Page 9 - Planet Tracker News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Company says process is less damaging than land-based mining

Despite the increase of global regulation on plastic pollution, new research details how the risks associated with the plastic value chain are being overlooked.

Housekeeping  A reader mentioned (thank you!) that last week's edition included at least one paper flagged as open access that actually wasn't. It seems to be the case that Nature Publishing is passing some duff data into the publication metadata food chain, with the result that Unpaywall (we employ the Unpaywall API to identify open access) is repeating this erroneous input to us. This week's edition finds direct links to open access articles from Nature journals still not working, but PDF links appear to be working properly.

Environmentalists say deep-sea mining could cause major damage to ecosystems that scientists know little about, yet mining companies argue that it is better for the environment than land-based extraction as part of the world's shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy. More than a dozen nations have sponsored small-scale exploration projects, but commercial mining of international waters is not permitted - something which will be debated at a key U.N. meeting on the issue in Jamaica, beginning this week.

In the depths of the Pacific Ocean between Mexico and Hawaii, trillions of potato-shaped rocks are scattered across the seabed…