3/3

-- deep breath --

My central concern is that the article you've written is by itself relatively benign. It uses an interesting ratio (biomass disturbed) and a bit of fluff from TMC's public disclosures and the nickel market in general. Where it can cause damage is that people will read it and draw conclusions:

1. Sea mining is less harmful (30x!!!) than terrestrial mining. This is not true. The simple answer is that we don't know yet. Trying to model environmental impacts in a marine environment is orders of magnitude more difficult than terrestrial activity. On the surface we can see, instrument, and to some poor extent predict. Underwater it's a whole different ball game. We don't know the receptors. We don't know the transport mechanisms. Unknown after unknown.

>>> I don't make that claim. I say it's 30x less destructive of biomass. and that is a massive underestimate as a) it only counts plants in the rainforest and b) the actual mass of nickel per hectare is lower than the estimate I used from investigative reporting in Indonesia. The real multiple is likely worse than 90x more biomass destruction on land. You say there is unknown after unknown, but this is a fact. here are the papers for you to verify for yourself

>>> it is also not true that it's harder to model impacts in the marine environment. it is far easier to survey, and there is far more EIS data about NORI-D than there has ever been about any Indonesian mine. Here's the NORI-D data https://obis.org/dataset/bb0b9375-c875-4cb6-8889-6f783e1015b.... you find me an equivalent dataset for a prospective nickel mine in Sulawesi. I'll tell you now that it simply does not exist

2. We need sea mining now! Our back is up against the wall climate-wise and sea mining is what will get us the batteries we need. We don't, we really don't. There's a reason Indonesia is now the dominant supplier (and current temporary reserve leader) -- their government is quite happy to strip their country down for metals and sell them. Market dynamics in isolation often mean that if there is contestable supply and a market participant has a clearly lower cost of participation new supply will not come on. The world is moving in the right direction in so many areas: pricing in externalities like carbon and deforestation, changing to alternate materials (iron based batteries, sand/physical batteries), increased recycling. We don't need to go trash a sea bed because some company says it's a great idea (and look at that NPV).

>>> I don't think we need to mine the CCZ because TMC says so. I think we need to do it because the enviro and carbon impacts are much lower per unit of metal. with battery passports and carbon pricing, CCZ nickel will just become more attractive. i hope that LFP etc goes as fast and deep as possible, obviously, but even if IEA is off by 2x the world still needs 175m tonnes of nickel to be mined by 2040. oh btw TMC says its floor price is $6000 per tonne. current price is about $20000

3. I (the reader) am educated, I know there are risks and unknowns, but for a short while the CCZ seems like an ideal solution to our problems. Maybe, we don't know. What we do know is that once this door is open it's not going to shut. It won't be confined to nickel. It won't stay in the CCZ. Mining as an industry has already learned this lesson -- strong regulation based on well developed science is in the public interest to ensure minerals are fairly priced for the long terms costs they incur.

>>> "What we do know is that once this door is open it's not going to shut" how on earth do you know this? and where in the piece do you see me arguing against regulation. I want ISA to finish the regulations it has been working on for 12 years so that mining can, cautiously, go ahead. I think there's strong evidence to suggest that DSM will have a dramatically lower enviro foot print than land based nickel

-- other thoughts --

Can you share any insight in how this article was suggested for research? Was it driven by the recent share price run, timing of ISA decisions, or general interest in battery materials? Either way, it looks like it has contributed to some very positive gains for TMC shareholders (~+20% since July 2).

>>> I dealt with this in my comment last night. I'd just add that the reason for doing this now was the July 9th peg. but I have been working on it and thinking about it for several years.

Thanks very much for sharing sources -- I concur with other discussion posters that these are increasingly useful in public consumption of analysis. I hope the policy at the Economist changes in this regard, particularly for online content.

I'm also fully aware that folks from HN probably won't even see this thread as it's well off the front page. If you've read this far your blood might be a bit up as well. Sorry. My original post was hyperbolic in the extreme and was unprofessional. I'm an engineer, economist, and environmental scientist. I care a lot about the role professionals have to play in guiding an increasingly untrusting public and I also know about balancing industrial and environmental outcomes. I'm telling you to suck eggs, but in the future I hope you can have robust conversations with your editor about tonality and neutrality in publishing rather than falling into the latest hype and narrative that sells. The future of this crazy world might just depend upon tens of thousands of small actions like that. All the best.

>>> i don't believe I have "fallen into the latest hype and narrative that sells". all the hype I see runs the other way, tens of thousands of copypasta tweets on DSM through a Greenpeace campaign; world leaders saying things that are flat our wrong about the CCZ (like nodule collection will disrupt global carbon cycles and fisheries); endless articles on the dangers of deep sea mining and none even attempting to compare the impact to that on land. I have attempted to do that by examining available evidence.

>>> I'd very much welcome you doing the same and providing your own reasoned, evidenced arguments on the following: why is it better to take a tonne of nickel from Sulawesi rainforest than to take it from the CCZ?