Canadians Plan Robot Sub Missions To Aid Claim For Arctic

jbpisio writes with a link to this blog-post summary that the Canadian government has commissioned a pair of unmanned subs to explore the geology of two underwater Arctic mountain ranges; the subs' mission will be to provide evidence supporting Canada's claim to huge swaths of potentially petroleum-rich seabed areas. According to the linked article, "The submersibles, scheduled to be launched in 2010, would be sent on a series of 400-kilometer missions north and west of Ellesmere Island, Canada's northernmost land mass and the country's gateway to the open Arctic Ocean — the scene of an international power struggle over undersea territory and petroleum resources believed to be worth trillions of dollars." At least five countries (besides Canada, these are the US, Russia, Denmark and Norway) would like a slice of those trillions.

Comments

Yeah I just had to do it

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one welcome our new frozen robotic overlords.

Re:Yeah I just had to do it

[MrNaz]

Blatant hijacking of idiotic first post.

Is there anyone else out there who is getting tired of the current greed-based international world order?

For starters, I would hope that the writing is on the wall for all petroleum based technology, what with alternative sources of energy and increasingly efficient ways to transport it in an appropriate form for a given application.

Furthermore, the squabble that results over any newly discovered resource ultimately ends up wasting large amounts of money and effort, which could be spent more intelligently. The size of the squabble often outweighs the actual resource gained.

At risk of sounding like a naive hippy, can't we all just get along? What the fuck is wrong with humans that we can't see that its in *everybody's* best interest to not act like a bunch of 5 year olds in a playpen?

Re:Yeah I just had to do it

[ColdWetDog]

At risk of sounding like a naive hippy, can't we all just get along?

No.

What the fuck is wrong with humans that we can't see that its in *everybody's* best interest to not act like a bunch of 5 year olds in a playpen?

Three quotes from people way smarter than me:

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.(George Santayana) "

"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so." - Douglas Adams

and finally from St. Heinlein:

"Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. " Starship troopers, 1959

Re:Yeah I just had to do it

[PingPongBoy]

Is there anyone else out there who is getting tired of the current greed-based international world order?

Sure. Let's leave the riches unexploited. I don't want to freeze my ass drilling in the north anyways.

Witn the increasing usage of robots to do the work of man, I wonder what the fairest distribution of wealth would be. Clearly, the most productive entity, be it machine or man, would be allocated the most resources. So will super-smart robots become the greatest controllers of wealth?

This question has seemed to rear its ugly head in many ways. Detroit automakers are going under. Why? People don't want to buy cars so much? Why? They're poor. Why? They don't deserve to be paid. Why? They do stupid crap that machines or underpaid people in the third world can do.

So robots are taking control of the riches, and people who want to earn a buck will have to go up north and freeze their tushes.

So much for machines making life easier for people, right?

Perhaps the key is for huge portions of the populace to stop doing just stupid crap that machines can do, with the emphasis on stupid. People need to get damned smart and try to do smart things. Otherwise, there's little left other than to seek out the low hanging fruit in international territory. And when that's gone, the slightly higher hanging fruit, and then the really high hanging fruit, but what's after that?

People are repeatedly told in school that they have brains, that they are better than animals. But schools do little to prepare people to be really ambitious. So we whine about the rich getting richer and CEO pay being 400 times average pay, but willingly get on a deep sea drilling platform for some rich-ass boss who has the guts to get greedy. That could be a result of the education system not presenting how people can realize difficult goals. Students learn the fundamentals of thinking, and then it's sink or swim time.

If productive machines merit resource allocation, people need to learn how to be equally meritorious. So let's see what these robots can do up north and they will motivate a few people to become ambitious and then things will happen...

Re:Yeah I just had to do it

[gwait]

The owners of the robots become wealthy and hold the power, not the robots themselves.

We're an extremely long way from any sign of actual machine intelligence, and only a complete moron would give such a machine power. Uh oh...

Ok, we're an extremely long way from machine intelligence...

The mountie always gets his man

[LiquidCoooled]

The mountie always gets his man errrrr killer whale.

Is it worth it?

[discards]

I wonder, with the economic crisis and the cost of fuel going down, will the race to claim and exploit Arctic fuel go ahead. The fuel there is ridiculously expensive to get to, so without oil being $100+ per barrel, will any of these countries really bother?

Re:Is it worth it?

[epiteo]

The idea is that once the ice has melted it will be cheaper to get to the fuel/resources there.

Re:Is it worth it?

[Paradise Pete]

I wonder, with the economic crisis and the cost of fuel going down, will the race to claim and exploit Arctic fuel go ahead.

Sooner or later it will be worth it, and so it makes sense to stake the claims now.

Re:Is it worth it?

[Anonymous Coward]

The area in question is VERY unlikely to be explored for petroleum, let alone developed, for decades. And there may be nothing there.

The real issue is the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which allows countries to claim exclusive mineral rights beyond the current 200 nautical mile limit, out to the edge of the continental margin (which the treaty calls the "continental shelf", but it's not the same as the usual definition of that term). In some places this can be a significant chunk of territory. However, to establish the claim you have to define the geological boundary between continental crust and ocean crust, and there is a limited time to do so after ratification of the treaty (10 years). In Canada's case, the treaty was ratified in 2003. Canada therefore has to submit the claim to the responsible UN commission by 2013. In the part of the Arctic Ocean that is close to Canada, there is a large area (e.g., the Alpha Ridge) that is shallow enough that it could be claimed (the white line in the picture in the above link), if it is shown to be continental material. Unfortunately there isn't much known about that area, because the Arctic Ocean is one of the least-understood ocean basins. Hence there is a strong motivation to find out more about it, and sooner than 2013. With sea ice covering most of the area most of the year, it makes sense to use subs to survey it.

It isn't so much a "power struggle" as a 10-year window to define a geological boundary in order to make an exclusive claim in the area, under international law. After that, the 200 nautical mile limit becomes the permanent boundary. Russia, Denmark (Greenland), and Norway have ratified the treaty, so they're in the running with Canada. The U.S. isn't, because it hasn't ratified, but it doesn't have much to gain in the Arctic (the continental margin in Alaska is narrow). As a sign that it isn't really much of a "power struggle", Canada, Russia, and Denmark have all run joint scientific expeditions to the area to study the sea floor geology in the last several years.

Re:Is it worth it?

[peektwice]

queue the predictions for $500 a barrel oil...

Re:Is it worth it?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish we would get past our dependence on oil and come up with long-term sustainable sources of energy like wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, etc. And why aren't petroleum reserves nationalized so at least the profits can do some social and environmental good. I hope the incorporate an anti-submarine net in their Arctic surveillance plans.

Re:Is it worth it?

[Jorophose]

Oh, it's worth it. Stay the hell off my land, please.

Look at a map and tell me with a straight face we can't claim the arctic as our own... Look at places like Grise Fiord; you're right there, about a few hours off from the actual north pole, and guess what? It's a small inuit community! (albeit not the prettiest one, but still)

It's an issue of we don't want international ships crossing and killing the region (enviromentally) in the name of profit, spitting in our face. Oil will be the least of our concerns.

Re:Is it worth it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cue, damn it!

Re:Is it worth it?

[Foobar of Borg]

And why aren't petroleum reserves nationalized so at least the profits can do some social and environmental good.

Because whenever any country has tried this, the US and other Western powers has had the head of state assassinated and a puppet dictatorship put in place. The only exception so far is Venezuela, though not through the lack of the US government trying to assassinate Chavez. One of the more recent ones is the US support (military aid and so on) of massacres in East Timor, which allowed Western oil companies to plunder their resources.

Re:Is it worth it?

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I hear, out of the G7 countries, Canada will be the only one to avert crisis. Any sort of development there will be strictly long-term projects, no profit will come out of it for a while yet, so it will be like the Canadians will have a head start on us.

That being said, I for one welcome our Canadian overlords.

Re:Is it worth it?

[Some1too]

I believe the real question at hand is who owns the passage once it opens up. It's not necessarily all the petrol or natural resources that will be available which is the concern. The shipping lane(s) opening up would mean new naval routes with a high volume of traffic (and pollution). I'm not up to par with my maritime law (and don't have the time to look it up) but I believe a country 'owns' the water near it's borders up to a certain distance. There are a few countries currently stating that the land/passage belongs to them because Canada hasn't had people 'living on it' and thus it doesn't belong to them. This sub is just to promote the "yes this is Canada's territory and look we are doing stuff here", but this is slashdot I haven't read the article. There have been rumors for years of Inuit and other northern people spotting subs breaking through the ice in the Canadian north. I've always wondered if those were true.

Re:Is it worth it?

[daem0n1x]

With current oil prices, people have an excuse to continue wasting. The same for corporations. I can see investigation for more efficient energy sources being put aside because oil price is low.

Ultimately, governments will scrap the oil-independence plans they had made during the oil-shock and get back to sit on their lazy asses. When eventually oil ends, we'll be unprepared, of course. That's why I think the currently lower oil prices are not a good thing, but a disgrace.

Let's face it, Joe Sixpack, Joe the CEO and Joe the Politician couldn't care less for global warming and the end of oil reserves. If it's cheap now, why take precautions? Why bother with what will happen 5 years from now?

Re:Is it worth it?

[dontmakemethink]

Great, so all we have to do is burn off all other oil sources to heat the planet up enough to melt the ice cap to get more oil.

What most don't realize is that the polar ice caps play a major role in moderating the Earth's temperature. Ice reflects light, while water (or at least its contents) absorbs it. Without the ice caps, the sunlight is absorbed into the water, raising the temperature of the oceans globally, compounding the global warming issues we're already facing.

Trust me, if that happens, the last thing we'll be worried about is finding more oil. The average year would make the last El Nino year seem like scattered showers with mild gusts.

The North Pole has become an island for the first time in human history. "Shipping companies are already planning to exploit the first simultaneous opening of the routes since the beginning of the last Ice Age 125,000 years ago. The Beluga Group in Germany says it will send the first ship through the north-east passage, around Russia, next year, cutting 4,000 miles off the voyage from Germany to Japan."

Re:Is it worth it?

[MrKaos]

Great, so all we have to do is burn off all other oil sources to heat the planet up enough to melt the ice cap to get more oil.....Trust me, if that happens, the last thing we'll be worried about is finding more oil. The average year would make the last El Nino year seem like scattered showers with mild gusts.

Exactly! It's a question I see very few people asking Will weather events become so bad that we become unable to use the remaining oil reserves?

It's like the oil industry is the Pied Piper merrily leading us to our destruction, desperate to maintain it's profits coming at the human race's expense. All while industrial scale investment into wind, geothermal, wave and solar, which would be a great economic stimulus to get us out of this financial mess we are in, are ignored to maintain the status quo.

Re:Is it worth it?

[camperdave]

The North Pole has become an island for the first time in human history.

The geographic North Pole is not near any land, so unless water levels in the arctic ocean have dropped significantly (like say by more than 4 kilometers) the pole has not become an island.

Re:Is it worth it?

[gwait]

Semantics.

Ok, the arctic ice pack has melted back from land enough to leave open water on all sides for the first time in human history.

That by itself is not a "problem" per se, the real problem is the dramatic loss of white reflective snow, traded in for heat soaking ocean.

Re:Is it worth it?

[RockDoctor]

The idea is that once the ice has melted it will be cheaper to get to the fuel/resources there.

Wrong.
Development plans have been multi-stranded : directional drilling from artificial, artificially increased, or natural islands ; drilling and piping from sub-sea (and sub-ice-gouge) manifolds ; drilling from gravity base structures of the scale of Hibernia (East of Canada, installed in the mid-1980s, designed for "Iceberg Ally", which is a harsher test than the relatively slow, flexible sea ice.

In Feburary 2006 there was a conference on Arctic oil resources - I attended - which discussed the important questions of - is there likely to be any? ; if so, very approximately how much? ; where is better than where? . The question of "how to get it out of the ground" didn't receive any podium attention (there may have been discussion in coffee breaks and poster sessions - I wasn't everywhere) ; the question of how to get it to market received more attention, since tankering is unattractive (ice + shallow seas = troublesome shipping), but railheads and pipelines are few, far between, and slow to build.
The engineering of how to get it out of the ground isn't considered a challenge. It won't be easy, but there's little reason to expect to need anything novel.

Re:Is it worth it?

[RockDoctor]

The fuel there is ridiculously expensive to get to, so without oil being $100+ per barrel, will any of these countries really bother?

The town that I met my wife in is within spitting distance of the Arctic circle, and was founded to exploit the area's oil reserves. If you believe the town's official history, it was founded in the late 1970s, but there was a settlement, then a railway line, then an industrial yard, then an administration centre, over the dozen years before then. At that time, exports were negligible (even though the country was still the largest producer), so the dollar price of oil didn't matter at all. But the dollar price was far below $40/bbl.
Also, at the conference mentioned in my reply to the next message, the oil price was scarcely mentioned; it's not important at the range of planning which we're talking about. People are anticipating that oil prices will generally continue to go up, and over the decade-plus that these plans need to be made, that's pretty much all you need to be confident of. A two-year blip like we've just had isn't particularly important except in slightly changing base lines.
(Of course, the conference was by geologists, for geologists. What the economists say got all the attention they deserve, considering that some of them believe the obvious fallacy that oil stocks are limited only by economics. Go away, dismal ones, and come back when your "science" has some practical foundation.)

So, yes, the countries planning to develop these areas, will develop them. They may shuffle priorities - like putting a couple of years into building railway lines and shooting wide-area 2-D seismic, instead of selling exploration licenses and encouraging people to do 3-D seismic - but the broader plans will go ahead.
When the revolution starts in Saudi Arabia (and I'm not claiming to know which dissident group are going to pop-off first), there will be a market to sell the oil to.

Re:Is it worth it?

[Alistar]

Actually, if you read Harpers throne speeches carefully, he hints at plans to exploit the resources there as much as possible.

He doesn't quite directly say that he wants to pillage the land, but he does mention resource acquisition, and an increased presence, and given his origins (Alberta) and his general environmental stance, I expect nothing more than a token environmental front to the whole northern area and as many resources as he can effectively pull out of it.

Re:Is it worth it?

[peektwice]

no, I meant get in line... okay... I guess you're right.

Cold (Brrrrr!) War?

[Smivs]

So everyone is sending midget subs to the arctic in an attempt to gain some sort of rights to exploit the resources there. Is it only a matter of time before they start equiping them with torpedoes and try to sink each other? Last sub floating wins...like underwater robot wars.
Actually, now I think about it, no-one will get hurt and this is starting to sound like fun!

Re:Cold (Brrrrr!) War?

[Anonymous Coward]

No worries: the laser-enabled sharks will nail the subs before any torpedoes are launched.

Re:Cold (Brrrrr!) War?

[dlgeek]

The AUVSI Autonomous Underwater Vehicle competition is getting there.

I keep saying we should weaponize the vehicles anyway...

Re:Cold (Brrrrr!) War?

[supernova_hq]

Last sub floating wins...

*scratches head...*

All I thought was...

[Anonymous Coward]

I would like a slice of those trillions, too!

I for one..

[Anonymous Coward]

...welcome our underwater-exploring Canadian robotic overlords. ;P

all we are & all we 'have' are gifts from crea

[Anonymous Coward]

so, what is a fair day's 'pay', & what became of the real clouds? seems like the motives garner the desired results, & often overlooked/downplayed negative consequences. mr. obama, we're still waiting to hear from you about the cloud spraying issue. we voted for you based on your promises to us. thanks.

greed, fear & ego (in any order) are unprecedented evile's primary weapons. those, along with deception & coercion, helps most of us remain (unwittingly?) dependent on its' life0cidal hired goons' agenda. most of yOUR dwindling resources are being squandered on the 'wars', & continuation of the billionerrors stock markup FraUD/pyramid schemes. nobody ever mentions the real long term costs of those debacles in both life & any notion of prosperity for us, or our children. not to mention the abuse of the consciences of those of us who still have one. see you on the other side of it. the lights are coming up all over now. the fairytail is winding down now. let your conscience be yOUR guide. you can be more helpful than you might have imagined. we now have some choices. meanwhile; don't forget to get a little more oxygen on yOUR brain, & look up in the sky from time to time, starting early in the day. there's lots going on up there.

we note that yahoo deletes some of its' (relevant) stories sooner than others. maybe they're short of disk space, or something?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081106/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/meltdown_who_pays;_ylt=A2KIR3MR9hJJ3YkAGhms0NUE
http://news.google.com/?ncl=1216734813&hl=en&topic=n
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/09/23/what.matters.thirst/index.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/31/opinion/31mon1.html?em&ex=1199336400&en=c4b5414371631707&ei=5087%0A
(deleted)http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080918/ap_on_re_us/tent_cities;_ylt=A0wNcyS6yNJIZBoBSxKs0NUE
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/29/world/29amnesty.html?hp
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/06/02/nasa.global.warming.ap/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/weather/06/05/severe.weather.ap/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/weather/06/02/honore.preparedness/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/09/28/what.matters.meltdown/index.html#cnnSTCText
http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/books/10/07/atwood.debt/index.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/01/opinion/01dowd.html?em&ex=1212638400&en=744b7cebc86723e5&ei=5087%0A
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/06/05/senate.iraq/index.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/17/washington/17contractor.html?hp
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/03/world/middleeast/03kurdistan.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
(deleted, still in google cache)http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080708/cheney_climate.html
http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20080805/pl_politico/12308;_ylt=A0wNcxTPdJhILAYAVQms0NUE
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20081107/ts_alt_afp/environmentclimatewarmingatlantic_081107145344
(deleted)http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080903/ts_nm/environment_arctic_dc;_ylt=A0wNcwhhcb5It3EBoy2s0NUE
(talk about cowardlly race fixing/bad theater/fiction?) http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/19/news/economy/sec_short_selling/index.htm?cnn=yes
http://us.lrd.yahoo.com/_ylt=ApTbxRfLnscxaGGuCocWlwq7YWsA/SIG=11qicue6l/**http%3A//biz.yahoo.com/ap/081006/meltdown_kashkari.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/04/opinion/04sat1.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
(the teaching of hate as a way of 'life' synonymous with failed dictatorships) http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081004/ap_on_re_us/newspapers_islam_dvd;_ylt=A0wNcwWdfudITHkACAus0NUE
(some yoga & yogurt makes killing/getting killed less stressful) http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081007/ap_on_re_us/warrior_mind;_ylt=A0wNcw9iXutIPkMBwzGs0NUE
(the old bait & switch...your share of the resulting 'product' is a fairytail nightmare?)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081011/ap_on_bi_ge/where_s_the_money;_ylt=A0wNcwJGwvFIZAQAE6ms0NUE

it's time to get real now. A LOT of energy/resource has been squandered in attempts to keep US in the dark. in the end (give or take a f

After depression comes war...

[Anonymous Coward]

So kids, would this be a good thing to go to war over in ten-fifteen years' time?

Not content to stop

[Aerynvala]

at merely raping the atmosphere and all the continents the Human Locusts quickly moved to infest the oceans. /bitter as hell this morning But seriously, enough is enough.

Re:Not content to stop

[Roland Piquepaille]

I understand your bitterness over countries fighting to take control of an ever-shrinking reserve of energy that has no future and damages the environment, but consider this also :

Successful nuclear fusion reactors (that put out more energy that they consume), at the current rate of scientific research, will appear in the 2040's at the earliest. In the meantime, fossil fuel prices are going to go up and up, and millions with low incomes are going to find it hard to heat their homes, buy food and travel to work. Do you really want them to struggle to survive until the magic energy bullet is found?

This said, I agree that now would be the time to form international consortiums to manage whatever is left of oil reserves worldwide intelligently (fat chance, too much money involved of course) and diverts the money spent in pointless wars over said oil to research, so the aforementioned magic bullet might be found earlier.

Cold war in the making

[bazorg]

If the ice melts and access to these areas becomes easier, I imagine there will be a major stand-off between the Navy forces of the major countries involved in this dispute and nobody will have the means to build any oil rig.

I hope that by then there will be a practical way to use hydrogen or something else instead of oil.

Re:Cold war in the making

[florescent_beige]

Canada doesn't have a major navy. There have been plans in the past to at least buy a polar-class ice breaker to patrol the north but that keeps getting canceled. Maybe it's back on (named, ironically enough, after Diefenbaker, he who murdered the Arrow. Harper has such a low opinion of Canadians he doesn't think we'll remember. Him and McKay, minister in charge of using his position to pick up chicks and lying through his pointy little teeth to the Progressive Conservatives, God Rest Their Souls.

Chances are, though, Harper is lying again.

At any rate, the Conservatives can be counted on to tool around with idiotic hardware to prove that Alberta is just as good as Texas. "Can we be Texas, please? Pleeeeeease?"

Re:Cold war in the making

[fermion]

The updated UN Law of the Sea is supposed to prevent random claims and standoffs. Under the treaty very little of the artic is unassigned and there is a protocol for dealing with over lapping claims. About the only major country that has not signed(as far as I know) is the us. The complaint was basically that it gave too much land to the russians, which is hard to avoid as they have a great deal of land in the Arctic, and that the dispute resolution protocol. If we do not sign it, we end up losing a lot of potential territory though, and potential energy deposits. Fortunately after years of obstruction, Bush caved in last summer and the new democratic congress ratified it.

As far as building oil rigs, I doubt any one is going to make any money off it while oil is under $100 a barrel, unless, of course, governments pays for the projects outright with little hope of return. About the only country with that kind of cash and that kind of political system is Russia. The US, or course, is broke, and the US oil companies are clearly not interested in difficult projects, as they hardly explore the oil fields they have. In any case the future is renewable energy, and investing in oil is throwing good money after bad, as is shown with multitrillions of dollars thrown away in Iraq while Afghanistan is left to harbor enemies.

Re:Cold war in the making

[bazorg]

I don't mean to offend anyone Canadian, but when I wrote about the major Navy forces in the region I was thinking of USA and Russia. Maybe China too if this story goes on for a long time and they become the owners of Eastern Russia.

As for UN-sanctioned borders and conflict mediation, if there is enough oil for this to become a conflict, I suspect the UN will not be able to cope.

Re:Cold war in the making

[supernova_hq]

Canada's army consists of 5 fully operational nuclear submarines (3 of which currently reside in the West-Edmonton Mall) and 4 killer-beaver equipped war canoes!

Disclaimer: Yes, I am Canadian!

Re:Cold war in the making

[udowish]

you sound like another poor little communist who's bad bad right wing media lost him the election awwww tissue?

Re:Cold war in the making

[udowish]

what I find interesting about these types of comments, while I am sure are in jest, truly disclose the dyslexia and hypocrisy of the Canadian public. They bitch, laugh and complain about the shape of the CF yet they are the ones who voted successive governments (primarily Liberal) in year after year who's made no attempt at hiding their disdain for the Forces as a whole and made gutting it a top priority. Chretien was quotted many times that he hated spending money on the military. Yet, here we are. Those same Canuks also bitch about the 'revolving' door justice system when again, they voted in 'hug a thug' liberal governments that clearly are and will always be soft on crime, and then complain about it. YOU GET WHAT YOU VOTE FOR. hopefully some sanity will arise from the Conservatives second win.

Re:Cold war in the making

[gwait]

Hey, we have several rowboats and sea kayaks standing by here in Canada, so don't get your hopes up!

Re:Cold war in the making

[gwait]

Actually I think one of the beavers retired after a punch from Stephen Colbert. He's been replaced by a marmot now..

Only a matter of time

[hyades1]

All that oil and only a few bears, seals and Inuit to complain. It looks like sooner, rather than later, we'll hear Mother Nature squealing "Oh my God! Nobody's ever put it THERE before!"

Re:Only a matter of time

[He who knows]

If the Inuit live there dont they own it. Oh they are like the Native American tribes.

Re:Only a matter of time

[Jerry Rivers]

Only about five people live that far North (840 km from the North Pole), in Alert, which is a small military outpost and weather station and the Northernmost permanently inhabited place in the world. The nearest Canadian city is some 2000 miles to the South.

Re:Only a matter of time

[molarmass192]

A couple of corrections, the population of Alert is closer to 200, and the nearest city (Iqaluit) is about 1300 miles away. That said, Iqaluit has a pop of about 7000, so town might be a better term. However, that land does fall under the Nunavut territory, so the riches really are theirs to control.

Re:Only a matter of time

[Jerry Rivers]

A couple of corrections to your corrections. Igaluit has been a city since 2001, and its population is 6184 (according to the 2006 census). You are right that Alert's transient population is around 200, but its permanent population is only 5. You're also right about the distance from Iquluit; I should have stated it was ~2000 km to the South.

http://tinyurl.com/577lbx

Didyasay OIL? American invasion

[Anonymous Coward]

in 1..2...3... we must root out AL QUIDA to SAVE OUR CANUCK neighbors!

The USA is sending Sarah Palin...

[tjstork]

We're sending her up there, and she'll just claim the whole lot using her sense of geography and nationalism to claim the whole lot. She becomes a national hero to a nation more interested in oil than logic, and she'll be swept into the oval office in 2012, reminding voters that she takes those nucular codes very serious.

Re:The USA is sending Sarah Palin...

[couchslug]

"We're sending her up there, and she'll just claim the whole lot using her sense of geography and nationalism to claim the whole lot. She becomes a national hero to a nation more interested in oil than logic, and she'll be swept into the oval office in 2012, reminding voters that she takes those nucular codes very serious."

Only the harsh, jackbooted Discipline of Alaska Barbie can rescue us from the Putinist Threat and restore the US to comforting post-WWII smalltown niceness. Vote for the She-Wolf of Mayberry!

Re:The USA is sending Sarah Palin...

[iminplaya]

...she'll be swept into the oval office in 2012...

Luckily the world will end a month and a half later

Well, actually...

[Aerynvala]

I don't consider nuclear energy to be a good/viable alternative to fossil fuels. *shrugs* And I acknowledge that, until we find a 'magic bullet' for our energy needs, life is going to get extremely hard to unlivable for a lot of people (myself included). But I don't think that causing more damage to an already wobbling ecosystem is the only solution.

Re:Well, actually...

[Roland Piquepaille]

I don't consider nuclear energy to be a good/viable alternative to fossil fuels

Nuclear energy *is* fossil fuel (uranium reserves are dwindling fast also). Nuclear fusion on the other hand produces very little harmful byproducts, if any, and while technically also consuming fossil fuels (deuterium and tritium), the supply is almost inexhaustible given the amount of energy even minute amounts of the stuff give off.

Re:Well, actually...

[Aerynvala]

Oh, I didn't know uranium was produced by the breakdown/transformation of organic matter? That's what I thought 'fossil fuel' meant. And while I understand that nuclear fusion produces less waste, I still find it unpalatable.

Re:Well, actually...

[Roland Piquepaille]

Sorry, I usually use the term "fossil fuel" as its larger meaning of "non-renewable energy source". My bad.

Re:Well, actually...

[Anonymous Coward]

And here I thought "fossil fuel" was a bunch of geezers running in giant hamster wheels.

Re:Well, actually...

[The_Wilschon]

I don't consider nuclear energy to be a good/viable alternative to fossil fuels. *shrugs*

Why?

Re:Well, actually...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because like fossil fuels, there's a limited amount of uranium and plutonium on Earth.

Mod parent up!

[TheLink]

Quote AC: "It isn't so much a "power struggle" as a 10-year window to define a geological boundary in order to make an exclusive claim in the area, under international law. After that, the 200 nautical mile limit becomes the permanent boundary. Russia, Denmark (Greenland), and Norway have ratified the treaty, so they're in the running with Canada"

Make up your mind

[bartyboy]

You rag on John Diefenbaker (Progressive Conservative) for cancelling a very expensive program and you whine that Stephen Harper (Conservative) is not spending enough on exploring the arctic.

You're either a troll or a disgruntled liberal will find any excuse to bash the conservatives. Frankly, I don't know how you got moderated up.

Re:Make up your mind

[florescent_beige]

You rag on John Diefenbaker (Progressive Conservative) for cancelling a very expensive program and you whine that Stephen Harper (Conservative) is not spending enough on exploring the arctic.

You're either a troll or a disgruntled liberal will find any excuse to bash the conservatives. Frankly, I don't know how you got moderated up.

There's a difference between liberal and Liberal, which one did you mean? Are you another Canadian who takes his lessons on political discourse from from American talk radio and don't know the difference?

Diefenbaker toadied up to Eisenhower and destroyed the Canadian aerospace industry, airframe and engine at the behest of the Americans who didn't want the competition. (Ironically ever since then Americans have ragged on Canada for not pulling our weight, which makes me choke).

Harper is either lying or delusional about the cost of icebreakers.

What exactly is your problem with these statements? Factually incorrect or just inconvenient for those Canadians who would rather be Americans?

Re:Make up your mind

[Anonymous Coward]

His problem appears to be your unmitigated bias. So who do we believe? You claims of Harper's lies and ignorance, or your lies and ignorance?

Re:Make up your mind

[SilverJets]

The Arrow was not a total loss. A lot of the design of the Arrow went into American fighter jets...fly by wire, computer control, artificial feedback, etc.

But I am definitely not a fan of Diefenbaker for doing what he did.

Re:Make up your mind

[florescent_beige]

The Arrow was worse than a total loss. Dief had them cut into scrap and melted down. He had the blueprints shredded and burned. Canadian aerospace never recovered.

American fighter technology benefited from the crowds of designers and engineers that were turfed out onto the street by AV Roe and Orenda at Eisenhower's command and who the Americans picked up cheap.

So we spent all that money then literally burned the results and forced the people to leave the country to find jobs. I'd rather name a ship after Peewee Herman than Diefenbaker.

Re:Make up your mind

[SilverJets]

Yes, I know what Diefenbaker had done. I was pointing out that the development of the Arrow pushed fighter jet technology way ahead and that those same technologies that were in the Arrow went into subsequent fighter jet designs.

Re:Make up your mind

[udowish]

likely delusional but it beats crooked face's cancellation of the 101, we are still flying sea coffins because of it.

Re:Make up your mind

[gwait]

Yes, but to no benefit of Canada as an industrial nation. Don't get me wrong, I think it is great that the people who designed the Arrow went on to share apply their skills and knowledge in the US and Europe, as they should. No reason they should suffer.
It's just a shame that Diefenbaker was such a pussy when the US leaned on him to cancel the Arrow.

In Soviet Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

right the maintain you!

Submissions?

[BorgCopyeditor]

Canadians Plan Robot Submissions To Aid Claim For Arctic.

Submissions? Those cruel Canuck bastards! How is humiliating robots going to help them claim the Arctic?!?

So, all it takes is planting the flag eh?

[hey!]

This could get very ugly.

The law of the sea supposedly governs this kind of thing. Determining the extent of the continental shelf can extend the exclusive national right for minerals up to 150 nm past the EEZ, so in theory the documentation of the shelf should be a benign action. But ultimately international law is enforced by warfare on various scales of intensity, starting at diplomatic sanctions, through economic sanctions, and all the way up as high as warfare can go.

International law is only what you can force a country to accept as international law. We know Russia wants to claim these resources, and gainsaying them can lead to armed conflict.

Back in 1991, I remarked that the course of the twenty first century would be determined by the integration of the former Soviet states into the world political, security and economic systems. The opportunity to do this, if it ever existed, was bungled by the first Bush administration, and now we are dealing with a militarily powerful, mineral rich nation with a paranoid persecution complex and authoritarian instincts. Do they have more invested in stability than they can get out of grabbing territory?

Re:So, all it takes is planting the flag eh?

[iminplaya]

...now we are dealing with a militarily powerful, mineral rich nation with a paranoid persecution complex and authoritarian instincts.

Who? Russia, or the USA?

It's no joke!

[Smivs]

Modding "Funny" is a waste of time. See
http://slashdot.org/faq/com-mod.shtml#cm700

Developement

[mosb1000]

The best way to prove your claim on something is to turn it into something useful by developing it. Once you have invested in the area and start producing oil, most people will agree that it is wrong to seize what you've built there.

Re:Developement

[supernova_hq]

You must be new here...
(to the world that is)

Pure Fucking Insanity

[Conspicuous Coward]

Two articles, 50 posts, and nary a mention of the total gibbering insanity of this move.

Our species is burning oil at such a rate that it's actually causing the polar ice caps to melt. Instead of turning around and thinking about just what the hell we're doing to ourselves we actually use this as an excuse to start a competition for oil rights under the ice that we're about to melt. Just take a step back and think about that for a minute, the lunacy of it just absolutely blows my mind.

This is like a crack addict scraping the dead tissue out of their lungs and putting that shit back into their pipe and smoking it. Doesn't there come a point at which people think our energy consumption might be costing us too fucking much and we need to just cut down a tad? Seriously, if this talk about drilling for oil in the Arctic isn't meant as a joke then satire is dead, and our species is headed the same way.

</rant>

Re:Pure Fucking Insanity

[Jerry Rivers]

This is as much about protecting sovereignty as it is about oil, of which Canada already has the second largest reserve in the world. It doesn't really need any more, but it does need to protect itself from the expansionist greed of other nations.

But I do agree about the utter insanity of burning fossil fuels.

Re:Pure Fucking Insanity

[Anonymous Coward]

Syntax error: without . Illegal document purged.

Re:Pure Fucking Insanity

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent.png

Yes, impressive "melting" in progress...

I hope the poles keep "melting" like this for the next years so Mr. Al Gore and the IPCC will finally STFU.

Obligatory Quote

[AnotherAnonymousUser]

Why mine trillions when we could mine...billions?

This is how it begins...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Canadians can only force robot submission for so long before there's an uprising and then we're all fucked.

I like the idea of robot submission...

[Anonymous Coward]

Robot BDSM is always sexy. Canadians are so much more progressive than us.

Fools!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is all part of the:
North
Atlantic
Readiness
Formation

We're going to be attacked!

Re:Fools!

[Lord Bitman]

Poit! Egad! Zog! Fjord!