Deep Sea Delusions

A manganese nodule from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Image source

“Praise ignorance, for what man has not encountered he has not destroyed.”

—Wendell Berry

There has been a flurry of articles published recently about the discovery of ‘dark oxygen’ — or how metallic nuggets found on the bottom of the ocean can actually produce a key input to complex life. First of all, this is a fantastic scientific discovery: proving that O2 can be produced not only by living organisms, but inorganic ‘dead’ matter as well. At the same time, however, this is also ‘terrible news’ for mining companies (who were funding the study and were clearly hoping for a different result), as well as the ‘energy transition being good for the planet’ narrative... Well, everything has a reason to exist, and the relationship between cause and effect is not always as straightforward as one would like to think. Take a deep breath, and let’s dive in.

Let’s start things off by discussing what these nuggets — or metallic nodules — are. As a remarkably well researched, although very much biased, article in Time magazine explains:

Similar in size and appearance to partially burned charcoal briquettes, the nuggets are called polymetallic nodules, and are an amalgamation of nickel, cobalt, manganese and other rare earth metals, formed through a complex biochemical process in which shark teeth and fish bones are encased by minerals accreted out of ocean waters over millions of years.

The nodules, which are strewn across the 4.5 million-sq-km (1.7 million-sq-mi.) swath of international ocean between Hawaii and Mexico known as the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), contain significant amounts of the metals needed to make the batteries that power our laptops, phones and electric cars.

The piece was written years before it became known that these nodules are not just sitting there waiting to be found, but are also performing an important role in the deep sea ecosystem. As Pippa Howard, director of the biodiversity-conservation organization Fauna and Flora International, put it back then: “They’ve got living ecosystems on them. Taking those nodules and then using them to make batteries is like making cement out of coral reefs.” Or as the author of the Time article succinctly remarked: “Removing them would be akin to yanking a couple of wires out of the back of your computer just because you don’t know what they’re for.” Now, we have proof that these nodules were not just sitting there waiting for Homo sapiens to evolve and to build batteries from them, but to produce oxygen for deep sea life to flourish in the absence of light and photosynthesis. Removing them sounds even crazier an idea than before.

Schematic of a polymetallic nodule mining operation. Source

The proposed harvesting technique, when it comes to mining this resource for battery metals, however, is what elevates destruction to a whole new level. You see, these metallic ‘potatoes’ would not be picked by sophisticated robotic arms carefully putting them into a basket... No, that would be way too slow and expensive. If you’ve ever seen a mining site on land, you know that deep sea mining will not be an act of love and care for Nature either. According to a somewhat overly technical description on Wikipedia:

The most common commercial model of deep sea mining proposed involves a caterpillar-track hydraulic collector and a riser lift system bringing the harvested ore to a production support vessel with dynamic positioning, and then depositing extra discharge down the water column.

Sediment, building up for multiple millennia and serving as a graveyard for billions of tons of dead algae (and who knows what other organisms), would be ploughed and stirred up heavily by the nodule collector. What’s more, organic matter brought to the surface together with the nodules would be also discharged into oceanic circulation by the vessel doing the sorting itself. What these billions of tons of half-decomposed organic waste would do to marine life is anyone’s guess. But instead of letting them accumulate carbon on the bottom of the ocean (where in yet another million years they would be transformed into oil, hopefully never to be found), we could potentially make them another contributor to the very climate crisis we are supposed to solve by building “renewables” and battery electric vehicles from the nodules obtained in the process. Again, how on Earth does that make sense?

Only viewed from a capitalist perspective (solely focused on short term profits), do deep sea mining and “renewables” look like plausible “solutions” to our energy and raw material woes. You see, our wee little problem here is that we are still unable to mine with renewable energy profitably… Especially not when it comes to the deep oceans. While its true that one cannot operate diesel caterpillars on the bottom of the sea, and that electricity and hydraulics have to be provided through long cables and tubes, the question poses itself: where would that power come from? Technutopist fantasy informs us that we would then install massive floating solar panels to power our newly found deep sea mining habit, but is the upfront investment really worth it? Has anyone considered intermittency, resulting in only 10–25% of wind and solar’s nameplate capacity being actually produced on an annual average? Isn’t it cheaper (and more profitable) to run a massive diesel generator 24/7 — rain or shine — onboard the ship instead, to power those caterpillars and conveyors a couple of miles below? Besides, we would be stirring up billions of tons of ancient carbon and destroy marine ecosystems anyway — so why bother with building a “sustainable” energy platform?

On the other hand we have powerful vested interests and corporations funding organizations like the ISA (International Seabed Authority) (2). A UN body, ostensibly protecting the “common heritage of all mankind”, the ISA is actually financed by wealthy donors and large corporations, all interested in making a profit on deep sea mining… Not to mention the fact that the ISA itself has a vested interest in the profitable extraction of the resources it sought to protect (through its Enterprise body). Conflict of interests anyone…? Surely you jest. As soon as a company or ISA finds a profitable way to dig up the sea bed, wreaking havoc on marine ecosystems (and quite possibly on climate too), it will find a justification to do so. If you ask me, it is only a question of time and money spent on lobbying and we will see the first batch of nodules coming to the surface.

“All things that they are calling ‘resources’ are actually the sources of life”
 —  Casey Camp-Horinek

Indigenous wisdom seems even more apt and timely than ever before in the brief history of modernity. After giving unheeded warnings to civilized folks about the dangers of wetiko — a cannibalizing force driven by insatiable greed — for centuries now, science has finally proved them right. What we call ‘resources’ is an integral part of Mother Earth to them, with a right to live within their mother’s body. By removing ‘lifeless’ dirt and rocks to turn them into objects we scrap within a few years, we slowly destroy life itself. Not only by destroying fragile ecosystems with our mining habit, but as we have seen in the case of dark oxygen, by removing the very source of complex life itself. As the Time magazine article (and a more recent one on Carbon Brief) explains: mining on land already threatens critical and sensitive ecosystems, as well as local communities. We have successfully put ourselves in a double bind:

The debate over the ethics of mining the earth’s last untouched frontier is growing in both intensity and consequence. It pits biologist against geologist, conservationist against environmentalist, and manufacturer against supplier in a world grappling with a paradox — one that will define our path to a future free of fossil fuels: sustainable energy that will run cleaner but also require metals and resources whose extraction will both contribute to global warming and impact biodiversity. So as nations commit to lower greenhouse-gas emissions, the conflict is no longer between fossil-fuel firms and clean-energy proponents, but rather over what ecosystems we are willing to sacrifice in the process.

Notice the false dichotomy, though. As we discussed last time, cheap fuel and diesel oil is the lifeblood of this civilization. Take it away, and replace it with massively material- and fossil fuel-intensive wind and solar, and you got yourself a self-defeating proposition. Renewables cannot be made by renewables. They cannot power the mining, transportation and manufacturing sector as they do not posses the high energy density of diesel, neither can they provide the stable high power and heat needed for reproducing even themselves. It is simply delusional to think that we could somehow make a shift to “renewables” without burning massive amounts of soon to be peaking fossil fuels, or mining the planet to depletion and ecosystem collapse (whichever comes sooner). And no, recycling won’t help us either (1).

Chart taken from Tom Murphy’s presentation titled Renewable Salvation? Source

The cognitive dissonance between indigenous wisdom and the pompous views of the technocracy could not be greater. In light of the discovery of ‘dark oxygen’ and the risk we run by stirring up carbon rich sediment, how can our technutopist leadership class uphold the view that they are “saving the planet” with “renewable energy”? Maybe it’s just me, but why don’t any of these articles ever ask whether we should continue with this highly destructive habit we call modernity or look for alternatives? Why do we think that everything is just there for us to take? If we go on like this we will soon be forced to ‘choose’ between a climate- and an ecological disaster… Unless we run out of economically viable ‘resources’ first (starting with oil), and the whole world economy goes through an involuntary but nonetheless massive simplification.

Until next time,

B

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Notes:

(1) Most notably before we could begin recycling old solar panels and EV batteries, we would need to build them out in the first place, and that means a lot of mining. Today EV-s and “renewables” replace only a couple of percentage points of fossil fuel use (3% of vehicles was powered by batteries in 2023, while wind and solar provided less than 6% of world energy) — so you would have to scale them up to seventeen to thirty-three times their current size. Now, consider also that none of the materials used during their manufacturing could be recycled with a 100% efficiency (usually a 90% rate is considered very good)… So, even if a ten-times scale up of everything electric would be technically possible, we would still lose ten times 10% (or a hundred percent of current mining production dedicated to build renewables) in each and every cycle. In order to reach a 100% market penetration, though, and to stay there, we would have to produce two to three times as much metals than today to continue building then rebuilding “renewables”, and to compensate for the losses during recycling. Good luck with that.

(2) I hope you forgive me citing Wikipedia again, but this article seems to be pretty well researched and balanced — which makes me wonder how long will it stay this way, knowing the massive controversy surrounding the organization.