[adim86]

I think its crazy that we find a discovery like this in our eco-system that we barely understand and the first thing people want to do is mine them for profit. Like the race to profit with the disregard for consequences is mind-blowing

[hammock]

These metallic nodules on the bottom of the ocean - and the habitat they create that is teeming with life - are already slated for strip-mining actually. Finding out they are a source of oxygen may save them (or see them destroyed in a different way)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33988999

[yellow_postit]

Last Week Tonight had a deep sea mining operation episode.

https://www.hbo.com/last-week-tonight-with-john-oliver/seaso...

[pstuart]

John Oliver (and crew) is a national treasure.

[jcranmer]

The "advantage" of deep-sea mining is that there are no neighbors to complain about the environmental effects of mining, and--since it's largely proposed in international waters--you get to choose whose environment regulations you follow.

The disadvantages are more numerous: the commercial viability of the extracted ore is extremely unclear; the seafloor is very poorly mapped, and with poor visibility, you could easily drive a seafloor rover into or over a cliff without seeing it; environmental effects are largely unknown [1]; the international authority meant to help guide these efforts has put a moratorium on it until these questions can be answered (which, given how long it's taking to answer them, has led many companies interesting in deep sea mining to advocate for ignoring it entirely).

[1] Although anyone who's had much of a thought about it would probably hazard that "insanely destructive" is the most likely outcome. Still an open question if deep sea mining is less or more destructive than our current mining techniques.

[whalesalad]

yep, these guys are hell bent on mining everything from the seafloor because they think its "free" and inconsequential https://metals.co/nodules/

[LargoLasskhyfv]

'First thing' ? AFAIK the idea existed looong before this recent discovery.

Even if only as a cover story for the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glomar_Explorer at first.

[newsbinator]

> and the first thing people want to do is mine them for profit

The reason we have the technology to discover non-obvious things is thanks to thousands of years of profit-seeking.

[datavirtue]

I picture these getting strip mined, causing a domino effect that results in Ocean death.

[unshavedyak]

Is it surprising/crazy though? I feel like our entire capitalist mindset is to pillage everything you can stomach and to push your own boundaries because if you don't - someone else will and beat you with their profits.

It always feels like a morality race to the bottom. Clearly i'm a pessimist here, but it's obvious in my pessimistic mindset. Do you have a more positive outlook perhaps?

[shrimp_emoji]

It's not just capitalism. The Soviet Union drained the Aral Sea in hopes of irrigating cotton farms and overfished whales whose carcasses went to waste to mindlessly meet quotas.

At least capitalism is good at extracting value from the pillaging, unlike the alternatives.

But, in the end, pillaging is inevitable. Thermodynamically, "there's stuff already there, and all we have to do is get it" is the simple sugar of industry. You'll never find easier Calories. It's too sweet to resist. That's how you end up in oxymoronic schemes like "biomass" (cutting down forests) in the pursuit of renewable energy.

[littlestymaar]

> At least capitalism is good at extracting value from the pillaging, unlike the alternatives.

Well that's kind of the problem, it's really efficient at it and this efficiency is the root of the crisis we're in.

[unshavedyak]

> It's not just capitalism.

Definitely, but i didn't imply it was just capitalism.

If it is as dire as you portray, i guess my pessimism is correct. We're doomed and we'll all race to the finish line.

[nilamo]

Is it a capitalistic mindset? There have been many civilizations throughout history which pillaged everything they could, and I'm not sure very many were driven by capitalism.

I'm thinking about the ancient Egyptians, Vikings, Huns, etc.

[littlestymaar]

Marx got you covered in Das Capital, this topic is being addressed explicitly. Long story short, you're right it's not specific to capitalism, capitalism is just the latest and most formally structured system to enable this fundamental human sin.

What's interesting is that societies are not bounded by destructive instincts: over time we've progressed a lot in limiting violence between humans. We will never reach a state with absolutely zero violence, but northern Europe or Canada shows that you can definitely reach levels that are incredibly low by human standards.

Now we need to do the same will pillaging and exploitation (of both nature and other humans).

[frumper]

It feels premature to say regions of the world have limited violence between humans. People are still alive from a time when there was some major European violence.

[littlestymaar]

It was 80 years ago though … If you combine the lack of large scale war in the area with the very low level of inter-personal violence, you've had three generations there who have lived in a situation that most people from before would have deemed impossible due to the nature of men. And yet it happened.

Incredible to see how the nuclear bomb and welfare state were able to perform such an incredible feat.

[unshavedyak]

I think that just means it isn't solely a capitalist mindset, no? Which i didn't mean to say that capitalism owned the idea, just rather that it's a core tenet of capitalism.

[bamboozled]

Yup, we just pretend it's not disgusting and keep participating / allow it to continue.

[GreatLdisisp88]

Your salary comes from that. So too is your Internet. Maybe you are being hypocrite? To be human, we destroy. The only way is to die out and let nature take her course. Agent Smith in Matrix said summed it best that we are virus on this planet that need to be eradicated.

[unshavedyak]

That seems reductive. Are you a slave owner if your shirts were made in sweatshops? You certainly contribute to the problem, but i don't think your a hypocrite if you use modern features of life - nearly all negatively impact. The alternative is living in the woods off grid - and likely illegally, since you can't afford to buy the land without also being a hypocrite in most locations.

I think there's a middle ground where you acknowledge there's a problem, try in some part to mitigate your contribution and build the world you want to be.

We don't have to be all-in on sweatshops and environmental destruction just because we in some part contribute to the problem as well.

[toss1]

True, but it seems more than possible that we could self-regulate to minimize the harms done

More on point, it is absolutely critical that we self-regulate, because if we fail to do so, eventually, nature WILL regulate us into oblivion. Our existence depends on an insanely complex web of life. As with any robust network, many nodes and connections can be damaged and the system will still work. But keep damaging nodes and connections, and eventually, the system cannot recover — it will break down and may die off completely. When that happens, no human technology will save our species.

And the self-regulation is happening. We may very well be on a path where improving technology gets us through to a far less destructive life mode. More education, security, and rights causes birth rates to decline. Sustainable energy production is now cheaper than digging up fossil fuels, transporting them across the globe and lighting them on fire. Lighting is 10X more efficient, etc. etc. etc.. Intentional efforts to save species and ecosystems often see them recover faster than expected.

The only question is whether we have the luck and political will to make this transition happen fast enough to get to a sustainable energy & materials economy before a critical collapse.

[saagarjha]

"Yet you participate in society! Curious! I am very intelligent."

[anonym29]

I think it's crazy that we keep finding discoveries like this, and yet everyone continues acting and going about their way as if we now know everything.

The world's an incredibly complex place. Who's to say the consequences of harvesting these nodules are necessarily negative? If we're just finding out new details about them, how can you possibly assume you know how removing them will affect the environment?

Epistemologically speaking, we know very little, while we erroneously believe ourselves to know all.

Kind of like how so many will assert with unshakable confidence that human activities are causatively responsible for the bulk of climate change, when we don't even have an exhaustive list of the factors influencing it, let alone the ability to study whether the observed associations are merely correlated or causative (you need to isolate all confounding variables and have robust experiment design, including controls, to establish causality).

We don't even have true mastery over human-made systems (Rowhammer, speculative execution attacks were possible for many years before any human brain had ever conveived of such a possibility), how can anyone possibly have enough intellectual arrogance to assume we understand how human activity will affect ecosystems we barely even know about the existence of?

And to be clear - I'm not arguing that companies should be allowed to start harvesting these, nor am I arguing that human activity is not the primary contributing factor to climate change - just pointing out the juxtaposition between the immense cognitive hubris and the infinite scope of how much about reality we don't even begin to have an understanding of.

Some points I would argue are that our education system is gravely flawed, our understanding of the world is dangerously shallow, and the level of self-awareness that we, collectively, as a species, have about these shortcomings of ours is dangerously low.

We ought to be ceasing much of what we waste our time with and figuring out ways to organize society to perform much more robust research, not confidently making knee-jerk assertions about the impacts of proposed activity we've never studied in an ecosystem we've barely even seen, let alone studied. That includes assertions both supporting and opposing such activity.

[peddling-brink]

Because the consequences of being wrong may be catastrophic for the future of humanity. The consequences of doing nothing are reduced profits.

It’s ok to err on the side of caution, because as you point out, we’re nowhere near being able to holistically understand these complex systems.

Yes, it would be better to completely understand the problem before digging in, but that’s not near term, but the destruction of this habitat is.