Earth Sciences 1070A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material, Economic Geology, Plate Tectonics
18 Jan 2017
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Unit 1: if it can"t be grown it must be mined (cid:894)part a(cid:895) 1. 0 intro: the present is a link to the past. Humans use readily available resources (land, surface water and plants) and about exploiting hidden treasures of the earth. Bronze age (3300 1200 bc) discovering precious metals, early smelting and processing techniques. Printing press and burning fossil fuels brought humans industrial. Development of plastics and synthetic materials now age of technology. Dependency on extracting resources increased since the industrial revolution. Today we depend on extracting billions of tonnes of resources. 1st law of conservation of matter: matter cannot be created, only converted to other forms, to make plastic: need naturally occurring resources and petroleum (major) (petroleum = non-renewable) Solar, wind and water = renewable sources that do not require mining: limited as volume available for use. Renewable sources need resources to build equip. /buildings for converting. Political landscape shaped by our need for extractable resources.
