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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.

4 of 108 comments (clear)

  1. experts say first one thing by turkeydance · · Score: 0, Troll

    and then the other. won't be sure until after we die.

  2. So in 200 years, the ice level may change by SensitiveMale · · Score: 0, Troll

    Wow! Good to know we have global warming alarmists, sorry "scientists", to tell us that ice levels may change in 200.

  3. Thanks, climate models by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    So in 70 years, the ice might start melting. If climate models with a lot of uncertainty are correct. And we here on /. know how accurate computer simulations are, when the underlying factors are not well understood and not all are known.

  4. more propaganda from slashdot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    2090... HAHAHAHAHA They can't predict next week's weather and they want to... OHOHOHOHOHH [gasping for air]
    Oh, my stomach hurts :-P

    captcha: get your skepticals on