ShivaX
6358
FFS. It’s like doing all this for aluminum. Only aluminum doesn’t have a cabal keeping it’s value above gold.
Instead we use it for fucking cheap shit.
Diamonds can be made in a lab and there is no difference.
https://lightboxjewelry.com/pages/laboratory-grown-diamonds
Lab-grown diamonds are diamonds that were grown by scientists in a lab. They share the same chemical makeup as natural diamonds, and are optically identical. The biggest differences between them are how they’re made, and how rare they are.
Matt_W
6360
It’s not for diamonds. Yes, De Beers is dredging the shores off of South Africa looking for diamonds, but the largest operations are looking for polymetallic nodules:
Deepwater plains are also home to the polymetallic nodules that explorers first discovered a century and a half ago. Mineral companies believe that nodules will be easier to mine than other seabed deposits. To remove the metal from a hydrothermal vent or an underwater mountain, they will have to shatter rock in a manner similar to land-based extraction. Nodules are isolated chunks of rocks on the seabed that typically range from the size of a golf ball to that of a grapefruit, so they can be lifted from the sediment with relative ease. Nodules also contain a distinct combination of minerals. While vents and ridges are flecked with precious metal, such as silver and gold, the primary metals in nodules are copper, manganese, nickel, and cobalt—crucial materials in modern batteries. As iPhones and laptops and electric vehicles spike demand for those metals, many people believe that nodules are the best way to migrate from fossil fuels to battery power.
I remember as a kid reading in sci fi/future tech books about tracked underwater mining machines that would travel the seabed collecting nodules. Might have even been mentioned in the underwater Willard Price adventure too.
Timex
6362
This part of the article here strikes me as odd:
Ships above will draw thousands of pounds of sediment through a hose to the surface, remove the metallic objects, known as polymetallic nodules, and then flush the rest back into the water. Some of that slurry will contain toxins such as mercury and lead, which could poison the surrounding ocean for hundreds of miles.
Why would the slurry contain lead and Mercury? Is it in something other than trivial Trace amounts? Or are they describing lead and Mercury which was already in the sediment before they dredged it?
I find it hard to understand why they would be putting something as expensive as mercury, which isn’t super cheap, into the slurry they are dumping back into the water.
It’s a blast from the past…
That’s simultaneously fascinating and horrifying.
Reading about the exploration of the deep trenches and poring over the 3d map of the Mariana trench was great.
Imagining what uncontrolled, virtually unregulated mining “slurry” plumes would do from an area the size of the US between Hawaii and California is… chilling (an understatement).
Yeah. I don’t think there’s any real hope for averting it now either.
Even assuming the cost estimate is low, this is a perfectly reasonable economic proposition that absolutely no government will take seriously, and which entrenched industries will fight to the death.
Chappers
6370
Something new for me to feel guilty about!
Honestly, what surprised me is that it’s only estimated at 2.4% of residential energy consumption. I would have expected more.
Now do cryptocurrency mining.
When people say we must “understand the science,” are you saying scientists should never be doubted by mere mortals? I was told in the 1970s that there would be an ice age, then in the 1990s we were told we only had ten years to live. This was not random people, it was the UN and NASA. And yet if you had doubted these projections then, would it have been OK to attack you as equivalent to an anti-vaaxer? You would have been correct.
Timex
6375
But this isn’t what actual scientists were saying.
Also, it’s worth noting that the Competitive Enterprise Institute is directly funded by major oil conglomerates, like Exxon Mobil, and has a somewhat vested interest in fostering climate change denial, so you should probably consider their claims with a grain of salt.
But even beyond that, do you realize what the ultimate narrative you’re trying to sell is? That scientists are liars. That somehow, your uneducated opinion is just as good, because scientists with expertise are trying to trick you.
That doesn’t sound like something you want to Hitch your wagon to, when stated so plainly, does it?
MikeJ
6376
A lot of those predictions are of the form “if population growth continues at the same rate” or “sulphur emissions growth continues” or “if cfc emissions continue”. Also most of the articles are projections of a single scientist quoted in some newspaper article rather than a broad conclusion of entire communities of scientists over many decades.
Stuff like how this article treats CFCs or flooding is really annoying to me and shows they are just willfully misinterpreting the statements and mining newspaper publications that they can shake they head at.
For instance, someone predicts that if emissions aren’t being curtailed by 2000 then some amount of coastal flooding is baked in. Your link then portrays this as a prediction that everything will be flooded by 2000. Well guess what? Emissions weren’t controlled and now it is too late to prevent significant sea level rise.
But don’t despair! There is still a chance for your disinformation campaign to make the future a little bit worse.
No, we’re saying that, although we acknowledge that science is a flawed enterprise by flawed people, when the vast majority unite behind a fairly coherent consensus backed by mounting evidence, maybe, considering what’s at stake (i.e. best case hundreds of millions of lives, worst case the future of innumerable species including ours), we should err on the side of caution take their advice over that of quarterly-revenue-focused captains of industry and demagoguing politicians who couldn’t be arsed to peruse the IPCC report if you put a gun to their head. Especially since the major carbon-producing energy sources are finite anyway, and we will have to wean ourselves off them sooner or later.
I mean, what’s the point of even having climate scientists if they all get together and say something really strenuously for decades and you just ignore them?
