This morning, I'm pairing the famous RFK quote with the coat of arms of Greenland.
ADDED: Picture the map of the world with Greenland as the 51st state:
What a legacy for the real-estate mogul!
AND: If what they're saying about global warming is true, Greenland is the place to which the entire population of the United States could relocate. If we bought Alaska from Russia, why can't we buy Greenland from Denmark? We're already using Greenland for military purposes — there's an air force base — and our military protects Europe....
ALSO: The Mercator projection is like the wide-angle lens in real-estate photos on Zillow.
MORE: From "Trump Eyes U.S. Buying Greenland" in The Wall Street Journal:
The idea of the U.S. purchasing Greenland has captured the former real-estate developer's imagination, according to people familiar with the discussion, who said Mr. Trump has, with varying degrees of seriousness, repeatedly expressed interest in buying the ice-covered autonomous Danish territory....It's a great topic for conversation. There's even potential for racial politics, I think. Trump seems to love the Nordic places (in contrast to "shithole countries")?
Some of his advisers have supported the concept, saying it would be a good economic play, two of the people said, while others dismissed it as a fleeting fascination. It is also unclear how the U.S. would go about acquiring Greenland even if the effort were serious.
With a population of about 56,000, Greenland is a self-ruling part of the Kingdom of Denmark, and while its government decides on most domestic matters, foreign and security policy is handled by Copenhagen....Truman tried to buy it! Trump endeavors to close the deal that was Truman's! If Greenland is draining $591 million a year from Denmark, they should pay us for taking it off their hands and taking care of it well and preventing China from acquiring dominance. But if China is so ambitious in Greenland, Denmark should wait for a good bidding war between the world's 2 superpowers. And every year gets us closer to the global warming disaster that will make Greenland the most desirable place on earth. In that light, Denmark should hold on as the landlord, charging exorbitant rents and until things become so catastrophic that Greenland is snatched away from them by military force.
U.S. officials view Greenland as important to American national-security interests. A treaty between Denmark and the U.S. gives the U.S. military virtually unlimited rights in Greenland at America's Thule Air Base. Located 750 miles north of the Arctic Circle, it includes a radar station that is part of a U.S. ballistic missile warning system.
The U.S. has sought to derail Chinese efforts to gain an economic foothold in Greenland. The Pentagon worked successfully in 2018 to block China from financing three airports on the island.
People outside the White House have described purchasing Greenland as an Alaska-type acquisition for Mr. Trump's legacy, advisers said...
Greenland relies on $591 million of subsidies from Denmark annually, which make up about 60% of its annual budget, according to U.S. and Danish government statistics. Greenland is culturally and politically linked to Europe. Following World War II, the U.S. under President Harry Truman developed a geopolitical interest in Greenland and in 1946 offered to buy it from Denmark for $100 million. Denmark refused to sell.
At a dinner with associates last spring, Mr. Trump said someone had told him Denmark was having financial trouble over its assistance to Greenland, and suggested that he should consider buying the island, according to one of the people. "What do you guys think about that?" he asked the room, the person said.PLUS: Kudos to the stable genius if he floated this idea intending to get his antagonists to declare it stupid and knowing that on further examination it would actually make enough sense to intrigue us to talk about this rather that whatever the hell we were talking about before this came up. I see WaPo is getting ahead of the curve with "Trump reportedly wants to buy Greenland. So did the Truman administration" (by Antonia Noori Farzan):
The person described the question less as a serious inquiry than as a joke meant to indicate "I'm so powerful I could buy a country," noting that since Mr. Trump hadn't floated the idea at a campaign rally yet, he probably wasn't seriously considering it.
The person believed the president was interested in the idea because of the island's natural resources and because it would give him a legacy akin to President Dwight Eisenhower's admission of Alaska into the U.S. as a state....
[The idea of the U.S. buying Greenland] was first floated in the 1860s, when a report commissioned by the State Department under President Andrew Johnson concluded that the icebound island’s abundance of fish and mineral resources could make it a valuable investment.
And in 1946, President Harry Truman’s administration went even further, offering to purchase Greenland from Denmark in exchange for $100 million in gold.
“People have forgotten about how important places like Greenland were in the Cold War,” said Ronald E. Doel, an associate professor of history at Florida State University and a co-editor of “Exploring Greenland: Cold War Science and Technology on Ice.”...
In the late 1940s, the Soviet Union had just become the United States’ main adversary. The shortest distance between the two rival powers was over the North Pole, and the Arctic region started to look like a potential battleground. Greenland sat practically dead center between the population centers of the United States and several major cities in the U.S.S.R. To Pentagon strategists, that made Greenland a valuable piece of real estate. If the Soviets launched an attack, American bombers stationed on the island would already be halfway to Moscow....
[R]esearchers weren’t quite sure how the northern lights, known as the aurora borealis, would affect navigational equipment and radio dispatches, or if the ice cap would muffle the seismic signals if the Soviets conducted nuclear tests. By 1946, “practically every member” of the planning and strategy committee of the Joint Chiefs of Staff agreed that the United States should try to buy Greenland, John Hickerson, a State Department official, wrote in a memo. The consensus among the group was that the territory was “completely worthless to Denmark,” he reported, and “indispensable to the safety of the United States.”...
And though Denmark’s government hasn’t suggested that it would be interested in putting Greenland up for sale, the notion of a U.S. takeover has reared its head occasionally since then. In the 1970s, Vice President Nelson Rockefeller reportedly suggested buying Greenland for its mineral resources....
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158 comments:
Trump certainly has a creative mind. He’s just taunting Vladimir.
The Left will certainly conclude Trump is crazy. Or racist.
The original quote comes from the Devil, in a play written by George Bernard Shaw, Back to Methuselah. John Kennedy used the quote in an address to the Irish Parliament shortly before his assassination in 1963. And yet, despite these well known antecedents, Robert Kennedy gets all the credit for it.
Perhaps the dullest, most childish inspirational quote of all time.
Seriously challenges Lennon’s “Imagine” for silly twaddle.
Spoiled brat blabbing.
Ted Sorensen, from Nebraska, wrote the line for JFK.
"Ted Sorenson" is gaelic for "Blue Bear."
You made me look up what is going on.
Master-level trolling -- and yet, I have to think this could be a good idea, if the US could afford it, which it probably cannot.
Sorry, that's "Polar Bear on Blue"
Since we are all going to burn up due to global warming, this is actually a great idea. The Dems should embrace it.
The Danes have negative interest rates so this is a smart interest rate and valuation arbitrage by Trump.
Seward's Folly redux. Trump's Green New Deal.
A whole new merchandising opportunity. Make Greenland Great Again. MGGA
MadisonMan: We just pay with T Bills! And the dollar is the reserve currency for the world. Trump knows real estate!
Buy Greenland and send our feminist harridans there to create their bitter, cold Utopia.
They can outlaw hard-ons and wallow in feminist porn day and night.
Why is that a white bear? Why not a black bear!! Freaking Greenland racists!!
Why not indeed.. :)
I've analyzed that RFK quote more than once on this blog.
Last March: "RFK adopted those words as the theme for the presidential campaign that ended in his death. The words are nearly identical to words that George Bernard Shaw had the serpent say to Eve in the play "Back to Methuselah": "You see things; and you say 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say 'Why not?'""
And June 2018: "Writing the last line of this post, I thought of the line associated with Robert F. Kennedy, "There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?" I say "associated" because: 'Though Kennedy stated that he was quoting George Bernard Shaw when he said this, he is often thought to have originated the expression, which actually paraphrases a line delivered by the Serpent in Shaw's play Back To Methuselah: “You see things; and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say, ‘Why not?’". This phrase was first used by his brother John F. Kennedy in 1963 (June 28th), during his visit to Ireland, in his address to the Irish Dail (Government): "George Bernard Shaw, speaking as an Irishman, summed up an approach to life, 'Other people, he said, see things and say why? But I dream things that never were and I say, why not?"... Robert's other brother Edward famously quoted it (paraphrasing it even further), to conclude his eulogy to his late brother after his assassination (8 June 1968): "Some men see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say why not?""
AND: The Serpent?! Maybe we should read this play. I've never read the whole thing, but here's the whole text. Let's get some context for that quote. As you've already guessed, we're in the Garden of Eden...." Text from the play appears in the linked post.
This quote is brain dead stupid, and here’s why.
The great minds of my generation imagined real, concrete physical things and then invented them.
This was almost entirely the work of men. Transistors, memory chips, cell phones, etc.
This imagining shit is cheap and easy. It’s for morons. Four year olds do it.
Make something happen in reality. That’s what men do. Women (and Kennedys) wallow in self-pity porn.
In the Mercator projection, Greenland looks yuge.
It puts the lie to Global Warming theology.
If European states really believe in Global Warming Doom, why haven't they made an offer to Denmark to buy Greenland?
The Mercator Projection Map is the wrong way to look at Greenland. The farther from the equator, the more distorted the map becomes. Greenland is big but not near as big as this map shows.
"Why not?"
Usually conservation of energy.
Clearly Trump’s trying to add a white state.
Probably to offshore the asylum seekers.
#ThinkLikeBeto
"An African in Greenland", Tete-Michel Kpomassie
Why does Greenland use blue on their coat of arms?
Oso Negro, 6:39:
In fact, the Mercator projection has already been called racist, for exaggerating the scale of northern countries relative to more equatorial ones. (Thomas Sowell poured scorn on this about twenty years ago.)
It will be a "native American" state.
Most there are Esquimaux/Inuit
The Flat earth guys use a map that makes Greenland the center of the world. That would appeal to a real estate sales Mogul. Then The Donald could threaten to divert the Gulf Stream to his Greenland Acres Development unless the EU pays us to buy it back. After all, it is OUR Gulf Stream waters that are keeping Europe from freezing over and we get nothing for it.
Seriously, the idea is to block China from militarizing the Atlantic Ocean. The Chinks have already taken the South China Sea.
Secretary of State, “We're entering a new age of strategic engagement in the Arctic," he said, "complete with new threats to the Arctic and its real estate, and to all of our interests in that region."
He did not shy from naming these threats to real estate: China and Russia.”
"In the Mercator projection, Greenland looks yuge."
The Mercator projection is the best projection, the most beautiful projection. Everyone says that. I was just looking at the map and I thought, Gee! The Mercator project is a great projection!
You could name something there Mount McKinley. Do a Mount Rushmore in ice with better presidents.
Greenland costs Denmark 500 million a year.
It’s like a timeshare Denmark never uses and can’t afford.
Mercator also increases the size of people, so there's no more space there.
It has serious natural resources. China is already there and interested in a larger presence, and of course China could bribe or bully Denmark into allowing a military base. A purchase would ensure we kept China out.
Pompeo then expressed dismay over Russian claims to the "international waters of the Northern Sea Route" as well as other "provocative actions" and aggressive behavior. He mentioned Russia's illegal demand that other nations request its permission to use the route and the Kremlin's threats to attack commercial ships that ignore its demands. (The Northern Sea Route is the segment of the Northeast Passage along Russia's Arctic coastline.)”
Also, Rare Earth elements to mine.
This is a great idea! We also probably pay rent for that air base. Buy, don’t rent.
August was once considered "The Silly Season" in journalism. It was when outlandish tales, tongue in cheek stories, etc were trotted out. Nobody really took them seriously, they were in any event off busily enjoying the waning days of summer.
Now the news cycle is measured not in weeks and months but in seconds. So "Buying Greenland" could run any time. Oh, probably a good idea to not attempt to "sell" it in a bitter cold January.
Anyway, I don't think it could go directly to being a state. Does it not first have to be a territory, then reach a certain population level? Some places like American Samoa (rather the Anti-Greenland) have about the same population as Greenland and seem content to participate in American public life by sending us lots of football players and having primary elections that sound more appealing than visiting Vermont.
TW
Gnomonic projection!! Greenland is about 3.5 times the size of Texas.
Greenland has ice, but Iceland is green.
(7th Grade geography class, Oakland, CA)
We could offer to give them Baltimore, Maryland in exchange for Greenland. And actually the idea to try and annex / acquire Greenland is a good one. None of the recent presidents had any good ideas that I can remember.
To start with, Greenland is Norse territory and not for Denmark to sell.
But then the Louisiana Purchase was not Napoleon's to sell either, not even the portion he thought he had sold, and certainly not the vast area that Jefferson claimed he had bought. However, after Waterloo, none of that mattered.
Today, Denmark can either continue the present arrangement as long as the Greenlanders agree, or turn them loose to face the world on their own.
Stop projecting your Mercator on me!
Blogger DeVere said...
It has serious natural resources. China is already there and interested in a larger presence, and of course China could bribe or bully Denmark into allowing a military base. A purchase would ensure we kept China out.
8/16/19, 6:55 AMBuying it isn't enough. Guns and only guns (big ones, yuge ones) would keep China out.
If the glaciers melt, the interior of Greenland will be under water.
Trump should open up a few casinos and ski resorts on Greenland. If you can't ski there, then a massive ice skating rink plus vast outdoor bar with heat lamps - kinda like what he did in Centrak Park. M
Also a cold-ass penal colony a la Australia might be good, too.
Trumanesque.
If the glaciers melt, the interior of Greenland will be under water.
The interior of Greenland is under water today.
Plus, we'd have Canada surrounded! It would just be a matter of time before we had our 52nd state (unless we made each province a state.)
The news story has been misreported, as most stories about the US are.
PDJT is not talking about the US buying Greenland. He is talking about buying it personally.
He'll carve out the good bits for himself and donate the rest to the us as a national park. Also military bases.
It will give him a hobby to putter with in 2025 when he retires.
Sort of like the Rockefellers did in St John with Caneel Bay resort. Also a former Danish Island.
Apparently Greenland only wants a billion or so. Certainly within the realm of private purchase.
John Henry
Prediction. At his next rally, Trump will ask the crowd if we should buy Greenland. The crowd goes wild. Chant, “Buy it! Buy it.”
Trump knows the asset is undervalued and can produce income for us. Genius!
As most stories about PDJT, not US in the first line
John Henry
It was called Greenland back in 1100 or so to attract settlers.
Branding is everything in real estate then and now.
John Henry
It wouldn't be a state with only 50,000 people. It would be a territory.
"If what they're saying about global warming is true, Greenland is the place to which the entire population of the United States could relocate."
And we'd be the immigrants! Trump could have written many of these lyrics!
Immigrant Song
So now you'd better stop and rebuild all your ruins
For peace and trust can win the day despite all of your losing
W'ell drive our ships to new lands
To fight the horde, and sing and cry
Valhalla, I am coming!
On we sweep with threshing oar
Our only goal will be the western shore
Ah-ah, ah!
Ah-ah, ah!
How soft your fields so green
Can whisper tales of [Al] Gore
Of how we calmed the tides of war
We are your overlords
You know the biggest argument from the left against the US buying Greenland to populate it would be environmental.
Basically the argument made by the El Paso shooter in his manifesto.
I’ve flown over Greenland several times en route to Europe and back. It is impressive in it whiteness. White mountaincaps. Whites prairies. White everything. You can see the snow blowing from 30,000 feet. I always think as I look down at this white abyss, global warming my ass. (If they can cherrypick, so can I.)
The Wall Street Journal headline: "Trump Eyes U.S. Buying Greenland"
Inside the story: At a dinner with associates last spring, Mr. Trump said someone had told him Denmark was having financial trouble over its assistance to Greenland, and suggested that he should consider buying the island, according to one of the people.
It took four "reporters" to get the story wrong: Vivian Salama, Rebecca Ballhaus, Andrew Restuccia and Michael C. Bender
They're not even trying to be accurate anymore.
I don't remember if the Constitution allows buying to expand our country. I vaguely recall it came up with Jefferson. Best not.
Fdr invaded Iceland in 1940 (before we we officially in ww2 to forestall Germany getting it.
And he didn't even pay!
Now PDJT is proposing something similar but friendly and he or the UU will pay fair m arket value.
John Henry
Oh, the flailing New York Times is weighing in now. Let's look at how Maggie Haberman and Michael D. Shear screw up the story:
"His interest in Greenland began last year. At a meeting that spring in the Oval Office, he joked about buying Greenland for its resources, according to a person who was in attendance."
In the Wall Street Journal, it began at dinner last spring. Now, Maggie and Mike tell us it was a spring meeting in the Oval Office. Which is it?
Silly season indeed.
Ann:
Could you kindly please put up a poll on this topic?
President Trump - via Rush Limbaugh - will review the results.
There's Milton Friedman's observation about the impossibility of combining free immigration and a welfare state. Well, a country can't grow geographically if it has a welfare state, either. For the last sixty years we've been squabbling over transfer payments, inventing ever more bizarre arguments to justify them, and squandered a chance to extend the protection of our Constitution to other lands. Change is the constant, so our failure to get bigger will eventually split us up.
I don't believe in global warming.
Greenland costs Denmark 500 million a year.
Those Esquimaux cost white people about $10,000/year each.
Here, white people pay $23 million a year for 2,100 Navajo kids to go to babysitting, er, Head Start, also about $10K each, but that doesn't include medical care (IHS) and all the other grants they get for just about everything, so Denmark's getting a pretty good deal.
What a great idea. It would certainly become a mecca for snow tourism and the old ruins with former cathedral would become the New Williamsburg.
On a very long flight to Europe on SAS, the jet stopped in Thule for three hours. I had a chance to wander around the airport around noon on a spring day. The sun touched the horizon and then set. It was beautiful and peaceful. The Aurora Borealis is a constant feature.
I have dreamed of going to Thule with a telescope to look at the stars at truly dark sky locations. Forget strategic emplacement; the place has incredible real estate potential. Hey, it worked for Leif Erikson.
"Greenland New Deal" been taken yet?
Dibs, if not.
Greenland's a smokescreen for the real acquisition target:
"As an example they have great beaches. You see that whenever they’re exploding their cannons into the ocean. I said, boy, look at that view. Wouldn’t that make a great condo? And I explained, I said, you know, instead of doing that you could have the best hotels in the world right there. Think of it from a real estate perspective. You have South Korea, you have China, and they own the land in the middle. How bad is that, right? It’s great."
The Dems will object to buying land popular with white people on principle. It is more likely that they would annex Haiti.
I'd rather we buy Alberta.
The early bear doesn't seem to like the worm.
Global warming is the best fallacy since Phlogiston, which lasted 200 years.
It was first stated in 1667 by Johann Joachim Becher and then put together more formally by Georg Ernst Stahl. The theory attempted to explain processes such as combustion and rusting, which are now collectively known as oxidation.
Eventually, quantitative experiments revealed problems, including the fact that some metals gained mass when they burned, even though they were supposed to have lost phlogiston. Some[who?] phlogiston proponents explained this by concluding that phlogiston had negative weight; others, such as Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau, gave the more conventional argument that it was lighter than air. However, a more detailed analysis based on Archimedes' principle, the densities of magnesium and its combustion product showed that just being lighter than air could not account for the increase in mass. Stahl himself did not address the problem of the metals that burn gaining weight, but those who followed his ideas and did not question his ideas were the ones that worked on this problem.[8]
During the eighteenth century, as it became clear that metals gained mass when they were oxidized, phlogiston was increasingly regarded as a principle rather than a material substance.[13] By the end of the eighteenth century, for the few chemists who still used the term phlogiston, the concept was linked to hydrogen.
So it lasted from 1667 to 1800. See if global warming/climate change can last that long?
"Greenland New Deal" been taken yet?
Dibs, if not.
Looks like tradguy beat you to it, Birkel. Nice try, though...
Let's do it! We'd have the bloody Canadians surrounded.
"the global warming disaster that will make Greenland the most desirable place on earth"
Wait, so are you telling us that global warming will have some positive consequences?
Illegal immigrants could await processing up there. No cages. No separations. Build as big an igloo as you like. Watch out for the white bears though.
mockturtle:
traditionalguy went with "Trump's Green New Deal" which is close but clunky.
I like my appellation better.
I am planting my flag and claiming this territory.
Let traditionalguy attack my well-fortified position if he dare it.
Make Greenland Great Again!
On Greenland, Trump can build a massive igloo - the size of the Astrodome - with Gucci stores, and blackjack tables, and Cirque De Solei shows and whorehouses and whiskey bars and cigar lounges and NFL wager rooms - Hey, I am dreaming and asking Why Not?
Of course we'd have to put the remaining Danes on reservations.
Retain the Danes mainly on the plain.
After the Greenland purchase we’ll need only six more to achieve Obama’s dream of fifty-seven United States.
Watch out for the Serpent in Eden. This quote s the foundational text for the Great Society. LBJ was going to outdo those Kennedys.
"Tell me about Greenland."
This could jump start our struggling snow shovel industry.
Trump seems to love the Nordic places (in contrast to "shithole countries")?
Trump can prove he's not a racist by buying Haiti and making it our 58th state.
Trumpland has a certain ring. I am looking at the beautiful Trump building in Chicago as I type this.
In the Pros column, Texas would drop to number three.
I think it's a great idea. The Navy could use it for target practice and see if they could sink it.
But seriously, folks, think what that real estate would be worth if the Earth's climate really does warm up.
"I don't believe in global warming."
That's okay. Global warming doesn't believe in you.
Glowball warmening, an alleged problem the answer to which is greater centralization of power with the self-proclaimed elites who wish to exercise power over other people. I want an alleged problem to which the answer is
Free people.
Free markets.
What motto should Greenland put on their license plates?
How about, "...but compared to Mars"
or "Just wait till it warms up."
t’s like a timeshare Denmark never uses and can’t afford.
Good analogy. Note that there are more companies that buy back timeshares than there are companies that sell them because people want out.
If the Danes want out of Greenland, I trust that Trump is the guy to make the deal.
What is it worth to the US? $10 Billion? $100 Billion? That's a drop in the bucket for the DC bureaucrats.
I don't remember if the Constitution allows buying to expand our country.
I don't recall that the Constitution forbids expanding the country either.
I do recall that there are parts of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution that forbid certain things. Such as "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed"
Or the 4th amendment that forbids the issuance of warrants except upon probable cause and directed to specific persons and places.
Or forbidding the issuing of Bills of Attainder Definition: A bill of attainder (also known as an act of attainder or writ of attainder or bill of pains and penalties) is an act of a legislature declaring a person or group of persons guilty of some crime and punishing them, often without a trial. You know.....Like writing laws that are meant to punish Trump in particular.
Wouldn't these new Red Flag Laws be similar to Bills of Attainder. Issued to punish and remove the rights of "certain people" (deporables and your icky brother in law) without any trial or proof of wrongdoing? Hmmmm?
These forbidden things don't seem stop people/Democrats from trying to take away arms and rights anyway.
Why get picky now. We can just ignore the Constitution and do whatever the fuck we want. As long as it is our "truth"...... Facts be damned.
I'm pretty sure that THAT, is THE DEFINITION of Radical Moderate!
I think it’s a fabulous idea. And I wish trump would shut up about it and just do it.
If we can afford to buy Greenland, we can afford to pay reparations. But it’s not an either or. We can go to the moon and do the other thing.
Hagar said... If the glaciers melt, the interior of Greenland will be under water.
I think the words you are thinking of are:MORE SHORE FRONT PROPERTIES
"If the glaciers melt, the interior of Greenland will be under water."
If they melt?
If we can afford to buy Greenland, we can afford to pay reparations.
Forty acres and a snow blower.
Cook, if you thinking they are melting, you might explain why the P 38, now called "Glacier Girl", was under 200 feet of ice deposited since it landed there in 1943.
Yesterday on facebook a lawyer was lecturing me about coal dust and advised me to learn Physics, as if that would explain why the idiots who are covering blue states with windmills and solar panels must be correct.
Left Bank if the Charles:
I love the idea of reparations.
Now get the fuck off of my continent.
Our native tribes have always owned Greenland and by our treaties with them, we now own Greenland if we secure their rights. We are One and we are The One they've been waiting for. I see the TV series. Rainbow over Greenland: How Force Rainbow Freed Greenland From Viking Invaders. Let's do it.
If we bought Greenland, which probably is not possible at this time, it would probably be a permanent territory in the same vein as Puerto Rico or Guam. The population is far too small to justify statehood. I suspect that many of the Danish citizens would voluntarily leave and would get replaced by Americans.
I did a little research on Greenland's history a while ago. Eric the Red discovered a few locations on the coast that had a more pleasant climate than the rest of the island to the point that they could support settlement. The name is almost certainly a real estate scam. Who wouldn't want to live in Greenland, especially when you live in Iceland? Greenland would be the jumping off point to reach Vinland in North America proper, but Greenland's settlement was too small to support such an endeavor, which is probably one of the reasons that Vinland failed.
In any case the world's climate got colder and these settlements were cut off. From one source I read, the Greenland settlements continued onward for centuries after they lost contact with the rest of Europe, the situation becoming more and more dire as the years went on, until they finally all died. The king of Denmark eventually sent out an expedition to find the settlements, but by then it was already far too late to find any survivors.
Another interesting thing is Greenland has had more than one Native American population. Greenland was populated by a group of people who eventually disappeared, perhaps died, perhaps got fed up an left, and then a new group arrived later. I believe the new group is the current natives. It is unclear if the natives and the original European settlers ever encountered each other. Greenland is a huge, inhospitable place and neither population was large, so it is certainly possible that they shared the same land for centuries without ever knowing the other existed.
Yeah, why not. The Virgin Island was bought from from the Danes for $25 million in 1917 and that turned out to be a good deal .
But I believe that due to self-determination it would be up to the residents of Greenland and not the Danes to approve such a deal.
It comes complete with a pretext for war with Canada, what’s not to like?
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/08/world/what-in-the-world/canada-denmark-hans-island-whisky-schnapps.html
Can we just buy Bermuda instead?
I don't plan to vacation in Greenland anytime soon.
Divide it up into 40 acre plots. Sure to be extremely valuable in 12 years.
A thousand years ago it was green. They exported cattle, which is documented, that they raised on the grasslands. The Vikings were not into crazy ironic names, they called the coast of Maine Vinland because it was covered in grape vines and Labrador “Flat Rock Land.”
Even the warmies have given up arguing that Greenland wasn’t very warm a thousand years ago. Now their take is that the extended warming there was a local phenomenon.
Before the mysterious Younger Dryas event, Greenland was well forested in the south, but of course the obliquity of Earth’s orbit at the time along with changes in the excentricity of its orbit made solar insolation my higher there at the time. Sill somehome the “Great Greenland Bear” survived..... Go figure.
If we buy it, I’m moving there, if I am still under about 68.
"The Mercator projection is the best projection, the most beautiful projection. Everyone says that. I was just looking at the map and I thought, Gee! The Mercator project is a great projection!"
Last night I was trying to produce an Aitoff Projection. I failed, but I'll get it eventually.
The Greenlanders would never go for it, so that's that. The era of trading colonies to other countries is over.
The ice-free parts of Greenland presently total some 381,392 square km, which is larger than the state of Montana or nation of Germany, and nearly as large as the state of California. That much territory (not to speak of the ice-covered parts) no doubt is worth a great deal of money.
GBS visited the Soviet Union back in the thirties. He was granted an interview with Stalin. Shaw came away very much impressed with Stalin's sagacity and wisdom. Shaw noted the cheerful work habits of the Soviet citizens he met along his travels.....The ability to see the world as it is should not be underrated. It's something like better than nothing is a high standard.
“Some men dream of things that never were and ask, “Why not?” I see things as they are and ask, “WTF?”—Robin Goodfellow
Blogger Kevin said...
Greenland costs Denmark 500 million a year.
It’s like a timeshare Denmark never uses and can’t afford.
I hope they are getting more than one week for that!
Blogger Kevin said...
Greenland costs Denmark 500 million a year.
It’s like a timeshare Denmark never uses and can’t afford.
I hope they are getting more than one week for that!
As to whether we can buy Greenland as a matter of the Constitution, sure. We bought Alaska from the Russians, the Mississippi drainage from France and the Gadsen purchase from Mexico. No problem there.
We didn't ask the people who lived there, though. That's the problem with Greenland. Why on Earth would they go for it? There would be more Americans than Greenlanders within 10 years, and then they'd lose their own country to immigration.
William-
My grandfather, a member of the Communist International and head of the Socialist Party of Peru, went to the Soviet Union in the 30s. He met Stalin. What struck him was the widespread poverty and the terror of the secret police. He quit the party soon after, having been sent to Spain during the civil war and seeing what the NKVD did there.
I guess he was more perceptive than George Bernard Shaw.
To be serious. Greenland is a fine strategic location for military and natural resource purposes.
Whether it is a 'good idea' would need to be intensely studied.
People thought that buying Alaska was a terrible idea at first. Seward's Folly. Until it was discovered that Alaska had vast resources (mineral, oceanic, animal, timber among others) and wasn't just a big icebox.
Since $500 million is less 0.002% of Denmark's yearly GDP I think one can safely say it doesn't make any sense for the population of Denmark as a whole to sell Greenland.
And thus the only circumstance where I can imagine Denmark selling Greenland would be if Denmark were to become a post-democratic state run by and for a small elite, where some few in that small elite would personally benefit from that $500 million. Or, the more likely circumstance, again power is in the hands of relatively few, but probably more than in the prior situation, except some foreign power has the goods on whoever in particular is in power so that the ruler would face personal ruin if he or she didn't facilitate the selling of their country.
I have by the way long wondered if some variety of the latter scenario is in fact the real reason so many MPs in the Tory Party have fought so hard to prevent Brexit.
"they'd lose their own country to immigration."
Or as the US press would say: They're racists!
Since we are talking about Greenland and that of course brings up global warming, it should be obligatory to mention that the ice on Greenland is not melting.
It was for quite a while but over the last six years or so NASA satellites have shown a substantial net increase of the ice volume on Greenland. This is a bit of a problem for the climatic models since Greenland is exactly the sort of place where the most rapid and dramatic temperature increases should have been seen. For that matter Wisconsin is another place where rapid and dramatic temperature increases should be expected, although much less than that for Greenland.
Is the fact that this is not occurring proof that the climatic models are wrong?
No. I hesitate to say that. A six-year counter-trend isn't enough to disprove a theory like this. But if climatic science were not so politicized I strongly suspect there would be more than a few scientists questioning some of the details of the climatic models simply on this basis.
Here by the is a commentary by Tony Heller on one rapidly growing glacier in Greenland which the press somehow manages to claim is doing the precise opposite.
Can we just buy the Swedish Bikini Team instead?
I bet Alaska costs us more than $500 million a year.
PR likes being a territory. They can vote on it.
Static Ping, according to Canadian Geographic the Vikings were in Greenland at least a century before the Inuit reached it and there are written Viking records of the Inuit attacking them, and in at least one case wiping out at a Viking community.
I bet Alaska costs us more than $500 million a year.
Way way less than the cost of Illegal immigrants cost us.
Washington times
"Although current federal policy prohibits federal tax funding of health care to unauthorized immigrants through Medicaid or Obamacare, “rough estimates suggest that the nation’s 3.9 million uninsured immigrants who are unauthorized likely receive about $4.6 billion in health services paid for by federal taxes, $2.8 billion in health services financed by state and local taxpayers and another $3 billion bankrolled through ‘cost-shifting,’ i.e. higher payments by insured patients to cover hospital uncompensated care losses, and roughly $1.5 billion in physician charity care,” Mr. Conover wrote in Forbes.
Some citations are that were are in the area of 116 billion in costs. I bet that is low.
And that is just the TIP of the iceberg of costs for ILLEGAL Immigration. Plus the Dems want to make it a Federal Funding issue to give ILLEGAL Aliens all sorts of freebies.
Greenland would be a BARGAIN and we might actually get something financially back on our investment. ROI!!
"President Andrew Johnson concluded that the icebound island’s abundance of fish and mineral resources could make it a valuable investment."
I'm not sure if conventional minerals could be recovered then, but there was a pretty big international trade in ice then.
I have been on a Shaw kick recently, but I think that he considered being earnest way too important.
Illegal immigration's costing Texas $10 bil a year. https://nationaleconomicseditorial.com/2017/04/07/illegal-immigration-costs-analysis-texas
Re Greenland - The key is the 'varying degrees of seriousness' appended to Trump's supposed comment.
"Yeah, it's a joke. You understand jokes, or did you have your sense of humor removed with a dull spork."
"Hey, wouldn't it be great if we could buy Greenland? It'll take way too long to melt though. Guy did an analysis, even if we moved it to the Sahara it'd take the better part of ten thousand years to melt. There's a lotta ice on that thing!"
"Man, we should buy that and ship the ice worldwide. They did that in the 1800's you know.
How much would Saudi pay for a few megatons of ice to cool things down?"
I'm so over the shrieking hysteria of "You won't believe what Trump said! OMG!" media idiots...
" bet Alaska costs us more than $500 million a year. “
I suppose that as many suppositions are made up on the spot as statistics.
To be honest, I think Shaw was a fucking genius who should have just stuck to art instead of the ephemeral politics of the day.
Since $500 million is less 0.002% of Denmark's yearly GDP I think one can safely say it doesn't make any sense for the population of Denmark as a whole to sell Greenland.
So as long as you can afford the timeshare you never visit, you should keep paying the annual fees?
Perhaps there's a better place for that money. Someplace that would benefit the citizens of Denmark rather than the citizens of Greenland?
I'm sure that's the real discussion for them to have. Let alone how they might socially invest the proceeds from the sale.
Since $500 million is less 0.002% of Denmark's yearly GDP
You're no fun. And it's .15% of the GDP, not .002.
Fernandistein said, "And it's .15% of the GDP, not .002."
Yeah, you're right. But on my monitor that decimal point is so small I almost can't see it.
So I would prefer 0.15% instead of .15% as that makes the decimal point a bit more clear.
Kevin said, Perhaps there's a better place for that money. Someplace that would benefit the citizens of Denmark rather than the citizens of Greenland?
But if that is the case then this seems to me the sort of decision that should be made by a national referendum instead of by an elite in Copenhagen.
It's hard to identify exactly why but I think selling Greenland is an issue that would never win if it had to be approved by a referendum, which would thus prove that the citizens of Denmark do somehow get something out of being associated with Greenland despite the lack, in most cases, of any personal interaction.
I suggest that the U.S. offer Denmark $1 trillion for the island — payable at the rate of $100 billion per year over 10 years. Let's see how they like them apples!
Greenland and then Canada.
I like the 0.002% figure because that would make Denmark's GDP 25 trillion.
And the GDP per capita would be 4.3 million for every human.
We should start a war and take all they have.
"I guess he was more perceptive than George Bernard Shaw."
Some people simply choose not to see.
This episode has proved highly entertaining. I wonder, however, if Mr Trump has ever actually thought about acquiring Greenland; I don't see any tweets.
So Alaska would be the second largest state?
Strike one.
So the languages of Iceland are tongue twisters at best?
Strike two.
Oooops. Just Googled Icelandic women.
Ballfour,take yer base!
Trump has always admired the mad real-estate skillz of Leif Eirikson, who named the place Greenland to trick the other Norsemen into thinking it was worth moving to.
Alaska at $0.10 an acre.
A population of 56,000 people or maybe some of that number are polar bears.
I think Trump got this.
Denmark does have wooden clogs.
Not sure if the rest of the population will forfeit grape squishing for testicles.
Hesitation is not an option.
Is Waldo in Mangolia ?
Trump might as well buy Denmark itself while he's at it.
Thule AFB...a new and improved GITMO
Greenland has a lot of fresh water locked up in its glaciers. As climate change warms the earth and it begins to dry up this will be like owning the South African reef gold fields. The iceboys would go up there in the spring calving season when icebergs calve off and herd them down to northern Maine where the water pipeline would begin. Then in sheltered bays the bergs would melt down and provide us with water which we could store in the Great Lakes if there was an excess. On the way down to the melting grounds the herd would divert the Gulf Stream so it went past more of Greenland and started melt for the next year. The EU would like this because climate change would be warming Europe enough without the Gulf Stream. So win-win. Let's get those Vikings white supremacists out of Greenland and put the Packers, I mean, our tribes, in. It's Inuit time.
Of course Trump's trolling, and of course the press is biting.
Of course global warming is coming at us like an oncoming train! The New York Times and the Guardian say so! The actual scientific literature is far more measured and hedged on account of they have to stick to the facts.
the idiots who are covering blue states solar panels
Wait until the panels start to degrade, leaking toxic chemicals like chromium down through their rooftops into their bedrooms. Most the solar companies that sold them are now safely bankrupt and judgement proof.
Our smug Maryland neighbors are looking at about $60k in toxic cleanup costs. LOL.
OTH, maybe that explains why all the liberals in the northeast are going nuts.
wildswan, "As climate change warms the earth and it begins to dry up this will be like owning the South African reef gold fields."
In general, it's the other way around. If the earth's lower atmosphere warms up there will be more water in the air and hence more rain.
If the earth's lower atmosphere cools down there will be less water in the air and hence less rain and also larger deserts.
The world's deserts were much larger at the peak of the last glaciation than they are right now. Even a modest temperature difference has a major impact on the size of the earth's deserts. Just 6,000 years ago, the world was about 1 degree C warmer than it is today, or so we think based on the temperature proxies, and most of the Sahara Desert was not a desert.
If the earth actually does warm up by 1 C by the 22nd century, which is less than what the climate models predict, there will be major and obvious consequences.
I think we should buy Mexico instead.
If we get Greenland, Canada will have no choice but to surrender.
Greenland isn't "Nordic." It's Inuit (at least primarily). I realized this when I spent 10 days in Denmark back in the 90s, and met some Greenlanders, mostly in the Aarhus area.
The Canada should sell him all those cool looking islands in between Greenland and Alaska.
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"We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!"
Just looking at the map - Greenland is Yuge. Greenland + USA = Unstoppable. Top of the world, Ma!
Danes have responded by offering to buy the USA. Ha. We will only sell Americans - Danes. What do you bid for Kathy Griffith?
We should buy Greenland for the oil and water. It will make America greater again, bigly.
Blogger mandrewa said...
The world's deserts were much larger at the peak of the last glaciation than they are right now. Even a modest temperature difference has a major impact on the size of the earth's deserts. Just 6,000 years ago, the world was about 1 degree C warmer than it is today, or so we think based on the temperature proxies, and most of the Sahara Desert was not a desert.
The past is a mystery. No theory can explain what we observe. It used to be that intelligent people said that the Earth's confusing geological formations and bizarre fossils were the result of Noah's Flood. Then, starting in the mid-sixties, they said it was continental drift -- which the intelligent people had said was not real just a few decades earlier. Now they say "climate change." Well, yes, you can blame a change in "climate change."
During the last ice age the Sahara was a desert. Then, about 5,000 years after the glaciers began to recede, the Sahara became a grassy plain (about 15,000 years ago). Then about 5,000 years ago (nearly in historical times), the Sahara became a desert again.
No one knows why.
Nobody knows anything about why the paleoclimate changed. They just stick labels on things to make an acceptable narrative.
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