It is generally accepted and uncontroversial within the scientific community that 95 percent of the landmass of Antarctica has cooled over the last 20 years. Yet, it is also showing signs of shrinking. Note the calving of some of the largest icebergs known to exist off of the major Antarctic ice shelves in recent years.
With the Arctic Ice Cap shrinking to its smallest known size in 2007 and predictions that it could vanish completely by the summer of 2030 or sooner, all of which is attributed to effects of global warming and the warming of the northern ocean currents, should we see the same with the southern ice cap covering Earth’s fifth largest continent?
There has been warming at the edge of the continent including where Wilkins Ice Sheet recently collapsed. The collapse could be due to global warming , oceanic volcanoes, and/or from internal stresses associated with the accumulation of ice in the bay.
There has also been a cooling trend in Antarctica which is creating some controversy. According to The Global Warming Hub at Blogspot.com in a recent post, “The Antarctica cooling controversy is known to focus mostly on the question of if the current trends of temperature in Antarctica tend to contradict the basic global warming theory … . The global climatic trends … reflect that in Antarctica the climatic trends are minimal compared to the Arctic climatic trends.”
We will be covering the trends and issues involving the cooling and/or warming of Antarctica over the next few weeks here at Ecology Today. Stay tuned and be sure to log your comments with own thoughts and observations.
The image above depicts the heating and cooling trends over and around Antarctica (1982-2007).
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Alternative energy is progressively breaking into the mainstream. However, there are various roadblocks. A multiplicity of projects are underway to study and solve these problems.
For example, solar companies are working on reducing the costs of solar energy. There have been dramatic decreases in the cost of solar energy. Advanced technologies contribute to the decreases in price. Also, the increasing number of solar energy users and manufacturing volumes have made solar systems more affordable. As more users realize the benefits of solar energy, solar energy cost will continue to decline.
As the market increases, more users will adopt affordable solar solutions. Because governments have recognized the benefits, financial incentives are available from state, federal and local governments as well as utility companies.
Wind power is intermittent and is a diffuse source which means low energy production and a large numbers of wind generators. Wind power requires large land masses, noise, and unsightly turbines present environmental drawbacks from the perspective of some environmentalists.
Common Problems & Solutions
Alternative energy technologies suffer from some common problems. First, several sources are intermittent and unreliable. These are natural resources so the wind does not always blow, the sun does not always shine and waves do not always occur. This gives rise to the inherent problem of providing a constant power supply to energy users.
Nationally, this may be resolved by using revolving supplies so that conventional fossil fuel power stations running at low output may promptly be increased to full output to meet sudden demands when alternative sources are not available. For instance, an eco friendly method could be to use pumped hydro-electric power in which water stored behind a dam would be released to meet peak demand and then pumped back later. Global warming and solutions are reviewed in detail at http://www.onebiosphere.com
A more efficient solution will be to establish a distributed system over an entire continent so that when one county is producing excess power, it sends electricity to another region. Similarly, when there is no wind in Massachusetts, wind energy from Texas may be distributed.