To disagree with William Hague on something we actually know about

Hague says that Britain really should oppose deep sea mining:

Deep down beneath the waves, in nodules below the seabed, minerals such as cobalt and nickel can be found in abundance.

No, that’s “on” the seabed.

And in the “black smokers”, the deep vents on the ocean floor often associated with the earliest origins of life, copper can be found in large quantities.

No, mining the smokers is not the suggestion. The entire point of such smokers being that as the fissures in the crust expand - the smokers being the little pinholes - then what used to be the site of a smoker becomes not one. The copper suggestion is to mine where there used to be one, not where there is. As that’s where the deposits are, where they used to be.

But far more than this the assumption is being made - certainly the impression is being given by Hague - that some vast area of the seabed is to be disturbed. Which is simply nonsense. The seabed is 3.618×10*8 km2. That’s, umm, a lot. As with surface mining the idea is to mine some hundreds of square kilometres, perhaps even thousands. Which is, when we’re talking about 10*8 quantities of km2, pretty much nothing.

Even the economics, let alone the environmental point, is wrong:

An unnecessarily weak stance is not only bad for the environment but not even in our national interest. No British company has developed deep-sea mining technology.

There’s a definite absurdity in claiming that cheaper nickel, copper, cobalt and manganese will not be beneficial to Britain or the British people. Consumer benefits do in fact count, you know?

Even the environmental damages are grossly overdone:

According to the review commissioned by the government which reported two years ago, “a 20-year mining operation may discharge an estimated 100,000 tonnes of sediment”, which would settle over millions of square kilometres on the sea floor.

Umm, OK, so 100,000 tonnes over millions of km2. Say, just for the ease of the maths, 10 million km2? That’s 10kg (no, really, ten kilos) of sediment to be spread across each square kilometre of seabed.

We’ve lived in flats dustier than that and not just as a student either. In fact, that complaint is piffle. For it’s one hundredth of a gramme of sediment per square metre. Most damaging I’m sure we’ll all agree.

Mine the abyssal deeps and get on with it - whatever Billy Hague has to say about it.