Deep sea 'gold rush' moves closerDavid Shukman

[Judi Lynn]

17 May 2013 Last updated at 21:27 ET
Deep sea 'gold rush' moves closerDavid Shukman
By David Shukman

The prospect of a deep sea "gold rush" opening a controversial new frontier for mining on the ocean floor has moved a step closer.

The United Nations has published its first plan for managing the extraction of so-called "nodules" - small mineral-rich rocks - from the seabed. A technical study was carried out by the UN's International Seabed Authority - the body overseeing deep sea mining. It says companies could apply for licences from as soon as 2016.

The idea of exploiting the gold, copper, manganese, cobalt and other metals of the ocean floor has been considered for decades but only recently became feasible with high commodity prices and new technology.

Conservation experts have long warned that mining the seabed will be highly destructive and could have disastrous long-term consequences for marine life.

More:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22546875

[newfie11]

1. Drilling for oil 9000+ feet deep isn't enough

Lets just push the oceans with more destruction. Money is great and maybe the idiots doing this can buy their own planet to go live in after they totally destroy this one.

[Nihil]

2. Which part of this do the authorities not comprehend?

> Conservation experts have long warned that mining the seabed will be highly destructive
> and could have disastrous long-term consequences for marine life.

Yet they are still preparing to "licence" it "as soon as 2016"?




Destroying the world for a short-term (one-off) profit ...

[kristopher]

3. This policy development has been underway for about 40 years

It was pretty much a settled issue at one time but commodity prices dropped and no country initiated action within the time frame that had been agreed upon (IIRC).

The focus of attention is a thing called 'manganese nodules'.
Worth going to google images:
http://www.google.com/search?q=manganese+nodules&client=safari&rls=en&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=BgmaUa6jIbPv0QG_yICYDw&ved=0CDkQsAQ&biw=1280&bih=646

...Most are about the size of potatoes, but some are bigger than a dining room table. Manganese makes up about a quarter of the typical nodule, with iron accounting for another five percent or so. But the nodules also contain fair amounts of nickel, copper, cobalt, and several other elements, along with smaller amounts of platinum and other precious metals.

Exactly how the nodules form is complicated and poorly understood. One thing scientists do understand is that it’s a slow process; in a million years, a nodule may grow by just a few millimeters -- the width of a few paperclips.

Manganese nodules may be strewn across half or more of the Pacific, especially in its broad, flat plains. They’re also common in the Indian Ocean, with some deposits in the other oceans as well. In all, they probably add up to billions of tons.

In the 1970s, several countries toyed with ways of bringing up the nodules. But they’re typically found at depths of a couple of miles or greater, so mining them is expensive. Treaties and environmental concerns have limited development, too....

http://www.scienceandthesea.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=244&Itemid=10

I don't think it is a given that they are ready to start harvesting these things.

One other thing. These nodules are very, very slow to form; on the order of millions of years/centimeter, and the last I heard they are a poorly understood phenomena deserving of far more research before we begin harvesting them. For example, for an unknown reason in spite of their age, they are scattered over the seafloor and not buried in sediment.
It's been a number of years since I studied this as part of a course on UN ocean policy, but I'm still fascinated by it.

[Nihil]

4. Haven't looked into it in a while but I thought that it had been put on hold at the time ...

... specifically due to the damage caused by any attempt to "mine" the resource but that
might be my memory conflating the protest with the result of the expiring time-window.




> These nodules are very, very slow to form; on the order of millions of years/centimeter,
> and the last I heard they are a poorly understood phenomena deserving of far more research
> before we begin harvesting them.

I've got a manganese nodule on my desk at home (small one, slightly less than the size of
a squash ball) that was a "prize" for good performance in an oceanography module of my
first degree (many moons ago). I have it next to my fossils and a polished piece of fossiliferous
limestone as another reminder of the timescales involved in history of the non-human kind.


Thanks for the links to the images!

[bananas]

7. They look like Martian blueberries, but bigger

images of Mars blueberries: https://www.google.com/search?q=mars+blueberries&channel=fflb&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=PzebUcg9x_HTAdzMgJAL&ved=0CDcQsAQ&biw=1278&bih=614

wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_spherules

[quadrature]

5. most comments here, typical of anti-US bigotry

it is OK for sleezeball dictators and their countries
to mine for copper, gold and platinum,
but not the US

[Nihil]

6. Yet again, your post bears no reality to the thread ...

> most comments here, typical of anti-US bigotry

No comment here before yours demonstrates "anti-US bigotry" never mind "most" of them
(#1-#4, #5 being your non-sequitur).

Please stop trolling (i.e., attempted thread diversion/hijack).