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John C. Mutter
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Deep Sea Mining: the good, the bad and the ugly.
Surprising to many, including myself at one time although I am a marine geophysicist, the deep seafloor in many parts of the world's oceans is strewn with fist-sized nodules chock full of what have come to be called critical metals (or minerals). They are known as polymetal nodules, or maganese nodules. A typical example is shown below. They contain manganese and a lot more metals including copper, cobalt, nickel, zinc, silver, gold and Rare Earth elements. That’s what’s mean
jcm767
Jun 125 min read


Earthquake in the Philippines, June 8th 2026. A soft story story.
The 7.8 Mw earthquake just south of the Philippines island of Mindanao was not exactly unexpected. The region is tectonically active and has seen many historic earthquakes. An earthquake with magnitude Mw 7.8 is not huge and doesn't qualify for the terminology in the science to be described as a Great earthquake. In the the map below the recent earthquake is shown with a yellow star embedded in a background of hundreds of historic eartquakes identified by circles of differe
jcm767
Jun 102 min read


Tragedy in Texas. Avoidable?
Why did so many die in Kerr County Texas? The death toll estimate now significantly exceeds 100, by how much will not be certain for a few days yet. That is the amount of time it will take to find those still missing. Searchers will keep searching, parents will keep hoping, but with every passing hour hope of finding missing people alive diminishes. For more than 100 people to die from a rainfall event in a sparcely populated area of a wealthy country is very. The Kerr County
jcm767
Jul 14, 20255 min read


Myanmar's SuperShear earthquake
We now know that the death toll from the earthquake in Myanmar exceeds 10,000. Any number with four zeros after it is suspicious and it...
jcm767
Apr 20, 20252 min read


Can natural disasters ever be good for us?
That sounds rediculous. And in the short term it is rediculous. People die in disasters. That can never be good. In Myanmar we will not...
jcm767
Mar 29, 20253 min read
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