Word: greenland
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Gore warns that the sea level will rise 20 ft. when parts of West Antarctica or Greenland melt, but Burton calls this "distinctly alarmist" and says it will take thousands of years for this type of melting to transpire...
What happens when they find it is another matter. Right now, Greenland and Denmark have 50-50 rights to profits from Greenland's natural resources. Securing full rights to administer the oil, gas and minerals harvested from their land and water has been a recurring theme among Greenlanders who want greater sovereignty, but talks about whether the territory will take over sole rights are currently stalled. And in August Denmark sent a crew of some 40 scientists on a technically unprecedented mission to explore whether a ridge beneath the North Pole was geologically linked to their territory...
...harvesting whatever Greenland's icy waters may yield - not to mention the resources under the polar cap - is a long way off. The sea ice is still too thick in most places to access reserves that may or may not exist, and the technology to drill in these inhospitable conditions is not there yet. "If anybody has reached anything, we haven't heard about it," says Mr. Steen Ryd Larsen, who heads the department in charge of Greenland in the Danish Prime Minister's office. "And if somebody reaches the resources, it would be another decade before it generates income...
...some independence-minded Greenlanders, that's just fine. The thought of big nations finding yet another vested interest in their landscape isn't universally thrilling in Greenland, which has been a strategic military outpost for the U.S. and Denmark since the Cold War. Inuit hunters were displaced when the American military set up camp at the Thule Air Base on the island's northwest shore in the 1950s, and Inuit hunters were the first to be exposed when a B-52 carrying hydrogen bombs crashed near the base in 1968. "We are fragile, both in terms of the climate crisis...
Still, having the world's ear isn't all bad news. Earlier this month, Lynge saw the United Nations adopt the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, an effort over 20 years in the making for him. And Jakobsen says the process of negotiating with Denmark has made Greenland savvier about their place in the international community. "[People] know more than they knew before. ... They are more ready for a change," he says. "They are waiting for someone to pop up and say, 'Yes, this is the way we should go. Follow...