President-elect Donald Trump has expressed interest in acquiring Greenland, which is a semiautonomous territory of Denmark, a longtime U.S. ally and a founding member of NATO.Remote, icy and mostly pristine, Greenland plays an outsized role in the daily weather experienced by billions of people and in the climate changes taking shape all over the planet.
Greenland is where climate change, scarce resources, tense geopolitics and new trade patterns all intersect, said Ohio University security and environment professor Geoff Dabelko.The world's largest island is now central to the geopolitical, geoeconomic competition in many ways, partly because of climate change, Dabelko said. It is also home to a large U.S. military base. Think of Greenland as an open refrigerator door or thermostat for a warming world, and it's in a region that is warming four times faster than the rest of the globe, said New York University climate scientist David Holland. Locked inside are valuable rare earth minerals needed for telecommunications, as well as uranium, billions of untapped barrels of oil and a vast supply of natural gas that used to be inaccessible but is coming less so. Many of the same minerals are currently being supplied mostly by China, so other countries such as the United States are interested, Dabelko said. Three years ago, the Denmark government suspended oil development offshore from the territory of 57,000 people. But more than the oil, gas or minerals, there's ice — a ridiculous amount, said climate scientist Eric Rignot of the University of California Irvine. If that ice melts, it would reshape coastlines across the globe and potentially shift weather patterns in such a dramatic manner that the threat was the basis of a Hollywood disaster movie. Greenland holds enough ice that if it all melts, the world's seas would rise by 24 feet (7.4 meters
United States United States Latest News, United States United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Source: NBCNewYork - 🏆 270. / 63 Read more »
Source: NBCLA - 🏆 319. / 59 Read more »
Source: NBCDFW - 🏆 288. / 63 Read more »
Source: nbcchicago - 🏆 545. / 51 Read more »
Source: NBCDFW - 🏆 288. / 63 Read more »
Source: BreitbartNews - 🏆 610. / 51 Read more »