Arctic dispute escalating

[Praxius]

It's the north pole for christ's sake. The adjacent populated territory is so sparsely populated, I don't think it warrants a claim which extends more than a few tens of miles offshore, less in many cases. And where there is consistently no people anywhere nearby, there is no just claim to the land itself. In my opinion, a framework of international law that prohibits abuse should reign in the north pole region. Canada doesn't own the north pole anymore than the US owns the moon.

Have a little free education, it's on me:

Inuit - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

".....The Inuit people live throughout most of the Canadian Arctic and subarctic: in the territory of Nunavut ("our land"); the northern third of Quebec, in an area called Nunavik ("place to live"); the coastal region of Labrador, in an area called Nunatsiavut ("our beautiful land"); in various parts of the Northwest Territories, mainly on the coast of the Arctic Ocean and formerly in the Yukon territory. Collectively these areas are known as Inuit Nunaat. In the US, Alaskan Inupiat live on the North Slope of Alaska and the Seward Peninsula. Greenland's Kalaallit are citizens of Denmark."

Canadian Rangers
Canadian Rangers | Canadian Army | National Defence and the Canadian Forces

"The Canadian Rangers are part-time reservists who provide a military presence in remote, isolated and coastal communities of Canada...."

The majority of these rangers are Inuit, there are approx. 150,000 people living up there, and if you think it's ok to push all these people off their lands and screw it up the way you please, then why don't we just take over all the native lands in North America, Australia and elsewhere in the world while we're at it?

Who cares? It's only a couple thousand people who call the land home...... they probably don't like living there anyways

If we want to argue that the north pole region should be a nature preserve, so be it. In that case there won't be squatters rights (if it was to be settled, squatters rights should reign). Its not as though there is anything up there that we really need yet anyways. But I don't think Canada has the right to unilaterally dictate how the north pole region is be used.

Well.... too bad, that's the reality.

I agree that the northern ice melting would accelerate global warming, but only due to the loss of reflection. Drop an ice cube in a glass of water and watch how the waterline does not change as the ice cube melts. Greenland is the greater problem location, because its ice is on land.

I disproved my old science teacher about that example back in grade 8..... to the naked eye the water may not seem to rise, but there is still a certain level of the ice that floats above the water level, and that amount above the water does add to the overall volume when it does melt...... now multiply that to a scale similar to the planet and it can be a number of feet in increase.

Not to mention the level of evaporation from a small glass of water and ice, the comparisons are not all that exact to a real sized example such as a pole.

If its a Cold War your looking to fight, I don't think you could win it if your adversaries put their weight into it.

Really? Well, we'll just have to see won't we?

And what makes you think mildly polluting the middle of nowhere with a mild presence will ruin it?

Sorry, I used up my one free education lesson for the day on you.... look it up.

I live in a suburb of the greater NYC area, and I certainly don't think this place is ruined. The parks are in fine condition; the pollution does not smite nature where it hasn't been displaced. Excepting for the frogs and toads, and there aren't any that far north.

And I live in Halifax, the "City of Trees" as they call it..... what's your point? Have you any other environments to compare to, or are you just comparing what you know only in NY?

And you do realize that other animals call the north home, besides toads and frogs?

It is a well known fact that the first places to be affected by pollution are the poles..... what you think is just peachy in New York, isn't a comparison to what is peachy in the Artic, and it's this level of ignorance of other nations wanting to gain control over the north that will screw it all up.

Your 30 million people who for the most part don't live anywhere near the territory being contested. Your the second largest country in the world. The founders of the US were into the idea of natural rights, and I don't think you guys have any to a lot of this territory your saying you own.

See above links and quotes yet again. Just because we don't have great cities all over the north, doesn't mean people don't live there..... which many do.

And it doesn't matter what the US founders' thought or what their ideas were..... this is Canada, and we're speaking of Canadian territory.



Hmmm..... maybe those areas of the US where there's not many people living in the desert, Canada could start plopping down stakes and setup factories and suck the resources out of those places..... afterall, there's probably nobody there anyways

Is that what happened to Siberia?

Let's find out:

"Air pollution from industrial centers in Siberia pose observable environmental threats. Siberian ecosystems have begun to show stress from the accumulation of pollution depositions that come from cities and industrial plants. While some uncertainty exists as to the long-term effects of air pollution upon forests, in measurable terms such as human mortality and incidence of disease, forest species decline or forest dieback, observable impacts indicate that there is a cause for concern........."

Air Pollution in Siberia. A Volume and Risk-Weighted Analysis of a Siberian Pollution Database
Air Pollution in Siberia. A Volume and Risk-Weighted Analysis of a Siberian Pollution Database

or

"In Siberia, 3000 kilometers from Moscow lies the Siberian Chemical Combine. This facility was part of the Russian nuclear program since the beginning of the Cold War. After almost 40 years of producing weapons grade nuclear material, the reactors were shut down and the facility now serves as a storage site for radioactive material and a uranium enrichment facility. In 1993 an explosion occurred at the facility contaminating almost 120 kilometer2 of the surrounding province of Tomsk........"

Siberia Nuclear Pollution
Siberia Nuclear Pollution

Again, I guess a north pole pole nature preserve would be a good thing. But if that is our aim, then the region should be governed like Antarctica is. Not divied up between Russia, the US (Alaskan area), and Canada. This is a matter for international bodies to decide. It should not decided by the impetus and arms of a few countries that have been overly inflated.

The borders and lines have already been drawn. There wasn't an issue until a couple of countries wanted to exploit the north.... plain and simple, and since it is noted and technically our territory, we don't need input or suggestions on what needs to be done..... stay out of our territory and leave things alone and there won't be an issue.

I agree with the US's position that this is international territory, but not with our position that it should be open to commercial development and traffic.

Well I don't, and since it's not your land to dictate what you think, it's irrelevant. If you guys had an issue with how who got what, you guys should have spoken up back when the maps were being drawn out and everything agreed apon.

You can't just suddenly try and change the rules and cry foul years down the road when you already used up all your resources and screwed yourselves over via military conquest and development (Russia/US ~ Cold War) and the massive thirsts both nations have for oil.

In regards to the US, you guys already got two oil wars going on in Afghanistan and Iraq.... how about you guys try and see those wars through before you continue to try and grab it from elsewhere..... ie: your allies.

[Yarn]

Praxius:

The majority of these rangers are Inuit, there are approx. 150,000 people living up there, and if you think it's ok to push all these people off their lands and screw it up the way you please, then why don't we just take over all the native lands in North America, Australia and elsewhere in the world while we're at it?

So there aren't vast tracks of land in northern Canada that are not visited by civillians more once every 10 years? If there are, then Canada doesn't have a natural right to that land.

I disproved my old science teacher about that example back in grade 8..... to the naked eye the water may not seem to rise, but there is still a certain level of the ice that floats above the water level, and that amount above the water does add to the overall volume when it does melt...... now multiply that to a scale similar to the planet and it can be a number of feet in increase.

Our eyes are not fooling us. The only reason why ice floats in water is because it is less dense than water. In other words, it takes up more volume per gram. So the total volume of ice's H2O actually decreases when it melts, and this makes up for the portion of it that floated above the water. If that weren't true, none of it would float above the water. Therefore melted ice only increases ocean volume if it wasn't floating.

On the other hand, the hotter water gets, the less dense it becomes unless it is very close to freezing. Thermal expansion of the oceans is already happening.

Really? Well, we'll just have to see won't we?

You have 30 million people, and a correspondingly small military. You have no nukes. If the United States invaded Canada again, it would likely succeed. You don't have the man power or the industry to win a conventional conflict against us or the Russians. And you can't mount an effective insurgency where you don't have very many people, so its a safebet that Russia or the US could forcibly take the north. But nobody wants war, and so your aforementioned rangers, and hopefully some more impressive things, prevent Russia or the US from doing anything particularly audacious. If either of us were willing to fight you over this however, you would lose.

The borders and lines have already been drawn. There wasn't an issue until a couple of countries wanted to exploit the north.... plain and simple, and since it is noted and technically our territory, we don't need input or suggestions on what needs to be done..... stay out of our territory and leave things alone and there won't be an issue.

Practically speaking, that might be a good idea, as under Canada's stewardship the north is already treated like Antarctica. But in principle, I think an Antarctica-like international treaty would be preferable. And trying to form one would bring this out into the open. And incidentally, whether or not northernmost Canada belongs to Canada, neither Russia nor Canada has a strong claim to the north pole, and unless you plan on putting troops there as well, some sort of formalized international concensus must be made as to how the northern most circles of latitude are to be treated or else they could get abused.

[no1ninja]

We have armed the polar bears man!!! Stand you ground damn-it!

They drink coca-cola and eat m&m's.



I agree, if we do not have people or settlements there, than we have no rights to the land. This is true of Antarctica and the Moon.

I wish it was ours, but until our government digs in to their pockets and does something like Russia, we have to be fair and abide by the rules of the land.


American subs have been challenging our sovereignty in those waters for years. It really is up to us to make use of the land, not cry about it when someone else feels they can.

[Praxius]

So there aren't vast tracks of land in northern Canada that are not visited by civillians more once every 10 years? If there are, then Canada doesn't have a natural right to that land.

Same can be said about your desert areas or the Rockies..... what about the whole glacier area of Greenland that has no homes or cities on it? Free for the taken?

http://www12.statcan.ca/census-recen...da-sz01-en.gif

^ Large image.

There are communities in the north, some towns, some villages, some outposts, etc..... and yes, there are people living on Ellesmere Island.... way up there in the north. And the north is patrolled and we have plenty of research and otherwise tracking and doing plenty in the north every single year.

By the way your comment above doesn't make any sense.

And when compared to Russia:

http://mars.wnec.edu/~grempel/course...iet_Pop_82.jpg

^ They seem to have plenty of space with not a lot of people living either..... let's go take that land too while we're at it

or how about:



^ Wow..... not many people in a few spots there in the US..... let's take it over.

Our eyes are not fooling us. The only reason why ice floats in water is because it is less dense than water. In other words, it takes up more volume per gram. So the total volume of ice's H2O actually decreases when it melts, and this makes up for the portion of it that floated above the water. If that weren't true, none of it would float above the water. Therefore melted ice only increases ocean volume if it wasn't floating.

On the other hand, the hotter water gets, the less dense it becomes unless it is very close to freezing. Thermal expansion of the oceans is already happening.

Regardless, in the poles there is a number of feet built up over the ocean level, and snow/ice builds up over the winter, etc. through storms, increasing that much more over sea level.

You have 30 million people, and a correspondingly small military. You have no nukes. If the United States invaded Canada again, it would likely succeed. You don't have the man power or the industry to win a conventional conflict against us or the Russians. And you can't mount an effective insurgency where you don't have very many people, so its a safebet that Russia or the US could forcibly take the north. But nobody wants war, and so your aforementioned rangers, and hopefully some more impressive things, prevent Russia or the US from doing anything particularly audacious. If either of us were willing to fight you over this however, you would lose.

Then what's stopping you? Make your move. The thing I always love about these little debates about who would win what in a war is that many just don't think the entire situation through very well.

The US thought it'd be simple to invade and take Canada over last time, and you failed..... you guys thought Vietnam would be easy to win, and you failed..... you guys thought Afghanistan and Iraq would be a breeze..... still going with those two arn't ya?

You guys can't even control some guys in caves with outdated weapons and goats.....

Canada was formed as an independant nation through WWI and our contributions during that war, and since (not including wars prior to) I'm not about to get into a pissing match over who's better then who or who's got the numbers..... they don't mean squat and I figured people in the US of all places would know this by now through your revolutionary war. Technically you guys were outnumbered against the British Empire on the fields and needed to get help from the French to actually win.

This isn't a stab at you guys, but just a reality check that things arn't always so black and white simple when you look at it at a glance.

Nukes?

That'd be probably the dumbest move.

moving on....

Practically speaking, that might be a good idea, as under Canada's stewardship the north is already treated like Antarctica. But in principle, I think an Antarctica-like international treaty would be preferable. And trying to form one would bring this out into the open. And incidentally, whether or not northernmost Canada belongs to Canada, neither Russia nor Canada has a strong claim to the north pole, and unless you plan on putting troops there as well, some sort of formalized international concensus must be made as to how the northern most circles of latitude are to be treated or else they could get abused.

........."Prime Minister Stephen Harper has emphasized that Canada will increase its military presence in the North as part of his government's Canada First defence strategy. Over the years the government has announced a series of initiatives, ranging from the proposed construction of Arctic and offshore patrol ships for the navy, an icebreaker for the Coast Guard, and an Arctic training centre for troops. Such initiatives are still years away from becoming reality.

Harper has also signalled concern about incidents where foreign military vessels, including those from the U.S., have entered Canadian northern waters without permission from Canada. There have been a number of sightings of mysterious vessels in the country's northern waters, the latest taking place last summer. Some in the military believe the vessel, sighted by hunters at the northern portion of Baffin Island, was a foreign submarine.

Harper has pointed to the oil, gas and mineral deposits in the country's Arctic region, resources which he noted are critical to the country's economic growth. "Canada has a choice when it comes to defending our sovereignty over the Arctic; we either use it or lose it," Harper said in July 2007. "And make no mistake - this government intends to use it......"

Reserve units to form core of new Arctic force
Reserve units to form core of new Arctic force

^ As noted above, hunters (civilians) were the ones who noticed the sub in our territory, thus we have people living there.

Additional information:

Canada First Defence Strategy – Canadian Forces’ contribution to sovereignty and security in the north
DND/CF | Backgrounder | Canada First Defence Strategy – Canadian Forces’ contribution to sovereignty and security in the north

It's in the works.

[Yarn]

Praxius:

Same can be said about your desert areas or the Rockies..... what about the whole glacier area of Greenland that has no homes or cities on it? Free for the taken?

Not free for the taking, but rather to be governed by international law rather than that of a single people.

But at anyrate, the continental US lacks your extremes.

Lets take Baffin island for instance (the home of Eskimo Bob: Episodes - Eskimo Bob ).

Its got 11,000 people. Its has 5 times the land area of Wyoming, the United States least populated state. Wyoming has 50 times as many people as Baffin Island has.

How about Baffin compared to the rocky mountains?

Human population is not very dense in the Rocky Mountains, with an average of four people per square kilometer (10 per square mile) and few cities with over 50,000 people.
- Rocky Mountains - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

To the great basin desert:

The Basin has remained among the most sparsely-inhabited areas of the United States. The two largest cities in the basin are Salt Lake City, Utah on its eastern edge and Reno, Nevada on its western edge. Suburbs of Los Angeles, including Lancaster and Palmdale, and Victorville and Hesperia, California combine for about 600,000 residents on the area's southwestern edge. Smaller cities in the basin include Carson City, Nevada; Winnemucca, Nevada; Elko, Nevada; Ogden, Utah; Provo, Utah; and Logan, Utah.

The Great Basin is traversed by major long-distance railroads and expressways, such as the parts of Interstate 80 between Reno and Salt Lake City, Interstate 15 between southwest Utah and Idaho, and Interstate 70 from its junction with Interstate 15 in central Utah from the Great Basin, across the Colorado Plateau to westernmost Colorado. Railroads, such as the Union Pacific, which through merger now owns the routes of the former Southern Pacific and Western Pacific lines, extend from the major metropolitan areas of Denver, Colorado, through Salt Lake City, Utah, and Reno, Nevada, to the San Francisco, California, Bay Area; and from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles, California

- Great Basin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Incidentally, my arguement applies to the much of not just northern Canada, but also northern Alaska, most of middle and eastern Russia, most of Greenland, and perhaps some of Scandenavia. I'm not singleing Canada out by any means.

Regardless, in the poles there is a number of feet built up over the ocean level, and snow/ice builds up over the winter, etc. through storms, increasing that much more over sea level.

Melting the ice caps would in the long term reduce northern oceanic cooling (although land does break wind, and wind borne cooling is probably the most powerful sort coming from the north), increase the amount of water vapor in the air (water vapor is the most abundant green house gas in the world), and reduce the percentage of the sun's light that is reflected back into the atmosphere. But it would not actually increase the number of water of molecules that are in the ocean. It's important to protect the ice caps, but your 8th grade teacher and my college level chemistry class are right that floating ice's mass doesn't increase when such ice melts and so neither does its displacement. If you put ice on top of ice, then collectively the ice sinks due to the additional mass. Hence, snow in the northern-most latitudes has the same impact on global sea levels as rain does on equatorial ocean. Excepting that up north, the water is less liable to form water vapor anytime soon.

The US thought it'd be simple to invade and take Canada over last time, and you failed..... you guys thought Vietnam would be easy to win, and you failed..... you guys thought Afghanistan and Iraq would be a breeze..... still going with those two arn't ya?

The last conventional army to defeat the US's was China's in the Korean war. You aren't China. And the only reason why the US hasn't been good at defeating guerillas is because the US has not been willing to be brutish enough to get at the guerillas no matter what borders they are within and no matter how many innocents get in the way. Simliarly, such restraint, which is why another invasion of Canada will never take place, is only reason why such an an invasion, at present, might fall. We have overwhelming force. Your right that this arguement is pointless. There will be no war. Only manuevering.

Harper has pointed to the oil, gas and mineral deposits in the country's Arctic region, resources which he noted are critical to the country's economic growth. "Canada has a choice when it comes to defending our sovereignty over the Arctic; we either use it or lose it," Harper said in July 2007. "And make no mistake - this government intends to use it......"

So much for noble Canada protecting the environment.

[Flangehead]

On the other hand, the hotter water gets, the less dense it becomes unless it is very close to freezing. Thermal expansion of the oceans is already happening.

Nonsense.

My sailboat has been kept, until this last year, at one slip in Alamitos Bay, Long Beach, California.

That slip was at a private home, the sea wall for which had been built in the 1930's. EVERY January, the high tides bring one or two days where the sea seeps in under the wall, and it's done just that ever since the lady who lived there could remember....and she died at the age of 98, having lived in that one house since it was built...in the 1930's.

The ocean levels haven't risen.

End of global warming myth, I think they'll have to start calling it "global climate change", because too many people are catching on to their scam.

You have 30 million people, and a correspondingly small military. You have no nukes. If the United States invaded Canada again, it would likely succeed. You don't have the man power or the industry to win a conventional conflict against us or the Russians. And you can't mount an effective insurgency where you don't have very many people, so its a safebet that Russia or the US could forcibly take the north. But nobody wants war, and so your aforementioned rangers, and hopefully some more impressive things, prevent Russia or the US from doing anything particularly audacious. If either of us were willing to fight you over this however, you would lose.

Canada is free for two reasons:

Russia can't take it with the US sitting where it is.

The US doesn't want it because the US isn't an imperialist nation.

If the US is wrongly claiming Canadian territory, that will be adjudicated and settled amicably, as all such claims since the end of the War of 1812 have been.

Russia is weirdly claiming that because some chain of seamounts is continued onto Russian territory, that it can then claim ownership of sections of the sea bed it's not allowed when the normal standard of measuring from where the water becomes coastline.

The Russians are trying land grab, to complement their land grab in Georgia, to complement their efforts to re-establish their hegemony over the former East-bloc countries, and to make up for their failed grab in Afghanistan.

The US has all the oil resources it needs, if one counts, as we should, our untapped off shore resources, our known 1.8 trillion barrels of reserves in oil shales, and the immense volumes of natural gas we can tap.

Considering we're allowing the Cubans to drill our oil from US coastal waters in the Strait of Floriduh, considering that our stupid Congress once again re-imposed totally assinine moratiria on the exploration and exploitation of our our own coastal waters, explain what friggin' sense it makes for the US to lay claim to Canadian resources we apparently would never never touch?

[rmnunez]

The Arctic contains valuable resources which, if there actually is a major meltdown could be readily accesible and exploitable. A meltdown of Arctic ice would also open up sea lanes from Europe to Asia which would be much shorter than current routes and likely encourage the development of a variety of major shipping activities along the way where vessels would stop to replenish fuel, store goods and take on shipments. I think this could change patterns of global development, but it all depends on whether the climate change is actually happening or is a hoax by the greens.

[Yarn]

The ocean levels haven't risen.

Well that wouldn't make any sense because the oceans have warmed. Who or whatever's fault that is, no one is claiming that the Earth isn't getting warmer or hasn't gotten warmer. And the oceans haven't been going against that trend. When water heats up it expands (unless its close to freezing, in which case it contracts).

Current sea level rise is occurring at a rate of around 1.8 mm per year for the past century
- Current sea level rise - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In other words, the sea levels are rising, but only at a slow subtle rate. They have risen between 15 and 20 centimeters in the past 120 years.
- File:Recent Sea Level Rise.png - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The US has all the oil resources it needs, if one counts, as we should, our untapped off shore resources, our known 1.8 trillion barrels of reserves in oil shales, and the immense volumes of natural gas we can tap.

It’s also true Obama is against lifting the ban on increasing drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf, and it's worth noting that both McCain and Obama oppose drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). As for the Outer Continental shelf, more drilling could indeed produce more oil, but not right away. The Energy Information Administration says that there are "substantial resources of crude oil" offshore. However, it also notes that both time and money would be required to produce any oil from areas that are currently off-limits. Specifically, it estimates that no production would begin until 2017 and that it would take until 2030 to reach peak production, increasing total domestic production by 3 percent.

And even then, the EIA study says, "Because oil prices are determined on the international market, however, any impact on average wellhead prices is expected to be insignificant."

Any notion that drilling could start more quickly than EIA estimates should be weighed against the fact that there is a shortage of drill ships. According to a New York Times article published last month, existing rigs are booked solid for the next five years. While shipyards have begun work on new ships, it will be some time before there are enough to accelerate the pace of offshore exploration, whether or not new areas are opened.
- FactCheck.org: A False Accusation About Energy

IOW, we can't drill our way out of this energy crisis. The US doesn't have enough oil to more than slightly mitigate the problem.

[rmnunez]

What energy crisis? Wasn't that the one where oil was at about $4 a gallon? Now its about $2 a gallon so the energy crisis is gone. Oil will become more expensive as the economy improves, then we will have another energy crisis. Higher oil prices promote the search for alternative energy sources and eventually a suitable substitute will be found, but as long as oil is cheaper, this will be our primary energy source. Oil, which is not renewable, will eventually be depleted to the point its very expensive and by then it will only be used in very limited applications. By the time we get there oil prices will have gradually climbed long enough to promote the development of a variety of alternative energy sources, we've got ethanol and biomass, electricity generated through solar, aeolic, and different chemical exchanges in batteries, hydrogen and even energy from sea currents and tides. All are more expensive than oil still.

[Praxius]

Well looks like the Opposition in our government wants to do what some here want:



Ignatieff wants North Pole to be international park
Ignatieff wants North Pole to be international park

Canada should push for the creation of an international park that would protect the area around the North Pole, Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff said Monday.

It's crucial Canada get involved in international talks about who owns the North to help figure out a way to take care of the region, he told a group of Calgary high school students.

"One of the proposals I've read about recently which I strongly support is that I think Canada could be part of an international agreement to make the North Pole, the whole area of the North Pole, an international public park for the world."

Ignatieff said he agrees with many of the military tactics Prime Minister Stephen Harper has employed to assert Canada's sovereignty over the north, including military patrols, icebreakers and the Canadian Rangers.

But global diplomacy needs to be a much bigger part of the country's plan, he said.

All of the countries that have tried to claim ownership of the region, including Russia, the United States and Denmark, need to sit down around a table and figure out a strategy.

"We've got to get everybody around a table and say, 'What do we want to do with this thing for the next 50 years?"'

Arctic countries, including Canada, have resisted international rules for northern waters made increasingly accessible by melting sea ice. They have said they will look after safety and environmental protection themselves..........

[Flangehead]

International Park?

You mean like with swings and slides and picnic areas and stuff?

It's a damn ocean, suck the oil out of it and be done with it.

Oh, it's also a road. Use that, too.

[rmnunez]

The international park idea is good, except we probably need some international park agency to run it, presumabbly a bunch of stuffed shirts from the UN with lots of diplomatic arrogance.