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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.
So's Death Valley. Keep your shit in your own bowl.
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?
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=-
They will melt their glaciers and inundate New York.
Ezekiel 23:20
Greenland is huge and almost unpopulated. If it weren't covered in ice...
Global warming is changing that, that is what this article is about.
...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.
You know, it's not just america doing that.. It's likely that if you're posting on slashdot, your own country is doing its part as well.
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.
Will they write us a letter telling us how angry they are?
So.. how many countries do you know that keep military bases in other countries?
bickerdyke
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?
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
The US is getting its payment now from letting Europe participate in all the US wars of aggression and let is deal with the immigrant flows they create. Next time the US invades a country, I suggest we help the invaded country by supplying advanced anti-aircraft missles. That will make the war soon too costly for the US to continue.
I find it funny that someone raises any excuse for dumping trash outside the country borders, as if there could be any justification for that.
It's like "well, I'm on the wrong, but fortunately there are lots of stupid guys on the world... maybe if I talk BS some will fall for it... let's try, what's there to lose?"
The problem is that some stupid people can be enlightened, but BS does not improve with time.
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!
The glacier were and are moving. That was one of the things that killed Camp Century to begin with.
Must be a really slow news day...
Yes we should save all our outrage and news of it until the day before it's due to be a problem. It's unamerica and inhuman to think about and plan things in advance. As we all know international politics especially concerning radioactive materials and military establishments during war time easily resolve themselves within a few hours.
Lets all get back to more important things like whose pussy Trump will grope next!
It was done all the time in the past. No one really considered the consequences in those days. Sure nowadays they'd know better but even so the military only cares about two things, war and preparing for war. I feel that we should go back and clean it up though, it's not right to leave it to Greenland.
False dichotomy. No, it does not have to be "day before". A year or two before would do.
As things stand, though, we aren't at all certain, this particular one will ever be a problem — the stuff may remain buried in ice for eons. "Climate Science" and related alarmism (Peak Oil, anyone?) is rather notorious for unsuccessful predictions, while successful ones are rather hard to come by — people have tried...
To worry about what even the "proponents" say is decades ahead, one must really have dispensed with contemporary issues — such as, indeed, whether bogus accusations of sexual misconduct — and attempts to redefine unapproved kissing as assault — will allow a deceitful and crooked person become president this year.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
It's like "well, I'm on the wrong, but fortunately there are lots of stupid guys on the world... maybe if I talk BS some will fall for it... let's try, what's there to lose?"
Mr. Trump, when did you start browsing Slashdot?
"If there was a gay Afro-Puertorican Linux distribution, I'd give it a try" ~lucm
Come on man. We can't just leave that shit lying around and not go clean it up. Greenland doesn't have the money for that and it's really not right. We built that place for our benefit in the Cold War and they were nice enough to let us use the place. It's not good manors to leave a big mess behind.
The borders and nations of the Middle East are the aftermath of European imperialism and European war mongering; they are on the doorsteps of Europe, they primarily supply oil to Europe. The US doesn't benefit from these wars, Europe does.
These wars are already too costly to the US, which is why as an American, I would like the US to withdraw from the Middle East and force the Europeans to clean up their own messes.
Europe doesn't need to ship arms to the Middle East in order to discourage the US from intervening; in fact, Europe already has a massive arms export business into those regions. It would be perfectly sufficient if European politicians didn't come begging on their knees to the US to intervene on their behalf.
In other words: "What are they going to do? Attack?"
Is that what you are saying? Great way to make friends. Or you think, that you don't need any?
Greenland invited and welcomed the U.S. military with open arms. There is plenty of excuse for the USA to have done things normally and typically at the time they were there.
For this kind of problem a couple of decades for cleanup may not be excessive. And you pointed about the failures of climate science without understanding their nature. Greenland is melting a LOT faster than predicted. It's more likely that we have less time than we think for the cleanup than that we have more.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
We built that place for our benefit in the Cold War and they were nice enough to let us use the place.
If we did not force them to let us build there, I would argue that building it was also for their benefit.
I can't explain why about half the population doesnt understand the core ramification of free choices, that when you are free to choose you choose things that you think will benefit you.
This thought should have been the very first thing in your head. Any reasoning on this matter must begin from this point. You however have outright denied the basic reality in your argument, which doesnt make for a good argument at all.
"His name was James Damore."
If we did not force them to let us build there, I would argue that building it was also for their benefit.
Denmark's benefit, perhaps. Nonetheless, "it's for your own good" is the justification of colonists and abusers throughout history.
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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?
Yes, I noticed that right after I posted it. I was waiting for someone to point it out.
And billions of parents as well.
It is the same rule as in a public park, you carry out what you carry in or properly dispose of it. I doubt Greenland has trash cans for nuclear and chemical waste, so carry out is the only option. I doubt Greenland benefited from the US being there. If anything, it made Greenland a prime target.
This is the type of arrogance that is going to destroy the world. What level of stupidity or insanity is required to say that remote areas of the earth, where people live, are perfect dumping grounds for toxic waste and radioactivity?
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
A year or two before would do.
For international disagreements on radioactive and toxic waste cleanup activities in a remote and difficult to reach area?
What are you smoking?
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!!!!
Indeed.
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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.
This is the type of arrogance that is going to destroy the world. What level of stupidity or insanity is required to say that remote areas of the earth, where people live,
In the particular places under discussion-- underneath the glacers-- nobody lives.
You do know that no missiles were ever installed, and the only thing that was there was the PM-2A reactor which the Danish government DID know about. You have no point
That's a small price for vengeance!
Ezekiel 23:20
This assumes we don't give a shit how the people living in Greenland or the rest of the world for that matter, think of us. Of all the stupid shit we spend money for around the world I'd think this would easily fall into the better ideas.
That may be true for now. But if you do have a major melting of the ice-caps, while the rest of the world may largely get flooded, Kalaallit Nunaat would be a very inhabitable place, and not as cold as it is now. (Where do you think the name 'Greenland' came from?)
The Sahara is a better place for this. Or better yet - Antarctica.
Come on man. We can't just leave that shit lying around and not go clean it up. Greenland doesn't have the money for that and it's really not right. We built that place for our benefit in the Cold War and they were nice enough to let us use the place. It's not good manors to leave a big mess behind.
The 'they' out here refers to Denmark, since Greenland was still a colony/part of Denmark, during the time in question. So it would make sense to split the costs 2-way, maybe 3-way.
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.
It's based on a movie quote.. *woosh*
Hospitality? We saved their sorry asses from becoming another Nazi occupied nation like Denmark. We were their protector.
They were interested in the mobile reactor in tunnels program and so let program happen. And that's all that happened.