South Pole to Get Highway 413
tetrad writes "The New Scientist magazine reports that the US is building a road to the South Pole. The "highway" would cross the Ross Ice Shelf and then pass through the Transantarctic Mountains (map here). Convoys of tractors will be the only traffic on the road, bringing fuel and heavy equipment to the South Pole, as well as enabling the installation of a $250M fibre-optic communications cable (discussed previously)."
Longevity? (Score:2, Insightful)
this will be useful (Score:-1, Insightful)
seriously, i think a highway costs somethign insane like $250,000 a foot for a 6 lane highway. after blasting, clearing it out, leveling it off, laying down rocks, then pavement, and paint.
so, factor in you're going to be going over water, which is frozen and melting?
RTFA, RTFA, RTFA (Score:3, Insightful)
Reading the article helps... (Score:2, Insightful)
This is BAD (Score:2, Insightful)
This good be good (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not like they are going to be building a 6 lane highway. Probably won't be much than a gravel back road.
Re:Yee Haw! (Score:2, Insightful)
What is pristine and holy about crapholes like an antartic ice plain or mosquito filled Alaska bogs?
Why isn't anyone complaining about Egyptian expansion into the Sahara and destruction of the pristine desert? Why hasn't anyone taken Iraq to task for the destruction of the swamps around Basra?
Re:Watch Out Chile! (Score:3, Insightful)
That works fine if you are talking about floating ice. Much of the ice in the world that is melting now, isn't floating, it is land based, which flows to the oceans.
If enough of this water flows into oceanic basins, the oceanic water level is going to rise.
No, satellites would be very inconvenient. (Score:1, Insightful)
All major communications satellites (other than Iridium & it's cousins) are geosynchronous. If you are in the Northern Hemisphere, go out and look at some satellite dishes... they all point roughly south, to points over the equator. From the Southern Hemisphere, they all point north.
By the way, I'd appreciate it if you didn't bash NASA, because you don't seem to know shit about space. Where geosynchronous satellites are parked is one of the first things anybody learns about spacecraft. Your comment indicates that you are completely uneducated about space exploration, and only know the most trivial things from CNN and Slashdot headlines. So, I don't think that you are qualified to evaluate whether NASA has been effectively spending money or not.
Wow...useful (Score:1, Insightful)
A plane ticket from Winnipeg to Rankin Inlet is $1400 at the least (as compared with a ticket from Winnipeg to Vancouver - same distance - $99 most days). This is BECAUSE there are no roads, and flying is the only way to get there.
If I was American, I would wholeheartedly oppose this utter waste of taxpayer's money.
PS: I'm not a coward, I just don't feel like registering
Re:Two birds with one stone (Score:3, Insightful)
The actual level of warming is insignificant - we're talking an average 1.5 degrees C or something. Nobody cares about that little bit of warming. Only the blowhards (yes, leftists have our embarrassing equilvalents to Rush Limbaugh too) think that. The real concern is how this change is effecting the weather. Anyone who's studied the thermodynamics realizes how much a tiny temperature change can do to weather patterns worldwide - so the problem is we get hurricanes in deserts, droughts in rainforests, blizzards in california, and generally worldwide crop failure. Pardon me, but I like to eat.
Weather is a very fractal thing - push it slightly one way and it will change completely across the board. Both the natural and artificial world rely on expecting certain weather - our crops, our forests, and our cities expect certain things. Only certain cities are prepared for hurricanes (and I'm sure you've noticed the increase in major hurricanes in recent years).
Global warming is not a problem. Talk to real experts and not loony treehuggers, and you'll hear about the climactic shift that is closely related to global warming. That is a threat to humanity and the planet's ecosystems.
The other legitamate environmental concern is local pollution. You think that the Ganges is the only polluted body of water? Here's a hint - your local factories also pollute the water. They just pollute it in less obvious ways - not nasty agricultural runoff that covers the lake in icky slimy algae, but more sinister things. In my town, the bay water looks fine. You can get bad swimmers itch at the beaches, so you can only swim from a boat - but still that's just regular chemical imbalances producing unnatural ecosystems. The real concern is the water is carcinogenic. There's a coking mill on the edge of the water, and the runnoff from that means that anyone who swims a lot or drinks a lot of that water will probably end up a hospital a few years down the road. This is not a third world country - this is part of the great lakes.
The third concern is concentration of toxins - sure, they're only generating a couple of gallons - but when one part per million can kill you down the road, and the stuff takes decades to break down (many nasty aromatic hydrocarbons are that persistant), you probably don't want that stuff being vented anywhere near people. But they do anyways. The world is big, but benzene is still benzene.
Environmental concerns are legitamate - the problem is that a large number of environmentalists are extremist lunatics. But really, its no different then if we had people like RMS and JonKatz speaking up for us computer people. Just because the people you hear about in a movement are idiots doesn't mean the movement is wrong.
Re:Watch Out Chile! (Score:3, Insightful)
the time of the dinasours, i'm expect there to
by lots of oil, diamonds, coal, plus your standard
exploited minerals in the area. Thus next century
when the rest of the earth is mined out, Antartica
will be a very important piece of real estate.
Re:Two birds with one stone (Score:3, Insightful)
True, but there is also a decisive lack of concrete evidence (non-circumstancial) that would say the climactic shift has anything to do with humans. Natural cycles of planetary systems modify temperature, as do ocean currents (which do change frequently) so I personally don't think humanity is doing much to contribute one way or the other. If the ocean currents stop or slow, we'll have a mini-ice age, then all your climactic shift concerns will be going for the other way.
Knee-jerk environmentalism, anyone? (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course, I really can't blame you, given the ridiculous headline about a "highway" being constructed.