so... they'll all be gone in a minute fraction of geologic time... ten million years from now, the so-called civilization that is so important to us will be a tiny thread in the strata of time...
But the trick is that we don't necessarily want their degraded products seeping into the oceans, groundwater, soil, or air. It's all nasty stuff, really.
there's a phenomenon termed the "rock cycle", in which materials are eroded, washed into the oceans, and subducted under continental margins and redeposited on the surface via vulcanism, then weathered down by wind and water again... aided and abetted by plate tectonics, a complete cycle takes hundreds of millions of years, depending upon local conditions... hence everything gets melted and ground up in a giant mixmaster and redeposited... details on Wiki...
4 comments:
so... they'll all be gone in a minute fraction of geologic time... ten million years from now, the so-called civilization that is so important to us will be a tiny thread in the strata of time...
But the trick is that we don't necessarily want their degraded products seeping into the oceans, groundwater, soil, or air. It's all nasty stuff, really.
there's a phenomenon termed the "rock cycle", in which materials are eroded, washed into the oceans, and subducted under continental margins and redeposited on the surface via vulcanism, then weathered down by wind and water again... aided and abetted by plate tectonics, a complete cycle takes hundreds of millions of years, depending upon local conditions... hence everything gets melted and ground up in a giant mixmaster and redeposited... details on Wiki...
@ Mudpuddle: Yup - in geological time everything we do will fade into the background. Unfortunately at our timescale its killing the planet!
@ Stephen: I think we're really finding out lately just how pernicious our plastic products are and how they are endangering so much of the planet.
Post a Comment