My son and I have been playing about a cat who lives in antarctica.
Does anyone live there? Is it habitable?
How many places on earth are too cold to live at(for humans)?
There are a whole bunch of scientists who live in Antarctica, but they all live in specially-built places.
I don’t think anyone could move down there and take up residency full time without bringing a lot of supplies with them. I don’t think it’s a good place for sustainable agriculture.
A couple thousand scientists and support personnel live in Antarctica during the austral summer, and virtually all of them leave during the austral winter. There are some people there year-round at American bases like McMurdo or the South Pole, and at some of the Australian bases. Maybe some of the Russian, Chilean, Argentinean, British, etc. bases do the same thing… I don’t know.
The more northerly areas of Antarctica, such as Palmer Land, are relatively much more habitable than the interior of the continent, but living there wouldn’t be comfortable year-round. All the food people eat in Antarctica is imported or caught from the Southern Ocean anyway, as there are prohibitions on taking any Antarctic wildlife for food. In theory, I suppose small groups of inhabitants could sustain themselves on Antarctic wildlife, but I don’t think it would be a good idea. I’m not sure what they would do for shelter, given the lack of trees to cut down… they’d have to be pretty good at digging into rock-hard or ice-hard ground.
My Argentinian friend told me that Argentina has been trying to force its claim by moving people there. With no sucess yet, but someone did have a baby there.
But as it was pointed out Argentina’s claim includes that long fingerlike penninsula extending almost to its southern part.
I understand Argentina offical maps show the claim as part of Argentina.
The CIA World Factbook is a good reference for stuff like this (geographical claims, demographics, economy, etc) The entry on Antarctica:
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/ay.html
See the entries on “people” and “government”
A couple of bits of trivia:
–US Army personell get a special insignia for spending the winter in Antarctica. It’s pictured on a large poster of US Military medals and decorations that I have. The insignia is this puny little disk with a cutout of Antarctica in it. You wear it on your army service ribbon. Petty pathetic reward IMHO, considering how rough a winter down there must be.
–The US and Russia don’t have any territorial claims down there. They’ve got research stations, however, because they don’t recognize any other nation’s antarctic claims. Convenient. This isn’t really that big a deal, however, since the claims all overlap and there’s nothing of value to fight over (yet).
It’s mostly Australian, and we have the stamps to prove it.
For what it’s worth, which is probably close to nothing, at least one baby has been born in Antarctica. She was Argentinian, and the mamma was kept there instead of being shipped back to a hospital in her home country specifically so that the baby would be born in Argentina’s Antarctic claim. The government at the time thought this would strengthen their territorial claim or some such nonsense.