Can someone explain to me what Trump and the US Government or companies would be able to do if they "had Greenland" that they can't do right now?
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@futurebird also port cities that can open up when the arctic ice retreats (yay! Climate change!)
@CatherineFlick @futurebird this is my understanding of it. An ice-free arctic is a potential major shipping lane, and Greenland is positioned to be able to control traffic into it.
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Can someone explain to me what Trump and the US Government or companies would be able to do if they "had Greenland" that they can't do right now?
Like, what are we talking about? It's going to be cold Puerto Rico? I'd say "well they could set up a military base" ... but we have that already?
Is this about mineral or drilling rights or something?
It's of course offensive nonsense, but I don't even get the point. And no one asks them.
What do you get?
@futurebird I think its a combination of a) mineral rights and b) the northern sea lanes opening up and new resources there.
a) is kinda bunk since no one is mining there.
b) if you squint sideways maybe. But we don't have new ice breakers (and that project has gone sideways recently). -
Can someone explain to me what Trump and the US Government or companies would be able to do if they "had Greenland" that they can't do right now?
Like, what are we talking about? It's going to be cold Puerto Rico? I'd say "well they could set up a military base" ... but we have that already?
Is this about mineral or drilling rights or something?
It's of course offensive nonsense, but I don't even get the point. And no one asks them.
What do you get?
@futurebird
My theory is that Trump is a toddler who wants to colour in more countries with his "owned by me" colour of crayon. He's probably only seen the Mercator projection of the world map. See also: Canada -
Can someone explain to me what Trump and the US Government or companies would be able to do if they "had Greenland" that they can't do right now?
Like, what are we talking about? It's going to be cold Puerto Rico? I'd say "well they could set up a military base" ... but we have that already?
Is this about mineral or drilling rights or something?
It's of course offensive nonsense, but I don't even get the point. And no one asks them.
What do you get?
Kuannersuit, in southern Greenland, contains the second-largest uranium deposit, possibly the largest thorium deposit, and the third-largest rare earth's deposits in the world. All of this will be required for AI data centres. To control knowledge that will lead to a white planet
That's what it is all about.
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Can someone explain to me what Trump and the US Government or companies would be able to do if they "had Greenland" that they can't do right now?
Like, what are we talking about? It's going to be cold Puerto Rico? I'd say "well they could set up a military base" ... but we have that already?
Is this about mineral or drilling rights or something?
It's of course offensive nonsense, but I don't even get the point. And no one asks them.
What do you get?
@futurebird
Resources and it likely turning a lot more hospitable place to be with climate change.Also bigger dick to wave
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@futurebird
Putin wants NATO gone. He's Donnie's puppeteer.@EugestShirley
Eeeh, Donald and Vlad are cut from the same cloth but Duck ain't a puppet per se. The Home Alone star has just acted in Moscow's interests for selfish reasons for the most part and not because they've got the KGB agent's hand up their ass.For more direct russian control I'd look at the weirdos under and around El Presidentte.
@futurebird -
Can someone explain to me what Trump and the US Government or companies would be able to do if they "had Greenland" that they can't do right now?
Like, what are we talking about? It's going to be cold Puerto Rico? I'd say "well they could set up a military base" ... but we have that already?
Is this about mineral or drilling rights or something?
It's of course offensive nonsense, but I don't even get the point. And no one asks them.
What do you get?
@futurebird I think it boils down to him wanting his face on Mount Rushmore. Taking Greenland has no practical benefit. He might be able to enrich some of his people but not worth the cost.
He was raised on a pathetically simple story about American history that lionized national expansion. He thinks if he can push the borders out he will finally be universally recognized as a Great Man.
Same with Putin, who wants to be Peter the Great.
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Can someone explain to me what Trump and the US Government or companies would be able to do if they "had Greenland" that they can't do right now?
Like, what are we talking about? It's going to be cold Puerto Rico? I'd say "well they could set up a military base" ... but we have that already?
Is this about mineral or drilling rights or something?
It's of course offensive nonsense, but I don't even get the point. And no one asks them.
What do you get?
@futurebird The petrofaction ("keep extracting fossil carbon no matter what") sees the Arctic Ocean as the Next Big Thing, it's practically an interior sea like the Med if it wasn't frozen over and there's decades of Russian "and soon it will not be frozen over and it is ours" positioning.
Thing is, the Bering Strait is epicratonic (=shallow, over continental crust), it's not really suitable for major trade. The only really deep water access is Fram Strait.
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Can someone explain to me what Trump and the US Government or companies would be able to do if they "had Greenland" that they can't do right now?
Like, what are we talking about? It's going to be cold Puerto Rico? I'd say "well they could set up a military base" ... but we have that already?
Is this about mineral or drilling rights or something?
It's of course offensive nonsense, but I don't even get the point. And no one asks them.
What do you get?
@futurebird yes. Someone was explaining some of the problems that extraction would have. Climate etc plus that applies to shipping windows in the extremely short season.
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@futurebird The petrofaction ("keep extracting fossil carbon no matter what") sees the Arctic Ocean as the Next Big Thing, it's practically an interior sea like the Med if it wasn't frozen over and there's decades of Russian "and soon it will not be frozen over and it is ours" positioning.
Thing is, the Bering Strait is epicratonic (=shallow, over continental crust), it's not really suitable for major trade. The only really deep water access is Fram Strait.
@futurebird Fram is next to Greenland. So there's this economic fantasy about control of Atlantic access to the Arctic Ocean which means needing a strong territorial claim to something along the Greenland-Iceland-UK gap.
There's a belief that melting glaciers will just leave masses and masses of rock flour that can be scooped up and refined at low cost; there's another belief that the US should exert territorial control over the entire Western Hemisphere.
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@futurebird Fram is next to Greenland. So there's this economic fantasy about control of Atlantic access to the Arctic Ocean which means needing a strong territorial claim to something along the Greenland-Iceland-UK gap.
There's a belief that melting glaciers will just leave masses and masses of rock flour that can be scooped up and refined at low cost; there's another belief that the US should exert territorial control over the entire Western Hemisphere.
@futurebird There's a belief that NATO is a scam; the other NATO members are exploiting US defense funding so they don't have to spend, which is an economic advantage, and a huge fraction of (at least) Republicans feel like they're being ripped off and resent it bitterly. (Having to spend money instead of just stealing things is the worst thing that can happen to a mammonite.) They want to destroy NATO because they, personally, aren't getting money from it.
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@futurebird There's a belief that NATO is a scam; the other NATO members are exploiting US defense funding so they don't have to spend, which is an economic advantage, and a huge fraction of (at least) Republicans feel like they're being ripped off and resent it bitterly. (Having to spend money instead of just stealing things is the worst thing that can happen to a mammonite.) They want to destroy NATO because they, personally, aren't getting money from it.
@futurebird Putin's legacy grand strategy is a safe Russia, which means no other nuclear powers and control of the ice-free Arctic. That means breaking up alliances and taking over the government of any other nuclear power and ideally crashing their economy so hard they cannot maintain a credible deterrent. (In the Time of Angry Weather, that is a simple ambition.) So Putin's an input, but not the only input; "why shouldn't we steal it?" is home grown.
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@futurebird Putin's legacy grand strategy is a safe Russia, which means no other nuclear powers and control of the ice-free Arctic. That means breaking up alliances and taking over the government of any other nuclear power and ideally crashing their economy so hard they cannot maintain a credible deterrent. (In the Time of Angry Weather, that is a simple ambition.) So Putin's an input, but not the only input; "why shouldn't we steal it?" is home grown.
@futurebird It is important to note that this interior-sea vision of the ice free arctic is abject nonsense; it may well get there, but it doesn't get there on a timescale of human lifetimes, and there's nothing to eat in the meantime.
It's also important to note that the freebooting "we want it, we should take it" basis of policy is predicated on different material conditions than those which actually pertain.
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@futurebird It is important to note that this interior-sea vision of the ice free arctic is abject nonsense; it may well get there, but it doesn't get there on a timescale of human lifetimes, and there's nothing to eat in the meantime.
It's also important to note that the freebooting "we want it, we should take it" basis of policy is predicated on different material conditions than those which actually pertain.
@futurebird So, alas, it really does come down to a policy constructed by people who think greed is a virtue and who need loot to keep the illusion of prosperity going for the elites whose opinions they notice.
The actual fix in prosperity terms is to decarbonize, quickly and thoroughly. But this lot have been resisting that since the 70s because that would reduce their relative wealth and status and they're quite willing to immolate the world instead.
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@futurebird So, alas, it really does come down to a policy constructed by people who think greed is a virtue and who need loot to keep the illusion of prosperity going for the elites whose opinions they notice.
The actual fix in prosperity terms is to decarbonize, quickly and thoroughly. But this lot have been resisting that since the 70s because that would reduce their relative wealth and status and they're quite willing to immolate the world instead.
I wonder if over the short term it’s analogous to the point that @pluralistic has made about deliberate share price inflation by AI vendors.
All the world’s biggest private fossil/mining companies are sitting on assets which are in a superposition of being stranded. These same companies have the engineering expertise (in theory) to exploit Greenland. Merely ‘owning’ its assets is sufficient to provide a prop to share prices
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Can someone explain to me what Trump and the US Government or companies would be able to do if they "had Greenland" that they can't do right now?
Like, what are we talking about? It's going to be cold Puerto Rico? I'd say "well they could set up a military base" ... but we have that already?
Is this about mineral or drilling rights or something?
It's of course offensive nonsense, but I don't even get the point. And no one asks them.
What do you get?
Your CW ate into my character limit, so I've rewritten my response and posted it here.
https://mastodon.world/@ApostateEnglishman/115888012566269860
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@futurebird So, alas, it really does come down to a policy constructed by people who think greed is a virtue and who need loot to keep the illusion of prosperity going for the elites whose opinions they notice.
The actual fix in prosperity terms is to decarbonize, quickly and thoroughly. But this lot have been resisting that since the 70s because that would reduce their relative wealth and status and they're quite willing to immolate the world instead.
I think we're extremely lucky that the people who'd rather immolate the world simply do not have the self-control to not broadcast their intentions and seem to be able to only hamfistedly pursue their antisocial goals.
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Can someone explain to me what Trump and the US Government or companies would be able to do if they "had Greenland" that they can't do right now?
Like, what are we talking about? It's going to be cold Puerto Rico? I'd say "well they could set up a military base" ... but we have that already?
Is this about mineral or drilling rights or something?
It's of course offensive nonsense, but I don't even get the point. And no one asks them.
What do you get?
@futurebird
Natural resources, Greenland has some oil and lots of uranium and rare earths.Strategic value, it would give the regime a military foothold in the north oceans.
Willy-waving, he'd be The Big Man who conquered the Vikings.
Real estate, he likes the idea of owning land.
And finally, he's butthurt that he had a whim ("I want Greenland!") but people didn't fall all.over themselves to make it happen for him. He wants to.punish the nonbelievers.
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I think we're extremely lucky that the people who'd rather immolate the world simply do not have the self-control to not broadcast their intentions and seem to be able to only hamfistedly pursue their antisocial goals.
@johnzajac @futurebird Well, to a degree, but note that when they made that decision back in the 80s fossil carbon use started going up and is still going up; society is as much as possible organized to force you to buy gas.
The only reason we're in as hopeful a position as we are comes down to some Chinese engineers presenting a smog mitigation plan to the Central Committee back around 2000. (Thus a major economy decided to put money into Solar PV.)
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Can someone explain to me what Trump and the US Government or companies would be able to do if they "had Greenland" that they can't do right now?
Like, what are we talking about? It's going to be cold Puerto Rico? I'd say "well they could set up a military base" ... but we have that already?
Is this about mineral or drilling rights or something?
It's of course offensive nonsense, but I don't even get the point. And no one asks them.
What do you get?
@futurebird The point is that it's so obviously outrageous it helps keep the #EpsteinFiles out of the news
