New Map of Carved Up Arctic 294
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."
Danish??? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Um, why not Antarctica (Score:1, Insightful)
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:2, 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. This is suicide without a large military to assert your control over said resources.
Historically this is sound reasoning, but very few nations have the capacity to launch a major ground campaign across an ocean. And even if the infrastructure and naval craft magically appeared in a country hostile to Canada, the navies of NATO have a downright obscene advantage in technology, numbers, and (dare I say?) operational doctrine over all non-NATO naval forces combined.
Strategic warefare otoh... that's a different can of worms. Messy.
Re:Danish??? (Score:2, Insightful)
We all know that Santa Claus lives at the North pole. But there's a big difference between precise north and magnetic north, and it's never been made clear which one Santa occupies. While magnetic north has actually passed through Canada and also is predicted to move around true north and towards Siberia anyways [nrcan.gc.ca].
So, the question is; what's so trollish about this parent?
There is no hope... (Score:2, Insightful)
I enjoy the climate change deniers' double think (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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... :)
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?
Re:Colbert wants to know (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.
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.
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?
Re:And that, boys and girls... (Score:4, Insightful)
Check again, I think you'll find it actually takes less than two.
Re:There's still some ice at the North Pole (Score:0, Insightful)
Well if there's that much oil under the area, then there must have been a lot of plants there which means it must have been much warmer there in the past. Why then are people freaking out that it might get warmer there again in the future?
Re:And that, boys and girls... (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:Um, why not Antarctica (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.
Re:There's still some ice at the North Pole (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.