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Greenland Is Very Mad About the Toxic Waste the US Left Buried Under Its Ice (vice.com)
Kate Lunau, reporting Motherboard:Greenland isn't happy about being treated as a dumping ground for abandoned US military bases established at the height of the Cold War -- and in a newspaper editorial, it's calling on Denmark to deal with the mess left behind by the Americans, since the Danish long ago took responsibility for them. This editorial notes that, after decades, Greenland is "losing its patience." One of the abandoned bases, called Camp Century, is full of nasty chemicals and some radioactive material, as Motherboard previously reported. At Camp Century, which was built in 1959, soldiers called "Iceworms" practiced deployment of missiles against Russia and literally lived inside the ice. When the US decommissioned the base in the 1960s, the military left basically everything behind, thinking that its waste would stay locked up in the Greenland ice sheet forever. Well, climate change has made that unlikely. Melting ice threatens to expose all kinds of toxic debris in decades to come, and Greenland wants it cleaned up, now.
If you needed to find a spot where you don't care whether there is toxic waste.. that's it.
Americans can be forgiven for being remiss about this, as this was nuclear and defense research in arctic climates related to the US ability to ward off an impending attack over alaska. We learned we could indeed install nuclear reactors and war bases in the tundra, however we unfortunately learned that cooling these reactors and ensuring they stayed in one place was a completely untenable matter.
the most damning part of this research was that it took place without Greenlands consent. these were secret bases established on remote areas of Greenland that existed for only three to six months before disappearing entirely. The cleanup is nontrivial amounts of chemical and nuclear material. As an american i feel we have a duty to clean this up, but as an american I also understand there isnt much impetus to get us to do anything responsible after the fact.
Good people go to bed earlier.
more like glowing-green-land amirite?
"This editorial notes that, after decades, Greenland is "losing its patience." "
Okay, so then what? Like, will they hurl insults at the rest of the world? Will they stop talking to us?
Well, if the military just left everything behind, you probably left Greenland with a few nukes.
Just sayin'.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
American Government: "We're sorry, but you're going to have to wait until we finish melting all the ice off your island. We expect it to take another 35 years or so. We'll see you then!"
Now, you look here, US. If you don't deal with this soon we're going to get really angry...at Denmark. That'll show you!
They will melt their glaciers and inundate New York.
Ezekiel 23:20
...the most damning part of this research was that it took place without Greenlands consent....
As the article points out, Greenland wasn't independent at the time; it was a possession of Denmark; and the bases were done with Denmark's knowledge and cooperation.
It shows how rigged this whole thing is that they have a place that's covered in ice and call it "Greenland". Completely rigged. The crooked media doesn't want you to know that it's covered in ice. It's a disgrace.
When I'm president, we'll make Greenland green again. There will be the most beautiful golf courses in Greenland, believe me.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Give the US 1 month to clean up there shit, if not, put the nuclear waste, paperwork, computers, electronics and anything else of interest on e-bay.
I thought by now with private space we would have garbage asteroids.
The US is also "very mad" that it provided military protection to Greenland and that neither Greenland nor Europe have paid their fair share. Both the US and Greenland will simply have to learn to live with it.
In different words, Greenland: clean it up yourself.
They could talk to Putin if he's interested in setting up a base there, much more near US soil. I guess he likes to repay the way the US is acting in Eastern Europe. And maybe the US left something interesting for the Russians behind.
Greenland is mostly covered with Ice but Iceland is very green.
Maybe do a name switch?
As it was done, it will be done. This is not Soviet Union we are talking about here, after all.
So.. how many countries do you know that keep military bases in other countries?
Ten.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_overseas_military_bases
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
" it's calling on Denmark to deal with the mess left behind by the Americans, since the Danish long ago took responsibility for them"
Trump is Denmark's fault?
The Dept. of Defense has long considered itself above the environmental laws that constrain industry. Anyone with half a brain and access to Google is aware of the damage they have done across this country. Pick almost any DoD installation and you can find the evidence. Pick your poison: Agent Orange, Radioactive waste - there is a smorgasboard of poisons.
Start here: https://www.google.com/#q=military+base+toxic+waste
From Fort Greely in Delta Junction, Alaska to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, The DoD has created a toxic catastrophe at hundreds of sites across the U.S.
Some sites, like the Hanfond Reservation, could cost in the billions to clean-up.
Try this: https://www.google.com/#q=hanford+nuclear+reservation+cleanup
The DoD / DoE funnels the cleanup money through their favorite contractors like Bechtel.
It creates full employment and it's a good way to keep the revolving door greased.
So, bend over America. You asked for it and your children are already inheriting the toxic goodness.
And there is nothing you can do to stop it.
NOTHING!
If Putin wants Greenland he will just take it, he doesn't need to be offered. He is a little busy taking over Europe and the Middle East at the moment though.
I doubt there will be anything interesting there if it was abandoned in 1960.
Philip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Oh, so it is not a pressing problem yet, is it?
Given the spectacular failures of other predictions made by contemporary "Climate Science", I say, this too can wait.
Indeed, though the write-up does not mention this, TFA quotes Greenland's official thus:
Must be a really slow news day...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
And dump it on the beach near new york.
Problem solved.
They may fart in your general direction. Radio active wale blubber farts. You better run.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
What is Greenland going to do about this, hunh? How many supercarriers does Greenland have? How many nukes? They can eat our shit and be grateful we allow them to exist.
The glacier were and are moving. That was one of the things that killed Camp Century to begin with.
Dump radioactive waste in the USA's national parks.
After all, no one lives there, so who cares right?
Starving under the Soviet Book, Comrade? No? Get over it. Small price for you to pay. OH, you want America to do all the heavy lifting and pick up the bill forever? Yeah, everyone else does as well. Rest of the world... your turn.
And no country is contributing to Global Warming the way the US is. Most of the pollution in the "3rd world countries" is from the production of goods for the US (and allies), often by US companies operating on foreign soil to run around regulations..
Those countries choose to produce that stuff. The people there like the new higher paying jobs. It enables them to develop and raises living standards as has happened in India and China. They aren't innocent victims. And they do make choices as to how they want to allocate resources. China could be more environmentally conscious where it to stop increasing the size of it military and spend the money on green energy instead. And it's important to remember that there are many more environmentally safe technologies in 2016 than there were in the nineteenth century or in the 1950s - if you are building out an industrial infrastructure from scratch now it's much easier to be green than before. Solar electricity was not around 100 years ago.
And what would you have the US do about it? Raise tariffs on third world produced goods? Do you propose a 500% tariff on goods from China? I would remind you that bossing around third world countries is also rejected as neocolonialism.
And you seem to be ignoring the emissions released by burning forests in Indonesia and Brazil. The forest fires in Indonesia last year released 11.3 million tonnes of carbon per day, exceeding the daily rate of 8.9 million tonnes of carbon emissions from the whole of the European Union. Predictions for future deforestation in Central Africa estimate that by 2050 forest clearance in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) will release a total of up to 34.4 billion tonnes of CO2, roughly equivalent to the UK’s CO2 emissions over the last sixty years.
But that doesn't fit into a convenient narrative of blaming the West, does it?
From the TFA: "Maybe in a century, theyâ(TM)re going to start to melt out."
Whoa, now there is a real crisis. MAYBE in a CENTURY there will start to be problems! Act now, save no expense!!!!
Isn't 99.99% of Greenland on the coast also?
Thank you for confirming my point — the "Climate Science" predictions are worthless.
Greenland, mysteriously warming faster than expected today, may start freezing again ten years from now. We may as well rely on predictions of Astrologers.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
They aren't really "international" — the term would imply multiple nations and some sort of deliberative body, where they meet with their agendas.
Greenland and Norway used to be one nation not long ago, split up peacefully and continue cooperating. They would not need very long to come up with a solution to a real problem. Which this is not. Certainly not today.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
That's a small price for vengeance!
Ezekiel 23:20
yeah, well, climate change is not real
If Putin wants to target the US, he just has to heavily load Chukotka, Kamchatka and Sakhalin w/ nukes, and aim them at this US. He hardly needs to play footsie w/ Denmark (not Greenland, whose foreign and defense policies are still run by Copenhagen)
(Where do you think the name 'Greenland' came from?)
I think it came from Eric the Red, who was doing a con job trying to convince people that the place was desirable.
In any case, the places Eric the Red started settlements in, that he called "Greenland", was not the ice sheets in the north, but the southern tip.
The PCBs on those bases are far more of a worry than anything else. Radioactives tend to decay fairly quickly, but chemical toxins last virtually forever.
In many ways this is pretty minor in the overall scheme of things - by the time any waste from these bases reaches the sea it will be well and truly diluted, but the principle of just abandoning waste all over the place is something that needs combatting.
The problem is that I have trouble taking anything from Greenpeace seriously.
Greenpeace pulled a showboating stunt near McMurdo back in the mid 1980s after collecting several tons of garbage which had blown almost 100 miles across the ice thanks to the base's dumps not being secure against the environment. It won them no friends but policies did change - not because of the protests (and garbage didn't reduce) but because the US military base commanders finally started taking advice on securing the dump from people who'd been offering it all along. The "unforseen" side of their showboating was that McMurdo was closed off to ALL non-military visitors for a few years and that badly affected operations for the civilian research site at Scott Base, including transport to and from Antarctica. Of course this didn't affect Greenpeace, because they'd already buggered off to new destinations on their protesting world tour.
They have a nasty tendency to show up and take credit for other people's work or parade around in front of cameras, destroying goodwill that other groups have spent years building up in an effort to combat pollution issues (Another incident I'm aware of put cleanup efforts back by around 15 years and resulted in the local greens being banned from the area despite having nothing to do with Greenpeace)
The thing they're best at is hoovering up money and spending it on their elite.
There's also the matter of the fraud committed in encouraging membership signups by promising a hand in governance after N years of membership, then constantly pushing that requirement out to longer and longer periods before silently cancelling it. This is why a lot of people are disillusioned by them - this is one of those organisations that's mostly show and little action. They may protest and grab camera views but they don't hang around for the long haul to actually effect changes (aka "corporate greenies", etc). In most cases they do more harm than good.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... - most of which is spot on.
If they want the U.S. to clean it up, they better hurry and get it done while there still a U.S. to make the demands to.