The Next Gold Rush Will Be Under the Sea | Hacker News Reader

The Next Gold Rush Will Be Under the Sea

motherboard.vice.com

32 pointsrl313 comments

we need to price this shit in to the goddamn market, having random unpriced externalities that can just be captured by whatever the base cost to obtain them, is reckless.

Not only is it not an equitable way to disperse resources, but there is an incentive to just absolutely destroy another key piece of the environment. I am not some tree hugging greenie either, not there would be anything wrong with that, but dispatching remote control bulldozers underwater in droves is going to be a great way to ruin an ocean that already has significant problems.

I know I'm nitpicking, and I'm just using your phrase as an example, but it always surprise me how often we exclude ourselves for being green behind an utilitarian argument. I mean, is that a terrible thing? I don't hear often, "I'm not a business shark, but I guess this business should be profitable".

I consider myself a pretty green person, but I have use the same language as the parent. The reason is because it prevents somebody from jumping to the anti green approach and calling or assuming you're a tree hugger. This way when you state that you aren't a tree hugger but still support a particular argument, it makes them weigh the argument in a reasonable way instead of going on the defensive right away. So it changes the logic from "I'm not a tree hugger, screw your point and ideals" to "I'm not a tree hugger but neither is this guy so his point may be reasonable, let me actually listen to this argument and see". It's a smoke rewording to get a person to be more receptive. (Typed on phone, hope it made sense)

It's going to happen eventually. Humans will take over and destroy/transform the sea once we have exhausted the space and resources on land. The best we can do is delay it and try to minimize the impact. We're currently at the hunter/gatherer phase there, but eventually we will mine it more intensively, farm it, 'develop' it and live on/in it. That's why Elon Musk's Mars ambition is so misguided in my view. We'll be living on/in the sea long before settling on Mars becomes feasible.

I keep wondering why we don't mine garbage landfills. Surely somewhere the technology exists to turn all that waste into raw materials again.

Well, on a fundamental level, if energy were cheap enough you could just vaporize the stuff and condense it out as pure elements, so it's not really a technology problem per se. It's an economic problem.

Is it not enough that many great land species are extinct that they now want to destroy ocean life?

I wish I were powerful enough to do something to stop this.

Like we haven't heard that before...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Azorian

Underwater diamond mining already exists. Mighty Ships did an episode about it: http://www.smithsonianchannel.com/shows/mighty-ships/peace-i...

Proteus IV always hated this idea and I have to agree. Man can do too much damage under the sea. Imagine the open pit mines and their pollution able to directly contaminate the water.

What about bitcoin ? :P

Yeah, let's disturb the sea floor, what could possibly go wrong?

Clathrate gun hypothesis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis

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