Wednesday, March 03, 2010

Three Generations in Antarctica


From Bill Gates' blog. Yeah, he's one of us although I doubt he's the one slaving over the fucking keyboard.
On a recent family trip, Bill witnessed great natural beauty and further evidence of global warming – even in one of the coldest places on Earth.

When I gave my ten-year-old son a chance to pick anywhere in the world to go with me and two of his grandparents, he chose Antarctica. I was thrilled. It’s the only continent I’d never visited, a continent with no indigenous people, where the largest land animal is a tiny, wingless fly.

We flew down to Chile (before the earthquake) and then took a special plane to the Antarctic Peninsula. It’s incredibly beautiful. Icebergs and icy mountains make up most of the landscape. The penguins are amazing. But winter temperatures there have risen by five degrees centigrade [41° Fahrenheit], which is changing the icepack and the penguin habitat quite dramatically. The warming being seen worldwide is magnified in the Antarctic Peninsula.

That's a damn interesting son he has there. Mine would have chosen Disneyland®.



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