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The Army is dreaming too hundreds of miles of railroad lines buried within the Greenland ice sheet. On the tracks of Project Iceworm, atomic-powered trains will move nuclear-tipped missiles through snow tunnels between hidden launch stations — a shell game covering an area the size of Alabama.
In the end, Project Iceworm never went overboard a 1,300-foot (400-meter) tunnel the Army dug in Camp Century. Soft snow and ice, always in motion, lay in that path as the tunnel walls closed. In the early 1960s, first the White House, and then NATO, Project Iceworm was rejected.
In 1966, the Army abandoned Camp Century, leaving hundreds of tons of waste inside the ice sheet. Now, the collapsed and abandoned camp located more than 100 feet (30 meters) below the ice sheet surface. But as the climate warms and the ice melts, that is the garbage will resurface: millions of gallons of frozen sewers, asbestos-lined pipes, toxic lead paint and carcinogenic PCBs.
Who will clean up the mess and at what cost is an open question.
Greenland remains a difficult place to make a profit
In the past, the Americans in Greenland focused on short-term gains without regard for the future. Abandoned baseswhich is scattered around the island now and needs cleaning, is an example. Peary’s disregard for life of local Greenlanders it’s different.
History has shown that many imaginative ideas for Greenland have failed because they took too little account of the island’s diversity, extreme climate and dynamic ice sheet.
Trump demanded American control of the island as a source of wealth and security for the US equally short-sighted. For now rapid climate warmingwhich ignores the dramatic effects of climate change on Greenland can doom projects to failure As Arctic temperatures are rising. The new floods, fed by the melting Greenland ice sheet, have bridges were washed away which stood for half a century. The permafrost that underlies the island is rapidly melting and damaging infrastructure, including critical ones installation of radar and runway in Thule, renamed Pituffik Space Base in 2022. The mountain sides of the island are crashed into the sea such as the ice that held them melted. the US and Denmark conducted a geological survey of Greenland and pointed out deposit of critical minerals along rocky, exposed beaches. However, most of the mining so far is limited of cryolite and some minor extraction of lead, iron, copper and zinc. now, just a small mine extracting the mineral anorthositewhich is useful for its aluminum and silica, running. The greatest value of Greenland for humanity is not this strategic location or potential mineral resourcesBUT its ice. https://www.youtube.com/embed/9lnP0Rjb2E0?wmode=transparent&start=0 A NASA animation of satellite data shows Greenland’s ice sheet mass loss between 2002 and 2023, measured in meters of water ice equivalent. If human activities continue to warm the planet, melting the Greenland ice sheet, sea levels will rise until the ice disappears. The loss of even a portion of the ice sheet, which holds enough water to raise sea levels all of 24 feet, harmful effects for coastal cities and island nations around the world. That’s a big time of uncertainty in the world. The most anticipated strategy is to protect the Greenland ice sheet rather than stealing a remote Arctic island while increasing fossil fuel production and acceleration of climate change all over the world. Paul BiermanProfessor of Natural Resources and Environmental Science, University of Vermont This article was reprinted from The Conversation under Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
It’s the ice that matters
