SHOULD WE HARVEST MANGANESE NODULES AT THE SEABOTTOM?

The Paris Summer Olympics roll along, and so are the teams of the USA.   

• Women's gymnastics team, overcame ailing legs, illnesses, falls and twisties to rather easily win the Gold medal.

• Men's gymnastics team won a medal, bronze, for the first time in 16 years.

• 
  Good ethnic mix on both teams.  In no other event will you see such close team camaraderie, and hugs.
• Men's soccer team, for the first time in 24 years, reached the knockout round.  They face Morocco at 9AM EDT on Friday, August 2.

• 
  Both women's and men's volleyball teams look to make the next round.
• Katie Ledecky coasted to victory in the 1500 meter swim, topping her Olympic mark of Tokyo by 5 seconds, finishing 10 seconds before the silver medalist, winning her 8th gold medal, the most in swimming, with Jenny Thompson.

• 
  The most stunning USA victory, maybe ever, was in women's rugby, where they won the bronze medal match over heavily favored Australia.  First medal in rugby for the U.S. since the Paris Olympics in 1924 .  A hundred years.   You need to watch this!!!  The ending is everything.  Unbelievable.
• The USA has won the most medals with 30.  #2 is Great Britain at 26 and #3 China 19, but with the most gold, 9.

1People's Republic of China

97319

2France

810826

3Japan

83415

4Australia

76316

5Great Britain

66517

6Republic of Korea

63312

7United States of America

5131230

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• If you live in Hawaii, you can save some TV-watching time by recording your NBC channel from 7PM, and begin watching around 8PM, so you can delete ads.  The time schedule calls for 3 hours, but many times extends another half an hour.  You will see the highlights of the day.

Changing subjects to politics, Donald Trump was scheduled for a one hour Q&A session at the National Black Journalists Convention, and began by insulting the first black, female journalist.  Made a complete fool of himself, and the program ended in half an hour.  Exaggerated, lied, showed rage and provided ammunition for future Democratic Party ads.  He might have strengthened his MAGA base, but alienated those at the margins.  Said Michael Tyler, Kamala Harris's campaign communicators director:

The hostility Donald Trump showed on stage today is the same hostility he has shown throughout his life, throughout his term in office and throughout his campaign for president as he seeks to regain power and inflict his harmful Project 2025 agenda on the American people.

About the topic of the day, I've long been associated with a controversial subject:  the harvesting of manganese nodules at the sea bottom:

• These nodules range in size from microscopic to volleyball size, although most of them are in the range of potatoes.

• 
  How did they form?  Dissolved metal compounds in seawater precipitate over time around a nucleus of some kind--like shark's tooth or fragment of a clam shell--on the sea floor.
• They not only contain nickel, copper and manganese, but, perhaps more important, rare metals needed for batteries and other higher tech products.

• 
  They cover 70% of the sea floor, and estimated to weigh 500 billion tons, more than enough to supply industry for centuries.
• The deep oceans were oxygenated in the Ediacaran period 540 million years ago, and this has become a recent environmental issue I'll later describe.
• Were discovered in the Arctic Ocean near Siberia in 1868.  The HMS challenger (1872-1876) later found them in most oceans of the world.
• The largest deposit can be found in the Clarion Clipperton Zone (about the size of Europe) on vast abyssal plains at depths of from 13,000 to 20,000 feet.  As can be seen below, this zone is close by Hawaii.

• There are three other prime locations.

• 
  While no nation owns this area of the ocean, Hawaii has reasons to be involved:
• Maybe a source of future income.
• Water pollution.
• Thus, when I worked for U.S. Senator Spark Matsunaga from 1979-82, I was the chief of staff to pass the bill, which is known as the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act.  Senator Lee Metcalf was the original sponsor, but he passed away in 1978, so Senator Matsunaga took on the congressional leadership.

• 
  Over the years I went to various Law of the Sea gatherings and have kept up with the status.
• I figured this subject was useful for research funding, so the University of Mississippi, University of Alaska and the University of Hawaii partnered to establish the Marine Minerals Technology Center through the Department Interior.  Senator John Stennis was then Chairman of the Appropriations Committee, and was from Mississippi. and Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, a Republican, was the co-chairman.
• 
  Governor Josh Green this month signed a bill into law prohibiting the mining, extraction and removal of minerals in the state's waters.  Of course, our legal outreach is only 3 miles, so this legislation will have no effect on the Law of the Sea Treaty.

While fraught with potential environmental problems, these metals are crucial to the progress of our economy.  Yet, and as a humorous aside, this subject matter itself in a conference setting is so utterly boring as to be somnolent.  What, then, is the Law of the Sea Treaty?

• Some history.
• The League of Nations held a 1930 conference, but there were no agreements.
• In 1945, President Harry Truman extended U.S. control to all the natural resources in our continental shelf.  Other nations similarly did, to a distance of up to 200 nautical miles

• 
  About some marine terms.
• The curvature of our planet distorts dimensions.
• Car and trains, for example use miles per hour.
• Boats and planes are affected by the earth's curvature, and use knots.

• 
  You thus sometimes see knots, and sometimes miles per hour.  
• One knot is roughly 1.15 miles per hour.
• A single knot represents one nautical mile traveled in one hour.

• 
  Our globe is broken up into 360 degrees. 
• One degree has 60 minutes. 
• One nautical mile equals one minute of latitude.

• 
  Our planet is not a perfect sphere.
• It is an oblate spheroid.
• Slightly bulges at the equator and flattened at the poles.
• 24,901 miles at equator.
• 24,860 miles around the poles.
• Thus, 24,901 miles divided by 360 equals 69.17, then divided by 60 gives 1.15, about the length of one knot, from which comes the nautical mile.
• Note that the length of a longitude shrinks from the equator to either pole, where it is 69.4 miles at the equator and zero miles at either pole.
• 
  In 1958 the UN held its first Conference on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) at Geneva, Switzerland.  Four treaties were developed.
• UNCLOS II in 1960 did not do much.
• UNCLOS III in New York had 160 nations participating, and went on for almost decade, defining baselines shown to the right.

• 
  The Law of the Sea Treaty was opened for signature in 1982 when I left the U.S. Senate to return to the University of Hawaii.
• The Treaty went into force in 1994 when the 60th party ratified.
• Today, 170 parties have ratified.  
• Red countries have not ratified, including the USA and twelve others.  All major powers have.  We are in the company of Afghanistan, Cambodia, Iran, North Korea, Libya and similar others.
• 14 other parties have not even signed, including Israel, Turkey, and the Holy See.

The U.S. helped shape the Law of the Sea and all revisions, and even signed on in 1994.  Thirty years later, our U.S. Senate has not ratified the Convention.  

• You need at least 67 Senators.
• In 2012, 34 Republican Senators said they wouldn't agree.
• So-called problems with outer space, environmental restrictions and need to share technology with others have stood in the way.  The usual excuse is that being part of the Convention undercuts American sovereignty, whatever that means.  
• In short, there is an attitude that if we wanted to mine the sea, we can go ahead and just do it without sharing anything...and no one can stop us.  Plus, we really don't care because deep sea mining isn't viable today, and into the nearby future.  Lockheed Martin has itself the rights to two Pacific seabeds.

• 
  The conservative Heritage Foundation (that same organization to develop the Republican Party's platform in the past, and is responsible for Project 2025) is particularly active in fighting off treaties.  So this is more a Republican Party position than a national one, and the two-thirds Senate majority is hard to reach.
• In the meantime, the ratifying parties are rushing to stake claims.
• China has five exploration sites over 90,000 square miles.
• The U.S. has none as a country.  But there is Lockheed Martin, which won't be able to get started until the U.S. Senate ratifies the treaty.
• Basically, China already dominates the rare-earth metals picture, and these are vital to a high tech economy, from electric cars to defense systems.

• 
  I've studied this field for forty years, and, in general, our U.S. Senate just does not like to ratify treaties.
• Many times presidents have entered the U.S. into international agreements without the advice and consent of the Senate.  

• 
  One example is the Paris Agreement for global warming.
• Donald Trump said the U.S. would drop out.
• But Joe Biden became president and re-joined.
• This is an example of the Administration proceeding without Senate consent.

• 
  The following treaties were signed, but not ratified.
• 1979 Salt II.
• 1979  Moon Treaty.
• 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity.

• 
  1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
• 1994 Convention on the safety of UN and Associated Personal.
• 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear-Test Ban treaty.

• 
  1997 Kyoto Protocol, which was the original climate change agreement.
• 2008 Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

• 
  2013 Arms Trade Treaty.
• 2016 Trans-Pacific Partnership.
• Want to see the entire list?  Goes back to 1930 for the Forced Labour Convention.  I count 46 of them.

But they keep trying, so last year, Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski and Democratic Senator Mazie Hirono co-introduced a resolution calling on the U.S. Senate to ratify UNCLOS.  What are the odds?

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TRAVEL AND MOVIES

A few postings ago, I was musing on how travel and movies are related.  For example:

• I enjoy those films that occur in places I have visited.
• Sometimes, those movies allow me to live vicariously, that is, transpose myself into certain settings.
• Then, too, there are places I will never visit because they are too physically challenging or dangerous or not within my current need for luxury.
• So here are a few films that allow me to enjoy them as a safe watcher, for I would not ever want to in that location or situation.

To start, I noticed there were free films from SLING on my Roku site, so I thought I'd give them a try.  I hate cold and will never again go to Russia.  Transsiberean appeared to be just about right.  Rotten Tomatoes gave ratings of 91 by reviewers and 65 by audiences.  When there is a huge discrepancy between the two, I usually like audience over reviewers.  However, the awfulness factor seemed attractive so I watched this 2008 movie.

Was about married American Christian young missionaries, played by Woody Harrelson and Emily Mortimer, returning home from Beijing after a training session.  Big mistake, but they decided to be adventurous, and caught a train from China to Russia.  Something about the Trans-Siberian Railway gives me shudders, but about that later.   

They began interacting with a Spanish Man (Eduardo Noriega, who I thought was the best actor of the lot) and his girlfriend (Kate Mara).  SM is trying to smuggle heroin and uses this innocent American two as unknowing mules.  Into the train comes a Russian inspector (Ben Kingsley), who himself is not all that innocent, and messes things up for everyone, including himself.  Film was shot in Lithuania, where the government loaned the production 40 kilometers of track.

The movie was okay, with several twists.  However, turned out that another overwhelming factor was my association of this film to the book, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, written by Paul Theroux in 2008.

This is a travel book that goes through various cities, but focuses on Theroux's Trans-Siberian Railway portion.  He was 33 when he first made a similar visit, for which he wrote The Great Railway Bazaar, but double that age for this sequel of sorts around the time of America's invasion of Iraq.  He realizes that not only have the countries changed, but he himself.  He writes about dysfunction, poverty, over-crowding, dictators and oppression.

While GTttES also included his visits with Orhan Pamuk of Istanbul, Arthur Clarke in Sri Lanka and Haruki Murakami in Japan, what sticks in my mind was the grimy, dangerous train ride.  I love trains, but I like the Japanese Shinkansen and similar train rides providing safety and posh doings.  But further, sometimes movies such as this one, provides such a contrast to my lifestyle, that I better can appreciate what I have.  So in my search for films, I find menace, jeopardy and uncertainty as pluses to provide this dissimilitude.

Thus, this success led to a film I watched on Prime, Driveways. about a recluse who lived in a home for years without really unpacking.  I despise this kind of messiness.   Rotten Tomatoes bestowed scores of 99/84, so I thought, why not.   Poignant, and a good farewell to Brian Dennehy, but utterly boring and uneventful.  A mistake for me.

Next, on Neflix, was not really in the context of the subject-matter today, but the cast was enough, so on to the 2019 The Highwaymen, with Kevin Coster as maybe the most famous Texas Ranger (nothing to do with baseball), and his partner, played by Woody Harrelson.  Only got 59/76 from Rotten Tomatoes, which was about right.  You might have seen the 1967 Bonnie and Clyde, with Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway.  This one got 90/88 ratings from Rotten Tomatoes.  Well, TH is from the law-enforcement point of view.  Interestingly enough, you don't see the faces of Bonnie and Clyde until the very end when the Highwaymen and their troops gun them down.  Gory.  Not bad, but not terrific.

Moving along, I'll report on a relatively new film, which is a re-make of the original 1996 Twister, which was written and produced by Michael Crichton.  Steven Spielberg co-produced, and the stars were Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton.  Had some production problems with weather, personnel and equipment, then the Oklahoma City bombing occurred on 19April1995.  Poor Rotten Tomatoes ratings of 67/58.  Got two Oscar nominations for sound and visual effects.  Grossed $495 million worldwide.  

The 2024 Twisters (with an s) is pretty much the same film.  Both had a novel science feature, the first about being able to better measure a twister, and this second on using some modern technology to kill the beast.  Rotten Tomatoes reviewers gave it a 78 rating, but audiences said 92%.

I think I might have previously shown this, but Uniquely Madison has good stuff on You Tube.  This video provides 100 years of music.  From L17, the evolution of music from 2100 BC to 2023 AD.  Going back a bit earlier in time, here is the evolution of music from 40,000 BC to 2021, by William Halfmann.  Also, from GeoPro, 40,000 BC, to today. 

Having just visited there, the evolution of New York City from 1524 to 2023, in 3D animation by InfoGeek. Another one by nexplore.  Finally, from Mr. Future, Future of New York City Overtime, from 2025-10,000.

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