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    Environmental risks Archived Message

    Posted by Ian M on July 9, 2019, 10:45 pm, in reply to "New Greenpeace Report Warns of ‘Irreversible Harm’ from Deep Sea Mining"

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    THE ENVIRONMENTAL RISKS OF DEEP SEA MINING

    The prospect of deep sea mining has been met with stark warnings from scientists and prominent conservationists, who have highlighted the risk of irreversible damage to ecosystems – including to those that we do not yet fully understand.29 Opening up a new industrial frontier in the largest ecosystem on Earth and undermining an important carbon sink carries significant environmental risks,30especially in light of the biodiversity and climate crises facing our oceans and the natural world more generally.Deep sea mining could cause severe and potentially irreversible environmental harm both at the mine sites and throughout broader ocean areas. The deep seabed underlying the open ocean was until recently thought to be relatively devoid of life, but deep sea research continues to reveal that this is not the case. Potential harmful effects from deep sea mining include:31 • Direct removal of seafloor habitat and organisms• Release of suspended sediment plumes• Alteration of substrate and its geochemistry• Release of toxins and contamination from extraction and removal processes• Noise and light pollutionHuge swathes of the seabed have already been licensed for mineral exploration, many of them in areas with high biodiversity value.32 A recent scientific analysis, Deep-Sea Mining with No Net Loss of Biodiversity – An Impossible Aim, demonstrates that biodiversity loss from deep sea mining will be unavoidable.33 The authors also point out that the ecological consequences to deep sea biodiversity are unknown and will have inter-generational consequences. They argue that this makes it hard to see how deep sea mining can be socially or scientifically acceptable, especially in the international seafloor of the Area, which is legally classed as “the common heritage of [hu]mankind.” Another paper has questioned the assumption that commercialising the international seabed will benefit all humankind and asks, “Is commercial exploitation of non-renewable resources from the ocean floor today really in the interest of humanity?”34Direct impacts: inevitable and irreversible harmRemotely operated mining machines moving, drilling and cutting over 1,000m below the surface will inevitably cause direct physical damage to the seabed and loss of biodiversity, risking extinctions of endemic species that may never recover after the destruction of their unique habitat.35 “Most mining-induced loss of biodiversity in the deep sea is likely to last forever on human timescales, given the very slow natural rates of recovery in affected ecosystems,” 15 leading deep sea experts warned in 2017.36Deep sea species, including Greenland sharks and corals, are among the longest-living creatures on Earth, and so are particularly vulnerable to physical disturbance because of their slow growth rates. There are three main types of deep sea mining: seafloor massive sulphides around hydrothermal vents, polymetallic nodules on abyssal plains, and cobalt-rich crusts on seamounts. While there are differences in the extraction technology and methods planned for extracting different deep sea mineral types, mining activity at any of these sites carries a high risk for marine life and ocean ecosystems.

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    It looks like this could turn out to be one of the major rotten legacies of civilisation that any human and non-human survivors will be cursing for 1000s of years hence. The mining companies are even going for the hydrothermal vents ffs, only known about since the 70s, one 'lost city' discovered in the mid-atlantic in 2000 and offered up to the Polish government in 2018. It reminds me of nazis taking gold teeth and other useful 'commodities' from the bodies of death camp victims. There's nothing this repulsive system won't try to devour...

    I

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