Denmark Makes Claim To North Pole, Based On Undersea Geography 191
As reported by The Independent, A scientific study has found that Greenland is actually connected to the area beneath the polar ice where the North Pole lies – thanks to a huge stretch of continental crust known as the Lomonosov Ridge.
Since Greenland is a Danish territory, that gives the country the right to put its hat in the ring for ownership of the stretch of land, Denmark’s foreign minister [Martin Lidegaard ] said. ... Of the five Arctic countries – the US, Russia, Norway, Canada and Denmark —only Canada and Russia had indicated an interest in the North Pole territory until now. "This is a historical milestone for Denmark and many others as the area has an impact on the lives of lot of people. After the U.N. panel had taken a decision based on scientific data, comes a political process," Lidegaard told The Associated Press in an interview on Friday. "I expect this to take some time. An answer will come in a few decades. Why such a big deal? As Business Insider notes, The U.S. currently estimates that the Arctic sea bed could contain 15% of the earth's remaining oil, along with 30% of the planet's natural gas and 20% of its liquefied natural gas. Whichever country is able to successfully claim the Arctic would have the right to extract these resources.
Unbelievable! (Score:2)
Uh, sorry! Forget! I was just dreaming!
Unbelievable! (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, denmark, for example, is focused on renewables. Doesn't mean they don't want to be the ones pumping up the oil and selling it. You can do other things with oil besides burning it also. I wouldn't put it past the danes to claim it as theirs and then not pump it in the name of protecting the arctic. They just might be altruistic enough.
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No, they'll just put a wind turbine on top of the oil derrick and proclaim it to be green. My understanding is that, in spite of all the green talk, Denmark has a pretty high per capita CO2 emission rate.
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No, they'll just put a wind turbine on top of the oil derrick and proclaim it to be green. My understanding is that, in spite of all the green talk, Denmark has a pretty high per capita CO2 emission rate.
Define "pretty high"
CO2 emissions per country [worldbank.org]
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I'd guess a combination of a small population and a large petrochemical industry pushes them up in the rankings (note that the rankings in question are per-capita).
Being a small island probablly doesn't help, in particular small islands are often short on fresh water which pushed them to energy intensive desalination. It can also make it difficult to achive economies of scale in power generation.
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Chemical industry in general. Emissions generated on export production should count partly against the importing nation.
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Well, denmark, for example, is focused on renewables. Doesn't mean they don't want to be the ones pumping up the oil and selling it. You can do other things with oil besides burning it also. I wouldn't put it past the danes to claim it as theirs and then not pump it in the name of protecting the arctic. They just might be altruistic enough.
They're not altruistic enough to leave the current oil in the ground [wikipedia.org] I don't see why this oil would be different.
Sure they may delay a few years, but people tend to be a lot more altruistic when it isn't costing much. The moment I point out you're sitting on a ton of oil is the moment you start to rationalize reasons that pumping oil isn't so bad.
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Re:Unbelievable! (Score:5, Insightful)
Energy diversity.
Renewables are great sources of energy... But they are not perfect.
Fossil fuels have their problems, but they do complement the gaps that renewables have.
Renewables have the problem of portability. Some like wind and hydro electric needs to be located in the proper areas where they can get a reliable energy from. Others like solar do not offer 24/7 support. Batteries do not have the energy density that we get out of fossil fuel, and takes much longer to recharge.
Right now with our current technology I can see Renewables replacing many of the power plants out there. Which will do a big cut in greenhouse gas emissions. However cars will still need to be hybrid gas/electric either the Toyota Prius style or the Chevy Volt style.
The idea of moving the population to local cities where they can use public transportation especially in less dense areas like the United States, just won't happen. If you tell the population that they need to move from their houses which they have put a lot of money in, and live in an area the matches how they want to live and go to a crowed loud crime ridden city, will cause a lot of people to put a gun to your face, whether or not it is legal to have guns.
So really energy diversity is the key, the goal is to reduce emissions, not just cut them off until we can get better alternatives to a point where we will not need fossil fuel.
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That's why the real future of portable fuel is synthetic fuel [wikipedia.org] (preferably from carbon sequestration or renewable sources, not coal).
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he idea of moving the population to local cities where they can use public transportation especially in less dense areas like the United States, just won't happen. If you tell the population that they need to move from their houses which they have put a lot of money in, and live in an area the matches how they want to live and go to a crowed loud crime ridden city, will cause a lot of people to put a gun to your face, whether or not it is legal to have guns.
bah. Worked out well for Stalin, didn't it?
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why does it have to be either or to some people?
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More like ten or twenty million years. We need some more global warming, much more plant matter growth (think algae mats meters deep for millions of years), then significant tectonic activity in just the right way.
So definitely renewable. But time lines matter.
Bad link in summary (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Bad link in summary (Score:4, Interesting)
Santa's gonna be PISSED (Score:5, Funny)
You're officially on the naughty list, you Danish bastards!
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Every child in the world knows where to write and where Santa lives ..
Santa Claus
North Pole
Canada
HOH OHO
( real address )
Can a billion kids be wrong ? North Pole is Canada and people saying otherwise better be ready for the kids uprising of the millenia.
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No idjit. It's in Alaska. Now, if you ask most Alaskans, we'd rather Alaska be part of Canada (except for the guns). We are patiently awaiting an invasion of stealth snowmobiles [www.cbc.ca].
Please.
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Sorry about that. But I am not sure about the oil.
The official danish position is that there is no oil at all in the newly claimed area. (Yes that is a direct quote from our foreign minister).
(Now with logged in user).
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You're officially on the naughty list, you Danish bastards!
Yeah .. but everybody gets sump'n from Sump'n Claus [nbc.com]
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Santa's got to pay the danegeld like every one else. We're back, in case You didn't get the memo.
Re:SantaSo what?'s gonna be PISSED (Score:2)
Let me reply on behalf of those naughty Danish:
THEN, SEND US COAL.
Sooo... (Score:2)
What reason are we going to make up to invade the arctic? -_-
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The same one as always ... the presence of oil.
Oh, you mean the public reason? Well, don't bother, we all know it's oil.
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we'll come up with something after we waterboard Santa.
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Well, that might be the reason we *do* it, but it will never sell to the public. Hey, what about those polar terrorist-bears. You see photos them all the time of them heading south on chunks of sea ice - what do you imagine they'd do if they made it here? Clearly we must liberate the Arctic for democracy, that will fix everything! Heck, without those damn bears breaking up the sea ice to try to attack America it'll even stop the melting of the ice sheet.
duh, it doesn't have to be complicated (Score:2)
Re:duh, it doesn't have to be complicated (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not how international law about exclusive economic zones works, because there's not a convenient pole between every disputed area in the world (and why the pole anyway, what not say the center of the arctic ocean?). One doesn't carve out a brand new approach just for this one dispute. As much as I'm sure Russia would want them too, since they'd get half of the arctic ocean.
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The only people who think it doesn't need to be complicated are the simple; any method of splitting the Artic and its resources would have winners and losers, and the losers are likely to oppose it. Any fool can come up with a way of splitting land up, getting it accepted by dozens or hundreds of countries...
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You are not cutting in China for a slice. There was a news article a year or so ago where the Chinese government made the case for why they should get a slice of the Arctic. Given their absurd claims to the S. China Sea, they probably believe they are entitled to a slice of the Arctic as well.
underwater ridges (Score:5, Insightful)
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Does Denmark... (Score:5, Interesting)
... honestly think that they can keep Greenland under their thumb for that long? Greenland already doesn't want to be part of Denmark - 75% voted for independence in a nonbinding referrendum in 2008 with a 72% turnout. The wealthier they become and the greater the percentage of the wealth that Denmark siphons away, the more they're going to want it. If Greenland and its EEZ start raking in trillions of dollars annually (which is the sort of mineral wealth up for grabs), how low in the single-digits do you think the popularity of remaining part of Denmark will be? For every trillion of GDP that'd be nearly $17M per capita, at Greenland's current population.
Is Denmark going to force Greenland to stay with them by the gun?
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Well, it worked for the United States....
Re:Does Denmark... (Score:5, Informative)
No, Denmark is going to let Greenland be independent as soon as they want to. The sooner the better.
But Greenland can't afford that right now.
75% of the income for Greenland, is direct economic support from Denmark. Think about that: They would lose 75% of their income without Denmark, which is the only reason they are not independent yet.
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This is false. Greenland's GDP is 2,3 billion USD. The subsidy is under 700M USD. They would lose about a third of their GDP if the subsidy cut off. On the other hand, they would also stop *paying* about that much in taxes to Denmark.
People in Greenland voted overwhelmingly to terms that called for eliminating the subsidy, in exchange for Denmark butting the heck out of their land.
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If there suddenly is real industry, do you think the population will stay in the 50k range? I think an influx of Danes etc., large enough to significantly change the demographics, is likely. They might not vote the same way...
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You have to take nonbinding referenda with a grain of salt. It's easy to wave the flag and claim nationalism when you don't have to deal with the difficulties of actually running a country when you do.
I'm not saying that the Greenlanders don't genuinely want independence. I'm just saying that 75% is the high-water mark. At least 25% genuinely don't want independence, and that were it to come down to a binding vote, they could well find another 26% who get cold feet at the prospect of having to deal with the
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Only half of Americans typically turn out to vote in binding presidential elections. 72% of Greenlanders turned out to vote in the *non-binding* referrendum on independence. I'd say that's some pretty serious interest. Even if every last Greenlander who didn't show up didn't want independence, they *still* wouldn't be in majority.
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... honestly think that they can keep Greenland under their thumb for that long? Greenland already doesn't want to be part of Denmark - 75% voted for independence in a nonbinding referrendum in 2008 with a 72% turnout. The wealthier they become and the greater the percentage of the wealth that Denmark siphons away, the more they're going to want it. If Greenland and its EEZ start raking in trillions of dollars annually (which is the sort of mineral wealth up for grabs), how low in the single-digits do you think the popularity of remaining part of Denmark will be? For every trillion of GDP that'd be nearly $17M per capita, at Greenland's current population.
Is Denmark going to force Greenland to stay with them by the gun?
The part of Greenland inhabited by greenlanders can secede all they want. It is the large uninhabitet area that has all the resources, and the only ones living there are Danish scientists and military.
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Oh, so Denmark is going to pull a Putin and cut off whatever sections of Greenland it wants for itself?
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The terms of the vote made pretty clear what the people of Greenland want. It was to terminate Danish subsidy, remove Danish as an official language, take full control of Greenland and Greenlandic waters (even foreign policy), take control of the majority of the mineral royalties, etc. So even they don't end up with, say, a UN seat, it's still pretty hard to say that's not "independence".
And there are Danish politicians who have made clear that they don't think Greenland should be let loose.
That much oil... (Score:5, Funny)
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Dammit, I hate those special pieces. They're like cheating.
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Monetary capital can be converted into oil, which can be sold for far more money than initially spent. And neither Russia nor Canada have much reason to pursue renewables - global warming will be converting countless acres of frozen tundra into much more human-hospitable terrain over the next centuries, so fossil fuels are a resource that benefits them twice... though Canada may have to worry about be annexed by the US, if we're still a major military power by then.
And human capital is cheap - we reproduce
Frightening (Score:2)
15% of the earth's remaining oil, along with 30% of the planet's natural gas and 20% of its liquefied natural gas
I wonder how long this will last us. 50 years? 100?
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First one there (Score:2)
I was taught in school that Robert Peary of the US was the first one that got there, doesn't that give USA a claim
How about International? (Score:2)
We have International waters and an International space station, why not declare the North Pole as being International land? Just get all the Arctic countries to sign up on that and we're good to go.
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Land huh? :)
Just to be clear ... (Score:2)
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First, "the guys who find, extract, move, refine and ultimately sell it to us" are typically several different companies, only the biggest companies have that kind of vertical integration, and they rely on third parties for a lot of those tasks, anyway. Second,
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And here's your citation: Oil Company Earnings: Reality Over Rhetoric [forbes.com] for th
We'll see if Grotius was right (Score:2)
The world of geopolitics are much more Hobbesian "red in tooth and claw" - certainly there are international "laws" but considering that a) being subject to them is entirely voluntary and b) there are no punishments for law-breakers beyond what other states are willing to exert, "international law" is more like a voluntary coordination of diplomatic efforts than an actual binding structure of laws. I know it didn't help Ukraine for shit (bye Crimea!), and is unlikely to do much for the Philippines or Vietn
Uh,.. sure... (Score:3)
I'm sure the large and powerful Danish Navy will have no trouble enforcing that claim...
IMO.... (Score:2)
First some facts. I once looked this stuff up because when I was a kid, I was try8ing to figure out which nationality Santa Claus would be. It happens to be the case that the northernmost point on land in Greenland is 440 miles from the North Pole, the northernmost point on land in Canada is 472 miles from the North Pole, and the northernmost point on land in Russia is 493 miles from the North pole.
Canada and Russia are both independently sovereign, which I think gives their claims to the pole more cred
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Ah, you forget Putin's dickski, it is waaaaay long enough to reach North Poleski with foots left over!!
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It gets even funnier. That "~ski" ending of the family names is actually Polish, not Russian. Pole-ish, get it?
mining companies salivating at Greenland (Score:2)
A dose of Realism. (Score:5, Interesting)
Canadian here. Much of the "ownership" of the north is symbolic. The ownership is in most ways determined by use (of the lack thereof). This is why there are stupid islands that Canadian and Danish forces regularly visit, even if in dispute, as they can claim they still "use" it. Even if like the moon, it is only to set foot on the barren rock and plant a flag for symbolism. The folks sent there I think have about the right attitude about the whole practice as I recall, Canadian forces leaving booze for the Danes to find, and likewise they would leave booze for the Canadians.
This is why I thought Stephen Harper was such an idiot on this topic. When talking about the ownership of the North, he decided that he should do a pork project to build "Ice Hardened" warships in the idea of protecting our claim to the North (As if they are going to fire on anything but perhaps some arctic seals). They are however of a Finnish design, and are basically armored corvettes. Unless however the polar ice gets very very thin and all but vanishes however, they are not going to be very capable. What we should have done was expanded and improved our fleet of real ice breakers.
As I hate to say it, but all the UN and other countries can say what you will, but only one country currently really has claim, the same one with the largest fleet of icebreakers in the world, the only one to actually build nuclear ice breakers, and has a fleet of 12 or so of them. As when it comes down to having the capability of actually using the north for anything, they are the only ones that really can effectively. Even if you say with the weakening of polar ice, that will take time, and the only country that will be able to take advantage of it first (and make a claim) will be Russia.
Canada should be building ice breakers not warships if they really wish to protect their claim on the north.
Vikings Plunder Santa's Oil (Score:2)
Or that's how I think the headlines should read.
Operation Danish Freedom, HELL YEAH! (Score:2)
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Denmark is a member of NATO, so if the US attacked Denmark militarily, the US (along with the rest of NATO) would be obligated to come to Denmark's aid and repel the aggressors.
Greenland Liberation (Score:2)
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It worked in Panama...
Re:No one gets the oil! (Score:4, Insightful)
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No, sorry, I've been too busy learning about archaeology from reading papers published in the 1800s and reading about how physics works by reading the works of the ancient Greeks.
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Now now, Rei, don't exaggerate. US science education sucks, but most people are taught Civil-War Era physics. None of that relativity or quantum stuff that's over 100 years old now, of course, that's too scary, but we do an OK job of teaching 150-year-old science!
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Over 100 years old is a bit of a stretch, the foundation of modern quantum physics was laid mostly in the 1920s...so "nearly 100 years old" might be better.
Realistically though, the reason classical physics is the basic physical foundation laid for most students is simply that it is tremendously easier to understand and calculate and is basically "correct" for 99.999% of things people encounter in their real lives. Schools already teach far too many things which are somewhat useless later in life, why shou
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People don't encounter evolution in their daily lives either, excepting the Flu, but I find it rather important to teach (more stuff in that 100-150 window).
Relativity and QM are easy enough to teach qualitatively (and the math for SR for many examples is simple algebra). There's a host of people who don't believe either, who think modern physics is a hoax, because it contradicts the physics they were taught in school. We should really be teaching "an electron is not like a particle, nor like a wave, but
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Macroscopic analogies help people envision what one's talking about, though. Saying "an electron does its own thing" doesn't really help people conceive just what that "thing" is.
I think the basic macroscopic analogy for particle/wave duality is to just go with the pilot wave theory and have them picture a boat bobbing along on a frictionless lake, where its wake is so powerful and so fast-responding that it steers the boat, and it never dies out - the boat creates the wake but is governed by it. There's ev
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"Over 100 years old is a bit of a stretch"
IParent is not specifically talking about quantum mechanics, just non-classic physics. Special Relativity paper comes from 1905 and the general one, 1915.
Classical physics can be pointed back to Newton: 1687.
"is basically "correct" for 99.999%"
It is not. It is utterly wrong. It just happens to throw the right numbers most of the time.
"until then the classic approximation is pretty good for high school work."
It is not. It would be much better to explain non-class
Re:No one gets the oil! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Feel free to cite the actual scientific papers predicting global cooling, as opposed to media hype about some speculation at the time.
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You're regurgitating complete [time.com] nonsense [archive.is].
No, I was not. Once again, you misrepresent my words.
Nowhere above did I write that "a majority of papers" supported global cooling. I merely pointed out the established truth that it was taken seriously. And again: the cited announcement by National Academy of Sciences is not "nonsense". It, too, is real.
Stop misrepresenting my words, then making straw-man arguments against me. That is dishonest. I have mentioned this to you many times before. Learn how to make an honest argument, or go the hell away
Let the voters decide! (Score:2)
I think this is an issue that should be decided by the citizens of the North Pole. Just chain a slotted box to the pole (so the wind doesn't blow it away). Come back in 10 years and count the votes. Oh, there's not actually a pole there?
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Go ask them [northpolealaska.com].
You might want to wait until after Christmas, they're a bit busy now.
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Denmark's play was a grab for the assets of financially troubled toymaker Claus Industries. Little did they know that Claus had already solved his problems by relocating to Shenzhen.
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In other news Britain makes claim to Northern Ireland, Jersey, Guernsy and the Falkland Islands based on "undersea Geography". And the British crown will refuse to discuss the matter.
Why stop there - we could claim the whole Afro-Eurasia landmass.
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and the Falkland Islands
"Ok, ok; if we call them the Malvinas, will you shut up?"
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Speaking of which, never underestimate the tensions those Danish have, eh? They sent a war ship when Canada "investigated" an island besides Greenland. The Russians have already put their metaphorical flag on the sea bridge, so the war will be fought between the Royal Danish Marines and Imperial Russian Fleet. Canada can only ask forgiveness and stay clear until an opening is discovered in the defensive posture of either countries as the war consumes both sides, eh? Or perhaps Norway can broker a deal separ
Greenland is part of North America (Score:2)
If they discover oil you better believe Greenlanders will vote for independence from Denmark the only stumbling block for
greenland independence has been financial.
Greenlands population is 56,000. A billion dollars worth of oil pumped a year would be about $20,000 a person.
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what on earth does denmark gain from having greenland as a territory? Other than PHP, what ever came out of Greenland?
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Ice for cocktails. In a few years, they'll have cornered the cocktail market, at least the part that relies on ice. Those Danes are sneaky devils.
Re:Resources are not claimed by countries (Score:5, Funny)
Obligatory. [xkcd.com]
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All thanks to Burns Slant-Drilling Co.
Tito Puente!
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I doubt they expect to be able to actually hold onto a claim for the area; however, if they have an arguably legitimate claim under the current rules, that can probably be leveraged into concessions on matters of less pressing significance. The time-honored "pay me to go away" strategy. And with Greenland sitting right there, primed to suffer the ill effects of the inevitable oil spills, they may even deserve to be.
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The US has strategic interest in Denmark getting this oil: providing Europe with a cheap alternative to Russian oil and natural gas. The US can't leverage the deposits for the same purpose nearly as easily as the Danish can.