Scientists Finding 5,000 Sea Species Is A Bad Sign

How could it be bad? Leaving it to the Washington Post (free at Yahoo)

Scientists detected 5,000 sea creatures nobody knew existed. It’s a warning.

There are bright, gummy creatures that look like partially peeled bananas. Glassy, translucent sponges that cling to the seabed like chandeliers flipped upside down. Phantasmic octopuses named, appropriately, after Casper the Friendly Ghost.

And that’s just what’s been discovered so far in the ocean’s biggest hot spot for future deep-sea mining.

To manufacture electric vehicles, batteries and other key pieces of a low-carbon economy, we need a lot of metal. Countries and companies are increasingly looking to mine that copper, cobalt and other critical minerals from the seafloor.

A new analysis of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, a vast mineral-rich area in the Pacific Ocean, estimates there are some 5,000 sea animals completely new to science there. The research published Thursday in the journal Current Biology is the latest sign that underwater extraction may come at a cost to a diverse array of life we are only beginning to understand.

“This study really highlights how off the charts this section of our planet and this section of our ocean is in terms of how much new life there is down there,” said Douglas McCauley, an ocean science professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara who was not involved in the study.

It also underscores a conundrum of so-called clean energy: Extracting the raw material needed to power the transition away from fossil fuels has its own environmental and human costs.

So, see, on one hand the same climate cult that works for places like the Washington Post demands that all you peasants drive electric vehicles, that you be forced into them and out of fossil fueled vehicles. On the other side of the coin they tell us how bad it is to do the things necessary to make the EVs. So, guess you’re walking!

It’s actually a very interesting article in terms of the potential life in the deep sea, leading to

That biodiversity has led over 700 marine science and policy experts to call for a pause on mining approvals “until sufficient and robust scientific information has been obtained.” Too little is known, they say, about how mining may hurt fisheries, release carbon stored in the seabed or put plumes of sediment into the water. Old underwater mining test sites show little sign of ecological recovery.

Say, you know we could opening up mining on land, right? In places like deserts, where we already know all that’s there, right? Anyhow, I’m getting the idea that clean green energy isn’t particularly environmentally friendly.

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