Deep sea mining

[413x]

Irrational is the complete opposite of what it is. Its perfect rationality and logic. What's irrational is emotion.


Humans have been displaced in one form or another for thousands of years.

There weren't billions of humans thousands of years ago though.
Look how much hassle immigration causes now.
Imagine capital cities going underwater. Or whole countries being near uninhabitable.

If the UK has a few days of snow it grinds to a halt. Imagine if that becomes standard with our badly insulated homes.

 

[Mason-]

I think a nicer middle ground is to just live your life and enjoy it. You only get one chance, if you spend your whole life worrying about a future you won't even be a part of then it's a bit of a waste. I think people assume the worst motivations of decisions made in the past because they live in the outcome (the path to hell is paved with good intentions). The truth is we're incredibly poor at predicting the future on a large scale. So if things turn out worse we assume it was because of greed/malicious reasons that those decisions were made, that's not to say some weren't, it's more likely some of them were made for benevolent reasons, they just couldn't fully predict the outcome.

 

[Devilman]

There weren't billions of humans thousands of years ago though.
Look how much hassle immigration causes now.
Imagine capital cities going underwater. Or whole countries being near uninhabitable.

If the UK has a few days of snow it grinds to a halt. Imagine if that becomes standard with our badly insulated homes.

Aaah but it doesn't matter, because the insulation is inside the walls and nobody will ever see that!

 

[Devilman]

I think a nicer middle ground is to just live your life and enjoy it. You only get one chance, if you spend your whole life worrying about a future you won't even be a part of then it's a bit of a waste. I think people assume the worst motivations of decisions made in the past because they live in the outcome (the path to hell is paved with good intentions). The truth is we're incredibly poor at predicting the future on a large scale. So if things turn out worse we assume it was because of greed/malicious reasons that those decisions were made, that's not to say some weren't, of course some were.

Worrying about the future for your kids is a "bit of a waste of time?"

 

[Mason-]

Worrying about the future for your kids is a "bit of a waste of time?"

It depends, if you spend your whole life worrying about the future so much that you don't even have kids, which seems to be quite common these days. Then maybe. What I'm getting at more is that if you wallow in existential dread or environmental fear about what the planet will look like in 200 years time, it's not really healthy. Also, being blunt, unless you're a leader of a large company or country, you can worry all you want but it won't change much.

 

[danlightbulb]

There weren't billions of humans thousands of years ago though.
Look how much hassle immigration causes now.
Imagine capital cities going underwater. Or whole countries being near uninhabitable.

If the UK has a few days of snow it grinds to a halt. Imagine if that becomes standard with our badly insulated homes.

Its catch 22 though.

Huge population growth and resource use is what has driven our pre-industrial and industrial development and allowed us to have the luxuries we enjoy today. We couldn't have done that without changing the planet in the ways that we have. The two things go together.

As we get more knowledge sure we can do things better but there will always be the underlying problems of excessive resource use, because that is the nature of our species. If the root cause is too many people then maybe we should be addressing that? Like I have said in previous threads, Thanos was right. Yet he is portrayed as the baddie because for some reason doing something about excessive population is unpalatable.

But if we want to continue our technological advancement and eventually colonise other planets, more population is probably what we need, and we'll need to resource that.

 

[HangTime]

My gut reaction is the sea bed is likely relatively under-exploited due to the logistical challenges involved so yeah makes sense from a resource acquisition perspective, I'm not qualified to comment on the potential downsides/risks though.

What could be 'interesting' is if it leads to war - historically a lot of conflict has been driven at least in part by fighting over natural resources whether that be living/agriculture space, access to waterways, natural resources etc. I imagine the deep sea is the sort of place that could have disputed ownership and could encourage just general 'land-grabby' behaviour that most animals including humans have leaned into at times.

 

[Mason-]

My gut reaction is the sea bed is likely relatively under-exploited due to the logistical challenges involved so yeah makes sense from a resource acquisition perspective, I'm not qualified to comment on the potential downsides/risks though.

What could be 'interesting' is if it leads to war - historically a lot of conflict has been driven at least in part by fighting over natural resources whether that be living/agriculture space, access to waterways, natural resources etc. I imagine the deep sea is the sort of place that could have disputed ownership and could encourage just general 'land-grabby' behaviour that most animals including humans have leaned into at times.

I don't think it would lead to wars these days, we trade too much. If one country got all the resource and refused to trade it or set up a racket/cartel like oil then maybe, I think it more likely that it would just lead to the resources having increased supply and more trading. If it becomes especially lucrative there would probably need to be international agreements drawn up because if it's international waters we can't just have anarchy out there.

 

[Richie]

Because there would be no control otherwise and there would be anarchy. As a collective species we tend to value stability.

We value stability except when it comes to the very environment where we exist given we are doing our very best to make it unstable which in turn is leading to record amounts and severity of highly volatile weather/environmental events e.g. flooding, wildfires, volcanic eruptions etc... Unless, of course, you are think these are just a normal part of planetary evolution?

 

[Devilman]

I don't think it would lead to wars these days, we trade too much. If one country got all the resource and refused to trade it or set up a racket/cartel like oil then maybe, I think it more likely that it would just lead to the resources having increased supply and more trading. If it becomes especially lucrative there would probably need to be international agreements drawn up because if it's international waters we can't just have anarchy out there.

Considering what's going on in Ukraine right now, I think it demonstrates very nicely that when push comes to shove, it could absolutely lead to war(s).

 

[Mason-]

We value stability except when it comes to the very environment where we exist given we are doing our very best to make it unstable which in turn is leading to record amounts and severity of highly volatile weather/environmental events e.g. flooding, wildfires, volcanic eruptions etc... Unless, of course, you are think these are just a normal part of planetary evolution?

Do you attribute 'special' status to humans?

Isn't there something about the atmosphere used to be majorly CO2 based, and it caused a crap load of sea algae to bloom to the point where they consumed so much CO2 and produced so much O2 that it flipped the atmosphere to be more oxygen based? The point is, if you were an outside observer watching earth, would you really say what humans are doing is unnatural, abnormal? All animals if given an environment in which they can flourish will consume all the resources until they're all gone, why do you think we're any different? Are you religious?

edit: found it: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/origin-of-oxygen-in-atmosphere/
It's not as I recalled it exactly, but I was going from memory

 

[Mason-]

Considering what's going on in Ukraine right now, I think it demonstrates very nicely that when push comes to shove, it could absolutely lead to war(s).

Is that over resources though? Or more about a political ideology?

 

[Devilman]

Is that over resources though? Or more about a political ideology?

Honestly, a bit of both.

There is no way that Putin / Russia does not realize that Ukraine is the Bread Basket of Europe and if he were to control that, he could use it as leverage against the rest of Europe.

Not to mention all the rare metals resources Ukraine has also.

 

[Tom_ed1987]

I don't understand how deep sea mineral mining can possibly be economically viable.
That said, I have no issue with it. Even if it miraculously is worth doing, any actual impact (outside of standard human/industrial mistakes like oil spills etc) will be near zero.

 

[Mason-]

I don't understand how deep sea mineral mining can possibly be economically viable.
That said, I have no issue with it. Even if it miraculously is worth doing, any actual impact (outside of standard human/industrial mistakes like oil spills etc) will be near zero.

Depends on the value of what is being mined I guess. It's economically viable to extract oil/gas at sea (is this mining... kind of?) because oil/gas is expensive. If they mined rare earth minerals at sea that have a high value then it will be worthwhile.

 

[Diddums x]

Do you base a person's opinion on something on what they do for work?

What he's failing to realise is that even though I don't meet his PHD requirements, my workplace is literally called the "cathedral of conservation".

In my daily routines I am constantly talking to some of the world's most highly regarded conservationists, scientists, biologists, and even a few chats with Sir David Attenborough himself. These aren't one off things, this is my daily life. I ensure that their conservation areas and labs are perfectly lit, at the perfect temperature, at the perfect humidity levels and my team and I support them more than anyone else in the building. If anything goes wrong, it's me they call. I have a team of 17 engineers looking after these people and their facilities.

I've been to more conservation talks and presentations by industry leads this year alone than he's attended his entire life, and I'd put money on that.

But ya, what do I know, I'm just "facility maintenance man"

 

[Devilman]

I don't understand how deep sea mineral mining can possibly be economically viable.
That said, I have no issue with it. Even if it miraculously is worth doing, any actual impact (outside of standard human/industrial mistakes like oil spills etc) will be near zero.

Part of it comes from technological progress, another part from the economics of scale.

Undersea Oil / Gas extraction was not economically viable for a long time... until it was.

Now we have hundreds of off-shore rigs extracting millions of barrels of oil a year.

 

[Mason-]

What he's failing to realise is that even though I don't meet his PHD requirements, my workplace is literally called the "cathedral of conservation".

In my daily routines I am constantly talking to some of the world's most highly regarded conservationists, scientists, biologists, and even a few chats with Sir David Attenborough himself. These aren't one off things, this is my daily life. I ensure that their conservation areas and labs are perfectly lit, at the perfect temperature, at the perfect humidity levels and my team and I support them more than anyone else in the building. If anything goes wrong, it's me they call. I have a team of 17 engineers looking after these people and their facilities.

I've been to more conservation talks and presentations by industry leads this year alone than he's attended his entire life, and I'd put money on that.

But ya, what do I know, I'm just "facility maintenance man"

This is like saying you're basically a rocket scientist because you clean the toilets at NASA.

Spoiler

tongue firmly in cheek

 

[Diddums x]

you clean the toilets at NASA.

In the very early days of my career I was a plumber in Brixton Prison, you don't wanna know some of the things I dealt with there

 

[wesimmo]

Humans aren't algae, or beavers, we're conscious and intelligent lifeforms.

While I get the philosophical point that, to an alien observer, we're just a part of the ecosystem of earth, and to them it might be an interesting study to see us wipe ourselves out along with half the larger lifeforms on earth, I can't help but feel you'd have to be neurologically atypical to live your life and base your values around that way of thinking.