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This is probably crazy, but I wonder if it would be possible to leave these sites with better ecology than they have now. What if, after mining, a smaller amou
by idontwantthis 4y ago
This is probably crazy, but I wonder if it would be possible to leave these sites with better ecology than they have now.
What if, after mining, a smaller amount of the minerals are put back, closer to the surface so that a smaller amount are more easily consumed and life could flourish again with less available?
- satellites 4y agoWhy are you assuming that rare earth metals deep below the surface of the earth would benefit the life ON the surface that has evolved to live in the absence of those metals? Even if for some bizarre reason the metals were beneficial, what about when the mining operation is done and humans leave the area? It just goes back to the previous status quo. It’s a disruption either way.
- idontwantthis 4y agoBecause life does depend on these deposits at the surface. That’s why this is a huge danger to globally ecology. They feed a unique ecosystem.
- satellites 4y agoYes, but in specific quantities, no? Manually depositing them on the surface after extraction would still disrupt the system’s balance.
- jfoster 4y agoBut a good or bad disruption? Are you arguing that the ecosystem is currently optimal? It seems unlikely. So there's interesting questions; what's an optimal ecosystem look like? How can it be achieved?
- satellites 4y agoIndustrialized humans have a historically abysmal track record of ham-fistedly “optimizing” ecosystems. Any manual intervention into an ecosystem generally requires establishing an indefinite commitment to more manual maintenance. Who determines what “optimal” means? Who implements the optimization? Who pays for it? What happens in a few decades when people lose political interest in the project? Which creatures do we optimize for? Why are we doing this at all? How have similar projects fared in the past? I can tell you haven’t seriously studied ecology from the way you are approaching this question, so I’m not too worried. But consider questions like those as you ponder this scenario.
- __Joker 4y agoAlso even if it is beneficial to some or all organism, generally eco system are based on equilibrium. Disturbing that would have consequence which we generally don't understand and can't predict.
- titzer 4y agoThis might be an honest question, I dunno. The downvotes seem to suggest that most people didn't take it that way. Probably because it sounds a lot like tired old arguments that miners in the 19th century trotted out, when in reality they left behind toxic lakes and wastelands where there were once flourishing forests.
- idontwantthis 4y agoI’m not a rare earth metal baron masquerading online as a Typescript developer. Yes I was asking honestly. I wish someone who downvoted me would tell me why the answer is no.
- TaylorAlexander 4y agoI didn’t vote, but personally it seems somewhat obvious to me that the best thing we can do for existing ecosystems, if they have not already been disturbed, is to leave them as they are. Generally the creatures that live there evolved to live there, and the conditions required for the ecosystem to thrive are complex. What I’ve seen of ocean mining involves completely scraping the sea floor of everything and extracting the metals from the disturbed material. Proposed machines leave behind them a complete wake of destruction. There is no possibility to make things better than if we had left it alone. The only opportunity we have to make things better is in areas we have ourselves destroyed. Then we have a chance to improve it. But if something is undisturbed we can’t really improve upon that.
- midoridensha 4y ago>I wish someone who downvoted me would tell me why the answer is no. This is an internet forum full of know-it-alls with Dunning-Kruger Syndrome and toxic personalities. You're not likely to get reasoned answers when you ask honest questions; instead, you just get downvotes and insults.
- idontwantthis 4y agoI did end up getting good answers.
- zdragnar 4y agoThese aren't formed nodules like other seabed metals, this is mud with higher than normal amounts of rare earths present. What isn't clear from the article is if they plan on dredging the top layer, which would entirely disrupt the ecosystem, or somehow pump up mud from under the seabed itself. If it is the latter, the ecosystem is unlikely to have a dependency on the rare earths in the mud itself; at that depth you don't have plants with deep roots or anything transecting the layers. You will certainly have surface deformation which will be disruptive, but not so much as dredging would be.