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As much as I am , as a keen environmentalist, against development in general, I must acknowledge Deneb here has a point : with climate change and population growth, in the long run developing ARCTIC REGIONS -and even Antarctic-will be unavoidable. Heck, billions $ ARE CURRENTLY INVESTED IN SPACE RESEARCH because some daydreamers like Stephen Hawking imagine colonizing Mars or the exoplanets at million light years, while at the same times millions of undeveloped sqmiles lie here on our blue Planet : talk of skewed priorities in our day and age.
How is space exploration in any conflict with development here on earth? One has to come at the expense of the other? So we as humans shouldn't wonder about what's beyond our planet. And no, Mars isn't millions of light years away. Most planets we are researching right now beyond the solar system are within the double digit light years. Talk about myopic tunnel vision.
A much more easily attained alternative would be for human populations to stop increasing at such an unprecedented rate as has been happening in the past 140 years, stop using up and wasting remaining resources, stop polluting and stop spreading out and destroying or pushing the rest of nature out of their way.
Maybe, maybe not. At present the Arctic cannot be easily developed because it is frozen tundra and permafrost (frozen mud) keeping methane and CO2 trapped under the surface. If and when climate change causes the Arctic regions to thaw out it will become one giant toxic black swamp sitting on top of quick-mud which is sitting on top of rock. Wildlife and plants will die and humans won't be able to remain there.
It will still take at least another couple hundred years or more for those regions to naturally drain into the Arctic Ocean and dry out. It will have to do it on its own in its own way because at present humans don't have the technology to drain, dry out, terraform and develop a vast swamp that encompasses so many thousands of square miles.
Once the region is drained and dried out what will remain is rock and rotting peat releasing the previously trapped methane and CO2 into the atmosphere. No wildlife will be able to survive that and no plants will grow there until the toxic gases have dissipated and the rotting peat can be mixed and terraformed with supplemental soils brought in from other locations around the world. It will be like terraforming an alien planet in outer space into something that humans can survive on.
No matter how much more human population growth there will be in the future I think it will take a very, very long time before the Arctic regions can be developed enough for infrastructures to be put in place and to be able to grow crops and support increasing populations.
A much more easily attained alternative would be for human populations to stop increasing at such an unprecedented rate as has been happening in the past 140 years, stop using up and wasting remaining resources, stop polluting and stop spreading out and destroying or pushing the rest of nature out of their way.
A much more easily attained alternative would be for human populations to stop increasing at such an unprecedented rate as has been happening in the past 140 years, stop using up and wasting remaining resources, stop polluting and stop spreading out and destroying or pushing the rest of nature out of their way.
I'm wondering if this would be feasible at least for the summer months and maybe year round with an icebreaker. I see that the Newfoundland government funds a summer ferry that runs to Nain on the Northern Labrador coast and it only has a population of 1200. Why not extend the ferry further north to Iqaluit which has a population of 6700 which is 5 and a half times the size of Nain. At least that way all territorial capitals will be connected by road or ferry to the North American highway network. From a financial point of view it makes no sense to serve a town of 1200 but not one more than 5 times bigger further north. Perhaps the Nunavut government could look into funding a ferry that would run from Iqaluit to Nain
How many people would ride from Nain to Iqaluit? And frankly I wonder how many ride to Nain.
That's great news, but I hope their ferry is an ice breaker, or this is going to be open for 90 days per year.
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