End of Year Reflections

This year has helped be better appreciate the study of history than any previous year. From day one the focus of this class has been abut developing empathy and using it to better understand history. our use of movies to learn history this year has been really useful and fun. on top of being entertaining they are able to provide unique perspective on history and offer unique opportunities to analyse history. Glory, 12 Years a Slave, Smoke Signals, and Thirteen Days, all were great movies that broadened our understanding of the part of history we were studying at the time. the use of newspaper article databases was also very interesting, as it gave a good way to easily access primary sources. These three things have made this year one of the best years of history I've ever had.

Draft

Dear Future,

            As of now, May 6, 2016, Antarctica is a very bizarre and unique place in the world. The treaties that govern it are some of the most complicated, its usage is widely debated, the resources found there are numerous yet inaccessible, and its climate is one of the most rapidly changing in the world. While it is impossible to say what the situation in Antarctica will be when you read this, I would like to share a bit about what we know now.

            Firstly, Antarctica is cold. Average temperatures around the continent are approximately

-37 degrees C. Antarctica is one of the coldest and driest places on earth, almost the entire place is considered a dessert. While the continent itself is an archipelago, it is so densely covered by ice sheets and glaciers that it appears to be one land mass. The ice sheets on the continent are very large, often around 2 kilometers deep and hundreds wide. These ice sheets and glaciers account for 70% of all fresh water on the planet. However, water is not the only abundant resource on the the continent. The estimations of the quantity of oil and natural gas vary from 30 to 200 billion barrels of oil equivalent. Despite this abundance, not a single drop of Antarctic oil has been sold commercially.

            Oil in Antarctica is extremely challenging to get. While experts say there is plenty of oil there, the actual act of acquiring it is almost impossible. Firstly there is the cold. The harsh conditions of the climate, as well as the remoteness intrinsic to the continent, would make working conditions unbearable. Secondly there is the ice. Most of the oil is expected to be below the vast and numerous ice sheets that cover the continent. As stated previously, these come in at around 2 kilometers thick. This makes getting a drill down to the oil a huge challenge in and of itself. Also related to the ice, is the fact that the ice would make for poor foundations for rigs, as they tend to slide and move frequently enough to make them unsuitable for building large structures. Thirdly is the cost. Even if these previous challenges could be overcome, it would not be economically feasible, due to the cost of the extracting and transporting the oil. Experts estimate that the cost of getting a barrel of oil from Antarctica to America would be around $100. Currently, oil in America sells for $58 per barrel. This financial gap makes people unwilling to find ways to overcome the other logistical challenges of oil extraction in Antarctica. “Antarctic oil is extremely difficult and, at the moment, prohibitively expensive to extract – but it’s impossible to predict what the global economy will look like in 2048 when the protocol banning Antarctic prospecting comes up for renewal. By that stage an energy hungry world could be desperate (Mathew Teller).”

            As mentioned above, the continent of Antarctica is governed and regulated by a series of treaties, collectively known as the “Antarctic Treaty System.” The first of these treaties was written in 1959, and it established Antarctica as a reserve for science and nature, with indefinite bans on military or nuclear action on the continent (this was even more remarkable when considering the fact that this was the first demilitarization treaty of the Cold War). This treaty, along with all the others that govern it, must be ratified by numerous nations around the globe, because the place in considered part of the “Common Heritage of Man,” which includes Antarctica, as well as the oceans, the moon, and all of outer space. The treaty discussed in the quote in the previous paragraph is the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty System, passed in 1998. It bans all commercial mining of any kind in order to protect the environment. However, the mining ban comes up for review in 2048. This is especially interesting when considering the fact that most leaders in the oil industry say there are approximately 30 years of oil reserves left in the world, conveniently ending just before the ban comes up for review. While many experts doubt the accuracy of this claim, it likely means that leaders in the industry will push very hard to lift the ban so they can have access to the continent. This claim is supported by China, one of the world leading producers and consumers of oil, recently making rapid expansion in Antarctica, rapidly planning and building new bases all across the continent. But as mention in the quote above, it is currently impossible to say what will happen. Maybe by then we as a world will reduce our oil consumption to the point where we don’t need to tap the fields in Antarctica. Maybe we won’t but the ban will continue anyway to preserve the environment of the continent. Maybe the ban will be lifted but we still won’t be able to extract the oil and still make a profit. Or maybe the ban will lift and we will by then have the technology necessary to make money off of the oil. Or maybe the ban will be lifted, but instead of commercially selling the oil, we begin mining the water in the ice, in order to alleviate dehydration.

Works Cited

http://www.coolantarctica.com/Antarctica%20fact%20file/science/global_warming.php

http://discoveringantarctica.org.uk/challenges/sustainability/future-of-antarctica/

http://www.asoc.org/advocacy/climate-change-and-the-antarctic

http://www.antarcticglaciers.org/glaciers-and-climate/glacier-recession/glaciers-and-climate-change/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Treaty_System

http://www.businessinsider.com/china-is-making-moves-in-antarctica-2015-5

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27910375

http://www.scar.org/antarctic-treaty-system

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbKNlFcg02c

http://www.coolantarctica.com/Antarctica%20fact%20file/science/threats_mining_oil.php 

Climate Research

https://goo.gl/zNHLy7
http://goo.gl/diJvFV
http://goo.gl/3f9asN
https://goo.gl/Dq1DY
http://goo.gl/fZ2C2e

I have been doing research about Antarctica. I so far have been looking into the politics 
and resources in Antarctica, and I hope to move into the actual facts about the climate in Antarctica 
soon. 

Climate Topics

I would like to do the "concerns section of the climate project. I am interested to learn about possible causes and effects of the changing climate and how to handle them, because in order to solve the problems, we first need to identify if they exist, what they are, and what the causes are.

Climate

Climate-change

Temperature

Humidity

Global-Warming

Green

These were the first five words that came to my head after hearing the word "climate." the fact that three of the words were about climate change and only two were about actual scientific facts about the climate shows that I care more about the fact that it is changing rather than proving that it is changing. 

How will the availability of drinking water change as the climate does?

1930 Reading Questions

the Great Depression (Links to an external site.)

Black Sunday (Links to an external site.)

The Drought (Links to an external site.)

Mass Exodus from the Plains (Links to an external site.)

1. Hoover was criticized because he did not do enough to stop the Great Depression. While did do somethings with government money to stifle the depression, he didn't do nearly enough and seriously underestimated the severity of this recession, because he believed,like many Americans, that the economic prosperity was a reflection of character and was deserved. This moral of Social Darwinism caused many Americans to blame themselves for their own poor economic standing. However, when looking at the problem as a whole, the concept that individual Americans did something to deserve this kind of poverty is simply false. 

2. Black Sunday was the day of an extremely powerful dust storm. While this are had been experiencing dust storms for most of the year, the one on this particular day was by far the most severe. The pain that would have been felt by the sand crushing those caught in the storm could only be matched by the fear of not knowing where you were or being able to see enough in front of you to find shelter. 

3. The drought was most prominent in the "Dust Bowl," the area consisting of the eastern part of Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas panhandles, south Colorado, and north New Mexico. a wicked dry spell and the systemic destruction of soil through misused farming techniques caused an abundance of loose dust particles to be constantly carried by the winds, and n the worst cases tornadoes. I disagree with the statement the writer makes at the end of the post. The dust bowl, (and most aspects of the depression) was the result of old techniques being unsustainable, However, because they had never failed before, no one had any real reason to expect them to, and therefore no reason to develop more sustainable methods. 

4. The migration from the dust bowl to California was the largest in American history. Many migrants faced discrimination by locals for overcrowding the farms and driving down wages for local or foreign workers. They also were often forced to live in slums or bad company houses that lacked water or electricity. 

Speech Questions

How’d the speeches go? Pretty well overall, some were a little dull or just plain wrong

Any distinguishing people? Madi, Andrew, Victoria, and Karen.

What would you do better next time? Write a better intro and conclusion and develop my thoughts more.