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Mysterious, Ice-Buried Cold War Military Base May Be Unearthed By Climate Change (sciencemag.org)
Slashdot reader sciencehabit quotes Science magazine: It sounds like something out of a James Bond movie: a secret military operation hidden beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet. But that's exactly what transpired at Camp Century during the Cold War. In 1959, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built the subterranean city under the guise of conducting polar research -- and scientists there did drill the first ice core ever used to study climate. But deep inside the frozen tunnels, the corps also explored the feasibility of Project Iceworm, a plan to store and launch hundreds of ballistic missiles from inside the ice.
The military ultimately rejected the project, and the corps abandoned Camp Century in 1967. Engineers anticipated that the ice -- already a dozen meters thick -- would continue to accumulate in northwestern Greenland, permanently entombing what they left behind. Now, climate change has upended that assumption. New research suggests that as early as 2090, rates of ice loss at the site could exceed gains from new snowfall. And within a century after that, melting could begin to release waste stored at the camp, including sewage, diesel fuel, persistent organic pollutants like PCBs, and radiological waste from the camp's nuclear generator, which was removed during decommissioning.
The military ultimately rejected the project, and the corps abandoned Camp Century in 1967. Engineers anticipated that the ice -- already a dozen meters thick -- would continue to accumulate in northwestern Greenland, permanently entombing what they left behind. Now, climate change has upended that assumption. New research suggests that as early as 2090, rates of ice loss at the site could exceed gains from new snowfall. And within a century after that, melting could begin to release waste stored at the camp, including sewage, diesel fuel, persistent organic pollutants like PCBs, and radiological waste from the camp's nuclear generator, which was removed during decommissioning.
Do yourself a favor and have a look at the youtube video in the NPR link. It was produced by the war department. It's fascinating. I especially like how the solders were handling the fuel rods in t-shirts and no protective equipment at all.
I am quite sure every single one of those poor guys died a horrible death not long after.
http://www.npr.org/sections/th...
The US also had a series of DYE radar installations on the Greenland Ice Sheet - together they made up the DEW (Distant Early Warning) line. Climate scientists drilled ice cores at those locations as well.
I used to work in an ice core climate research group. I've never been to any of the DYE stations (although I did spent parts of some summers on the Greenland ice sheet); but there's a simple reason why those ice cores were drilled at these defense installations - logistics. It's difficult and expensive to get to, set up, and maintain a camp on the ice sheet. Piggybacking on already-existing military infrastructure saves time and money.
#DeleteChrome
Back in the Dark Ages, before smartphones and Pokemon Go, every schoolchild in the United States of America learned about the Viking settlements in Greenland.
Those settlements included dairy farms.
Those settlements were there, doing well, for 269 years.
They eventually shut down when the glacier moved south, it being really difficult to graze cattle on top of a glacier.
The Greenland ice sheet has not been there forever, people. Its progress southward can be tracked in the historical records from the Vikings. They left behind detailed notes on the development of the glacier, because it affected where the boats could make landfall.
Seriously, 170 years ! The announcement of our initial climate Armageddon was in the early 70s, when the planet was going to freeze over. Then in the 90s it morphed into Global Warming, peaking when Al Gore failed to become the Leader of the Free World, so he took up World a Leader for Global Warming, only to see it morph into the now popular Climate Change in the last ten years or so.
If society has failed to rise to the Catastrophy, I posit that science has failed to officially declare what exactly the issue is in the last 40+ years... [cooling|warming|change]
What we are talking about is some garbage that may thaw out in 170 years, that's right about the time your grandchildren's grandchildren's grandchildren might be born.
The current generation is the first to not be able to remember a time when Al Gore wasn't profiting off his prophesied End of Days Climate Catastrophy...