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New Map of Carved Up Arctic
Posted by
timothy
on Thu Aug 07, 2008 11:18 PM
from the beware-angry-norsemen dept.
from the beware-angry-norsemen dept.
thepacketmaster writes "The International Boundaries Research Unit has recently published a new jurisdictional map of the Arctic, using geographic and legal definitions. Now it appears Santa Claus could potentially be Danish. But as pointed out in an article at The Star, more important than St. Nick is 'an area thought to contain one-fifth of the world's undiscovered and recoverable oil and gas resources,' and from this map, Russia has a huge claim in that."
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Danish??? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Danish??? (Score:5, Funny)
Fuckin-A man. I was up there the other day (North Pole's just a couple of kilometres from Toronno), there's a cup holder on his sleigh with an empty Tim Hortons in there, and a Timbits bag on the floor (also empty).
I went inside, we cracked open a few beers, sat and watched the hockey. Santa reckons he might have enough funding to start his own team in a couple of years; those elves are short, but they're vicious fuckers, fast too. I got money on them making the play-offs in their first year.
I don't know, does this make Santa Canadian?
Parent
Re:Danish??? (Score:5, Funny)
well, Santa does have a Canadian postal code:
SANTA CLAUS
NORTH POLE
H0H 0H0
CANADA
Parent
Re:Danish??? (Score:5, Funny)
If they overlook his slave labor camp, sure.
Parent
Coke had nothing to do with it. (Score:3, Interesting)
'Twas the Night Before Christmas established, as eyewitness testtimony, that St. Nicholas is "dressed all in red from his head to his foot." Coke just depicted what Clement Clark Moore wrote.
Re:Danish??? (Score:4, Informative)
It is illegal to hunt white coats. Furthermore, the seals are shot with guns.
The hunt is no more inhumane than moose hunting, deer hunting, duck hunting, or any other sort of sustainable natural harvest. Sure, it LOOKS grisly given the white snow and striking blue skies in winter; but the fact remains that killing any animal is unpalatable but necessary.
The consistent, erroneous belief that Canadians feast on mounds of dead 'baby' seals is attributed to groups like PETA who are, arguably, one of the most inhumane non-governmental organisations in the world.
Parent
Stop prepetuating the urban myth. (Score:3, Informative)
No, there are similar carvings and portraits of Santa before Coke started using them.
Now the coke Santa has certianly become the iconic view of how Santa looks.
", became popular in the United States in the 19th century due to the significant influence of caricaturist and political cartoonist Thomas Nast."
From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_claus [wikipedia.org]
Then ther is the denial:
"http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2007/dec/10/coke-denies-claims-it-bottled-familiar-santa/"
And no one would ever discuss fictional
Re:Danish??? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know where he lives, but everybody knows that he rests in Bari, Italy and had a Turkish passport http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Nicholas [wikipedia.org]
Oh well, Turkey wasn't Turkey at the time and we didn't invent passports yet. That's probably why we can't agree on his nationality :-)
Parent
St Nick is a Turk who LIVES at the North Pole, duh (Score:5, Funny)
The historical record is perfectly clear. He was born in Asia Minor and moved north in Victorian times. The nation of which he was a citizen has long since passed away, so he is now a stateless person. As he lives in international waters he is not subject to any nation's jurisdiction. He has found gainful employment and is regarded as one of the world's best-known brands, with a Q score even higher than that of Paris Hilton.
Parent
Re:Danish??? (Score:5, Funny)
So, the question is; what's so trollish about this parent?
Maybe its the closest /. has to "+1 Elf"... :P
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I can second this. I am a Canadian and drive my the north pole (True North) on my way to work. The true North Pole has an acutal pole, that is painded red and white like a barbers pole. This is just outside Santa's workshop and is actually his mailbox. (He get's too much mail for a true box, so they just dump all the mail beside the pole. The magnetic north pole, on the other hand has no physical marker on the surface, so santa goes theere
Um, why not Antarctica (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Um, why not Antarctica (Score:4, Insightful)
Speaking as someone from the country with the largest territorial claim over Antarctica, I think it's better not to do any studies or drilling there. That way, when all of the mindless idiots in the world have finished wasting their oil as fuel, we will still have some to make useful and durable things like plastics.
Idiot.
Parent
Unbelievably bad moderation (Score:4, Insightful)
Max Littlemore (parent of this post) responds by calling him an idiot, and gets modded insightful.
Well, so long as moderators aren't using their points as political weapons. Why do we even have a moderation system here?
Parent
Re:Um, why not Antarctica (Score:5, Funny)
Ummm I think he is an Aussie. Although I admit we Aussies make our outragous territorial claims in the hope that the yanks will defend it for us.
Parent
Re:Um, why not Antarctica (Score:5, Informative)
"Plastic" is not a single substance. There are literally thousands of kinds of plastic, each having its own distinct properties and production methods. Some of them are not replaceable by any other kind (for example PTFE also known as Teflon) and certainly cannot be produced from plants. They can be produced from coal in a round-about way, but it would dramatically increase their costs.
If I had to rank the fields in which the general public is most uninformed related to their importance, it would probably be:
1. Genetic engineering
2. Plastics
3. Energy sources
4. Foreign affairs (no matter where you live)
(I haven't thought about it too much though)
Parent
Re:Um, why not Antarctica (Score:5, Funny)
Several isolated pointless islands in the southern Atlantic and Pacific belong to the UK, which is why it can make those claims.
Sorry, but Australia and New Zealand have long since become independent.
*ducks*
Parent
Re:Um, why not Antarctica (Score:5, Informative)
Antarctica is not included in the study for NG or oil in those studies. Why?
Because the Antarctic Treaty [wikipedia.org] prohibits such activities.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, but the countries they'd be dealing with in Antarctica would be a bit different to going after some of the places in the Middle East.
Colbert wants to know (Score:5, Funny)
Will foreign polar bears be able to cross into US territory without proper cavity searches by DHS employees?
Re:Colbert wants to know (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Colbert wants to know (Score:4, Funny)
I'd rather all DHS and TSA employees simply go to antartica.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I disagree, on the basis that most of the people you see on the ground are mindlessly doing as they're told.
I think it would be far more productive for the management and politicians behind the DHS to lead by example.
Polar bear cavity searches (Score:5, Interesting)
True story:
A few decades ago, Norwegian arctic researchers wanted to determine if polar bears really hibernate (like the brown bear does), or just take a lot of long naps.
To check this the father of a guy I knew used to dig/push his way into polar bear burrows, with a revolver and a rectal thermometer in front of him.
He never had to fire the gun, but the temp readings he got showed that the polar bears were only sleeping, not hibernating.
See the polar bear FAQ [polarbears...tional.org].
Terje
Parent
Re:Polar bear cavity searches (Score:4, Funny)
Did he volunteer for this, or was it some sort of cruel and unusual punishment for an unspeakable crime?
Parent
Well St Nick Can Give Coal... (Score:2, Funny)
New Cold War? (Score:5, Funny)
New Cold War?
I know.. I know.. It's bad. Sorry.
Undiscovered? (Score:4, Funny)
'an area thought to contain one-fifth of the world's undiscovered and recoverable oil and gas resources,'
So in other words it is a big patch of ice that could possibly contain oil and gas but we have no clue? I'm so happy that our world's research has lead to that conclusion.
UK defines your borders (Score:5, Funny)
And that, boys and girls... (Score:5, Insightful)
And that, boys and girls, is why the next world war will be fought between Russia and China.
Re:And that, boys and girls... (Score:5, Funny)
And that, boys and girls, is why the next world war will be fought between Russia and China.
Then I guess it's safe to say that at least one of them is going to fall for the most famous of the classic blunders.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
China has no stake in the Arctic at *all*
Exacly. If they want a piece of the Arctic, they have to invade Russia.
If China where to expand through Siberia all the way to the northern coast, they would have a claim on Siberian Arctic territory.
The Russians would probably have issues with this, though, and fight back. =)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
And which one would that be?
The one that has trouble asserting its northern sovereignty because all it's got is literally a bunch of natives armed with WW2-era rifles up there. The one that's also spread itself thin in Afghanistan while recruitment numbers plummet.
While the rest of the world runs out of resources, us Canadians are sitting on a veritable goldmine of oil, precious metals, and uranium. This is suicide without a large military to assert your control over said resources.
And given that the Americans have given their economy
Re:And that, boys and girls... (Score:5, Insightful)
While the rest of the world runs out of resources, us Canadians are sitting on a veritable goldmine of oil, precious metals, and uranium.
Said resources are located in one of the most hideously inhospitable climates on Earth. In the winter, you can die of more than ten minutes exposure to the cold and the equipment constantly freezes up. When it warms up the land melts into twenty meter deep ultra-sticky mud that you can easily lose heavy machinery in (and many companies do, it's the cost of doing business up north). Injuries are very common in that line of work, often after only a few years of doing it, and deaths are not unheard of. I mean, it isn't hell, but it's not like we're rolling around being decadent on giant heaps of gold and precious gems, either. Getting those resources out of the ground is expensive no matter who's doing it, and most countries are just as happy buying them as losing soldiers to capture them and then losing workers to dig them up themselves.
Now if global warming floods the coasts and a few hundred million people need to move somewhere dry...well, then we have issues, but that will be the start of a world war anyway and we'd be doomed in one of those even if we conscripted half the population and started training them tomorrow.
This is suicide without a large military to assert your control over said resources.
Canada already doesn't control its resources. It's sold a controlling stake to pretty much everything of value to various large foreign interests.
And given that the Americans have given their economy AND military the royal shaft over these past few years, they'd be hard pressed to come to ANYONE's aid at this point.
What makes you think the Americans would come to Canada's aid? My money's on them "liberating" us from our evil socialist government some time in the next twenty years or so. And short of them torturing and literally enslaving the local population we probably won't even notice as our much-loved social programs will have decayed to nothing or been sold off to private interests by then.
If Russia is to reassert itself as a power its prime time is coming soon.
Russia is already asserting itself. You just don't hear about it because small bits of news like "Russia and China Conduct Joint Military Exercises", or "Russia Resolves Border Dispute With China", or "Russia Signs Energy Deal With X, Y, and Z EU Countries", or "Big Company X is Builds Giant Factory in Russia" get lost under the more important issues like "Are Americans Bitter?" and "The Friend of the Aunt of the Candidate's Wife's Stepbrother Hates Apple Pie, Will the American People Think Less of Mr. Candidate Because of This?" and the ever-interesting "Brittney's Not Dead Yet!" story. And that's why most North Americans still can't wrap their heads around the fact that Russia's economy is growing very quickly...we didn't hear about all the little steps they took to fix things and now we can't believe the results because it seems it came out of nowhere - which probably suits the Kremlin just fine.
Parent
Re:And that, boys and girls... (Score:5, Insightful)
And given that the Americans have given their economy AND military the royal shaft over these past few years,
Sadly true, but note that our Navy is in better shape relative to our ground forces right now, while at the same time Russia's Navy deteriorated badly after the fall of the Soviet Union and has not been significantly rebuilt yet, especially with respect to capital ships (and any conflict between Russia and Canada over Canadian possessions would be primarily a naval confrontation). As the other responder pointed out, Russia, for the moment at least, would be badly outclassed at sea.
they'd be hard pressed to come to ANYONE's aid
Umm, well no, actually, because we don't consider our geographical neighbors to be just "anyone", and I suspect every other nation feels the same way: the closer to home the location is, the more important events at that location are viewed.
And in this specific case this is especially true since we have a certain not-so-small and not-so-insignificant possession [wikipedia.org] located prominently in the conflict area (never mind that one of these belligerents is a long standing ally, and the other is a long standing adversary).
Now if we don't fix our economy and stop spending money we don't have, then in 20 or 30 years we won't be able to afford the military we have now and won't be able to come to our own aid, much less anyone elses, thats true enough, but for now at least, its just about guaranteed that a Russia trying to expand at Canada's expense would quickly result in at least 3-5 US Carrier Battle Groups freezing their butts off in Canadian Arctic waters... :)
Parent
Re:And that, boys and girls... (Score:5, Insightful)
For an example of how far the Russian Navy has fallen, remember the Kursk? Sank while on exercises in the Arctic, surrounded by the entire northern fleet. The Russians tried and failed for days to mount a rescue. Finally they swallowed their pride and accepted foreign help; a team of Norwegian and British divers quickly reached the submarine, but the crew were long dead.
Since then the Kursk has been raised... by the Dutch.
Parent
Re:And that, boys and girls... (Score:5, Funny)
... very few nations have the capacity to launch a major ground campaign across an ocean.
Good thing for Canada they don't border by land an overly aggressive, armed-to-the-teeth nation with a bloodthirsty addiction for natural resources.
Parent
Re:And that, boys and girls... (Score:4, Insightful)
Check again, I think you'll find it actually takes less than two.
Parent
There's still some ice at the North Pole (Score:5, Interesting)
The North Pole isn't quite open water yet. But it's getting close. A friend of mine just went there. By ship. Admittedly it was a nuclear-powered icebreaker. But pictures taken near the pole show patches of open water.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, there's more polar ice than there was last year.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png [nsidc.org]
(Daily chart showing icepack compared to last year and to previous 20 average.)
So yes, there's less ice than there used to be, but the somewhat under-reported increase this year over last year casts some question over the long-term trend, it could simply be long term climate oscillation.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Tectonic plate movements have a tendency to move things around.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Why then are people freaking out that it might get warmer there again in the future?
There weren't 7 billion people living on the planet at any time where conditions were like that. Such a planet might not support that many people. The Earth itself has never been in any significant danger, just some of its inhabitants.
Coords (Score:3, Funny)
*badoom tish*
I enjoy the climate change deniers' double think (Score:5, Insightful)
So The question is.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
If you can find penguins, hovering or not, in the ARCTIC, I as a proponent of the Canadian Seal Hunt(TM) would definitely be interesting in locating this new potential renewable resource/way of pissing off brown-nosing celebrities.
Re:Yeah... (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, Russia's economy has been growing steadily over the last few years http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/ECAEXT/RUSSIANFEDERATIONEXTN/0,,contentMDK:20888536~menuPK:2445695~pagePK:1497618~piPK:217854~theSitePK:305600,00.html [worldbank.org] and they still have quite a lot of oil and NG, not to mention a storehouse of minerals in Siberia. The country has just begun to modernize and I suspect in 15 years, they could easily be an economic powerhouse (depending of course on stable government). 15 years is not a long time, chances are any drilling at the pole and its environs is going to be long term for anybody.
Parent
Re:Yeah... (Score:5, Interesting)
No, you have it right, except that it's Medvedev now (two leaders that agree with each other a lot does not necessarily mean that one is the other's puppet - especially not when they've been working together and influencing each other for many years). The thing is that overall he's improved life in Russia. The average Russian is happier to have a job and food on the table (and the table and the chairs and the room they're all in...) than he is upset over the death of Ms. Politkovskaya or the feelings of BP's shareholders. Remember, rigged or not Medvedev would have won the vote by a landslide - that wouldn't have been the case if Putin's reign had been a continuation of the disaster that was Yeltsin.
The Soviet Union functioned for a long time without the freedoms we seem to predicate our very existence on, and the restrictions Putin's imposing in Russia are nothing compared to what came before. And as long as they're not launching their nukes at us and willing to trade (even if it is strictly on their terms) I'm content to let them govern their land as they see fit.
Parent
Re:Yeah... (Score:4, Insightful)
It looks to me like it's specifying a bunch of db primary keys (the $fooPK:NNNNNs), separated by ~s rather than making it a "traditional" query string (which may not be search engine friendly). Chances are the ".html" at the end is to make it look to google et al (and your browser) like it's just any other link, and shouldn't be treated specially (and especially not ignored).
Yes, it's ugly as hell, but how often do you actually read out a URL, rather than copy/paste/send it to someone?
Parent
Re:Yeah... (Score:4, Informative)
Yes [wikipedia.org], but not from 20 miles away.
Parent