China Plans To Mine the Yellow Sea Floor 223
eldavojohn writes "Details are limited but state media is reporting on $75 million being put into a new research facility
in Qingdao, Shandong Province that will conduct research into mining the sea floor. From the article: 'Scientists believe sea beds at a depth of 4,000 to 6,000 meters hold abundant deposits of rare metals and methane hydrate, a solidified form of natural gas bound into ice that can serve as a new energy source.' The research center's first goal is to do surveying and exploration with a new submersible named 'Jiaolong' (a mythical aquatic Chinese dragon). Hopefully these quests yield energy resources to meet growing demand for resources like liquefied coal in China."
What could possibly go wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Releasing even more of one of the most effective greenhouse gasses (methane)..
Paying the Cost to Be the Boss (Score:4, Interesting)
If only the true costs of carbon pollution were built into the price of causing it, China's repressedly low labor costs couldn't govern the vast amount of pollution it generates.
The Tragedy of the Commons [wikipedia.org] can be protected against by only government, not market, action.
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You mean, they are Photoshopping pollution out of the pictures like they did in the olympics?
Or do you mean wiping out animals or moving 1 million people without concern for any ethics just for appearances?
Or forcing people at gun point to stop their businesses so the electricity could be used to light a stadium?
I noticed the chinese are up to their same old deceptive shit during the olympics.
There is a lot of grass roots green energy usage, but that's due to the fact there's a lot of extra labor ar
Re:Paying the Cost to Be the Boss (Score:5, Interesting)
China is putting in more work to reduce pollution than anywhere else and luckily they didn't stop after the Olympics.
I thought they stopped most sources of smog only temporarily before resuming them after the games. And did they clean up their act anywhere besides Beijing? Because it's fine if they're trying to lower pollution in Beijing, but it's a big country. For those of us who don't live there, a coal plant 100 miles from Beijing isn't that much different than one in the very center.
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China is putting in more work to reduce pollution than anywhere else
I hope this is a fucking sarcastic joke?? China doesn't give a shit about pollution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_water_crisis
"China is facing a water crisis that includes water shortages, water pollution and a deterioration in water quality. 400 out of 600 cities in China are facing water shortages to varying degrees, including 30 out of the 32 largest cities.... the south has abundant water, there is a lack of clean water due to serious water pollution. Even water-abundant delta
Green spray paint (Score:2)
As you should have noticed with the Olympics, China is putting in more work to reduce pollution than anywhere else and luckily they didn't stop after the Olympics.
You were just impressed by the landscaping. [clearwisdom.net]
Re:Paying the Cost to Be the Boss (Score:5, Insightful)
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"Vast"? Chinese are quite decent in emissions per capita; even despite large part of those beeing essentially an import from places buying stuff from them (so just don't...)
Re:Paying the Cost to Be the Boss (Score:5, Insightful)
Except pollution isn't created per capita. Most Chinese people don't produce more pollution than their ancestors did a century or a millennium ago, because they're not part of the global economy - they're stuck in the feudal economies of their areas, outside the cities, factories and mines that really pollute. Even without consuming much more than they did before indoor plumbing and the quality of life that they're stuck in. The US, meanwhile, counts nearly every resident in the global economy.
The actual measure is pollution per output. China consumes more energy than the US now, produces much more Greenhouse pollution, and vastly more pollution that isn't Greenhouse emissions. Yet China produces only 1/3 the output of the US. China therefore pollutes a lot more than 6x the amount the US pollutes per output.
Other countries also look better than they really are. China and the US together produce about 1/3 the total global output, much more than other countries do per capita. That output is consumed around the world. Those other people are outsourcing their pollution to the US and China, just as the US has outsourced much of its worst pollution to China.
All of which shows that markets have done nothing but shuffle pollution around to the lowest bidder. Which is why the people create governments to protect ourselves from getting dumped on when it's free.
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You have some extreme (in a bit literal sense of the word here) ideas about Chinese (and US, for that matter) societies...
Picking few convenient numbers for easiest target doesn't tell much, too (why won't you go with Germany? And generally, look at this graph [wikipedia.org] - the source document for it / methodology includes to the fullest practical extent imports/exports of all types; this one shows the end ballance)
Though ultimetely what you're doing is a good sign, I guess; such type of slight dismissal could relate t
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What extreme ideas? Say something that could be compared to facts, please.
Like comparing your graph to facts. It's not actually linked to a source document, and the pixellated names of two documents can't be at all easily used to examine the source documents it claims to be derived from. But let's take its word for it. Its "ecological footprint" (whatever that is exactly) is measured per capita, and I already debunked that basis, so your argument is either circular, or you're not even reading what I wrote t
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What a pretty graph - it must actually say something, right? Except as far as I can figure out it doesn't. "Human Development Index" plotted against "global hectares per capita"? WTF? Not only don't we know what a Human Development Index is, I challenge you to tell us what a "global hectare" is (and why it is different than a normal old area-of-measurement hectare), and why it is so significant when it is evaluated per capita per country.
Balderdash.
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Y axis & not strictly pleasant places from that graph doesn't even have much to do with the issue...certainly can be ignored for the needs of this discussion. There are plenty points there with very comparable standard of living to the most wasteful, while claiming between 2 to 3 times less resources.
'Green most industrialized places' is sort of bullshit; but some more than the other and generally in reality in a bit different rank than people would think / hope for.
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hmm, per cap or per output? fair question. Now how should we go about deciding which is the proper measure? It is more than academic. India made the per cap argument in telling the no development crowd at copenhagen to go to hell and with a few other countries who valued their sovereignty derailed the agenda.
I consider this question illustrates part of the stupidity of statistical reasoning. Oh well.
But I guess having raised the question, I should take a shot, Hmm, try this. Thinking about mastodons
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I'll just pick the most obvious fallacy in your bag of bad logic:
Even considering just the past 50 years shows us a global civilization that has lately, occasionally and superficially had any "green" component. It has been overwhelmingly industrialized, polluting, and unsustainable. All underwritten by a fraudulent global finance system. All of which has collapsed several times: environmentally only locally, though the global collapse is now on us as we cha
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amusing. as far as bad logic is concerned, do you not feel sort of silly when someone claims a correlation and you then attack a claim of causation. Sure, in fact I am fine with blaming anti-tech ideologies, but I am even happier to blame global financial system stuff.
so I have to look around hard to find anything useful in your response. Here is what I come up with. Your response to the correlation claim is "not green", because "industrialized, polluting, and unsustainable". So one part of your claim
Re:Paying the Cost to Be the Boss (Score:4, Insightful)
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That is simply not true. Can you name some examples of those "many" libertarians who promote not having ANY taxes and regulation? Is Ayn Rand libertarian enough: http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/government.html [aynrandlexicon.com] The mainstream view of libertarians (not anarchists) is that you cannot have liberty for all individuals without government providing l
Re:Paying the Cost to Be the Boss (Score:4, Insightful)
The "Contract" you gave is just propaganda.
No it is not. That is exactly what the Tea Party movement is about. To say anything else, you will need to provide some evidence.
The point of the Tea Party (it's not a party)
Of course it is not. It's a reference to the Boston Tea Party. It's nothing to do with political "party".
is for Republicans to call yourselves something else
Not at all. Republicans tend to be closer to the ideals of the Tea Partiers, but by no means automatically. Did you even see what happened in the primaries this year. A whole crap load of established Republicans got voted out by the Tea Party preferred candidates because they did not stand for those ideals.
You never call for cutting the military/intelligence budget down from the $TRILLION+ to something actually justifiable like $200B.
And how did you pull that number out of your ass? A strong military is of course necessary for us to have but if we spend excessive amount on it, that is mainly the result of the government corruption (i.e. pork) that exists in both parties.
You want to get government out of healthcare, but hands off your Medicare.
No, we want all government programs including Medicare audited for constitutionality and for waste and cut back as necessary. I personally want Medicare completely eliminated, as well as the Medicaid, Social Security and all Unemployment Benefits. If we want to help our fellow citizens (and I do) we should do it voluntarily through charity. We have no right to do it with other people's money.
You talk about entitlement as if people aren't entitled to things like Social Security they paid into and which don't add a penny to the deficit.
Both parts of your statement are laughable. Social Security is a broken and bankrupt system, I can provide as much evidence for it as you like. Even so, I have not heard of any Tea Party supporters calling for it to be abolished without paying out the benefits to those who paid into the system. Even those who are open about ending social security like Sharon Angle would only phase it out for new people entering the workforce, not for those who already paid into it.
You never complained while you were voting for Bush/Cheney twice, but the moment a Democrat is elected you answer the call of your corporate funders and organizers like Dick Armey and Glenn Beck to "take back" your country - that you and your fellow Republicans brought to ruin.
The country has never actually had a government that was as fiscally irresponsible as the current one. The Obamacare alone will over time (esp if Dems stay in power and eventually turn it into a fully socialized system as they intend to) bankrupt the country. Along wioth SS, and other programs, we are heading for European style 70%+ income tax burden for our children just to fund all the entitlements.
As for the Constitution, you want to gut the 14th Amendment,
Who does? Some Republicans do want to stop the deliberate abuse of it with the "anchor babies" and I agree with it, but that has really nothing to do with the Tea Party. Even so we only want to do this through a constitutional amendment. We don't want to bypass or ignore the constitution, we want to amend it. There is a procedure for that provided in, guess what, the constitution.
ignore the 4th Amendment add a homophobia amendment...
All I can say to that is... What!?
and march with racists who really just prefer the original intent of the Constitution that protects slavery.
There is not once single piece of evidence that Tea Party is in any way racist. I might as well say that the Democrats want to burn live babies. Stating something doesn't make it true. On the other hand there is plenty of evidence that there is a deliberate policy among the liberals to smear the Tea Party, and in fact any opponent, as racist. Would you like me to provide some?
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Social Security is a taxpayer funded pension with wealth redistribution components. Low income households get back 27% more income than they put in while middle income get back 5% more than they put in and high income get back less than they put in.
Not true. Poorer people don't live as long as rich people so the rich draw SS benefits much longer than poorer or middle class workers. That's a fact. It is also a fact that rich retirees end up drawing a higher percentage of benefits vs the amount they contributed because of their longer lifespans. Although it is true that while drawing benefits the rich don't draw in proportion to the amount they contributed, their longer lives more than make up for the difference. The rich cost us more in SS than th
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Yes, in order to make that 40% above poverty line pension payout, people who don't need the pension don't get as much, and people who would starve and freeze without it get more. Meanwhile, the portion of the salary from which Social Security is deducted is capped at a relatively low amount, so really rich people who don't really need it still get it, but don't pay as much as those who do. Yes, there's some "wealth redistribution", so people don't starve and freeze to death when they're old the way they use
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If only people like you understood that free market != anarchy the amount of pointless nonsense written on slashdot would decrease. If you cause harm to others, including polluting their environment, you ARE supposed to pay for it. This is NOT inconsistent with the free market.
Dear Free Marketarian,
All things being equal, your money is not a substitute for my unpolluted air, water, and land.
Further, I'd like to point out that limiting pollution, while expensive for you, is cheaper
overall than remediating (when possible) the results of your raw output.
Also, could you clean up all your Superfund sites the government is now responsible for?
Sincerely,
Someone who has to live in the world.
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If only Teabaggers like you would stop with the strawman [wikipedia.org] fallacies, like where you accused me of saying "the free market = anarchy". You said that.
Without government action, Chinese industry pollution causing climate change everywhere else isn't going to have any mechanism for compensation. You just cited Friedman in tort cases and taxation, which are government actions in response to complaints, not market actions.
In other words, your actions agree with me, even while you attack me with fallacies. Teabagge
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The Tragedy of the Commons [wikipedia.org] can be protected against by only government, not market, action.
Except there are multiple governments in the world, so unless you can get them all to agree on the same regulations, then they're going to pretty much act like players in a large regulations market.
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Correct. Which is why we have so many international organizations and alliances. The UN itself is the forum for getting governments to coordinate international law. These laws are typically enforced by individual countries on each other by enforcing import and export taxes penalizing noncompliance. The US imports and exports so much among so many countries that our taxing those imports/exports can be more expensive than complying with the law.
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All the time. America's Constitutional democratic republic is organized with feedbacks harnessing competition among those people to do what the people want, both immediately according to the rules and in the long term making the rules.
As Churchill said, democracy sucks, but it's the only thing that's ever worked. The market anarchy you're equating in quality to even American government proved for millennia how much worse its alternative is.
Re:Paying the Cost to Be the Boss (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not about better or worse. The government requiring corporations (and people, by extension) to pay compensation for damage done to the environment doesn't interfere with the market any more than enforcing property rights does.
Re:What could possibly go wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
In the series "what could possibly go wrong", long before greenhouse gases, I'll worry about the people behind these operations. China sending people into the deep of the ocean for mining operations; considering how "stable" and "safe" surface mining operations are in China, I can only ask myself this question: "what could possibly go wrong"? And the answers comes naturally: Possibly a lot...
Re:What could possibly go wrong (Score:5, Funny)
Look at it this way - sending a lot of people into the ocean to recover resources will solve two problems - too many people and not enough resources.
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The chinese have a consistent track record of cutting ethical and environmental corners, and doing business based on bribes.
There's no reason to believe this particular project will be any different.
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You're fooling around with methyl hydrates. Yes it could be worse than BP. The Gulf disaster was relatively localized. Methyl hydrates have a reputation for large areas spontaneously releasing, even without intervention. (There's reasonable grounds for suspicion that some tsunami have been caused by such spontaneous detonations.)
Well, if it's done carefully and safely, afterwards things might be better. (There's a notable chance, after all, that if the sea warms much the rate of spontaneous detonations
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There are 33 men in Chile who might raise some questions about the wisdom of adding a mile of water to the situation.
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Long article on the subject:
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1987/02/23/1987_02_23_039_TNY_CARDS_000347146?currentPage=all [newyorker.com]
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On a long enough time span, you are probably correct. OTOH, the ecology of the Gulf had already been stretched near the breaking point, the dead zones were already growing, etc.
I'm not sanguine as to the outcome of this latest problem. It may only lead to a few thousand deaths, and a few hundred thousand who are sick (perhaps mildly) for the rest of their lives. But that's just people. The fisheries may never recover. (They were already pretty stressed, and fisheries that collapse often don't recover f
Unfortunately, this is what we do (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone who is serious understands we can't keep gobbling up resources the way the West has been since WWII. Yet no one stops to think that moving to the suburbs and having kids is a huge contributor to the demand for resources.
The only good thing is that things will start getting more and more expensive as oil gets harder and harder to get, and therefore anything that depends on cheap energy (everything) starts getting not so cheap.
The next 50 years will be interesting, to say the least.
Re:Unfortunately, this is what we do (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone who is serious understands we can't keep gobbling up resources the way the West has been since WWII. Yet no one stops to think that moving to the suburbs and having kids is a huge contributor to the demand for resources.
You did think about this. But the vast majority of population growth is not in the developed world. Reality doesn't fit the narrative.
The only good thing is that things will start getting more and more expensive as oil gets harder and harder to get, and therefore anything that depends on cheap energy (everything) starts getting not so cheap. The next 50 years will be interesting, to say the least.
Eh, that's a really mean Calvinist strike you have there. I'm a bit more optimistic. Maybe things won't be quite as easy as they are with cheap fossil fuels, but we still do have a lot of free power hitting the Earth every day in the form of sunlight. I think we'll figure a workable substitute for fossil fuels in transportation and coal in electricity generation.
Re:Unfortunately, this is what we do (Score:5, Interesting)
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You, too, are capable of some thought... Try this on for size... Population in the "not developed world" - How many iPods are those kids getting at Christmas? Elmo dolls? How many toys? What about XBox, PSP, Nintendo? Are they eating tons of beef and drinking gallons of milk produced in the "developed world"? What about the average caloric intake in the "not developed world"? Does it approach what fat American/European and developed Asian kids and grownups eat? How much energy goes into the production of their food compared to modern food? I would love to know exactly the ratios of child:resources in the developed and non-developed world. I think it's a fair guess (yup, that's all this is) that developed lifestyles over the span of a lifetime so far over-consume resources compared to those in the non developed world as to be scary. If I am wrong I would love to hear about it. (I didn't even get to construction, transportation, medicine, space exploration and defense spending) The non-developed world will not lead the way in consumption of resources until they become... the developed world. And then they join the all-you-can eat buffet. Calvin be damned (which he may be), it is going to be far beyond "interesting" in the next 50 years.
Why don't you go looking for them then? My take here is that we also need to consider production as well. And the developed world generally wins on that as well as consumption.
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thing is that suburbia eats a whole lot more resources pr person then urban or rural (former from concentrated transport, latter for less transport needs overall).
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I'm guessing you mean "streak"?
Yes I did.
Well, this IS a story about China, and my comment about the West is basically that Chindia will be doing, or at least try to do, the gobbling.
I have to agree with dbIII. Chindia is awful. And as your use of the word, "interesting", when someone whines about resource allocation and then says things will get "interesting", I usually get the impression (as I did here) that to mean mass starvation, wars, etc. In other words, that person pretty much expects mass die off of humans. Often they expect the West to do most of the dying even though the West has the infrastructure and the technology to deal with these die offs (far more resilient
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the west? this is about china. you know, the east.
Re:Unfortunately, this is what we do (Score:5, Insightful)
- Stop having more than one kid : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy [wikipedia.org]
- Use high-speed rail for long distance : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_China [wikipedia.org]
- Switch unequivocally to nuclear power : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China [wikipedia.org]
- Build cheap electrical cars : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_Auto [wikipedia.org]
Funny. "Western elites" seem to know what is needed to be done but it looks like in Asia, they prefer to do than to talk.
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I guess we have to start do things like China does then
- Exempt ourselves from the Kyoto accords
- Beat union organizers to death for organizing and striking
- Increase coal consumption rapidly
- Institutionalize dissidents and kill protesters
- Create a permanent traffic jam of coal trucks
- Build hundreds of light water reactors
- Recreate the 1930's North American dust bowl
- Use growth hormones to give female infants big breasts
"Western elites" don't prefer to "do" these things. They grew out of it.
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- Stop having more than one kid
Most of the developed world has a negative population growth. Even the US - with one of the highest birth rates amongst the industrialized nations - has a birth rate just below the replacement rate.
- Use high-speed rail for long distance ... Switch unequivocally to nuclear power
Sounds good to me.
Build cheap electrical cars
$40,000+ USD isn't cheap, by any means. Even Tesla motors was planning on putting out a similarly priced vehicle, and I'd put good money on their vehicles being much safer than anything coming out of China. Or you can buy the Chevy Volt - a more practical vehicle - for almost $10,000 less.
Funny. "Western elites" seem to know what is needed to be done but it looks like in Asia, they prefer to do than to talk.
Yep
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Anyone who is serious? What, the rest of us are light-hearted jokesters?
Hey guys, we're innovating our way out of resource scarcity! What crazy shenanigans will we think up next?
If you'd like to claim that I'm being overly optimistic, I remind you that I have the entire history of the human race supporting my theory, and you've got a long line of doomsday-prophesying crackpots backing up yours.
By all means, try to convince me that subsistence farming the Olduvai Gorge with a few thousand other folks is the
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Yet no one stops to think that moving to the suburbs and having kids is a huge contributor to the demand for resources.
If I don't have kids, how would that reduction of carbon / energy consumption / etc compare to, say, having kids and advocating restrictions on coal-fired power plants? Are we talking comparable amounts or are we talking my sacrificing my kids would be like one less hour of a coal plant running? I'm really more in favor of having the government clamp down on abusive corporations than not having kids, even moreso if reproducing would be small potatoes compared to your average corporate ubercitizen.
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Anyone who is serious understands we can't keep gobbling up resources the way the West has been since WWII. Y
What ever happened to conservation of matter? No resources are really "gobbled up". They are distributed among the population and/or eventually find their way into landfills and other waste products. Our technology is advanced enough to recover all of these materials, be it CO2 from the atmosphere or copper from landfills. The problem is an economic one - at the moment it's stil
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"moving to the suburbs and having kids is a huge contributor to the demand for resources."
Moving to the suburbs is different from settling new spaces (something not unique to the U.S.) how? Choices then may have been driven by opportunity, lack of resources where they came from, growing families, etc. So moving to the suburbs gets you opportunity (more space, bigger residence) resources (space, again?) and of course gets you out of your parents' house...
Having kids, of course, continues our species. If t
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Boy, did you get it wrong.
Taking personal responsibility for population growth, I meant taking the obvious step and starting with throwing yourself off a bridge. But I do NOT expect you to, since you have every right to live. So deal with the hypocrisy of telling otherds they should not procreate, knowing you only exist because someone DID.
And having as many children as possible might mean letting finances limit the number instead of biology. This, and self-centeredness, IS the reason the U.S. is experie
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If we want to treat the Earth as a closed system, we need to step up to the plate about population problems. The first step is probably to get the population down below 500 million, probably more like 200 million people in as short a time as possible. This could be done with some untreated and fatal disease, war or just encouraging people to volunteer. The best course of action is probably to actively make things as awful as possible to life on the planet until people decide to (a) not have children and
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Perfect Balance (Score:5, Funny)
The way I see it, as long as we dig up the bottom of the ocean fast enough, we can counteract the rising water levels due to global warming! The more we dig, the more we burn, the more it rises, the more we dig; nature back in balance~!
Horray!
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Hmm. Quick napkin math.
3.61*10^14 m2 (ocean surface area) x 1 cm = 361,000,000,000,000 cubic cm
3.61*10^14 cm^3 = 361 million m^3 = 0.361 km^3
So to lower the level of the ocean by 1 cm, you need to store a bit over a third of a cubic km on land.
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When i try that, i get a larger number...
3.61*10^14 m2 (ocean surface area) x 0.01 m = 3.61*10^12 m^3
3.61*10^12 m^3 = 3.61*10^3 km^3 = 3160 km^3
You'd need just a wee bit more..
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Oh, hell. I was multiplying m2 with cm2 or possibly cm3. I went the wrong way, turning it into cubic cm then cubic meters (might have went with a million cm in a meter. sshh, I know. That's some baaaaaad math skills) then making the same mistake thrice figuring out how many cubic meters are in a cubic km.
It's not public schooling's fault. It's that I haven't tried calculating volume and surface area in years. Last time I did math even close to this was to figure out the RPM of tires on the vehicles in X
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Ok, double reply.
Cubic meter is 100*100*100 cm, right? And a cubic km would be 1000*1000*1000 meters, right? So that means there's 1*10^15 cm^3 in a km^3, right?
So then, 3.61*10^14 / 1*10^15 = 0.361
Nope, never mind. I didn't convert the square meters into square centimeters (100*100) which is why I was off by a factor of 10000.
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Yeah, that's what I thought. Turns out I math bad and was off by about 10000 times that.
Thankfully, this was pointed out and I was able to go back and figure out where I screw up. I had the square meters and, instead of going with 1 cm of height, I should have used 0.01 meters for the height.
Obligatory (Score:2)
Minerals on the floor (Score:2, Interesting)
There's also a bunch dissolved in the water. Distillation can serve a dual purpose. I still don't know why we dig salt mines with the great abundance right there in the oceans. Yeah yeah yeah... "It's the economy, stupid" Same reason we'd rather fight wars over water itself.
Re:Minerals on the floor (Score:5, Informative)
Evaporation ponds (Score:2)
You can have evaporation ponds [uol.com.br], using wind power to pump the sea water.
The big problem then is separating the more valuable compounds from the sodium chloride
And the best part is (Score:3, Funny)
Methyl hydrate apocalypse averted? (Score:5, Interesting)
Some people are worried that global warming will trigger a methyl hydrate apocalypse in which the vast stores of methyl hydrate locked into ice at the bottom of many bodies of water begins to boil and release all the methane into the atmosphere causing a greenhouse effect that's much, much worse than the CO2 one we're causing for ourselves now.
I suppose that having the methyl hydrate mined and turned into CO2 is better than having it released as methane. But that is somehow little comfort.
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Um. Wait a minute.....
/sarcasm
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Wait, doesn't atmospheric methane naturally break down after a few years in a way that carbon dioxide doesn't? So it potentially has a warming effect, but only temporarily?
Re:Methyl hydrate apocalypse averted? (Score:5, Informative)
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Got it. Okay, then I'll cancel burrito night.
Methylhydrate Geyser (Score:4, Interesting)
The pressure is keeping it from changing to gas. If you lift it, the pressure drops and it goes to gaseous state. If enough water above it is displaced by anything including bubbles, then the pressure drops and it goes to gas.
There is also the matter of the amount of sediment that the mining, if done on the surface of the ocean floor will stir up and how many years it will take to settle. Fish and other sea life do it in minutes. Sea life does not like changes in turbidity and there is the potential for very far reaching problems lasting a very long time. Water takes about 400 years to go full cycle from surface to bottom to surface again.
Oh. For resources. Read that title wrong. (Score:2)
Thankfully this is just peaceful science. Right? RIGHT?
China Plans To Study Mining the Yellow Sea Floor (Score:2)
Ftfy. Studying sea floor mining is not new.
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Studying sea floor mining is not new.
Or is it "studying" instead of studying? Or whose sunken submarines are they planning to recover?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glomar_Explorer [wikipedia.org]
Not that kind of mining (Score:2)
False alarm.
Well, in a manner of speaking. We'd still be fucked ecologically.
Glomar Explorer (Score:2, Insightful)
Pretty much the same cover story.
They were going to collect metal right off the top of the ocean floor.
In a way, they did.
Wow! There are a lot of smart people in China! (Score:2)
Too bad none of them are involved in this project.
Jiaolong (Score:2, Interesting)
As China Advances.. (Score:3, Informative)
We Americans keep tying our own hands behind our backs. Energy and resources = Power.
Step 1 To A Long Term Lunar Presence? (Score:2)
Personally, my mind ponders the wording used in Psalms, 107:23 KJV. Maybe a minor modification to include women, and a minor edit for altitudes greater than 60 miles.
Any Chinese Up For This? (Score:3, Funny)
Fuel for chinese naval border disputes (Score:5, Insightful)
While this research takes place in largely uncontested [wikipedia.org] Yellow sea, any success could very well bolster the Chinese government's hawkish stand on naval borders.
The disputes with Japan and Taiwan are well known [wikipedia.org]. It recently claimed sovereignty of regions of the South China Sea that are well beyond common UN agreements on sovereignty [bbc.co.uk] and openly challenged by ASEAN neighbors [economist.com].
Even the Yellow Sea is not without conflict, in which even the US is directly involved [economist.com]. At the heart of the matter is what the article calls ``one element in what appears to be an attempt to turn the seas near it into a Chinese lake''.
DUPE! (Score:2)
Old news! [wikipedia.org]
Glomar Explorer? (Score:2, Interesting)
Oceanic crust probably more abundant with metal. (Score:2)
Since the oceanic crust is composed of mafic material with higher levels of metals, wouldn't this be a good place to look for metals. The continental crust is much more metal poor and not as good a place to mine it seems. In many ways it seems the continents are not good places to mine. AS well, eventually the oceanic crust will be recycled so any mining of the ocean floor would cause only temporary damage to the terrain. So the effects of mining the ocean floor are relatively short lived. The oceanic crust
Re: (Score:2)
An interesting side note, the continents being so poor in metal makes them lighter and unable to subduct and also to float higher, which leads to the appearance of land. Continental rock is the result of volcanic arc subduction fractional melting which results in a lower metal felsic rock that becomes the continental crust. It is due to plate tectonics and arc subduction magmatism that we see the continent/oceanic crust duality that has led to land on otherwise what would have been an ocean planet. SInce th
Ecological disaster (Score:2)
Inaccurate title (Score:4, Interesting)
Should read: "China plans to tap fibre-optic cables on the sea floor".
Remember the "manganese nodules" cover story for Glomar Challenger from the 1970s?
This will require some pretty awesome robots! (Score:3, Interesting)
Most people posting don't seem to acknowledge that there wouldn't be any people doing mining with five miles of water above them. This would all be done by autonomous robots. Quite honestly, I like the idea, as long as it doesn't pollute the water (I don't see why it should, if it's just the mechanical removal of stuff).
One reason why I love the idea of autonomous mining is because I want this sort of thing to happen on the moon. That ore, processed on the lunar surface, can be shot into orbit with a simple railgun and get used for whatever we want, like a permanent space station at a liberation point.
Debugging the technique in a hostile place on Earth sounds like a good idea to me.
Methane Hydrates = Global Disaster (Score:4, Insightful)
In addition to Coal, Tar Sands, and Oil Shale, if we burn these up, we will put the earth well on it's way to the "Venus Syndrome".
People in their 30's, their kids kids will surely suffer from this. It's time something was done about it. Getting a gas saving car does nothing but make it cheaper to buy carbon based fuels somewhere else, cap and trade is a complete hoax, it's time to start making renew-ables cheaper and tax usage of carbon based fuels across the board world wide. If we do nothing we may be responsible for killing everything on the planet.
Re:Religious Propaganda (Score:5, Interesting)
The Jehovahs once brought round a leaflet containing exciting news of this new stuff that "scientists" had discovered on the ocean floor. The same "scientists" who all believe that god is a fact and believe in biblical creation.
This new fuel source was going to provide all our energy needs without mention of any damage to the environment and cost of extraction.
Mind you, when the earth is only a few thousand years old and the end of it is nigh anyway, why does it matter if you ruin the environment?
I believe China is getting a bit god-botherery these days.
Re: (Score:2)
The Jehovahs once brought round a leaflet containing exciting news of this new stuff that "scientists" had discovered on the ocean floor. The same "scientists" who all believe that god is a fact and believe in biblical creation.
What is it about crazy people and mixing science and religion? It's like their crack.
Actually, I guess plenty of crazy people use actual crack too...
Re: (Score:2)
They'll be firmly in the driver's seat soon on many fronts.
You have just realized this? I've been saying it for years.
MOD PARENT UP PLEASE (Score:2)