[Hairy Leafer]

Companies back moratorium on deep sea mining

A long-running dispute over plans to start mining the ocean floor has suddenly flared up.

www.bbc.co.uk

... but could the real reason be to help cause a shortage in materials needed to make batteries and allow the auto manufacturers more time to sell more profitable ICE vehicles?

 

[Harry_Zoe]

Maybe so, but I'm sure all the ecological types will be along in a minute to tell you that dredging nodules off the sea floor is an absolute disaster for the marine environment. They already have (bad) experience off sea-bed mining off one of the South-East Asian countries is my vague recollection.

 

[jgwozdzicki]

They did a test in the pacific in the 80’s where they did a deliberate drag of a couple of miles of seabed nodules to see the impact. They’re still studying it now but it is yet to show signs of any significant recovery Nearly 40 years later. The biggest worry too was it’s easier to track and enforce environmental issues on land than it is in the sea. Good documentary on Curiosity Stream about it if people have access to it but I genuinely think there is a good reason for the stoppage. After all, car companies now need environmentalists to like their cars and getting into another environmental scandal won’t do them any good. They may just be waking up to smell the coffee. That said, your scepticism is well justified.

 

[Alessandro Volta of Como]

cynic

 

[WonkoTheSaneUK]

The whole "Glomar Explorer" story was a CIA scheme to secretly raise a Soviet submarine.

 

[jgwozdzicki]

That was in the 70s though, this experiment was in the 80s

 

[Harry_Zoe]

This is a great read on the topic of the results of the old tests. Looks pretty grim environmentally if no abatement is applied:

"Since the DISCOL experiment was completed, scientists have returned to the site four times, most recently in 2015. The site has never recovered. In the ploughed areas, which remain as visible today as they were 30 years ago, there’s been little return of characteristic animals such as sponges, soft corals and sea anemones. “The disturbance is much stronger and lasting much longer than we ever would have thought,” says Thiel."

Seabed mining is coming — bringing mineral riches and fears of epic extinctions (nature.com)

 

[Rooster-x]

Well its Nickel that they need for batteries among lots of other things.

 

[jgwozdzicki]

To some degree though, this is a good thing. If you take away the easier path, it forces more innovation. Not always for the better but eventually batteries won’t use the same materials or not in the same quantities etc. Look at cobalt for example, 10 years ago it was needed in high quantities in EV batteries to stabilise the lithium and stop them from catching fire, now in a lot of batteries the chemistry requires a lot less. I’d argue we probably go through more cobalt in our regular swapping of mobile devices than we would in the life of one EV battery. Obviously don’t quote me on that but I know the percentage is much higher in consumer devices these days than EV’s. You get the point I’m trying to make.

 

[SuperLeaf]

I wouldn't worry too much about it.
New technology will appear in a few years that will completely change the chemistry, composition and the way batteries are used.

Toyota is working on solid state batteries, Swedish are working on making a battery out of the body of the car.

15 years ago, people had a Nokia 3311 running on NiMH, 15 years from now an iphone X will be considered obsolete technology.

There are materials that we haven't discovered yet in space and perhaps even on Earth.
One discovery can change everything.