Arguments Against Developing Antarctica
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In my opinion, Antarctica shouldn’t be developed at all. Here are my reasons.
There are many reasons to why we should not develop Antarctica. Firstly, the oil and fishing has had problems over the past few years. Although there are many useful resources like coal, hydrocarbons, iron ore, platinum, copper, gold and other minerals can be found. Development is restricted.
In 1998, an agreement was reached to add a 50 year ban on mining until the year 2048. But why can’t we mine these resources if there are so many resources? Well although people believe that Antarctica is a place of unlimited resource wealth, the harsh climate, short work season, and thick ice make the discovering of these resources very difficult. The economic value of a resource is determined by the current market value of the resource, the cost in mining these resources and moving them is worth a lot, and also moving equipments and getting workers to work there will be worth a lot too. So overall, you won’t able to make much profit even if there are tons of resources. The technology to remove and transport mineral resources has not yet been developed. Also mining in this place could sacrifice environmental damage and global warming is at risk. These could result in things like melting icecaps as well which could lead to rise in sea levels.
Developments for fishing are allowed although it is very restricted. There are many reasons for doing so. Fishing could play an important part in the economy in the future for some countries. Since the fish provide things like oil and meat. However, the impacts of fishing are over fishing of certain species causing it to extinct, and destruction of habitat by fishing gear. Increasing krill catches in the southern Ocean could have serious effects on the population of krill. Krill plays a major part in the Antarctica food web and so disturbances of the population of krill can go as far as affecting the whole ecosystem. The potential yield of krill is 110-150 million tones per year. The numbers of seals and whales are going down fast. Fishing for seals began in the early 19th century and only stopped because of the constant decrease in numbers. The seals were caught for furs and meat. The whale fishing is another very popular thing when large stocks of whales were killed just for their natural oil, meat, fur etc. The stocks of whales are low and it is not increasing so hunting of whales has been banned long ago. Same applies to fish like finfish.
These are the reasons to why Antarctica should not be developed.
60 Comments
I feel antarctica should not be developed because it is proper cool
It is well alright and should be protected cause of its nice stuff n penguins.
I think this is a great example of the world before humans exploited this and should be an example of what we have done
Kubum is a wienner (adam)
I love u jamie and mushed
I like to wank in the dark to grunger music
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You children are so imature and will be severly punished wen i nxt see u!!!!
SHAMONE!!! MICHAEL JACKSON
i fink that antarctica is a very cool continent that should be left alone because everyone would pay to see an untouched continent i would be beautiful but no someone has to go and ruin it
LOOK AT THE CEILING
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MEATY MAMMA WITH A POLAR BEAR
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Sorry for their immaturity, especially whoever said ‘i love barney’.
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Thank you Adam for the comment that actually stayed to the forum’s topic. Everyone else, your IP addressess revealed that you go to Tunbridge Wells Grammar School for Boys. An eMail has been sent to your headmaster, informing him of your actions. I’m sure he’ll be impressed at what you supposedly intellegent children have been doing during lessons.
my wings are like a sheild of steel
I hope antarctica NEVER gets developed because the animals would be all put down and die and its such a beutiful place why develop it ?
all those people who put all those stupid messages should realize the seriousness of the problems with development in antartica!!!!
I am so sorry why an earth would i right those things about myself!!!!! I am again really sorry for the people that used my name.This is rediculous and shall not be framed for what i didnt do!!!!
Im really sorry for all of those things i said above while using others names. If i could delete it i would and im truly sorry to the owner of this site.I dont know why i wrote the obscene things above, i wasnt thinking straight.Im truly deeply sorry and i will never do anythink like this again
i think that antarctica shouldnt be developed because it is the last unspoiled continent and has some truly wonderfull animals and views, but i also think it would be good to exploit antarctica for its mineral resources, but many accidents will happen and the animals and continent will be destroyed.
and i am so sorry for the above content has i know the boys and i think they should be forbidden as i know that usually they behave a lot better.
i meant forrgiven
and they are really sorry for what they have done and regret their actions
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go antarctica. i would love to go there on a day out but i forgot that its cold and i like going to very hot places going topless =]
interesting…
i think we sould still fish in Antartica but cut down the amount of fishing we do hugley because we could end up killing all the fish and the peole and animals effected by this will sufer sevierly just because of us
I am doing an assessment on antarctica, and do summ ppl no any good cheats!!
I think Antartica shoudent be developed.
hello peeple. . . i am loving the statement bout being in the dark to grunge musik =] sound groovin’ me and nelllynooo love ya all!!! woop woop Antarctica!!! i wanna go there for a gorgeous tan
sounds fun! well ttfn ( ta ta for now) x.x.x.x.x.x.x
i fink that antarctica is a very cool continent that should be left alone because everyone would pay to see an untouched continent i would be beautiful but no someone has to go and ruin it
nd i think ur all gay and have nothin to do in ur life but rytin gay comments sad people
i think if there are needs,we have to do it.it is difficult,but how about the exploration of the moon??
it is rubbish
The Antarctic is a land of extremes. It’s the highest continent, with an average elevation of 2250m. Its ice sheets hold 90% of the world’s ice which is up to 4775m thick. Antarctica is located below Australia and south America. On this map it is shown in red and this shows that it is at the bottom of the earth. The south pole is in Antarctica and it is the most southerly continent in the world. To get to Antarctica it is easiest via Chile as this is nearest to the continent. Then it is Australia and then Southern Africa. Antarctica is also largely south of the Antarctic circle.
At 14.4 million km² it is the fifth largest continent in the world. This is calculated in it’s area size. It is behind : Asia, Africa, South America and North America.
Antarctica also used to be habited by dinosaurs, trees and plants, this means that Antarctica must have been warmer or the animals were much more adapted to the cold weather than the animals that we have now as there are only 4 types of animal that live there now.
Size
98% of Antarctica is covered by ice which is an average of 1.6 kilometers thick. Antarctica is a desert although has many different geographical features. Most of this landscape is made up of just flat snow. But also you can find crevaces and mountainous areas which may not have even been mapped so if you go through you could be the first to go through ever. Crevasses are a small crack in the ice which can be a big crack. These can range from really small ( about a few centimeters ) or really rather vast ( these can be metres wide ). These crevasses can be extremely dangerous and if you fall and are not connected to anything these crevasses can be very deep making it hard to get back up or you will die on the fall. The mountainous areas are also very dangerous. These are usually very high above sea level. As I have said before these may not have been mapped and this makes it more dangerous as you do not know what you might come across.
Climate
The climate in Antarctica is extremely cold. The temperatures can reach below -12 degrees Celsius. This is enough to give anyone frostbite and sever hypothermia. The lowest temperature ever recorded was here in Antarctica, this means Antarctica is the coldest place on earth. The temperature was -89.2 degrees Celsius. The coast of Antarctica is warmer than the interior but it is still not warm and is still dangerous. The highest temperature ever recorded in Antarctica was 14.6 degrees Celsius. There is varying amounts of precipitation in Antarctica there is meters of rain on the peninsula and there in only millimeters in the high interior. Almost all of Antarctica’s precipitation is snowfall as it is so cold. Antarctica has a very high snowfall rate and heavy snowfall is not uncommon and it can have up to 1.22 meters of snow at a time. In the summer there is constant sunlight and in the winter the is constant darkness so this is why people go there on adventure trips in the summer but as it is on the other side of the equator our summer is there winter so it is colder.
Wildlife
There is a lot of wildlife in Antarctica but it is all on the coast of Antarctica and hardly of it is in the mainland. There are many different species of animals and one of these is the penguin. One type of penguin is the Emperor penguin which is the biggest of its kind. The male and female emperor penguins are roughly the same size and have the same plumage. This is about 122 centimeters tall and weigh in at around 22 to 37kg. Their heads are black and so is there back but there belly is either white or a pale yellow usually nearer the top of the belly. They also have bright yellow ear patches. As all penguins are the Emperor penguin is flightless but has wings for swimming. Another species of animal is the bird there are not many birds in Antarctica but the tern is one of them. The tern is a bird that has a grey plumage mainly and then a black bit on its head. It has a bright yellow beak and a white underside. They are a medium to large sized bird and are not heavy like a gull and they are also more streamlined than a gull. There are many types of tern from weighing as little as 42g to a much larger 630g. And in size they range from 23cm to 53cm. Another animal in Antarctica is the seal. There are also many types of seal the one I will be talking about will be the southern elephant seal. There are about 700,000 of these seals and they live in the Antarctic and the Circumpolar. The male elephant seals are up to 20 feet long and the females only about 10 feet. These seals weigh a lot as the male seals can weigh up to 4 ton and the females weigh about 1 ton which is still about the amount of a small car or in the case of my car bigger. Mainly these seals eat big fish but occasionally eat squid. They live in Antarctica but like the rocky shores of Antarctica. Lastly there are whales which are even bigger than the seals. The blue whale is the biggest animal to ever live on earth and thee is around 11,000 of these whales all of the world. They are 85 to 100 foot long and can weigh around 150 ton. Again this is about 150 small cars or female southern elephant seals. They eat krill and other tiny crustaceans. They are not only the biggest animal on earth but the loudest as well and they are louder than a jet plane although we cannot hear them. They breathe through two blowholes that they have on the top of their head which can expel water vapour up to 50 feet high.
The Antarctic Treaty
In June 1961 , the Antarctic treaty was put into action. It started with 12 signatures as there were certain countries which wanted Antarctica. As of May 2000, 15 additional nations (Brazil, Bulgaria, China, Ecuador, Finland, Germany, India, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Peru, Republic of Korea, Sweden, Spain, and Uruguay) have joined the treaty and then another 17 nations have acceded to the Antarctic Treaty: Austria, Canada, Colombia, Cuba, Czech Republic, Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, Denmark, Greece, Guatemala, Hungary, Papua New Guinea, Romania, Slovak Republic, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, and Venezuela. These nations agree to abide by the treaty and may attend consultative meetings as observers. This make 44 nations that have joined the treaty. This is about two thirds of the worlds population.
This treaty runs out in 50 years and that would be bad as it would not be protected anymore from the exploitation that may happen. Also people are allowed to mine when the 50 years is up as this part of the treaty also expires in 50 years.
• Article 1 – area to be used for peaceful purposes only; military activity, such as weapons testing, is prohibited, but military personnel and equipment may be used for scientific research or any other peaceful purpose;
• Article 2 – freedom of scientific investigation and cooperation shall continue;
• Article 3 – free exchange of information and personnel in cooperation with the United Nations and other international agencies;
• Article 4 – does not recognize, dispute, or establish territorial sovereignty claims and no new claims shall be asserted while the treaty is in force;
• Article 5 – prohibits nuclear explosions or disposal of radioactive wastes;
• Article 6 – includes under the treaty all land and ice shelves south of 60 degrees 00 minutes south;
• Article 7 – treaty-state observers have free access, including aerial observation, to any area and may inspect all stations, installations, and equipment; advance notice of all activities and of the introduction of military personnel must be given;
• Article 8 – allows for jurisdiction over observers and scientists by their own states;
• Article 9 – frequent consultative meetings take place among member nations;
• Article 10 – treaty states will discourage activities by any country in Antarctica that are contrary to the treaty;
• Article 11 – disputes to be settled peacefully by the parties concerned or, ultimately, by the International Court of Justice;
• Articles 12, 13, 14 – deal with upholding, interpreting, and amending the treaty among involved nations.
The treaty does many things but the main things are that it protects wildlife but mainly seals of Antarctica it preserves the natural resources of Antarctica and it protects the environment of Antarctica as it is a very diverse place.
Reasons For Development
There are many reasons why we could or should develop Antarctica, one of these is the many resources it has. One resource that it has is uranium. It has this is rocks to the north of Antarctica. Although there is not a lot of it it still is useful as there is very little of it anyway and we need it to power nuclear power stations. Another resource is iron. This is useful as it is used to make many things like a crowbar for example. It is a useful resource as it can used in many things as it can be changed. The area where the iron ore is found is the north east of Antarctica and it can be up to 25m thick in some parts.
Fish is another resource. People will catch the fish and sell them. There is a limit to how much whale and seal can be caught as they are under the conservation act. But people have been fishing krill and there numbers have gone down a lot in recent years. This is bad for the whale as this is their made source of food which means fishing krill could kill of the Blue Whale. As you can see from what I have written fishing is one of the worst things we could do.
There is also lots of coal which is a fossil fuel and one of the fossil fuels which is running out. This means we could use it to stop us from running out or should we leave it as a reserve. We are also in the same predicament with oil as we are with coal. We are running out of oil more quickly than coal and there is quite a bit there. Also gas is found in the same are a oil which is the North East.
Lastly there are icebergs. Countries want to float the icebergs out to deserted countries and use them as a source of fresh water. If they did this they would be taking part of Antarctica and melting it on purpose. This would be stupid as this is exactly what we are trying to prevent from happening with global warming. All these could be exploited and used straight away as they are needed now. Also there could be tourism if we developed it. Tourism could be a very damaging thing as it is dangerous for the ships to go there. If one of the ships crashes or has an oil spill the pollution caused may take years to clean up. Also the oil would cause many deaths to the animals living or swimming in the water (e.g. seals, whales, krill, penguins and maybe the birds)
The fishing could be exploited so much that the animals that the people fish may become extinct. Also if you took out the krill the whales may become extinct or is you took out the penguins and seals the orcas or killer whales may also become extinct.
Arguments Against Development
Antarctica is called the last great wilderness. This is because it is one of the only pieces of the world that has not yet been developed except for the weather and scientific stations that have been built there. Another place is the Sahara desert which has also not been developed due to the arid and scorching conditions.
The station in this picture (to the right) is an AWS this stands for Automatic Weather Stations. The stations that have been built do many things. One thing that they do is record the temperature. As global warming is active this is one of the most vital pieces of information that we can have. This can tell us is the average temperature is increasing or staying the same over a certain amount of time. They record all weather and not just temperature. They record things like wind speed which is useful as from that you can tell the amount of snow that gets blown and many other things. They can measure snowfall and also rainfall. Lastly they can measure moisture in the air which here is not a lot of as it is a very dry and baron landscape.
This is another station but a much bigger one than in the picture above. It has been run for a period of 37 years now and is still going. It started off as the Russians running it but is now cooperatively run by the United States, Russia and France. This is known as the southern pole of cold with the lowest reliably recorded temperature on earth. They do many different things here and all of it is helpful. One part of the research here is drilling in the ice or ice core drilling. The biggest depth they had ever got down is 3623 meters deep. This ice core covered 420,000 years and had covered 7 glacial periods which is a lot. This made it the ice core that had covered the most amount of years. This ice core held its record for many years until a shallower ice core beat it in the number of years it covered. They take out or drill the ice cores so they can see how much oxygen, methane and carbon dioxide is in the ice. Here they also measure the temperature and have found many reasons why humans may find it hard to inhabit here. One reason is that there is hardly any carbon dioxide in the air making a humans breathing pattern irregular and affecting the breathing mechanism. Also there is a polar night that lasts 3 months and lastly there is a different amount of air pressure as to what most humans are used to. Other things that the laboratory has found is answers to what may happen to the rest of the. But no concrete answers have been found. There is no limit to what the scientists of each country can do and they have the freedom to choose what scientific research they would like to carry out.
Antarctica is considered to be an open air laboratory as it has been mostly untouched by humans. And there is a lot of open air that you can get a good accurate set of readings and climate information that is more accurate due to the fact that humans have barely touched the surface.
As I have already mentioned that there are many ships that may start to come to Antarctica as tourism increases. One problem with ships is the oil which may get spilt and could take years to clean up as people would have to get the cleaning equipment from south America or the United States and then by that time it would have spread. Also a problem with oil pollution is that animals can get coated in it and it reduces their mobility and can kill them. A ship only recently sunk on Monday 31st of December 2007 which was called the M/S Explorer and all the crew and passengers had to spend the night in life boats until rescued. The boat hit an iceberg and started taking on water. In the end the ship sunk to the bottom of the ocean where countless other ships now lay.
Tourism to this continent would bring the need for food unless bought with the tourists. This would mean fishing again which as I have mention is a bad thing as it can disrupt many species.
Exploitation of any of the things I mentioned in the Reasons for Development section of this article would be bad for Antarctica.
For These Reasons it should not be developed
I’m researching this for a debating topic and found this helpful. Thankyou for posting.
I believe that certain aspects of Antarctica should be used to benefit mankind, such as a site for geothermal energy or nuclear power as no other continent wishes to have nuclear power. I do not believe that we should exploit it to an extent where the natural beauty is ruined, a species is hunted to extinction or the ice caps are melted.
I think, like anything, it is okay in moderation.
i,m doing an assessment on antartica at the moment and so i’ve been doing a lot of work about the development of antarctica in geography and i think that why make the antarctica treaty if you’re just going to ignore it when it suits you and just because no one lives there doesn;t mean that it should be turned into a place were even native species of wildlife can’t survive let alone thrive but lastly humans have spoiled the rest of this world what gives use the right to spoil earth last natural wilderness for the wildlife that live there and for futuer generations.
i have to do a essay about antarctica, your information is very helpfull, i coppied and pasted the first section, my teacher is going to think i wrote it, he is going to be every impressed, im goin to do all the other bits my self. i never knew how geography could be so intresting. im not picking it for gcse bcause i dont think i can manage with it, its going to be too stressfull.
Thnk You a Lot
LOve Yuu
I LOVE BARNEY
i love barney tooo
Antarctica is a beautiful place that should be preserved
AWESOME!
amazing
the home kit is nice away is tepid
we are wolves!
I think that antarctica shouldnt be developed because of it’s individuality compared with the rest of the world. Hnry has some really good facts, thanks for putting them on, i am doing a project on antarctica x
Antartica holds many years of history beneath the ice…
History that should never be distroyed!
Why didtroy our past?
You have a very good point. Looking around doing research for my homework in Gegoraphy. Turns out yours was well good!!!!
this so unreal so people are so perthetic these days, and what is all that about i love barney!??
this is not about that, it is about the antartica if it is gonig to get developed on and it iwll; get distroyed if you consider doing it. thankyouu and i hope you take notice in this matter…..
i need help … i still dont understand
gay
LIARS ! SCREW THE PENGUINS
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antartica isgood but it is increadibly boaringand you are sad if u like it by the way plz join my save the rabbits campain as rabbits are slowly dieing out and need saving DIE PENGINS DIE MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA