by Chris Wayan, 2006
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ANTARCTIC PLATEAU
Funny how things work out. I expected to be writing an article on the hellish Martian conditions in the new Antarctica--much thinner air (already thin, on that high plateau, but now Himalayan or worse), even worse temperature-swings (winter cold snaps that freeze CO2 right out of the air?).
Wrong, wrong, wrong. If Antarctica were like Tibet, a rocky plateau three miles high straddling the pole, we'd have it: Norse hell on Earth. But it's ice, and ice is slippery stuff. In the first years after the Big Slurp, the drop in sea levels did create a little Mars here--deadly cold and dry. But that meant the blizzards spent themselves on the slopes at the rim, never reaching that stratospheric ice plain--it was just too high, the air too thin. And it starved. The glaciers crept outward and the plateau subsided until it was low enough so at least a little new snow fell. Not coincidentally, that balance-point is where the air pressure and temperature were roughly what they had been. The ice cap averages only a kilometer thick today. Nunataks--those lonely rocks and spires piercing the cap--grew and merged into raw rocky ranges. It sounds paradoxical but more of Antarctica is ice-free today than before the catastrophe. Not that it does life here much good; these bare hills and valleys are frozen deserts where only lichens grow. Still, the thinning of the cap helped life recover elsewhere; it freed over ten million cubic km of water sorely needed to the north.
Conditions around the rim of Anarctica would seem strange to us. The ice cap rises even higher than today, over 5 km above the new sea level, and the temperature difference is larger too: the deep sea-basins with their dense air are much warmer than the old Antarctic shore. That temperature- and altitude-gradient makes for stormy weather! Much of the year, katabatic winds sweep down from the ice, strangely warm from compression but bone-dry; yet in summer, this forces the warm sea-air high up into thunderheads. Hailstorms pummel the coasts, and the dense air is so warm it thaws the hail into heavy rains. Tundra flourishes as high as a kilometer up the Antarctic slopes; low trees even huddle in sheltered spots on the coast. It's habitable, if Nordic--more like Iceland than Greenland. The best analogy, though, is from the last Ice Age, when tundra thrived right up to the foot of the ice.
Humans could and probably will live here, then. But they won't be alone. Arctic wolves already have brains as big as chimps', probably with more sophisticated language abilities. Siphonia offers much wider habitat for them--Siberia and the north polar basins, but the long icy mountain-chain of the Rockies/Andes is a land-bridge of habitat over the equator to these Antarctic shores. Expanded populations, deep time, and probable genetic tweaking have synergized to breed Siphonian wolves larger and more long-lived than any on Earth, with nearly human-sized brains and stubby thumbs on their big forepaws.
The scattered reindeer ranches of humans and wolves won't be like the lonely crofts of old Scandinavia. A third species will see to that: intelligent mega-ravens, a species that needed no helping human hand at all--the rise in air pressure was all it took to remove the cap on their maximum size. Weight, brain size and wingspan all tripled or more; wingspans are now 4 m (13'), and they're smarter than humans. You doubt me? Ask any raven; they'll explain why your very question is stupid, stupid, stupid. Silly monkey!
The avian component of Antarctic society means that news will spread quickly; the whole Antarctic shore may be culturally unified; the ring around the ice may have no cultural center, or need one.
A fourth possible species: mammoths. They'd do nicely here. Whether guilty humans re-create them, or tropical elephants simply re-adapt for the cold over time, I think the long slopes will be grazed by nomadic bands of shaggy red-haired giants. With brains bigger than modern humans', they too are likely to be intelligent. Nomadism may keep them a primarily oral culture. But I could be wrong. Elephants at least have the option of building if they're motivated, and conditions here probably favor planners and savers. Stone shelters, ponds, dams... and hydro generators? So much power latent in all that water dropping off the highland! Perhaps in winter, mammoths will gather in crude stone castles glowing with electric light, to hear rumbling infrasonic tales of the mythical days when people were tiny and stupid and bald: the Iceless Age.
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