> 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#Agriculture_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?

>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.

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 Václav 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.

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.

Look into the problems with batteries when e.g. an electric car gets destroyed in a collision. Batteries can re-ignite days later; wrecking yards have to isolate EV wrecks, etc.

Ok, we still need batteries though.

> 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

> 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.

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.

> 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."

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!

Well met! Have a great day too.

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.

Exactly! How else do you prove deep sea mining is safe without trials like this?

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?"

> 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?

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.

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.