What I learnt about Antarctica in 30 minutes

Right off the bat, I would like to welcome you to my new blog — medium.com/@DouglasBlogs. I have imagined this space for myself as being somewhere I can explore new ideas and research, as well as semi-regularly practice my writing. I also imagine that things will get worse before they get better, but like the philosopher Miley Cyrus once said, “ it’s not about how fast I get there, ain’t about what’s waiting on the other side, it’s the climb”.

To kick things off, I have spent 30 minutes trying to absorb as much information as I can about Antarctica from a quick Google search. This might seem to come from left field, but previously Antarctica has been a continent I have known next to nothing about. This is what I have come up with:

· Research communities from around the world work together to preserve and protect Antarctica from the affects of global warming, and use this research to predict how climate change will affect the rest of the world.

· World heritage sites dot the continent, and more research is being supported to protect the natural environments and wildlife from pollution migrating from the rest of the world — which has supported a restriction on tourism to Antarctica.

· The Scientific Committee of Antarctic Research (SCAR) are the global body who drive international strategy and objectives for research in the Antarctic and Southern Ocean.

· A total of 30 countries operate research bases across Antarctica — supporting a population of around 4,000 during the summer.

Something to think about:

· There aren’t many opportunities to visit and work on Antarctica outside of the research community, which I thought was an interesting contrast to space travel — both being extremely out of reach for most people. However, this might change after Branson and Virgin Galactic recently secured its operating license for space tourism from the US Federal Aviation Administration. These are absolutely wild times!

I seem to have only brushed the surface of what is going on in Antarctica. I’m definitely more curious than before I started this #investigation, but I’ll leave those mysteries for when I have more time. It would be interesting to do some research around New Zealand’s involvement and contributions to the research in the frozen continent.

Thanks for reading my first blog post. If you have any questions, or to point out anything I might have gotten confused, please reach out with me at @DouglasPR_NZL on Twitter. Cheers.