Last week's Guest Speaker: Michael Irving - Life on an Antarctica Research Station
Posted by Franz Huber
on May 30, 2015
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OK, I understand that Michael doesn't want to be referred to as District Governor Elect (that means he will be DG in a month's 
time), but in the context of doing a presentation at a Rotary Club, in the opinion of your humble Editor, this needs to be mentioned. In his professional life, Michael had a string of major University Executive appointments, including Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the Gold Coast Campus of Griffith University, Vice-Chancellorial appointments in New Zealand and in the Sultanate of Oman. And he "spent some time" at Scott Research Station in the Ross Sea region in Antarctica, which was the subject of his presentation last Wednesday:
Did you know that the Great Dividing Range extends all the way to Antarctica? If you ever explored the Rainforests of Springbrook, on the short, fully paved walk at 'The Best Lookout' and at a lot of other places, you will find the Antarctic Beech tree. 2000 years old. And if you look at the map of Gondwanaland (referring to the ancient land approx 510 to 180 Million years ago (see picture on right) - not the Jazzband...), you will find that at the time, Antarctica was sort of aligned with Australia (and New Zealand didn't even exist yet, and thus there was no argument about All Blacks -v- Wallabies, underarm cricket and the like)... ☺
Michael had lots of very interesting pictures, amongst which were the comparison of American versus New Zealand Bases: the buildings of the Kiwis (see photo on left) are all interconnected, one can move to any of them under cover. And, so they have fresh vegetables all year round, they have a fully functional Hydroponics Farm!The area of Antarctica is 350,000 Km2, and this roughly doubles in winter. Growth of sea ice can be as much as 64 Km2 per second, so no wonder some people (even of recent origin - refer a "scientific" (read: tourist) ship in 2013) got caught with their vessels totally stuck. So, what about Global Warming? "The ice shelf in Antarctica and Greenland has increased", Michael advised, "Global Warming has nothing to do with the speed of the melting of glaciers". In essence, this is explained that glaciers flow because of the pressure from above, e.g. the amount of snow fall in the region, which determines the amount of ice at the top, which pushes the glaciers down.
If you want to go to Antarctica, you have to undergo some serious survival training. One of the tricks is to learn how to light a Primus stove. Not too hard, you say? Try it at minus 45 degrees... No, it is not recommended to take your gloves off!
So, why would you want to go there at all? Well, drilling down into the ice cap and into the solid rock below provides solid data of life on earth some 10 Million years ago. But how can you drill when the ice shifts continuously? Well, Russia applied the same technique already when they drilled in the Arctic for oil. And this is how one discovers real data on what happened in the past. This is how professional Geologists such as University of South Australia Professor Ian Plimer can prove why, as Michael Irving declared, "you should not believe what they tell you on ABC about Global Warming". You can read all about it in Ian Plimer's work 'Heaven and Earth' (the library has it and also his latest work 'Not for Greens - He who soups with the devil should have a long spoon'). You can also go back to your Junior High School assignment when you studied the Vikings who, roughly 1,000 years ago, were farming on Greenland. The settlements ultimately perished because of Global Warming. Sorry, I meant Climate Change...