Slashdot Mirror
Denmark Makes Claim To North Pole, Based On Undersea Geography
As reported by The Independent, A scientific study has found that Greenland is actually connected to the area beneath the polar ice where the North Pole lies – thanks to a huge stretch of continental crust known as the Lomonosov Ridge.
Since Greenland is a Danish territory, that gives the country the right to put its hat in the ring for ownership of the stretch of land, Denmark’s foreign minister [Martin Lidegaard ] said. ... Of the five Arctic countries – the US, Russia, Norway, Canada and Denmark —only Canada and Russia had indicated an interest in the North Pole territory until now. "This is a historical milestone for Denmark and many others as the area has an impact on the lives of lot of people. After the U.N. panel had taken a decision based on scientific data, comes a political process," Lidegaard told The Associated Press in an interview on Friday. "I expect this to take some time. An answer will come in a few decades. Why such a big deal? As Business Insider notes, The U.S. currently estimates that the Arctic sea bed could contain 15% of the earth's remaining oil, along with 30% of the planet's natural gas and 20% of its liquefied natural gas. Whichever country is able to successfully claim the Arctic would have the right to extract these resources.
Problem solved. Now time for breakfast!
Shouldn't all these countries be focused on renewable energy sources?
Uh, sorry! Forget! I was just dreaming!
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Since the first anchored text in the summary isn't actually linked to anything, here's The Independent's article. I'm guessing this is the one timothy intended to link to.
A recursive sig
Can impart wisdom and truth
Call proc signature()
You're officially on the naughty list, you Danish bastards!
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
In other news Britain makes claim to Northern Ireland, Jersey, Guernsy and the Falkland Islands based on "undersea Geography". And the British crown will refuse to discuss the matter.
Well, denmark, for example, is focused on renewables. Doesn't mean they don't want to be the ones pumping up the oil and selling it. You can do other things with oil besides burning it also. I wouldn't put it past the danes to claim it as theirs and then not pump it in the name of protecting the arctic. They just might be altruistic enough.
Using this logic, wouldn't Greenland be part of Canada?
What reason are we going to make up to invade the arctic? -_-
Good is never enough, when you dream of being great!
Just draw lines from the North Pole to places where countries border each other, and each country gets that slice of the Arctic. For example, in-between the Bering Strait one line would be drawn between USA and Russia, toward the Pole. Where Alaska borders Canada. another line is drawn toward the Pole. That slice becomes claimable by the USA. Another line between Canada and Greenland would yield the Canadian slice. And so on.
They are claimed by big ass oil companies. The profit is privatized whilst all the environmental problems are offloaded to the general public (called state). The company can legally offshore its profits and pay virtually no taxes. For the company it doesn't really matter which country claims the territory - the mere fact that one does is sufficient. It will then bribe the responsible politicians of that country to get the rights to extraction.
If being connected to land by underwater ridges gave right of ownership the map would look very different. Besides which it looks as though the other end of the ridge connects to the Siberian Shelf. Push this argument too far and you could find out that Russia owns Greenland!
... honestly think that they can keep Greenland under their thumb for that long? Greenland already doesn't want to be part of Denmark - 75% voted for independence in a nonbinding referrendum in 2008 with a 72% turnout. The wealthier they become and the greater the percentage of the wealth that Denmark siphons away, the more they're going to want it. If Greenland and its EEZ start raking in trillions of dollars annually (which is the sort of mineral wealth up for grabs), how low in the single-digits do you think the popularity of remaining part of Denmark will be? For every trillion of GDP that'd be nearly $17M per capita, at Greenland's current population.
Is Denmark going to force Greenland to stay with them by the gun?
"We consider that six courts and an asylum claim are a rather odd way of returning to Sweden within a month."
...could easily lead to a doubling in size of Denmark's Lego stockpiles...
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
Two words: Resource Wars. Or another way of saying it is, for all practical purposes, the only country with the ability to affect the rights to this region is Russia. Only Russia owns a fleet of nuclear icebreakers to get to this frozen floating turd and maintain a shipping lane.
Or more realistically, of the parties listed contesting the north pole, only Russia has a fleet of fourth generation Akula and Severodvinsk tactical submarines capable of listlessly patrolling the sea and torpedoing the first canadian or danish friate that decides to stake a claim.
What we should be doing is moving past this "resource extraction" economy of profiteering through squandered potential. The country that will benefit the most from the north pole is the one that realizes the cost in human and monetary capital in the long term outweighs any financial gain in the short term and decides to pursue renewables instead.
Good people go to bed earlier.
15% of the earth's remaining oil, along with 30% of the planet's natural gas and 20% of its liquefied natural gas
I wonder how long this will last us. 50 years? 100?
I was taught in school that Robert Peary of the US was the first one that got there, doesn't that give USA a claim
I just knew I couldn't trust Denmark.
They are connected by a strip of land called Central America.
So the other four countries will get as close to the disputed territory as possible, and then drill sideways to get under it and extract the oil.
"Could be worse...could be raining." Igor
Denmark is delusional if she thought that any of the other involved country is going to play by the rules.
Fact is, these "rules" are always used only when it benefits the superpowers. Good luck getting the US or Russia to care about the rules when they are getting the short end of the stick. Denmark will suddenly get a "regime change" if she pushes this too hard.
I think this is an issue that should be decided by the citizens of the North Pole. Just chain a slotted box to the pole (so the wind doesn't blow it away). Come back in 10 years and count the votes. Oh, there's not actually a pole there?
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
We have International waters and an International space station, why not declare the North Pole as being International land? Just get all the Arctic countries to sign up on that and we're good to go.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
... it will be sprawling multinational oil corporations that will profit most off the oil. Nation-states will get crumbs, albeit very lucrative crumbs.
If they discover oil you better believe Greenlanders will vote for independence from Denmark the only stumbling block for
greenland independence has been financial.
Greenlands population is 56,000. A billion dollars worth of oil pumped a year would be about $20,000 a person.
The world of geopolitics are much more Hobbesian "red in tooth and claw" - certainly there are international "laws" but considering that a) being subject to them is entirely voluntary and b) there are no punishments for law-breakers beyond what other states are willing to exert, "international law" is more like a voluntary coordination of diplomatic efforts than an actual binding structure of laws. I know it didn't help Ukraine for shit (bye Crimea!), and is unlikely to do much for the Philippines or Vietnam in terms of a logical (ie not China-uber-alles) resolution of the various sea-disputes they're in.
If there are truly vast swathes of resources beneath the polar cap, ultimately, it's going to go to whomever can protect it (or who has big enough friends ok with them having it - in particular them having it instead of someone they like less...).
In short, Good Luck Denmark! My suspicion is that legal victory here, if they win, will be short-lived: Denmark *may* have a legitimate claim in the World Court, but this case would be followed almost immediately by a just-as-legitimate claim by Greenlanders for independence from a pre-modern colonial tie.
-Styopa
I'm sure the large and powerful Danish Navy will have no trouble enforcing that claim...
Proverbs 21:19
Nevermind Oil, we just want a dollar every time anyone use the northpole in a compass! :D
First some facts. I once looked this stuff up because when I was a kid, I was try8ing to figure out which nationality Santa Claus would be. It happens to be the case that the northernmost point on land in Greenland is 440 miles from the North Pole, the northernmost point on land in Canada is 472 miles from the North Pole, and the northernmost point on land in Russia is 493 miles from the North pole.
Canada and Russia are both independently sovereign, which I think gives their claims to the pole more credibility than Denmark's. However, Russia's claim over the territory is weaker, IMO, since the pole is actually on the North American continental shelf, not part of Eurasia at all. Also, for what it's worth, the northernmost populated settlement happens to be located in Canada.
However, national borders do not extend any further than about 14 miles into the ocean (basically, approximately the distance to the horizon as seen from a tall ship's crows nest) so in the end, I think none of the countries have any true claim over the territory in terms of their national jurisdiction.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Let me reply on behalf of those naughty Danish:
THEN, SEND US COAL.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
Does that mean all of North America belongs to the US because it's the same land mass?
Just take my words...
And btw, WW 4 will be fought with stones and sticks.
Merry Xmass all.
Picture this in your mind:
You're the foreign policy adviser who's about to tell sovereign Putin that Denmark is trying to claim a substantial portion of your Arctic holdings and oil reserves.
Think that one through really hard. Not a job I'd want.
Also, consider Putin's immediate response of breaking out into laughter.
Our PM in Canada doesn't believe in Science, nor understand cartography. So his his claims to North Pole are based solely on false bravado and wishful thinking.
It has lots of gold, rare-earth-elements and other kinds of minerals you find in ancient geologic cratons. As the ice melts, more is exposes every year.
Canadian here. Much of the "ownership" of the north is symbolic. The ownership is in most ways determined by use (of the lack thereof). This is why there are stupid islands that Canadian and Danish forces regularly visit, even if in dispute, as they can claim they still "use" it. Even if like the moon, it is only to set foot on the barren rock and plant a flag for symbolism. The folks sent there I think have about the right attitude about the whole practice as I recall, Canadian forces leaving booze for the Danes to find, and likewise they would leave booze for the Canadians.
This is why I thought Stephen Harper was such an idiot on this topic. When talking about the ownership of the North, he decided that he should do a pork project to build "Ice Hardened" warships in the idea of protecting our claim to the North (As if they are going to fire on anything but perhaps some arctic seals). They are however of a Finnish design, and are basically armored corvettes. Unless however the polar ice gets very very thin and all but vanishes however, they are not going to be very capable. What we should have done was expanded and improved our fleet of real ice breakers.
As I hate to say it, but all the UN and other countries can say what you will, but only one country currently really has claim, the same one with the largest fleet of icebreakers in the world, the only one to actually build nuclear ice breakers, and has a fleet of 12 or so of them. As when it comes down to having the capability of actually using the north for anything, they are the only ones that really can effectively. Even if you say with the weakening of polar ice, that will take time, and the only country that will be able to take advantage of it first (and make a claim) will be Russia.
Canada should be building ice breakers not warships if they really wish to protect their claim on the north.
Umm, that's underwater... if we start using that kind of rule, there is ground underwater that is attached to Australia, and while there may be some cracks in it here and there, it goes all the way to the North Pole.
Sea level is rising. If it was falling, then maybe they could get excited about some underwater ridge. When it pokes through the surface.
Or that's how I think the headlines should read.
Much as I love and admire my U.S. colleagues and am honestly grateful for what the U.S. has done as benevolent conqueror.. it is just too easy to imagine how the "Hell Yeah" school of American politics would deal with Danish ownership of a lot of oil. Dumbass Danes, it's their own fault they have a weak military. Hell Yeah! Here's hoping everyone has evolved far beyond that by the time anything like drilling for oil in Arctic is ever held feasible. If only there was a way to add 20-30 IQ points quickly to everyone in the developed world :(
Easily solved: all one has to do is help local Greenland residents "liberate" themselves from their colonial Danish overloads and create themselves a new, frozen petro-state with quasi-loyalties to its liberators. The United States, Russia, China, Canada... same result.
Burn it, Burn it allll, yaaaahhhh!!
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
There is always the UK claim to the Faroes http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/denmarks-historic-claim-to-the-faroes-in-doubt-as-archaeologists-find-proof-that-islands-were-inhabited-before-arrival-of-first-norse-colonists-8776954.html if we are going for dodgy territory grabbing.
You linked to a blog and claimed it linked to an announcement in Science News, Jan. 25 1975, p. 52. But the blog you linked has two "Science News" links which lead here and here. Neither of those links lead to Science News, Jan. 25 1975, p. 52. Could you please post the link to Science News, Jan. 25 1975, p. 52?
While Jane looks for that link, he should also consider addressing this issue with his basic thermodynamics:
As I suspected, Jane disputes the definition of the word "net". Jane didn't get his nonsensical definition from any of his textbooks, because in physics, net power through a boundary around the source = "radiative power out" minus "radiative power in".
That's what net means. But after it became clear that Jane is hopelessly confused about the very term "NET" which he keeps capitalizing, I explained conservation of energy in a way that didn't require using that troublesome word. Draw a boundary around the heat source:
power in = electrical heating power + radiative power in from the chamber walls
power out = radiative power out from the heat source
Since power in = power out through any boundary where nothing inside is changing:
electrical heating power + radiative power in from the chamber walls = radiative power out from the heat source
Notice that this equation is equivalent to the equation Jane just described, but only if Jane uses the physics definition of the word "net". And in order to derive it, I didn't even have to use that word which has Jane hopelessly confused. All I had to use was conservation of energy.
Okay, so you read a blog which linked to an article which mentioned an announcement by the NAS. Then you responded to David Thornley's request for actual scientific papers predicting global cooling by saying "the NAS was convinced enough of the "Global Cooling" scare to actually publish a call for immediate action."
Did you ever think it might be educational to actually read that NAS report first-hand rather than relying on third-hand interpretations of interpretations? If you did, you'd discover that the 1975 NAS report (PDF) "Understanding Climate Change: A Program for Action" doesn't predict global cooling. Quite the opposite! Read their words:
"Of the two forms of pollution, the carbon dioxide increase is probably the more influential at the present time in changing temperatures near the earth's surface (Mitchell, 1973a)."
"The corresponding changes of mean atmospheric temperature due to CO2 [as calculated by Manabe (1971) on the assumption of constant relative humidity and fixed cloudiness] are about 0.3C per 10 percent change of CO2 and appear capable of accounting for only a fraction of the observed warming of the earth between 1880 and 1940. They could, however, conceivably aggregate to a further warming of about 0.5C between now and the end of the century."
How ironic! Instead of predicting global cooling, the NAS actually predicted "about 0.5C" of CO2-based warming between 1975 and 2000. To see how their prediction fared, let's plot HadCRUT4 over that timespan. The raw data shows warming of 0.47C from 1975 to 2000, which rounds up to 0.5C.
So that 1975 NAS report wasn't predicting global cooling! Its warming prediction was actually fairly accurate, and was certainly within the statistical uncertainties.
Again, that's probably why the National Academy of Science’s 1979 Charney report estimated climate sensitivity as 1.5C to 4.5C and said “If carbon dioxide continues to increase, [we] find no reason to doubt that climate changes will result, and no reason to believe that these changes will be negligible.”
While Jane tries to explain why that NAS report predicting about 0.5C of
Everyone knows that Denmark just wants control over the entrance to the center of the hollow Earth.
Due to global climate change, the Danes can take advantage of it by cornering the market on oil and methane--thereby causing more global climate change.
Is anybody else seeing a problem?
Didn't Germany take the same approach with France?
Jane's "interest" in that NAS report evaporated after I showed that Jane had been fooled by "Steven Goddard" once again. So let's return to Jane's confusion about basic thermodynamics.
I've already pointed out that Jane's hopelessly confused about the word "net", but that's just one of the mistakes Jane packed into these few sentences.
Jane's also wrong to imply that energy conservation across one choice of boundary could somehow contradict energy conservation across another boundary choice. That's impossible. Many boundary choices are inconvenient but they all have to be consistent. Otherwise, how could we possibly tell which boundary choice was correct?
So Jane can't object to the simple energy conservation equation I derived by claiming that some other boundary choice would somehow contradict my equation. That's completely impossible, and if Jane doesn't understand that point then he should learn about conservation of energy: example (backup), example (backup), example (backup).
As you can tell after reading those introductions, here's how to apply conservation of energy. Draw a boundary around the heat source:
power in = electrical heating power + radiative power in from the chamber walls
power out = radiative power out from the heat source
Since power in = power out through any boundary where nothing inside is changing:
electrical heating power + radiative power in from the chamber walls = radiative power out from the heat source
I put the boundary around the heat source so the boundary is in vacuum. That's because radiation can't travel through opaque solids like the heat source. So the only way to obtain an energy conservation equation with radiative terms is to place the boundary around the heat source.
For example, I calculated the enclosing shell's inner temperature by drawing the boundary within the enclosing shell. This boundary was inside aluminum, so heat transfer through it was by thermal conduction, not radiation. Notice that even this boundary choice leads to a conduction equation where electrical heating power depends on the cooler chamber wall temperature. That's because all boundary choices have to be consistent. They can't contradict each other unless one of them is wrong.
After I asked Jane to expl
Sadly, Jane/Lonny Eachus repeatedly chooses the second option. Once again.
Jane/Lonny Eachus keeps lecturing about physics.