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Comment by sunday_serif | Hacker News Reader

I am always surprised when I find others don't just assume that undersea mining is more impactful.

To me this fact feels like a given considering that is such a complex operation and the sea is such a delicate environment.

Of course its great to have data to back up what we know... but I'm always surprised that we have to go so far out of our way to back up what should be intuitive.

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Well, obviously nobody is going to mine undersea for the sake of mining undersea. If someone is going to go to the bother there must be some advantage that compensates for the difficulty. Maybe the ores are richer, or you don't have to dig as deep.

The ore is sitting right there, in coalesced lumps, on the floor for core green energy metals, and there's a general acceptance that the orders of magnitude involved over the next 3 decades require getting them.

I don't mind the discussion on it the past couple days, god knows wherever I get information from isn't the one blessed source, but I am worried about HN's instinctual "from first principles" reactions to undersea mining. Made me wince a little bit when I saw the post you're replying to say "I am always surprised when I find others don't just assume that undersea mining is more impactful."

I really appreciated you gently pointing out there's other smart humans on this and they likely have considered things like the environment.

>The ore is sitting right there, in coalesced lumps, on the floor

So then we're going to gently pluck them off the ocean floor, without disturbing anything else?

Or would it be more of a "grind up everything and spit out the lumps" job? :-\

Be honest, now...

Yep and it’s one of the rare parts of the earth that has been relatively undisturbed, so bringing industrial operations there is obviously (if you’re paying attention) going to have unforeseen adverse effects. The entire planet’s biological origin started there and it’s a region we don’t yet thoroughly understand. Mass scraping of the surface for cobalt and nickel nodules is the very definition of fuck around and find out.

doubt if godzilla actually gives a fuck if you disturb his slumber, but sure

But I also wonder, with what fishermen are already inflicting to sea floors, would sea mining worsen anything if e.g. it comes right after...

Yes, it would make things worse, especially if it comes right after. You wouldn't think "well chemo was already terrible so smoking probably won't make it worse".

You may be right, but it is not obvious (in the case of the sea floor), especially because industrial fishing is so devastating. "Worse" is not enough information, for example if it is "slightly worse" at a point were it's under the variability of the destructing action of fishing. The benefit for the energy transition is to take into account too.

It's worth investigating, in any case. I'm not advocating for taking action before getting the results of such study, though! It is important to be careful.

The only crushing argument that I would admit at this point is: "industrial fishing should not exist in the first place".

Indeed. Let alone the energy needed to move machines to the deep and back with the extracted material.

Agreed. I would have thought that as well.

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