BIOC65H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Plastic Pollution, Marine Ecosystem, Continental Shelf
11 Oct 2016
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And how human activity has irreversibly changed the chemistry of our oceans, atmosphere and planets as a whole. The dilution paradigm: the philosophy that if it doesn"t kill u, it makes u stronger. With respect to pollution (the fumes that come out of our cars for instance), the notion was, the planet is enormously huge that everything is going to dilute out. According to this philosophy, industries made smoke pipes very tall into the atmosphere or made ocean pipes very deep into the ocean so that the pollution will dilute. In vancouver and hong kong, there is a very primitive sewage system because they have the ocean so they just dump stuff in there. About 4. 8 million tons per year of plastic waste that is dumped in the ocean!! Plastic is long lived and floats on the surface of water and can be seen so it gives us a manifestation of the dilution paradigm.
