it often a case of cost as in how cheap
| corporations can bilk poorer countries and their political
| class of important resources...? higher prices/legislation
| could be a way to force innovation to develop alternative
| extraction methods...geothermal extraction
| https://www.thinkgeoenergy.com/geothermal-lithium-its-
| extrac...
| jgwil2 wrote:
| > The environment would be in much worse shape if
| industrialization had been fueled with wood rather than
| coal.
|
| No, there would have been no industrialization without
| fossil fuels. The carbon density of wood is insufficient.
| mienski wrote:
| You're really going for the straw-man argument here I see,
| there is a huge difference between launching a space ship and
| creating a new way to mine the earth and destroy the
| environment.
|
| I understand that they have this little catch-all:
|
| > GSR has said it will only apply for a mining contract if the
| science shows deep seabed minerals have advantages, from an
| environmental and social perspective, over relying solely on
| land mining.
|
| But I'm not going to hold my breath thinking that if they find
| a rich-enough deposit of minerals - that they wont suddenly
| discover enough "advantages" for the ocean to now be open to
| the same decimation as land mining has seen for many years.
| the-dude wrote:
| This. And ocean is really scarce.
| nitrogen wrote:
| Our planet has way more ocean than land. In what way is
| that scarce?
| igetspam wrote:
| I'll take the bait.
|
| Planets that are capable of sustaining human life are
| scarce. Putting aside the divisions on our maps, we have
| a total of one ocean. Since we have exactly one planet to
| live on and one ocean to sustain life, I'm gonna go ahead
| and call that pretty scarce. There's a massive amount of
| water but if we ruin that one ocean, I believe we all
| die.
|
| So now it's time for a judgement call: what is so
| valuable at that depth that you're comfortable having
| people poke holes in it hoping to determine the science
| is good and worth the risk?
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| From a life sustaining perspective, the most important
| thing the ocean does is absorb CO2 through oceanic
| churning and phytoplankton. Some might say that the ocean
| currents are important too because it transfers heat
| between the north and south, but it has stopped before
| and only caused greater temperature gradients, but life
| was still sustained.
|
| How would undersea mining put any of this at risk?
| curryst wrote:
| It's all hypothetical, but it's not unimaginable that
| there are nasty things laying under the layers of ocean
| snow. Either materials that could poison the ocean, or
| forms of ancient bacteria that have been dormant (like
| the anthrax in Siberia that used to be frozen under
| permafrost).
|
| It would be catastrophic if we released something that
| could displace phytoplankton in the food chain, but
| didn't absorb CO2.
|
| It's also possible that those minerals are important to
| some kind of natural process. I'm not a scientist, so I
| don't know what that might be, but it's not unfathomable
| that it's part of some bacterial lifecycle, and that
| disrupting that bacterial lifecycle could have
| implications for the rest of ocean life.
| hackily wrote:
| I'd be fairly concerned if undersea mining waste or
| debris started killing off phytoplankton, perhaps by
| disrupting any of the delicate cycles such as phosphorus,
| or providing extra iron which may lead to runaway algal
| blooms or such, and subsequent algal death and oxygen
| shortage. Since the mining is so deep, we don't know if
| these effects will stay localized, or if undersea
| currents will dilute these effects, or anything.
|
| It should be valid to question what harm there could be.
| Nature is quite fragile, and we should know that,
| especially seeing what harm industrial processes have had
| on the atmosphere.
|
| On the other hand, it's quite possible that undersea
| mining may produce less harm than surface mining, where
| waste gets dliuted far enough to have less impact. Maybe
| similar to how salmon farming has to be done where
| there's a strong enough current to dilute the waste.
| the-dude wrote:
| Well, there is only a couple of oceans.
| xwolfi wrote:
| After all, water is only 75% of Earth
| sp332 wrote:
| The _surface_ of the Earth.
| https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/all-earths-water-a-
| single-...
| jozvolskyef wrote:
| GP is a straw man only in the part where it quotes David
| Attenborough because the quoted concerns weren't related to
| this accident. The rest of their argument is valid as far as
| I can tell - please correct me if I'm wrong.
|
| Also, David Attenborough saying seabed mining is untested and
| has a largely unknown environmental impact is not a great
| argument either as it stands in the article. It would be
| helpful if Reuters provided more context or a direct quote.
| hluska wrote:
| This study made the rounds in 2020 - Attenborough wrote a
| forward and was heavily involved in the press:
|
| https://cms.fauna-flora.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2020/03/FFI_2...
| baryphonic wrote:
| I was quoting from the article. I didn't realize the quote
| was out of context w/r/t this project. My apologies for
| perpetuating it.
| [deleted]
| dang wrote:
| You broke the site guidelines and started a large flamewar with
| this. That's seriously not cool. We don't want shallow,
| predictable, nasty discussion here.
|
| At a minimum, you broke these:
|
| " _Don 't be snarky._"
|
| " _Eschew flamebait._ "
|
| " _Avoid generic tangents._ "
|
| " _Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of
| what someone says, not a weaker one that 's easier to
| criticize. Assume good faith._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| Generic ideological tangents are particularly destructive here.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
| baryphonic wrote:
| I'm very sorry that this happened, and was not at all my
| intention. I had no idea that the post would be received the
| way that it was. Usually, if I make a post that has an
| extreme reaction like this one, I delete it shortly
| thereafter, but failed to do so here.
|
| While I can understand how my comment could be interpreted as
| snark or possibly flamebait (despite neither being my
| intention), I'm not sure I understand the "generic tangents"
| or straw-manning claims. Can you help me understand which
| parts of my post cross these boundaries so I can avoid them
| in the future?
| bigbillheck wrote:
| > Things will go wrong (as they have), but this wasn't some
| sort of catastrophic failure like Deepwater Horizon or
| something
|
| The thought is to stop this kind of thing before we get another
| Deepwater Horizon (or Montara or Ixtoc or Bohai Bay or
| Barataria Bay or so on), not after.
| dsign wrote:
| I can't wrap my head around environmentalists. If they really
| _understand_ that anything we do perturbs the environment--and
| it does--, why are they not openly advocating for evacuating
| all humans from Earth as soon as possible and creating a full-
| planet environmental reserve?
|
| It's not like there is not enough matter in the solar system to
| create our own lush ecosystems...
| DanBC wrote:
| We need manganese. We currently get that from open cast
| mines. Those are pretty terrible, so we need to look at ways
| of making them not awful, or at alternatives.
|
| Deep sea mining doesn't really do much for either.
|
| Nodules are never going to provide enough to meet demand, so
| mining nodules doesn't get rid of open cast mining. We don't
| know what the impact is of mining deep sea nodules, but it's
| likely to be pretty bad.
|
| If open cast mining had a history of attempting to fix the
| mines (eg re-wilding) when they'd finished we could trust
| them a bit more when they want to mine new untouched
| wilderness. But they mostly don't have that history.
|
| EDIT: for an example of the harm already caused:
| https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02242-y
| horsawlarway wrote:
| > Nodules are never going to provide enough to meet demand
|
| My understanding was that this one area is estimated to
| have more rare metals in these nodules than all land based
| deposits combined.
| FredPret wrote:
| They think of humans as a plague. It's a weird form of self-
| hatred. From a philosophical point of view, I wonder if this
| stems from the idea of "original sin" in Christianity.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| > I can't wrap my head around environmentalists. If they
| really understand that anything we do perturbs the
| environment--and it does--, why are they not openly
| advocating for
|
| I think the reason you can't wrap your head around them is
| because, with possibly a few individual exceptions, 'any
| human effect on the environment at all' isn't actually what
| they're opposed to.
| QuadmasterXLII wrote:
| Try to remember that today you live in a world shaped by
| environmentalists: that's why there are currently some rivers
| safe to swim in / not on fire, why the air isn't filled with
| toxic levels of lead, why it's ok to go outside without
| immediate sunburn
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| An Iain Banks Culture Orbital is optimal, yes. But "perturbs"
| is a weasel word. You can 'perturb' the environment without
| destroying it, or you can 'perturb' it and leave a desolate
| wasteland where nothing grows.
|
| I'm hardly an environmentalist, but for a personal example,
| my home happens to have a well for drinking water, a
| perturbation of the environment that's perfectly sustainable,
| we use less water from this well than the watershed on my
| property restores to the aquifer. This is an acceptable
| perturbation IMO. That well is contaminated with
| polyfluoroalkyl substances from Scotchgard-treated leather
| scraps. It was too expensive to dispose of them safely, so
| Wolverine leather buried truckloads of the toxins in a local
| swamp. This 'perturbed' the environment, turning the place
| into a Superfund site, making the entire aquifer toxic for
| decades to come, and should not have been done.
|
| If underwater mining just makes a depression in the seafloor
| with little other effects, that's probably an OK
| perturbation. If it releases heavy metals into the water that
| travel with the currents for miles and miles, killing much of
| the wildlife, that's an unacceptable perturbation.
| davidcbc wrote:
| Because a "solution" like that is at best several hundred
| years away and in the meantime we'd like to slow down the
| current mass extinction event so that the life as we know it
| on this planet can survive until then.
| Jedd wrote:
| Title should be as per article: 25-tonne. (metric unit,
| equivalent to 25,000kg)
| Symmetry wrote:
| There's only a 10% difference between the two and given that
| the the weight is rounded to 25 I'd be surprised if it wasn't
| more than 10% off the true figure.
| [deleted]
| jhgb wrote:
| Tons are metric, too (and the default in most of the world).
| ehnto wrote:
| I don't think it is. A ton is an imperial measurement that is
| close to a metric tonne. A lot of places use the words ton
| and tonne to mean a metric tonne, but an imperial ton is a
| different amount if kilograms to a metric ton/tonne.
| jhgb wrote:
| "A ton" is a very vague word that can mean lots of things,
| only one of them being the imperial ton. Some tons can't
| even be converted to kilograms at all since they're units
| of volume.
| Jedd wrote:
| In 'most of the world', especially the English-speaking /
| metric-using parts, the word 'tonne' is used to clearly and
| immediately make it clear we're using the metric unit for
| 1000kg.
|
| The article itself used the word 'tonne' as it was written by
| / for people that use metric.
|
| 'Ton' is a word with myriad meanings, none sensible.
| dang wrote:
| We've fixed the title now. More at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26984413.
| PLenz wrote:
| Flashing back to the Glomar Explorer/Project Azorian:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Azorian
| tyingq wrote:
| The text makes it sound like a non-violent sort of event, like
| someone forgot to insert a locking pin or something. As opposed
| to something like unexpected external forces ripping it loose.
|
| _" On its final dive in the GSR area, a lifting point separated
| and Patania II now stands on the seafloor,"_
|
| _" An operation to reconnect the lifting point begins this
| evening and we will provide an update in due course."_
|
| Also, a picture of it with people, so the scale is more clear:
| https://www.deme-gsr.com/wp-content/uploads/coverfoto-gsr_pa...
| nsbk wrote:
| Seems like these freaking huge tracks will treat deep-sea coral
| nicely
| himinlomax wrote:
| It's the size of a typical tank. This will do as much harm to
| coral or whatever is down there as one (1) WW2 tank did to
| the Black Forest.
|
| Meanwhile, dissolved CO2 is killing coral on a global scale.
| That seems like a very misplaced concern.
| katamaritaco wrote:
| The comparison to a WW2 tank in the Black Forest isn't
| great though, because the environments live on different
| timescales.
|
| A forest can regrow and thrive after a few decades. The
| same is _not_ true for the deep sea[1].
|
| 'Life on the ocean floor moves at a glacial pace. Sediment
| accumulates at a rate of 1 millimeter every millennium.
| With such a slow rate of growth, areas disturbed by deep-
| sea mining would be unlikely to recover on a reasonable
| timescale.'
|
| [1]: https://news.mit.edu/2019/understanding-impact-deep-
| sea-mini...
| seiferteric wrote:
| Are they mining in sensitive areas? Isn't there an
| equivalent of an underwater deserts with little
| life/biodiversity? Not to diminish this idea, but the
| ocean covers >70% of the earth so I would think this
| could be done somewhere with relatively little impact,
| but maybe I am wrong.
| jascii wrote:
| I'm not sure our knowledge of the ocean is sufficient at
| this point to designate an area as "non sensitive".
| lostlogin wrote:
| This area with nothing in it sounds like the oil spill
| "outside the environment" in the very excellent comedy
| skit "The Front Fell Off". https://youtu.be/3m5qxZm_JqM
|
| Edit: Linked to official channel. Thank you for the
| correction.
| mcfoobar wrote:
| Might be nice to link to the official Clarke and Dawe
| channel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM )
| rather than some knock off reupload. RIP John Clarke.
| seiferteric wrote:
| Not really. We already mine on land that covers only 30%
| of earth, I would think that would have a much bigger
| impact. Second, and oil spill spreads far and wide
| contaminating a vast area. All I am saying is mining can
| in theory be contained to a much smaller area.
| joeblow21 wrote:
| A 25 ton prototype....
| pas wrote:
| umm.. it's not lost, the current title is too clickbaity.
|
| > "On its final dive in the GSR area, a lifting point separated
| and Patania II now stands on the seafloor," a GSR spokesman said
| in an emailed statement.
|
| > A spokesman for GSR said the company has not lost control of
| Patania II, and that projects like this always have challenges to
| contend with.
| dang wrote:
| Submitted title was "25tons seabed mining robot prototype was
| lost at 4km depth in Pacific Ocean". That broke the site
| guidelines: " _Please use the original title, unless it is
| misleading or linkbait; don 't editorialize._"
|
| Submitters: please don't do that. We eventually take submission
| privileges away from accounts that do.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| TedShiller wrote:
| This machine totally destroys the ocean floor. Environmental
| destruction.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| Is it more destructive than Cobalt mining elsewhere? What about
| when taking account developing nation violence?
|
| At least from the photo it doesn't look like they are dredging
| fish reefs.
|
| Though I don't trust the behavior of these corporations &
| developing nations use loose or non-existent maritime
| regulations to scoop up, net, and kill more fish than we can
| sustain and just completely wreck the last untouched
| environments we have.
| gertrunde wrote:
| "lost" may be overstating things a bit.
|
| It appears that the tether became disconnected, and they're
| working to reconnect it.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| I daydream that an undersea civilization resented the pillaging
| of their entire ecosystem and attacked the mining robot in self-
| defense.
|
| But no, probably just a mechanical failure. Soon they'll be back
| to sterilizing the ocean bottom. Sigh.
| 542458 wrote:
| Edit: ignore this post, I was wrong.
|
| > Thirty years on, the test that Thiel and a colleague devised
| is still the largest experiment ever on the potential impacts
| of commercial deep-sea mining. Called DISCOL, the simple trial
| involved raking the centre of a roughly 11-square-kilometre
| plot in the Pacific Ocean with an 8-metre-wide implement called
| a plough harrow. The simulated mining created a plume of
| disturbed sediment that rained down and buried most of the
| study area, smothering creatures on the sea floor. The test
| revealed that the impacts of sea-bed mining reached further
| than anyone had imagined, but it did not actually extract any
| rocks from the sea bed, which itself would have destroyed even
| more marine life.
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02242-y
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| This is probably one of the most fragile, delicate ecosystems
| on the planet. It could take 100 or 1000 years to recover
| from the sterilization.
|
| Low-impact? We have very different definitions for that
| phrase.
| j-pb wrote:
| Reminds me of that TNG episode where they try to terraform
| a planet inhabited by sentient crystals, ignorant of the
| delicate and mousy life already present.
| Jiocus wrote:
| > I daydream that an undersea civilization resented the
| pillaging of their entire ecosystem and attacked the mining
| robot in self-defense.
|
| That might be the claustrophobic plot of _Underwater (2020)_.
| Deep-sea mining operations in the Mariana Trench.
| throw_away wrote:
| Also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Laundry_Files#The_Jenn
| ifer...
| jimnotgym wrote:
| This is not evoking the same kind of drama as the Chillian mining
| disaster, is it?
| [deleted]
| jbk8210 wrote:
| I'd suppose there might also be increased interest in mining
| areas near black smokers and other geologically and biologically
| active regions of the seabed.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-04-29 23:01 UTC)