What examples of digging through that amount of ice for the purposes of mining are you familiar with? What's a good example?
It'd be interesting to understand how much the environment there increases the cost of mining. Anything is possible, but it'd be cool to know whether it makes any sense. (and yes, I think our leadership in the US is fully capable of causing an international crisis over mineral assets that would in financial terms be best left in the ground)
It's not for mining, but the US built Camp Century and Camp TUTO in the ice to determine how feasible Project Iceworm would be. A construction film about the former was declassified some decades ago [0]. Icefield construction wasn't feasible even in the context of cold-war era MAD spending.
Actual subglacial mining has only been attempted a few times. Kumtor gold mine in Kyrgyzstan is in the middle of a couple glaciers and reshaped the landscape to redirect the glaciers a bit. Svea Nord in Svalbard ran tunnels under a glacier for coal. Canada's Granduc mine wasn't technically on or under a glacier, but it was just below one.
I guess I don't even know what to do with some of this information. It occurred to me that you'd also probably have to build some infrastructure (power plant, railroad, fuel terminal, a real port... I don't know) in order to even get the ball rolling. I don't think anyone's going to pay for that by taxing the citizens of Nuuk.
I also wonder if there has ever been a real geopolitical obstacle to doing this stuff, since the Danes and Greenlanders seem amenable to doing business. It would seem the obstacles have all been financial.
As I said in a comment elsewhere, arctic mining is doable with nation-state level resources. There's just no reason to do so that isn't better accomplished by other means. It would be stupid, expensive, and devastate a beautiful country.
As for "amenable", my experience is that people in the arctic are relatively unhappy about that sort of industrial development. They like the places they live.
If “non experts” aren’t welcome, can you establish your expertise on the topic? In particular, what’s your experience with mining thorough ice or maintaining industrial operations in the Arctic or near-arctic conditions?
The main problem with ice, is that it moves all the time. The glaciers on Iceland move up to 46m per day. Also, any tunnel created in fast moving ice could easily be crushed by the pressure of the ice.
Greenland isn't entirely covered in ice. Take a look at any of the mineral resources maps floating around for the country. Everything's on the coastal margins in places only covered by seasonal snow. The interior is a big blank because no one's been able to search under the ice.
However, the adjacent Canadian provinces (Nunavut & Northern Labrador) share many of the same geologic provinces, also without significant glaciation. There aren't a lot of big mines up there relative to the mineral wealth because it's simply too challenging. Constructing big infrastructure in the arctic takes resources approaching nation-state levels. Most mining companies can't muster that or maintain it long-term.
Don’t modern mines remove everything over a very large area? It’s not tunnels and pickaxes any longer. The trucks are the size of a three story building.
Start with a few bunker busting bombs, work outside of winter, dump ice, dirt into ocean. Sounds plausible.
And? So carve out a wider area. The defeatism is palpable in here, some hackers. Why even get out of bed in the morning, right?
They extract oil from tar sands in Alberta, for example. Difficult things are done all the time that are costly, as long as the price exceeds the cost.
To be clear my post above is not supportive of the administration, but rather the feasibility of mining at high latitudes.
Greenland is 99% uninhabited. There is no significant bill for invasion beyond transportation of mining equipment, cheap at sea. They were talking about buying it or the inhabitants, but that is paid with other people's money.
Reply below:
It's been under Danish control, and the Arctic is warming more quickly than other parts of the world.
You can do both, but why would you? It's not like we've tapped out Australia. And until we have, why bother with Greenland if the same money invested in Australia, or Sweden, or Canada would yield more profit?
Maybe, people previously thought it was not worth it to mine in greenland and thats why there is no noticable mining operation. But what do i know about cost-ratio or thinking.
I'm glad the resident HN tech bros are also Arctic mining experts. Surely they wouldn't complain about non-experts writing clickbaity articles while making claims with no evidence themselves.
