‘High demand for metals has fueled interest in deep ocean mining, as land-based resources get stretched and need increases in nations such as China and India, which have growing economies but relatively few natural resources. The projects cost hundreds of millions of dollars just to get started, and widespread ocean mining is years away. But new technology has investors seeing possibilities.’

However mining plans near seabed vents raises environmental concerns:

‘The unique species that thrive near the vents are a chief concern of scientists, including marine geologist Peter Rona of Rutgers University, who discovered the Atlantic’s first hydrothermal vents in the 1980s. He describes the area near the vents as “like another planet.” Creatures there include footlong clams, man-length tubeworms and a shrimp species that has no eyes, but may have sensors that detect the vents’ infrared radiation.

The species there may tell us more about the origins of life of earth, and even what life elsewhere might look like, Rona said. Already, he said, the species there have been a benefit. For instance, an enzyme from microbes found there are being used to enhance the flow of oil extracted from deep reservoirs.’

via Deep Ocean Mining Becoming Possible: Promise, Perils Weighed.

‘Australia has issued a health warning about air pollution for travelers to Hong Kong. Australians with pre-existing breathing conditions or heart problems should be careful visiting the city. Much of the bad air in Hong Kong blows in from Guangdong, China’s most important manufacturing province. But there is plenty of evidence many factories are closing and many workers have left because the international economic crisis has cut demand for Guangdong’s industrial goods. That should mean less air pollution.

…Trade associations had been pressuring the local government to ease up on enforcing environmental regulations on struggling factories. But Wu Hong Jie, who heads the Pollution Control Division in Guangdong’s Environmental Protection Department, says no one’s backing down on enforcement. He says, “Whatever happens, we should stick to the environmental standards. We can find other ways to help companies survive. We shouldn’t just let them pollute.” But economic growth has long come first in this region.’

via Clearing the air in China (3:30) | PRI’s The World.

Yet another example of the environmental consequences of military deployments. Always reassuring to hear that standard refrain, ‘releasing no radioactivity’.

‘LONDON – Nuclear-armed submarines from Britain and France collided deep under the Atlantic Ocean earlier this month, causing damage to both vessels but releasing no radioactivity, a British official said Monday.’

via British, French nuclear subs collide in Atlantic.

‘ROCKDALE, Ill. (AP) — A holding tank at a Caterpillar facility in a Chicago suburb broke Sunday, spilling about 65,000 gallons of oil sludge and contaminating a 3-mile section of the Des Plaines River, officials said’

via The Associated Press: 65,000 gallons of oil sludge spills near Chicago.

“South Asia has a cloud over its head — an unpleasant, unhealthy and climate-affecting soup of sooty haze that envelops the region, particularly in winter….

Orjan Gustafsson of Stockholm University in Sweden and colleagues have now removed the cloud of uncertainty hanging over the brown cloud. Burning of biomass, they report in Science, is the greater culprit.”

via Study Pinpoints Main Source of Asia’s Brown Air Pollution Cloud – NYTimes.com.