We spent the week in Sudbury, Ontario, the site of what remains the richest combined nickel and copper deposits in the world, along with platinum, gold, gallium, and one of the world's only supplies of rhodium. We toured one of the older mines, which has been modernized to show how mines are run today, which was something just this side of profound.
The tunnels were chiseled out of hard granite and gneiss, with wire mess holding up the walls, and electric light showing the way. There was water dripping constantly, and we walked in shallow puddles of it throughout the tour. I suddenly got a real appreciation for water removal in mines!
We also got to sit in a rescue station for a few minutes... quite eerie, and when the guide turned off the lights to give the visitors a feel for how dark it is several hundred feet under the surface, I was back on the boat in a flash. The lights were off only seconds, but I had already gone through my emergency drill for the sub in my mind, and knew what my next move was when they came back on. Some things leave the body, but never leave the mind.
Most profound of the whole trip is that all this geology for the region, the nickel bearing ores, the igneous and metamorphic rock in the middle of a sedamentary formation with no volcanoes, is all from a meteor strike about 2 billion years ago that hit with enough violence to change the rock in the earth for a 200-300 km radius, and to simultaneously deposit huge amounts of metals. The nickel, copper, platinum, and especially the rhodium, are all star-stuff, all from "out there."
Exploration in the "Old Days" relied on the good eye of a trained geologist, and a lot of luck. Now they have sonar, underground radar, and computers. Today, a full 100 years after the first mine was begun, the Sudbury nickel deposit has been mapped, and it is a lens of material that has not even been started to be mined yet! They haven't even gotten to the really good purity stuff, according to models of the ground. Wow. Wow.
What they DID learn in the 100 years of nickel mining here is that the thinks men do can and will change the Earth. The smelting process liberates a tremendous amount of sulfur dioxide, and that along with other waste gases and metals actually stained the rocks here black over the years. You can tell a development from after 1976 (when they began to use stacks, and to remove SO2) from before, because the rocks, especially large boulders that are uncovered, are grey. Some have a characteristic line on them where the dirt was.
Sudbury also stank. There is an old song about miners cutting loose, "Sudbury Saturday Night," which is local folklore about the only people that would live here: miners, their reluctant families that couldn't live elsewhere, and the camp followers that usually follow a large group of foolhardy, hard-working men. My SO remembers trying to eat a meal in Sudbury and not being able to eat the food for the smell. Slag heaps were everywhere, and since stacks didn't exist, the smoke from the smelter just rolled over the town. Sudbury became all but a dead mining camp.
They learned form that disaster: the SO2 is removed from the effluent as much as possible now, and sold as another revenue stream. All effluent is put out of tall stacks, away from people, and the one slag heap is carefully cultivated as it cools into a specific shape to be built on. Older heaps were covered and capped, and now have housing and parks, and the town of New Sudbury built on their remains.
And the mining continues, unfortunately fatalities also continue. A miner died two years ago in the mine, and the company and government were completing an inquiry as we were leaving. I don't know that mines will ever be completely safe, but I think the one we saw is much safer than those past.
In a final moment, I went rock hunting, and found a listed gneiss deposit on the Ontario geological tour that was an outcropping of the meteor strike, age listed as 1.85 billion years old. I picked up rocks that were a quarter of the age of the Earth itself.
Which brought home to me: the Earth does not need Man. The Earth does not really care what the temperature is, or how much SO2 or NOx is in the atmosphere. The Earth will survive just fine with or without these things, because the Earth is a ball of rock. Man is the one that requires oxygenated air to breathe, and water in a certain pH range in order to survive. It is Man that should be aware of the conditions in the environment he finds himself, irregardless of who or what causes the conditions. If there is global warming, then Man must do something if he wishes to continue on the Earth, it doesn't matter what is causing the warming. If there is too much SO2 in the atmosphere, then Man must do something to reduce it if he wishes to see many more summers, no matter where the SO2 is coming from.
And if making money is to take precedence over survival of our kind, then just pass a law saying you can print money on your computer and everyone will make money all the time. Then we can stand together in the sun until it roasts our skins and grows tumors all about us. "There is no damage from the Sun!" we will say bravely, waving our money at each other. "The Sun is just a plot, no one can keep me from making money!"
One day the Earth will stop being our Mother, and will support us no longer, and the Sun will bleach our bones. And all our money will only last about 16 months, far less than the damage we have done that killed us.
Crow
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