[HN Gopher] Deep-sea mining may soon ease the world's battery-me...
___________________________________________________________________
Deep-sea mining may soon ease the world's battery-metal shortage
Author : scythe
Score : 45 points
Date : 2023-07-03 19:39 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| aurizon wrote:
| We have all seen the hot vents, the large worms/crabs etc that
| subsist on the large sulfur bearing hot springs. Large colonies
| of bacteria live on these sulfur based nutrients. There is a
| large ecology from bacteria all the way to large worms/crabs/etc
| - an amazing diversity. These sulfur streams also carry
| cobalt/copper/zinc - all crustal minerals. Most of these sulfides
| are soluble at very high temperatures. They start to precipitate
| as soon as they exit the vent = black clouds of diverse sulfides
| = bacteria food = supports the whole food chain. These vents
| migrate and once they move away from the vent they cool, There is
| a zone of up to a kilometer or more within which the ecology
| lives. Once the live zone moves away = dead zone. The dead zone
| is full of the nodules and these zone are huge and dead. They can
| be mined for minerals = no need to mine the life zone. The
| nodules are hard and dense, They get covered by silt and deep
| ocean detritus that is easy to break and mine with zero harm to
| life-forms, tube worms etc. What is needed is a deep sea sieve
| with a separator/flusher connected to a conveyor to the surface.
| This what they do now. There are enough modules for mankind for
| 1000 years or more.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=deep+sea+nodule...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _no need to mine the life zone_
|
| We need to set up independent monitoring and enforcement before
| the Pulitzer-winning expose of mining trawlers blisfully
| wrecking through vents.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > There are enough modules for mankind for 1000 years or more
|
| At the current rate I suppose? But if we keep the current
| "growth" rate, we would consume 60 times more ressources by the
| end of the century... (I used 5% increase a year as an
| approximation, and we aren't that far off currently).
| _Microft wrote:
| _> They get covered by silt and deep ocean detritus that is
| easy to break and mine with zero harm to life-forms, tube worms
| etc. What is needed is a deep sea sieve with a separator
| /flusher connected to a conveyor to the surface._
|
| What effect does it have to disturb/stir up all that silt?
| Isn't that going to create huge plumes that might take ages to
| settle? Could that be using up the little oxygen left at these
| depths?
| meepmorp wrote:
| We have no idea, and it really doesn't matter because it's
| going to happen anyway; even if we do know, nobody's going to
| not do it because it might wipe out some ecosystems.
|
| We'll wreck everything, carelessly, like we've always done.
| samtho wrote:
| Defeatist thinking is not what we need to actually solve
| problems.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| The only viable alternative is _violence_ , and most of
| us aren't especially thrilled by this perspective either,
| so cynicism is all we've left...
| galangalalgol wrote:
| It isn't necessarily defeatist. We could expect human
| nature to prevail despite our best efforts to curb it,
| and use that expectation to be prepared with mitigations
| and backup plans.
| meepmorp wrote:
| We don't even take particularly good care of the parts of
| the earth we live in and directly need to survive, why
| are we going to get it right in a remote and hostile
| environment like that?
|
| Sure, I'm all for trying, but I don't hold out a ton of
| hope. I'd love to be wrong.
| zerodensity wrote:
| You make a valid point but if the last century has shown us
| anything it's that our global civilisation hates the ocean (all
| large bodies of water really, above or below ground) and we
| want them gone or poisoned and dead. So if this cost even 5%
| more I don't see it happening.
| canadiantim wrote:
| If I had a nickel for every time someone said something may soon
| ease x shortage, I'd have atleast a couple nickels
| lovemenot wrote:
| Sure. But where did the nickel come from?
| jtrip wrote:
| This and other recent similar articles honestly sounds like
| someone paid a big bag of money to a very high profile PR agency,
| the one used by the Middle east dictators and BP, to rehabilitate
| ocean mining's image and lobby the public zeitgeist.
|
| I wonder what else comes with the Platinum knife through our
| morality's heart package other than nudging multiple article
| mills and ai wranglers to massage out their press kits.
| PradeetPatel wrote:
| Hence it is extremely important to lay down regulations and
| compliance requirements for ocean mining from the get-go.
|
| It has been established that this has the potential to be
| destructive towards the biosphere, but it can be reduced
| through due diligence and NGO oversight.
| jtrip wrote:
| I wonder if the Regulatory bodies and the NGOs can
| sufficiently express the necessity and severity of these new
| regulations to the high levels of radioactivity in the metal
| nodules. There is also the concern that mining companies may
| not be able to relay their concerns about the proper handling
| of such metals to the Governmental and Regulatory bodies in a
| timely and above the board manner. Over dinner at the local
| Social Club. This might create some consternation.
| Prcmaker wrote:
| Sounds like a prime reason to build a new Glomar Explorer.
| gpderetta wrote:
| Yes, was going to comment that some three lettered agency needs
| to lift another Russian sub and needs plausible cover.
| PradeetPatel wrote:
| It's a shame that they didn't get the whole thing (according
| to official sources of), but that's easily an overlooked
| snippet from the Cold War era.
| scythe wrote:
| https://archive.ph/7RpfK
| woodpanel wrote:
| and this is supposed to be a good thing, obviously
| tacotacotaco wrote:
| Wired did an article on this earlier this year. It talks about
| the ecological concerns and the international politics
| surrounding these deep sea mining efforts.
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/deep-sea-mining-electric-vehicle...
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| For country level power usage where space and weight are less of
| a premium lithium ion and lithium phosphate batteries aren't
| really the right fit. Pumped hydro, molten salt,redox or even
| just the new sodium ion all make more sense as they are much
| cheaper per KW/h. Also a lot of second hand car batteries are now
| appearing and getting racked for grid storage uses now. I am
| hopefully in the next few years we won't have nearly the
| explosion in demand for lithium, nickel and cobalt expected as
| alternates are released.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| Oh, have they lost another military submarine?
| ulrashida wrote:
| In the Economist's own words: "a very rough comparison is
| possible" which they then turn into a speculative headline
| ("may") and a bold statement that the comparison is correct
| "taking nickel from rainforests destroys 30 times more..." after
| the article specifically states it is incomplete.
|
| What a bunch of tools. We shouldn't be listening to management
| consultant speak when it comes to underwater ecosystems. Not a
| single scientist quoted in the article. Disclosures from the
| company taken as truth and "very transparent". To think I used to
| look to this magazine for journalism.
|
| Again: the whole article is premised on "deforestation bad,
| destroying marine ecosystems okay or less bad" based on... what?
| The mining company's assessment? Absolute rubbish. How much was
| this writer paid by the company?
| max_ wrote:
| Its our growing hunger for resources that will eventually lead to
| our destruction.
|
| I recommend you read Geoffrey West's book "Scale". Or at least
| watch his talk [0]
|
| [0]: https://youtu.be/nxgHyPCCqaw
| flownoon wrote:
| I used to think this way. I guess it is possible, in the long-
| term, that we might see some kind of social collapse due to a
| tragedy-of-the-commons driven depletion of some critical
| resource.
|
| But I see no evidence this is close. Humans are flourishing
| more than ever before. And in the places that humans aren't
| flourishing, this is more due to social issues (inequality,
| deaths of despair) than to resource depletion. Moreover,
| stalling birthrates obviate any kind of Malthusian concerns for
| at least a generation or so.
|
| People have been predicting resource-driven collapses for a
| long time now, since the Club of Rome and Donella Meadow's
| Limits to Growth in the 70s. I haven't read Geoffrey West but
| it looks like he is in the same camp. A lot of very smart
| modelers and game theoreticians have come up with models
| predicting collapse. But they've been wrong so far when pressed
| to make falsifiable predictions (see the Simon-Erlich wager).
| And beyond falsifiable predictions, more empirical and less
| theoretical work also seems to show that models of resource-
| depletion and collapse are too simple to map on to what
| actually happens. See for example, Elinor Ostrom's Governing
| the Commons, about how societies around the world and through
| history have successfully managed common-pool resources.
|
| So Im not worried about resource-depletion-driven collapse.
| dottjt wrote:
| I think the thing that people miscalculate is that resource-
| depletion-driven collapse happens once. Everything the
| happens prior to the collapse is largely irrelevant,
| irrespective of how nice life was prior to the collapse.
|
| Ultimately we live in a world of physical limits. Current
| society is predicated upon exponential growth, it is
| literally unsustainable by definition.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| This is not true. A total collapse can happen many times,
| and there can be innumerable reaource-driven collapses of
| societies or even civilizations.
|
| What is conjectures in this thread is that it hasn't
| happened yet (debatable) but that doesn't mean it can only
| happen one more time.
| dottjt wrote:
| You're conflating two separate things. Yes, society can
| collapse multiple times. Yes, there can be innumerable
| resource-driven collapses. These are given.
|
| What I'm referring to is the literal running out of the
| necessary resources to progress modern society in the
| same way that we have up until now. This is also a given.
| Take oil for example, and think of the vast amounts of
| plastic we rely on, which we currently have no equivalent
| alternative.
|
| Of course, this is only relevant to modern society. This
| is not to say that humans cannot exist in a pre-modern
| society. It just won't be pleasant.
| bumby wrote:
| > _Current society is predicated upon exponential growth_
|
| Is it though? There is no law in economics that I'm aware
| of that bars steady state. Exponential growth seems to be
| nothing more that a (possibly shortsighted) preference
| dottjt wrote:
| Can you name a modern society that doesn't aim to
| maintain positive economic growth year on year?
| climatologist wrote:
| What is your opinion on industrial pollution?
| forty wrote:
| The issue is not resource depletion, but more how we f* the
| planet by producing / consuming too much (heating it and
| killing biodiversity in miscellaneous other ways).
| mrcartmeneses wrote:
| One problem is the ore deposits contain radioactive elements, so
| it would need specialist processing otherwise the workers would
| all have radioactive dust in their lungs
| edhelas wrote:
| > Taking nickel from rainforests destroys 30 times more life than
| getting it from the depths
|
| So why not doing both at the same time !
| czbond wrote:
| ^ This is Reddit level snark. Well done.
|
| I guess the thinking is the ocean approach is "see no evil or
| the outcomes" .... especially since large amounts of the ocean
| are empty enough?
| [deleted]
| ben_w wrote:
| Getting half from the rainforest and half from the depths would
| cause (1+30)/2 = 15.5 times as much destruction as just getting
| it from the depths.
|
| (Assuming the numbers are correct; Gell-Mann Amnesia says that
| sadly it's _reasonable_ cynicism to suggest we live in a world
| of misleading newspaper reports).
| scythe wrote:
| I thought the article was reasonably upfront about the
| limitations of the use of total biomass as a measure of
| ecological value. But the subtitle, unfortunately, omits
| those details.
|
| There is a bit of "until next time" in all of this: nickel
| only covers a small part of the ocean floor, and humanity is
| not normally interested in exploitation down there, meaning
| that the vast majority of the seabed will remain intact. But
| we have to be aware as a society that the first time we
| extract a resource somewhere is almost never the last.
| raffraffraff wrote:
| Great. So, all those disposable vapes with rechargeable batteries
| that are stewn across the streets of most cities... I should stop
| wanting to kill the assholes that make/sell/use them?
| myshpa wrote:
| Deep-Sea Mining Could Cause 25x the Biodiversity Loss of Land-
| Based Mining, Report Warns
|
| https://www.ecowatch.com/deep-sea-mining-ocean-biodiversity-...
| dumpsterlid wrote:
| [dead]
| freitzkriesler2 wrote:
| Deep sea mining has its own risks that aren't readily apparent.
| I'd like to see how long mining equipment at 12k ft under the sea
| lasts compared to land.
| baud147258 wrote:
| isn't deep sea mining something that had been promised to solve
| shortage of precious metals for decades already?
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| But it's not legal... Yet
| NovaDudely wrote:
| Yep, it is great in theory but reality is messy and expensive.
| I will probably eventually happen to some degree but a lot of
| groups that try to get into the space bite off more than they
| can chew.
|
| Its like getting uranium and gold from sea water, technically
| fine but economically a nightmare.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-07-03 23:02 UTC)