ENV100Y5 Chapter Notes - Chapter 12: Clearcutting, Wild Fisheries, Food Security
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ENV100Y5 Full Course Notes
Verified Note
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Document Summary
We used the ocean for transportation for thousands of years and it continues to provide affordable means of moving people and products over vast distances. Ocean shipping has had substantial impacts on the environment as well. We mine the ocean for commercially valuable energy. Worldwide, about 30% of our crude oil and nearly half of our natural gas come from seafloor deposits. Ocean sediments contain a novel potential source of fossil fuel energy. This could cause a massive landslide and tsunami --> would release huge large amounts of methane (a potent greenhouse gas) into the atmosphere --> global climate change. Ocean holds potential for providing renewable energy sources that do not emit greenhouse gases: engineers developed ways of harnessing energy from waves, tides, and the heat of ocean water. We can extract minerals form the ocean floor: using large, vacuum-like hydraulic dredges, miners collect sand and gravel from beneath the sea.
