West Antarctica is among the fastest developing regions in the world As a result of global warming, temperatures at the poles have risen more than anywhere else in the world – meaning that parts of Western Antarctica are now comparable with the climates of Alaska, Iceland, and northern Scandinavia. In some areas, the melting of surface ice has resulted in conditions appropriate for large-scale human settlement. * The icy continent today would be unrecognizable to observers from the 20th century: its northern peninsula is now home to a multitude of towns and conurbations, with a total population numbering in the millions. Even farming and crop growing are now possible in some of the most northerly areas, using genetic modification techniques. Rapid immigration from countries all over the world has created a diverse mixture of people and cultures flocking to this new land of opportunity. In a way, the settlement of Antarctica is similar to that of America in the 18th and 19th...
Hypersonic vactrains are widespread Much of the world has now established a hypersonic, evacuated tube transport system connecting major population centres. * Its routes extend primarily throughout Russia, Northern Europe, Canada and the US. These trains are more advanced versions of the slower, simpler prototypes first introduced decades previously. * This form of transport works by combining the principles of maglev trains and pneumatic tubes. The trains, or vactrains as they are called, travel inside a closed tube, levitated and pushed forward by magnetic fields. After passing through an airlock, the train cars enter a complete vacuum inside the tube. With no air friction to slow it down, the vactrain can reach speeds far beyond that of any traditional rail system. The fastest routes can now reach speeds of around 4,000 mph (6,400 km/h) * – around five times the speed of sound – compared to a 300 mph maglev train a century earlier. * With speed of thi...
Over 80% of the Amazon rainforest has been lost Due to the combined impacts of logging, drought, forest fires, desertification, agriculture and industrial expansion, less than one-fifth of the Amazon now remains. * In addition to mass extinctions of flora and fauna, many indigenous peoples' communities have vanished. A portion of the Amazon rainforest, 2000-2012. Animation created by Will Fox, using imagery from NASA .
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