> President Donald Trump has renewed his efforts to take over Greenland, and tapping into the Danish territory’s natural resources is a key part of the strategy.
It is not "taking over" or "annexing". It is invading. A military ally, at that.
And it is not "tapping into [...] natural resources". It is plundering their natural resources.
None of these hypotheticals are consensual. There is no plan for a freely agreed-upon bilateral agreement. This is about invading and pillaging a foreign land. Whether it is Greenland, Canada, or any other country.
Nobody is talking about how less than 1% of the Epstein files have been released weeks past the deadline after Venezuela, ICE in Minneapolis and Greenland.
> It’s not invading, yet. Just buying or psyopping is more likely than fighting NATO.
Threatening to invade (which the Trump administration has been explicitly doing) is about as damaging as invading in the long run, either way we have sent the message loud and clear that the US is no longer a reliable ally and everyone has to shift away from the post-WW2 world order.
I find it funny that they could simply exit the Antarctic treaty and take over Antarctica and gain more value. There's plenty of good stuff under that ice too. It's very likely that it's got his favorite mineral of all: gold.
Don’t give governments bad ideas —surely the treaty will collapse one day and the big powers will divvy it up and push out the has been powers from the playground… but let’s keep things as they are as long as possible.
If “non experts” aren’t welcome, can you establish your expertise on the topic? In particular, what’s your experience with mining thorough ice or maintaining industrial operations in the Arctic or near-arctic conditions?
What examples of digging through that amount of ice for the purposes of mining are you familiar with? What's a good example?
It'd be interesting to understand how much the environment there increases the cost of mining. Anything is possible, but it'd be cool to know whether it makes any sense. (and yes, I think our leadership in the US is fully capable of causing an international crisis over mineral assets that would in financial terms be best left in the ground)
The main problem with ice, is that it moves all the time. The glaciers on Iceland move up to 46m per day. Also, any tunnel created in fast moving ice could easily be crushed by the pressure of the ice.
Greenland isn't entirely covered in ice. Take a look at any of the mineral resources maps floating around for the country. Everything's on the coastal margins in places only covered by seasonal snow. The interior is a big blank because no one's been able to search under the ice.
However, the adjacent Canadian provinces (Nunavut & Northern Labrador) share many of the same geologic provinces, also without significant glaciation. There aren't a lot of big mines up there relative to the mineral wealth because it's simply too challenging. Constructing big infrastructure in the arctic takes resources approaching nation-state levels. Most mining companies can't muster that or maintain it long-term.
Don’t modern mines remove everything over a very large area? It’s not tunnels and pickaxes any longer. The trucks are the size of a three story building.
Start with a few bunker busting bombs, work outside of winter, dump ice, dirt into ocean. Sounds plausible.
You can do both, but why would you? It's not like we've tapped out Australia. And until we have, why bother with Greenland if the same money invested in Australia, or Sweden, or Canada would yield more profit?
Maybe, people previously thought it was not worth it to mine in greenland and thats why there is no noticable mining operation. But what do i know about cost-ratio or thinking.
I'm glad the resident HN tech bros are also Arctic mining experts. Surely they wouldn't complain about non-experts writing clickbaity articles while making claims with no evidence themselves.
> President Donald Trump has renewed his efforts to take over Greenland, and tapping into the Danish territory’s natural resources is a key part of the strategy.
It is not "taking over" or "annexing". It is invading. A military ally, at that.
And it is not "tapping into [...] natural resources". It is plundering their natural resources.
None of these hypotheticals are consensual. There is no plan for a freely agreed-upon bilateral agreement. This is about invading and pillaging a foreign land. Whether it is Greenland, Canada, or any other country.
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