Vocal Voices

... and go 'net-zero' with windmills, solar panels, and EVs, we are going to dig up the ocean floor to make more of them.

There are so many present and future unknown "unknowns" in doing this, but we will be doing it anyway. Countries are racing to get there asap. They are not just going to pick up the mineral rich nodules laying on the seabed, which is environmentally bad enough as studies have shown, they are going to mine the ocean floor!

We save the climate (atmosphere) but kill the seas.

It's not a catchy soundbite, but it is probably true.

Humans: the most intelligent life form in the Solar system and, simultaneously, the most stupid.

They've been looking at polymetalic nodules for decades. There are very significant challenges to mining them.

It's the first time I've heard of them looking at mining a seamount but it makes sense. It is these undersea volcano's which provide the rich materials that coat the nodules. Although it can take millions of years.

It is hardly as if we are stripping half the sea bare. a single sea mount is nothing compared to the volcano's which vent on a daily basis.

It is either this or they start mining the methane clathrates from the sea floor and that would be a disaster which would take about 75% of the species on earth with it.

Hoovering up the nodules on the seabed will create clouds of silt and we do not know what is in that silt, biologically or otherwise. Those clouds will be carried by ocean currents right around the globe, as with what happens to gases and ash in the atmosphere. We have no idea what damage they will cause.

The actual mining of the seabed, below the subsoil, will create clouds thousands of times worse.

When it comes to mining seamounts it is absolute madness. Marine biologists, geologists and other scientists claim, and with some justification, that they were the cradle of multi-cellular life on Earth. They could even be seeding the ocean with new microscopic life forms even today. They are also the main support for extensive fisheries. There is already concern that bottom trawling is damaging them beyond repair with major impacts on fish stocks - our food. I know, let's tear them down, they are in the sea, out of sight, out of mind, there's money to be made.

We do not have any clues as to the damage this nonsense will create. Ah, but we need the batteries to save the planet. Triples all round, barkeep, and have one for yourself.

Well we are going to hell in a handcart anyway. Either we transition to something other than fossil fuels or we transition to a much smaller % of the current population (think 20% or so).

One way or the other one hell of a lot of creatures are going to die. Plus uncontrolled heating kills shedloads of creatures in the sea and on land. Huge areas of the ocean are already suffering asphyxiation due to oxygen depletion because of CO2 absorption.

There is no clear path where every species gets out intact. That is the reality of digging up dead dinosaurs and reintroducing their carbon to the atmosphere as CO2.

Suff wrote:Either we transition to something other than fossil fuels or we transition to a much smaller % of the current population (think 20% or so).

We need to do both, but we won't.

8.1 BILLION people on Earth. That's up from 2,7 billion when I was born in 1953, an increase of 5.4 billion in only 70 years.

They all need the necessities of food, drinking water, clothing, shelter, education, medical services; and now iPhones, takeaways, apps, the Internet, tattoos, disposable vapes, 101 TV channels, video and music streaming, cigs, alcohol, makeup, nail bars, work, transport, foreign holidays, pop, flying, air fryers, sugar-free sweets, furniture, microwaves, fast fashion, EVs, ready meals, plastic... did I mention smart phones?

We are not going to transition from fossil resources any time soon whatever we do, and we are certainly not going to reduce the global population unless we have a bubonic plague style pandemic, another dinosaur asteroid event or a super volcano (Toba like) eruption. Apparently, Yellowstone is overdue by a few tens of thousands of years.

Data centre servers (used for our phones and streaming) are now using so much power and outputting so much CO2 that they are going to use small nuclear reactors (SNR) for their power in order to keep us happy and content.

Grim isn't it.