http://www.mining.com/greenland-closer-building-worlds-fifth-largest-uranium-mine/

and

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/world/2017/02/10/greenland-needs-money-is-a-uranium-mine-the-answer/?utm_term=.5222c16e3bf0

And Greenland wants to break from Denmark – another political element to the Neo-Arctic drama. From the WP story:

With a territory larger than Mexico and a population that could fit inside a football stadium, Greenland badly needs new sources of income to provide jobs and combat chronic social ills. Its economy leans heavily on one major export — shrimp — and is propped up by an annual block grant of more than $500 million from Denmark.The question is what to do about it. Many in Greenland, including Prime Minister Kim Kielsen, view resource development as the nation’s best chance for self-sufficiency. The issue is tightly intertwined with Greenland’s fervent movement to win independence from Denmark, which began colonizing the sprawling territory almost 300 years ago. Greenland negotiated the right to self-rule in 1979 and has since built the institutions of a modern democratic society.

Here’s the overview from the govenrment website:

https://www.govmin.gl/minerals/geology-of-greenland/mining-projects

(Disclosure: I used to work with a company that had a relationship with London Mining. I did not work on the Iron Project but was familiar with it.)

Your long-term speculations about a BiPolar future are interesting, though, and food for thought. Thanks.

Not only will the sea level rise (from melting Greenland ice alone) devastate the world’s coastal populations, the amount of heat required to melt that thick glacier will be destructive to the rest of the planet. In fact, in the worst case scenarios, the highlands of Greenland and Antarctica may become the last redoubts of humanity, with the remnants of our species huddled at and clinging to, and following the edges of a rapidly retreating glacier.

No, I don’t think the worst case scenario will materialize. Long before that point comes, human industrial civilization, the cause of this catastrophe, will have disappeared. In a few centuries, the warming will stop, the global climate will stabilize, and we will be a hunter gather society again. If we are lucky enough to survive at all. In a thousand years, barely a trace of our civilization will survive.

But it will make an interesting sci-fi scenario: A bi-polar world, with the few remaining human survivors living at either pole, isolated from each other, with a hot and uninhabitable equatorial belt separating them for eternity.

The polar projection map illustrates nicely the geographical significance of the Arctic Ocean, a new Mare Nostrum, not unlike the Bronze Age Mediterranean. All the world’s land masses surrounding it, and all the ocean highways from the rest of the world leading away, and converging there. Your other map, showing contemporary claims, illustrates what will have to be resolved politically–or militarily, before that world can be.

https://www.wired.com/2010/09/seafloor-sunday-73-territorial-disputes-in-the-arctic-ocean/

And here are some maps, as requested:

Edit:

While there are certainly economic resources on the continental slopes that can and will be exploited, in my view, Greenland is the real prize. As the ice melts it will reveal some amazing mineral discoveries.

The closest thing to snark I’ve ever seen him get was from some guy who condescendingly told him to “go find a global map” and color things in.

Coloring in on a map, pointing out the obvious geographical facts, as if I had just missed them, mentioning two small nations who are obviously in no position to go mano a mano with the Russians. And sure, Russia has always wanted to develop Siberia, as well as expand her ice-free ports, but the Eastern Passage also has immense strategic possibilities, even if they develop it peacefully. And then there’s that “lecturing” crack. Can you blame me if I interpreted that as just a tiny bit hostile? Conservatives aren’t good at sarcasm, TB, you guys have no sense of irony.

So if I was overly sensitive, then I apologize.

But now, in this post, Russia encourages industrial development, I presume American Liberals only care about polar bears, right? Russia builds nukes, our Liberals don’t, being technological pussies, right? You just can’t help yourself, can you?

As for the bipartisan Congressional icebreakers, that was March 30, Obama won’t get credit for them. We’re going to be getting a lot of bills considered now that Obama won’t get credit for. Like an infrastructure bill, or Obamacare Lite.

You see TB, maybe I’m not being overly sensitive. I just don’t trust you any more.

I wonder if, like the photic sneeze reflex, it is genetic or a product of your upbringing.

I was just pointing out that Russia owns a lot of arctic territory already, and has an enormous arctic ocean coastline and the United States doesn’t (just the north of Alaska). It has a lot more skin in the game.

Also, the ice along the Russian arctic coast has always been a lot more open for conventional shipping during the summer than the ice along Canada’s complex northwest passages. Even last September, a lot of the Archipelago channels were icebreaker-only, while most of the Russian coast was open water.

In addition, Russia is going to be encouraging industrial development up there, not shutting it down like we have. Russia also has no problem building nuclear-powered civilian surface ships. Good luck with that here.

For the record, a House bill went into the Armed Services Committee on March 30 for the Navy to build up to three heavy icebreakers and three light ones. It was sponsored by a Republican, and cosponsored by another Republican and two Democrats.

Not because it was the conservative, or libertarian thing to do- but because it was the opposite of what the liberals were doing…

If all your enemies are NOT jumping off a cliff, does that mean you must jump off a cliff? Maybe TB will answer that question once he hits bottom… as for now he has no idea how much further he has to fall.

We always competed with the Soviets in the Arctic, even when we both thought it would remain an inaccessible frozen wasteland.
Now that its mineral and biological resources are up for grabs and our technological superiority in missile submarines is less dominant, we seem to be losing interest. After centuries of looking for the Northwest Passage, now that we have one, the USA has suddenly wimped out.

While you’re pondering that, consider that the polar sea is now also a strategic commercial asset, a trade route that will connect Europe and Asia and whoever controls it with bases, ports, yards, and other aids to navigation and maritime infrastructure will be the primary beneficiary of that trade, not to mention in a position to interdict it if required. We should be working with the Canadians and the Danes to develop the Canadian Archipelago and the Denmark and Fram straits the same way the Russians are developing the Siberian Littoral.

This is just the tip of the iceberg (forgive me for that!) as far as the Russians are concerned. They are already putting together a consortium of nations (under their protection and leadership) to help “manage” commerce and navigation in this area. I suspect they’ll model it on our control of the Panama Canal, and Britain’s control of Suez. Free passage, and access to all the support and logistic facilities en route, but don’t even think of pissing off the boss.

So while you have your crayons out, look at a terrestrial globe from a point over the North pole. An ice-free Arctic will be the center of the world, the crossroads of all trade. All the world’s land masses circle it. It will do for Russia in the 21st century what the Panama Canal did for America in the 20th. It will be the gateway to Empire.

As always, TB, you argue every issue as if protecting Conservatives from embarrassment were all that really mattered.