Antarctica
From RationalWiki
Antarctica is a continent covered by a giant (though shrinking) plain of ice around the South Pole, opposite the Arctic. Almost all of Antarctica is south of the Antarctic Circle, and it covers 14.4 million square kilometers (5.4 million sq mi), making it the fifth-largest continent after Asia, Africa, North America, and South America. Ice covers about 98% of Antarctica to an average depth of 1.6 kilometers (1.0 mi) in thickness.
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[edit] Potential exploitation.
And no people either...
The Antarctic is presently protected by a treaty which prohibits exploitation of the continent until 2011. Given that global warming is making potential exploitation easier and that the threat of peak oil is making potential exploitation more profitable it is highly probable that petroleum exploration will begin before the end of the next decade.[1]
In this case it is somewhat ironic that the very countries and institutions which deny the existence of global warming are using its consequences to further the process which generated the warming in the first instance.
[edit] Ecosystem
The Antarctic has a unique though limited ecosystem with no land dwelling mammals. In fact, the largest completely terrestrial animal on Antarctica is a half-inch long "wingless fly." Penguins, though cute, do not count; they spend much of their time in the water nearby.
[edit] Mars rocks
Antarctica is a major source of rocks from Mars because they fall on an enormous ice-covered plain, and are conveyed by means of a very slow "conveyor belt" of moving glacial ice to be deposited at the edge where the flow is obstructed by hills and mountains. The rocks stand out on the flat, white surface.[2][3]
[edit] Other views
Some people believe that Antarctica is a myth, despite all of the people who have crossed it. They instead claim there is a giant wall of ice/rock, that keeps the water in.
Other people have written about a great range of mountains in the middle of the continent, which is supposedly the location of a great city built by space aliens a billion years ago. (This seems more believable than the claim immediately above.)
Antarctica is where the fundamentalist Christian's God keeps most of the water from the Global Flood when He doesn't need it. The rest is stored on Greenland.
