Question

Why should humans care about the rock cycle?

Answer 1

The rock cycle operates on very long time scales - 10s to 100s of millions of years, but does contribute some important things to human activities.

Explanation:

The rock cycle moves at exceedingly slow rates that are very hard to detect on the scale of a human lifetime. However, the rock cycle has contributed to all our mineral resources (eg. gold, zinc, copper, etc) and our fossil fuel resources. Fossil fuels are developed in sedimentary basins - a part of the rock cycle.

CO2 is also circulated out of the atmosphere into the oceans, then into rocks and then subducted into the mantel and in turn, this has kept the greenhouse effect in check for millions of years - except for now when humans are pumping even more CO2 into the atmosphere and the rock cycle can't dispose of it fast enough