Hillary Opposed to Highway to South Pole

[Khephra]

WELLINGTON, New Zealand -- New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to climb Mount Everest and the first to drive a vehicle to the South Pole, described a U.S. highway to the pole as "terrible."

Work on the 1,020-mile "ice highway" from the Antarctic coast south of New Zealand to the South Pole is currently in its third season.

snip...............

Hillary, who's revisiting Antarctica this week, was blunt about the project: "I think it's terrible," according to local media reports.

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-south-pole-highway,0,7240567.story?coll=sns-ap-world-headlines

[Bono71]

1. What's his beef? The highway makes it too easy?

[trotsky]

5. Yep, see the article.

Sorry Sir Hillary, but there is now a research station there and getting supplies and people back and forth is very important. Remember the doc who developed breast cancer there one winter? They had to airlift her medicine and she had to treat herself because it's too cold for planes to land there during the winter.

[Bono71]

6. Yeah, I remember that...good grief...poor guy seems to be

living in the "Glory Days" as the Boss might put it.

[Rush1184]

12. It will only be open in the summer...

I just did a little research on this, and according to a New scientist article (http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993300) it will only be open for about 100 days a year, durring the summer, so this road will do nothing to solve the above mentioned problem. The main purpose of the road is to lay fiber optic cable to improve comunications.

[trotsky]

14. Interesting!

Sounds like the benefits still outweigh Sir Hillary's "purist" concerns, though.

[vinny9698]

2. Lewis and Clark

Would Lewis and Clark complain about a highway to the Pacific?

[thedailyshow]

3. not if it disturbs the ecosystem and destroys natural resources

[Bono71]

4. How much damage could the ice-road to the south pole do?

And isn't it being built to enhance research and help ecosystems?

[Floogeldy]

16. So . . . .

. . . . I guess lining the highway with casinos, hotels, restaurants, gas stations, skiing and sledding tourist lodges is out of the question? :silly:

[Rush1184]

20. According to an article on this...

independent travel on the road will be prohibited. They are scientists, so they have no intrest in promoting such attractions. Also, Antartica is pretty flat, no to good for skiing.

[TahitiNut]

37. "flat"? No, not really.

Antarctica has several mountain ranges. The Ellsworth Mountains includes Vinson Massif, the largest mountain in Antarctica at 5,140m. That's pretty large by any standard. The Transantarctic Mountains, extending across nearly the entire continent, divide the continent between West Antarctica and East Antarctica.

http://www.antarctica.org/UK/Cartes_UK/dia_UK/geo_mountains_UK.htm

[amazona]

26. it will happen

I don't know it if is silly. There is a new fad for "ice hotel" resorts -- why not in the Antarctic? There is money to be made from the crowd who wants to say they have done something others have not done, but who can only "buy" such achievement.

[eyepaddle]

31. I spent the 2000-2001 season in McMurdo

which is the big base on the coat which supports operation for a large percentage of the research staions on the continent, the Kiwis, the Italians--even the Russian base at Vostok, which itself is famous as the coldest recorded temperature on Earth.

At any rate, I was there the year that Ann Bancroft and Liv Arnesen skied across the Continent, along with a few other expeditions, and the official National Science Foundation position is dictated ny treaty. They flat out will NOT assisst in a commercial or recreational endeavour. Ann and Liv didn't quite make it across in time and called for their supporting company (ANI) to fly them out the last few hundred miles or so, ANI's plane had the range to get them and drop them off near McMurdo--but not enough to get back to their own base. They had to sleep in tents, we had about ten million gallons of fuel and they needed about two hundred. They were told tough luck. I should not that that was my job, working in the fuels department and I was told explicitly NOT to help those guys. After sweating 'em for a couple of days they made a deal and used their plane to haul supplies for the NSF and were paid in just enough fuel to get out of Dodge.

It was the same deal with the Cruise ships one made it within a few hundred yards of Mac-Town but were not allowed to dock, they had to fly their helicopter a few hundred yards back and forth so the passengers could see the historic sites in McMurdo sound. Trust me on this there WON'T be any commercal development on that road--the NSF is fairly hostile to adventure seekers. (Us little worker ants were fairly hospitable, feeding them and letting them use the bathrooms and such, but it was clear we were very limited in what we could offer.) As I recall, there was debate as to whether or not we would assisst in rescue operations.

Other posts have raised questions about fuel efficiency of dragging sleds by Cat Bulldozers, the current method is to fly everything down to Pole, and it takes more than two gallons of jet fuel to fly one gallon to pole. Plus it would greatly reduce demands on aviation resources--keeping the runways going was our major focus and takes several hundred people at the peak of the season.

I'm not strictly an expert on this issue, but thought I'd pass along some insight

[norml]

35. Very interesting. That sounds as it should be. Thanks for the information.

I think this ice highway sounds like a good idea.

[Andromeda]

39. Very interesting...

thanks for sharing that.

[eyepaddle]

41. No Problem

I loved my Antarctic experience and still try to stay sorta current on what's going on down there. (And I still have a few friends down there.)

I should also say that I don't type so well--and don't feel a bunch like editing my original post. Oh well!:-)

[seriousstan]

23. We are talking ice here. There is no ecosystems or natural resources

in the interior. All animal inhabitants are on the shore. The rest is ice.

[HeeBGBz]

7. There's a highway to Antartica?

Really?

[Bono71]

8. Highway is a bit of an exagerration...It is more like a path cut

in the ice (no asphault).

[Buns_of_Fire]

9. I was wondering what Hillary Clinton had to do with it...

:shrug:

[Bono71]

11. Lol...thought the same thing.

[Andromeda]

40. Lol, that's what I thought too...

:)

[liberalpragmatist]

46. As did I

Of all the serious issues to be raising...

But then I read the article.

[Rush1184]

10. Where have I been?

This has been going on for three years?!? Where the fuck have I been?

[Khephra]

13. That was my first thought when I read this

It's not like anyone could accuse me of not following the news, but this was the first time I've heard of such a project.

[Rush1184]

17. Kinda makes you wonder

kinda makes you wonder how somthing like this could go on for three years with out us news junkies hearing about it. You would think a project like this would have had greater world wide coverage. Maybe not, too little death and destruction for mainstream news.

[ozone_man]

15. First I heard of it.

My first reaction is that I don't like it. The Earth has precious little wilderness left without making the last wild places easily accessible. But I could see if there are enough scientific reasons to support this, then maybe.

[Bono71]

18. It doesn't seem too intrusive...just a path cut through ice...

plus it will help global warming studies.

[Rush1184]

19. Still not convinced it is good

I dunno... They will be using catipillar tractors to pull the sleds on the roads, and it will take 20 days to go accross the road... As we all know, they are hardly fuel efficent. I am still undecided about this road, but it just donsn't seem to be the most efficient way to do this. I can see its use for bringing large equipment in, but for regular supplies, but wouldn't flying a plane load in burn less fuel than driving catipillars for 20 days accross the ice.

[AP]

21. Funny, the high correlation between having "Sir' in front of your name and

not being interested in progress.

[liberalcenter]

22. Good view

for the rapture..

I guess that's why it doesn't matter if we trash the planet.

[Algorem]

24. oil plans?

[DS1]

25. They should plan ahead and call it a canal

;-)

[Tab]

27. He's looking ahead

I actually had the honor of meeting Sir Edmund Hillary about 14 years ago when I was on a trek near Mt. Everest in the Himlayas, and we spoke for about 20 minutes.

When Hillary first went up Everest (1957?), it was basically pristine. A few travelers had gone before him, but it was for the most part untouched.

Eventually travel to Nepal got commercialized and even trips up Everest itself. There's a permanent set of ropes and access is much easier.

By the time I got to the area in 1990, it was very obviously traveled, and in certain places, garbage littered the paths. Since then, although I have not been back, my understanding is that the garbage and traffic problem has increased signficantly, to the extent that major efforts have been made to "clean up" the region. Everything from oxygen canisters to wrappers from pre-packaged food litter the area.

Unlike others, Hillary made an effort to stay in the region and work to make things better for the Nepali people. He truly loves the people and the area and has stayed to make it better, which sets him far above those who swoop in, make an ascent, leave garbage, and disappear again.

I think what you're seeing here is not an explorer who's "reliving his glory days" but someone who's very concerned - and has seen first hand - how we can take an environment and change it from pristine to trashed in just a few decades - certainly during one's lifetime. He saw it in Nepal, and he doesn't want to see it again in the Antarctic. How many other places like it are left?

- Tab

[hippiechick]

28. I thought your headline referred to Hillary Clinton ....

:silly: I was thinking, OMG, what does she even have an opinion on such a thing for ???


:hi: Bro !


:hippie:

[conflictgirl]

34. LOL! I thought the same thing. nt

[DFWJock]

29. This just in....

Halliburton will be building the highway at a cost of $986.5 billion dollars, give or take a billion or two.

[oscar111]

30. at 1:37 haliburton just said the cost is now 1.7 Trillion

but expected to level off soon.

[belle]

32. I was sure this would be an Onion article...

[DubyaSux]

33. My only beef...

...is that it appears we're paying for it via public money, but it's not available to the general public. If it's just for scientists, why don't they pay for it?

Otherwise, I think it's a credible idea with an acceptable benefit/damage ratio.

[eyepaddle]

38. It's the Antarcitc Treaty

While nominally it is all "just for science," there is a fair bit of geopolitics going on here.

In the interest of full disclosure, while I basically fueled airplanes and helicopters when I was down there, it was my interest in exploration and science that really fired my interest, my actual work background is (was) as a geologist, so I get pretty stoked about research and discoveries and such, AND there is a BUNCH of really world class science going on down there--from long term ecological research to climatology and even to basic cosmology, plus a ton of other stuff.

However we all knew why the US had so many people down there--as do the Russians, New Zealanders, British, Argentinans etc., the old concept "maintaining a prescence." Most countries that have a research presence also claim large sections of the continent--Argentina claims the whole thing--the only two exceptions are us and the Russians. Both of these copuntries state that they do not claim any of "The Ice" nor will they recognize anybody else's claims. As long as the two big kids on the block state that they won't develop anything commercial down there nobody else can either. In fact that's the real reason we ahve a station at the Pole--that's where everybody's territorial claims come together (sort of like the center of a pie) and with just one base we get to put something in everbody's slice and give them the figurative "what are you lookin' at?"

That's why the Antarctic Program won't start developing tourist stops along the path. Right now it makes zero sense to develop any regular economic stuff down on The Ice--three fourths of the year there is a thousand mile ice fringe around the continent that you just really can't get ships through, which is why we don't develop anything. But we for damn sure don't wanna let anybody else get clever and get the drop on us in some scheme we haven't figured out. This is why even a morally bankrupt regime like *'s won't screw around down there. It's one of those rare cases where altruistic good can come from fairly base motives.

I also would like to make it clear that the people actually down on the Ice don't worry about this from day to day, it is a very progressive bunch by and large, who are committed to helping humanity as a whole--we would often have dinner table discussions on how to reduce our footprint on the continent, just to pass the time.

Oh yeah and hooking up! That's the real focus, that place was like a very cold singles resort, no children and no adult supervision!

[daleo]

36. There is a great deal of interest in space tourism now

And a few rich people have been granted paid holidays in the Russian space station. Don't be surprised if some government relents on the tourism issue, if the money is right.

[AlFrankenFan]

42. What a stupid idea

It's not terrible, it's just stupid.

[pinniped]

43. I agree with Sir Edmund Hillary.

.

[Deja Q]

44. It's stupid. Pointless. Waste of money. The pole doesn't even have any

economic viability, and money is what is important in this world. ;eyes: x(

Hillary is correct.

Not to mention upkeep costs, what the fuck are those idiots doing?

[eyepaddle]

45. I can't tell what you mean by your post

Do YOU think all human activity should be motivated by ecoonmic interests? I don't think there are many on this board who feel that way, and I don't think you do either.

And what the fuck those idiots are doing is reducing costs to support the South Pole Station. It costs more than a dollar a pound to fly shit to the pole, in 2000 the cost to get a gallon of fuel there was over eleven dollars.

I try not to lose my cool--I don't generally like to get into flame matches, nor do I wish to incur the wrath of the moderators, but anybody who makes any blanket statements about this or that type of scientific research not being worth it is an ignoramus fuck-stick. Believing in the value of science for more than just military purposes is a strong difference between us and the Republican party. There is a TON of excellent research going on at pole and around the continent, and Americans being Americans, we tend to take a spare-no-expense overwhelm the obstacle approach. Doing a traverse with a convoy is a lot less expensive than flying it all down in planes. :mad:

If you wanna get a feel for what's going on down on the ice check here:

http://polar.org/antsun/index.htm