Talk:Colonization of Antarctica

Information sources

• This page is completely unsourced. It may well be un-encyclopedic. Is it someones pet idea? If not, please source it... William M. Connolley 16:23, 1 November 2005 (UTC).

• Whoever knows sources for this information should provide details. Verifiability is important. (SEWilco 19:12, 1 November 2005 (UTC))

• Agreed. Unless some sources are added, this article should be AfD'd or at least redirected to the main Antarctica article.--FRS 23:45, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Population

Is it true the population in Antarctica is currently 1000 scientists each year? CarDepot 20:38, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

See the infobox on the right side of Antarctica article. (SEWilco 20:58, 1 November 2005 (UTC))

Sources

This article still appears to be poorly sourced, and potentially therefore could be considered as original research. Expansion of the single tentative reference might be useful (depending on the reliability of the reference - note that a single reference is not sufficient to warrant an article). See how to format references. As stated above, maybe this needs to be tested at AfD. -- MightyWarrior 20:42, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

The source appears to be Aant Elzinga, "Antarctica: The Construction of a Continent by and For Science," in Elisabeth Crawford, Terry Shinn, and Sverker Sörlin, eds., Denationalizing Science: The Contexts of International Scientific Practice (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1993): 73-106. See here.--Pharos 03:12, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Student-designed domed city

Isn't it odd that this student-designed domed city from 1977 is also supposed to have a population of 40,000, the same as Frei Otto? The student design I imagine is of borderline notability only, but I thought the other editors of this article would want to be aware of it.--Pharos 09:11, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Scope

As this article expands further, the proper scope of the "colonization" topic will become an issue. I propose we use "land-based permanent settlement and economic activity", excluding (1) scientific research and (2) tourism. Is this a good definition for this context?--Pharos 21:32, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Why should those two be excluded? They're human activity like any other. If there are to be any qualifiers for what counts for "colonization" and what does not, IMO "permanence" is the only real criterion. If Antarctica ends up having cities of 100,000 people, 100% based on tourism, then I'd still call it "colonized". Same with scientific research. It doesn't matter what people are there for. Just whether they are there or not. Also, why is "land-based" necessary? If we build underwater or floating habitats all along the coastlines, but along the continental shelf, why shouldn't that count? Thus, I propose we use "permanent settlement and economic activity", with no exclusions. Samy Merchi (Talk) 22:41, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Permanent human presence

Currently the article reads:

Colonization of Antarctica refers to having a permanent human presence in the continent of Antarctica. Currently only some scientists live there temporarily. Antarctica is currently the only continent on Earth without a permanent human presence.

Perhaps this needs to be clarified. After all, Antarctica has had a permanent human presence for decades. At all times of the year there are at least 1000 people there. Ordinary Person (talk) 08:15, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, and haven't Argentina and/or Chile had births, kindergardens etc there? Hugo999 (talk) 00:26, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

I believe we should use the expression "permanent residents", because though individuals stay for a time, noone actually lives there.--Pharos (talk) 01:14, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

I believe that any qualification about "permanent residents" should use standard legal definitions of what defines a resident of a given jurisdiction. These can range from as little as 30 days up to as long as 6 months. Given many people have spent as much as a year in Antarctica, some returning for as much as 20 years after annual vacations to visit family, holidays, etc, then there are some people who qualify legally as permanent residents for some amount of time in Antarctica.71.95.151.21 (talk) 04:58, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I consider both the Chilean and Argentinian settlements as "colonies" in the original, common sense of the word. It's not grand or spectacular or particularly sustainable, but none of those are required in order to be a "colony." "colony: a body of people living in a new territory but retaining ties with the parent state" ...and I consider the Chilean and Argentinian settlements as "colonies" but not others because the Chilean and Argentinian settlements were established explicitly in order to support territorial claims, while the other current bases are ostensibly about scientific research. --Robotbeat (talk) 02:41, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

We have to stop global warming before Antarctica becomes a continent that people can actually live on! Global warming has gone too far, it is melting our ice caps, heating our deserts, and now it's going to make Antarctica able to actually sustain human life. We can't let this happen. If people can live on Antarctica, who knows how hot the rest of the world may be. We must stop global warming NOW!!!

PS, if we're writing an article about Antarctica, shouldn't we call it an antarcticle? Huh? Get it?173.187.11.21 (talk) 14:03, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

External links modified

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Over-linking

As wikipedia style guide notes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Linking#What_generally_should_not_be_linked) we don't need to wikilink very common geographic terms that have no special connection to the article - in this case, the word "Earth". - DavidWBrooks (talk) 21:43, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Commented-out section

I "commented out" this section a couple weeks ago because it's not relevant to this article - but leaving it there makes editing confusing. So here's the sction, in case anybody thinks part of it should be returned - DavidWBrooks (talk) 14:16, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

While even relatively common radioisotopes like Strontium-90 (fission product yield of 6% in thermal fission of ²³⁵
U) have acceptable power density (0.95 Watt_thermal per gram for the metal or about 0.46 Watt_thermal per gram for the chemically inert Strontium titanate) and long enough half lives (a bit under 30 years in the case of ⁹⁰
Sr) to make them attractive in principle, the low efficiency of RTGs (usually only about 1% of the thermal output is converted to electricity) and the lack of large scale nuclear reprocessing with the aim of recovering RTG-isotopes have limited them to small scale applications. Other commonly used RTG isotopes, while sometimes more power-dense or longer lived, pose their own challenges. ²³⁸
Pu is expensive to produce and thus used primarily for space based applications. ¹³⁷
Cs loses much of its power density when transferred into an inert form and is found in moderately "aged" spent nuclear fuel only "diluted" with stable ¹³³
Cs and long lived ¹³⁵
Cs which further reduces power density.

References