posted on Jan, 25 2006 @ 01:51 AM
X,
I think that fighting in 70` below zero temperatures (instant frostbite upon removal of even facial or hand coverings /before/ you add in the
Catabatic (sp.) Winds that are in the 150-200mph range and run all up and down the coastal plains 24:7:365 of AA makes war in the southern polar
extremes one of those things that you do only when you grow tired of installing screen doors on submarines.
Literally, steel snaps like glass under these conditions.
As others have stated, there are alternative sources of power available, some much closer to home (the UK has 986TWh worth of windpower off her shores
and is building her wind industry up at a rate of 10% every year with some 321TWh now exploited).
Furthermore, I expect that along about the time we are expected to make some serious 'power or materials' choices on the remaining oil, 'someone'
will discover a way to make bacteria pump the stuff out under conditions akin to uncle jo's still (a giant mash under salt domes 1,500ft down) such
that we can make all the plastic we desire.
Of much more urgent concern are those indicators which seem to point to the shrinkage of both polar caps and particularly the sluffing off of giant
segments of the Antarctic ice sheet. Certainly, I can think of no one nation that would desire responsibility for 'stabilizing the AA environmental
crisis' if such was indeed their sole responsibility.
And that is ultimately the problem with your premise. War has gone from being a blatant 'devil may care' statement of burgeoning nationalism for
pride or resource/trade access reasons to some vainly twisted notion of 'Moral Supremacy' as an artificial justification. Where people refuse, for
cultural, religious or ethnic reasons, to ascribe to such shared social mores; they have little or no ability to come together as friends or
enemies.
Certainly not if the outcome of war is not merely embarrassment and occupation but isolation and excoriation as a vae victis victim of the winner,
indefinitely.
You wanna fight? You talk about food shortages, clean water and social entropy (nobody wants to be a slave nation with a rich economic production
base, nobody wants to be a 'service' economy with utter dependence on slave states for production of goods that they can no longer afford). All
leading to a general (global) decay of the civilization engine where conflict is less about societal values than the certainty of the wealth and
security that they once brought are no longer assured or unique enough to be worth the struggle.
THIS will lead to 'war' as a widespread scream of the chained drey beast we have become, harnessed to our own social plow. It may be we need severe
climatic stress, a pandemic disease or secondary geo-political upheaval to make it catalyst into warlike struggles at home as much as abroad. But it
will be our disgust with US, as a people losing our awareness of self, that ultimately dooms us to combat.
At which point, ironically, people may want to come to the farthest known regions just to get away from a vastly overpopulated, mixed ethnicity,
resource 'shared', and ultimately socially tyrannical governing system necessary to put return things to stability if not aright.
Dunno, if the plexiglass is thick enough, can you do hydroponics in Antarctica?
KPl.