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Polymetallic nodules, found at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean’s Clarion-Clipperton Zone, have enough metals to secure the future of green energy. But is it worth the cost?
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A terrible idea to mine the ocean!! We've almost overfished and polluted it to death. When the ocean ecosystem collapses we will be close in line to be next!
Or stop reproducing and need less of everything.
No, no, no, no no! Leave our oceans alone! We already pollute them beyond their limits. Our ocean wildlife suffers at our hands and offers us so much already.
Could Deep-Sea Mining Solve the Energy Crisis? Not even close. No better than Wind and Solar Power, EVs is. The big cash cow industries, corporations, corporate lobbyists, and governments worldwide. All the While destroying are environment under the guise of green clean energy.
No, we cannot use it. We need to figure out a different material for those batteries. This will probably have absolutely DEVASTATING consequences lol
So is that what I've been digging up in Subnautica?
Oh gosh, I really hope people don't try to remove these, and just finish off the ocean… -_- Apparently we just found a big lithium reserve in Arkansas, so maybe that'll be at least a little better than ravaging the ocean?
we are literally better off mining asteroids than the deep sea imo. Every dollar invested in asteroid mining furthers our space exploration capacities, which will actually be useful in the long term, while investment in deep sea mining only really improves deep sea mining, theres not nearly as many tangental boosting effects compared to space exploration
What I don't understand is, how can they stay on the ocean floor surface and not be buried by sediment raining down from above over all that time.
I say mine a very small portion of this area and stop and measure all of the results.
Back in the 90's a close family friend converted a station wagon into an electric car. It didn't have the same HP that modern ones do so freeway use wasn't advised nor going up BIG hills. It could go highway speed though and was a great "local" car. In the back bed was a box that stretched the width of the seats. That box was jammed full of Duracell batteries. He designed it in such a way that it could be plugged directly into a regular house outlet for charging. The plug was sticking out of the grill and the cord was tensioned to spool back inside when not in use.
My mom hated the thing because it was quieter than a bike so if he was pulling up in it to visit, she had no idea he was outside.
Iirc, it cost him less than 8K to convert.
No, we probably shouldn't mine the area where we may find the origin of life
NO
It feels disingenuous to call batteries "green energy" considering how much we don't know about the repercussions of deep sea mining, and our lack of environmentally friendly ways to dispose of and/or reuse/recycle them once they reach their end of life.
TLDR: No.
Yes. Destroy that deep oxygen now!
ffs. We have a solution: Nuclear.
Jurassic Park said it best: before we even knew what we had, we patented it, packaged it, and slapped it on a plastic lunch box.
I just want to point out that mining a metallic asteroid is estimated to yeild about 1.5 MEGAtons of cobalt. Even at 10% efficiency, that's 3+ times the cobalt from this abyssal plain.
Yes, space is hard. But so is deep ocean.
The fundamental reason to mine the ocean instead of space isn't the challenge, imo. It's the fact that one is easy profit (ocean) and the other drives the price of cobalt to nil because it stops being rare at scale.
Capitalism. Simultaneously the most efficient global management system we know and the primary reason we can't have nice things (and indeed must have horrifying things like poverty and war and human trafficking and…).
Even if we do start mining them, completely ignoring all the environmental harm that act alone could cause, the face that they’re a non-renewable resource means it wouldn’t be solving the crisis, just delaying it. It’s still important to research,
Cancer cures and drugs are a bit of a ruse. Its our modern diets of carbohydrates that enable cancer because cancer eats sugar.
It won't
No, we don't need green energy now.
We should study them so we can find a way to replace them for the ecosystem first!
We need green energy now: we have it. What we need is efficient energy storage. Nuclear batteries are or could be a thing if governments would allow the research and development to advance. it could be the game changer.
I’d sign petitions and do what ever I can to stop capitalists from raping the ocean floor for a $. Do the friggin science and research to safely extract the metals from the ocean waters. But that requires effort and creative thinking.
SAS > JMP
That which negatively affects oxygen generation in the ocean should not be done. Period. We have too many dead places in the oceans already with insufficient oxygen. The Oceans are key to our survival because of the way the food chain works.
It's been found that these deep sea ecosystems where these nodules are may be as productive as coral reefs. And yes someone tried mining a spot in the 1980s and the ecosystem was destroyed to the point that even microbes haven't returned.
Short answer: No! We absolutely should NOT be mining the deep ocean floor!
I'll go so far as to say we shouldn't be mining the deep sea – especially the CCZ. That doesn't seem too far to go🤷♂
Mining these will essentially destroy the planet. A natural potential energy source that took millions of years to form being removed overnight doesn't sound like anything good to me.
There are so many other Solid State battery technologies in development, that by the time we figure out how safely to mine it ( if at all), we will have great alternatives on hand already.
So what I'm getting from this video is that tossing car batteries into the ocean is literally recycling!
NO.
1:30 the cobalt in 167 cell phones is the same as one EV battery pack… So SciShow shouldn't single out just EVs. Some EV batteries don't even have any cobalt.
Electric car battaries is THE MOST USELESS USE FOR THESE. Electric cars are a bandaid that does next to nothing compared to indistrial proceses and wider human activity. We should be focussing on how we can more efficeintly organise and conduct ourselves rather than looking to destroy a vertualy unreserched area of biology to get another two years to egnore the consequenses of out actions. Brain dead thought process.
hehe subnautica
We should be funding super capacitors they have 3-4wh per cell
Isn't this the spot of the weird wave bubbles in recent months/years with skyscraper high waves?
Leave the oceans alone! It will be done anyway, and wouldn't be surprised if it's already in progress by countries with no regard in environmental respect. The biggest destruction will be caused by the unused excess dumped overboard. It may seem innocent, but what's dredged up from the depths is highly toxic to the upper layers of the ocean ecosystem – which will be carried in currents. There's gobs of CO2 locked up in the sea floor, by disturbing it, it'll basically release it.
Sea Mining reminds me of hydro mining from 19th century that was banned due to massive environmental impact.
Lithium is everywhere. Cobalt is used less and less already. We don’t need to mine the seafloor.
We need to recycle all our batteries in our EV’s and smartphones and iPads.
Look at Redwood Materials who are a big player in the US.
We can be smart and realize that we don’t need to mine forever for batteries, just a certain level and then it’s all recycling.
(Honestly, this was covered in the Master Plan part 3 Tesla announced a couple years ago. It’s possible to power everything by solar and electricity without destroying the environment and creating zillions of ruinous mines.
The alternative is coal mines, oil, gas and further degradation that NEVER ENDS.)
There’s nothing recyclable about the alternative.
So let’s fight seafloor mining but not against batteries and mining for their materials with care for the environment.
These places will not be wastelands.
And there’s other areas to make improvements. Tesla will be getting rock from N Carolina at their new lithium processing plant in TX and out will come finished product ready to go into the battery cells they make about 60 miles away.
Right now rock from Australia goes to somewhere for processing, then to China for final conversion, then to Japan or Korea or US to go into cells.
The carbon footprint is so huge and that needs to change asap and we have to be open to letting new processing facilities come online asap and bypass some exhaustive and pointless regulations that cost so much time and money.
These are the kinds of things to worry about more and where we as citizens can actually make an impact through education