will finally get over freezing
No need to worry about that happening. Let's pretend that we actually do see this 3-5 degrees of warming caused by AGW. At some point we are going to move away from fossil fuels. The temperature will level off and likely start to fall after awhile. The melting will slow down and stop due to the Earth finding a new equilibrium. That new equilibrium will still have Antarctica as completely uninhabitiable. A 3-5 degree rise in temps is not going to make Antarctica inhabitable with as cold as it is. The mean annual temperature of the interior of Antarctica is -57 degree celsius.
Wait, wait. If Global Warming makes Antarctica inhabitable, how it can become a new independent nation. Inhabitable means, no one can live there.
And how more inhabitable Antarctica can be than it is now? If anything, if AGW would be real, it would make Antarctica habitable. In that case it would has a chance to become independent nation, if it won't have oil or/and diamonds, but that would be very poor existence... :D
It wont have to warm much for more land to be above the ice and it will be inhabitable but still very cold. And as said before it is inhabitable now to some degree.
Raisin a ruckus A 6 degree cooling would bring on an ice age What do you think a 5 degree warming would do. Well at least a 100 foot rise in sea level. Maybe 200+
Antarctica is a very interesting continent. It is bigger than the United States by nearly half again, it has the highest average elevation of all the continent due to the fact that the ice is as thick as 4 kms. and yet the average precipitation is less than the Sahara desert. It covers the South pole and in places has temperatures as cold as Mars.
I think you can understand Mitch that it would take significant warming to melt all the ice on Antarctica, so it will be far into the future before this will be a concern, however your question is a good one as the continent is in fact far more dynamic than was thought a few years ago. So the shelf into the Ross Sea will be something to watch. Good luck with your search mitch.
Good question, though settlement in Antarctica is likely to be fairly gradual because the melting of the ice cap (most of the world's ice) will occur over centuries and millennia. And it can only be anyone's guess what the political configuration of nations ANYWHERE in the world will be 200, 2,000 or 20,000 years from now.
Antarctcia would seem to have at least some economic basis to support an independent nation state. There is coal, oil and gas, and fish, and a long coastline with a number of natural harbors. Eco-tourism and scientific research, main activities today, would likely continue. There is little rainfall to support agriculture (now: that could change in coming centuries, due to climate change) but lots of ice melt. The long dark winters and ozone hole skin cancer risk would deter some people, but the total and area is larger than any current country except Russia, and even a small fraction of that area (growing slowly as the ice melts) would seem sufficiently large for nationhood status in a interconnected global economy.
The main obstacle to independence nation status would likely be political, as Antarctica is governed by overlapping claims of several different countries and a set of international treaties, including one that bans mining until 2048.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctica
Answerer Larry's posted map seems somewhat misleading because it does not take into account "isostatic rebound." This is "the result of the weight of the ice sheet depressing the land under it. After the ice is removed, the land will rise over a period of thousands of years by an amount approximately 1/3 as high as the ice sheet that was removed (because rock is 3 times as dense as ice). Approximately half the uplift occurs during the first two thousand years. If the ice sheet is removed over more than a few thousand years, then it is possible that a majority of the uplift will occur before the ice sheet fully disappears."
This map is more realistic of what Antarctica would eventually look like after all the ice melted: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Antarc...
That would however take a long time: "Even in the event of severe sustained warming, it would take many thousands of years for Eastern Antarctica to be fully deglaciated."
Before that, e.g. for the next few centuries, the main melt off would be in the west where something like the archipelago suggested in that map from Larry, though I guess with fewer and larger islands, would indeed result.
As long as Antarctica is still ice and solid, it will be inhabited by some sorts of species. If it somehow all melted away, there would no land there to become an independent nation, as it's just solid ice.
No, it's already divided up among the nations of the world and the UN. They would have to open it up to settlement and it would be several centuries before the population was great enough to think of forming a nation of their own.
As for it being mostly under water, you melt off a mile or more of ice from the surface and that surface will rebound (it's floating on magma). You can expect a lot of tectonic activity because of this. It will be sometime before the continent becomes a friendly place.
It may. In fact when humanity decides to colonize the oceans even those territories would vie to become independent nations.
By the way, Antarctica was ice free in the past and it was still above water. Fossil records prove this.
Antarctica is inhabitable now.
When the ice melts away, most of Antarctica will be under water.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/co...
I don't know. But I do know that denialists will still be denying AGW.
