How bad does global warming have to get before Antarctica melts and we have another continent to screw up colonize?
When do you think that would happen?
How long for the Land Truly Down Under to lose enough ice for people to start moving in?
What do you think? Vicious land grab or civilized divvying up of the resources? (I laugh - of course it will be a vicious land grab - by that time we’d have tens of millions, if not billions, of desperate people looking for a new place to live, major/super powers rushing in for all the juicy, juicy geological resources, etc…)
Maybe this would have gone better in another category, but the questions above should have answers based somewhat in fact, although the mods are welcome to move it if it shuffles over to more opinion than facts. I could argue for “General Questions”, “Great Debates”, or “Opinion” so I rolled a gaming dice.
I think we’d need average artic temps to increase 15 C before there are long term colonization attempts. Probably 10 C before the bravest can make realistic attempts so if guys 5 C is where countries start making plays for ground. According to NASA it looks like worldwide average would have to go up 2 C for the antarctic to go up 5 C. From looking around it seems 2050 is a decent number for when that will happen.
It’s not as if Antarctica is just a little too cold; it’s a LOT too cold.
Virtually all of it is covered in ice, and it wouldn’t just take a few years to melt it. If somehow you could melt it faster, what open land there is would be subject to landslides and massive erosion. It’d be mush for a long time.
Furthermore, the northernmost parts of Antarctica aren’t great for colonization anyway. They’re mountainous and rocky.
Also, it’s not just about ice cover, it’s about available sunlight. Antarctica getting warmer and less ice-covered isn’t going to make it any less south, geographically speaking.
Almost all of Antarctica is south of 65 degrees, and most of it south of 70 degrees, meaning that it’s going to have at least two months of near-total darkness every year. Habitations at comparable latitudes in the north have the warming effect of the Gulf Stream, and also are connected by land to warmer and more populous regions.
A multi-hour plane and/or boat trip across the Southern Ocean just to get to a place whose latitude is more polar than Reykjavik in Iceland and whose climate is much harsher is not going to be an attractive colonization prospect. Come back in a few million years or more when the forests have regrown.
Miskatonic University found some interesting geological aberrations in their 1930 Antarctic expedition. Perhaps if some of the ice clears up we can go back and get a better look?
Mining an Antarctica de-iced by anthropogenic climate change in order to get more oil and coal sounds like a textbook case of Not Learning Our Lesson The First Time.
Considering that most of the continent is covered by ice between 1- 2 miles thick it will take along time for the surface to be exposed. At current melt rates the entire planet could be ice free in 5000 years. With Antarctica most likely being the last hold out. Many models predict that the sea ice around it could be gone by 2100 which I guess would start to expose the shore line. But, all that ice melting will raise sea levels which would probably inundate the exposed shore.
If Antarctica is ice-free, civilization as we know it would already be a dim memory.
You’re needlessly optimistic of how many people will be alive, in the kind of world that would have to exist to have an ice-free Antarctica in it.
Why would the last remnants of humanity, huddled in their chilled Arctic domes in the only latitudes where people can be outside for more than a few minutes without broiling, look to the other side of the planet? That would involve crossing the killing heat of the Great Oven of the inter-tropical zone. It’s a suicide mission…
If Antarctica melted, the sea levels would rise 230 feet. It would also mean that all ice on the earth would be gone, and temperatures would skyrocket. I’m thinking that, at that point, the human race would have pretty much ghosted itself and wouldn’t be settling anything, anywhere.
