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A comment on Deep-sea mining may soon ease the world's battery-metal shortage. Parent comment

Re:Deep-sea mining may soon ease the world's battery-metal s... by _Microft on Monday July 03, 2023 @04:54PM (#36578679)
> 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?

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Re:Deep-sea mining may soon ease the world's battery-metal s... by meepmorp on Monday July 03, 2023 @04:59PM (#36578762)
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.

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Re:Deep-sea mining may soon ease the world's battery-metal s... by samtho on Monday July 03, 2023 @05:05PM (#36578822)
Defeatist thinking is not what we need to actually solve problems.
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Re:Deep-sea mining may soon ease the world's battery-metal s... by meepmorp on Monday July 03, 2023 @05:19PM (#36579004)
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.

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Re:Deep-sea mining may soon ease the world's battery-metal s... by galangalalgol on Monday July 03, 2023 @05:15PM (#36578961)
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.
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Re:Deep-sea mining may soon ease the world's battery-metal s... by littlestymaar on Monday July 03, 2023 @05:12PM (#36578909)
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…
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Re:Deep-sea mining may soon ease the world's battery-metal s... by halhod on Monday July 03, 2023 @07:34PM (#36580211)
We do in fact have an idea, and it’s improving all the time. See this paper by MIT team on the plumes from the collector

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abn1219

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