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| Great White North |
| Fondly, Greenland Loosens Danish Rule |
| 2009-06-23 |
| NUUK, Greenland -- The thing about being from Greenland, said Susan Gudmundsdottir Johnsen, is that many outsiders seem to have no clue where it actually is. "They say, 'Oh, my God, Greenland?' It's like they've never heard of it," said Ms. Johnsen, 36, who was born in Iceland but has lived on this huge, largely frozen northern island for 25 years. "I have to explain: 'Here you have a map. Here's Europe. The big white thing is Greenland.' " But Greenland, with 58,000 people and only two traffic lights, both of them here in the capital, is now securing its place in the world. On Sunday, amid solemn ceremony and giddy celebration, it ushered in a new era of self-governance that sets the stage for eventual independence from Denmark, its ruler since 1721. The move, which allows Greenland to gradually take responsibility over areas like criminal justice and oil exploration, follows a referendum last year in which 76 percent of voters said they wanted self-rule. Many of the changes are deeply symbolic. Kalaallisut, a traditional Inuit dialect, is now the country's official language, and Greenlanders are now recognized under international law as a separate people from Danes. |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #17 global warming is rapidly melting the mighty icecap that covers some 80 percent of Greenland's 840,000 square miles Citation? OR are facts not important? There is no water to melt the ice from below due to lack of warmth, except at lower altitudes near the coast where warm currents melt the bottoms, so it must be melted from above. The cooling always exceeds the warming for solid ice at reasonable altitude. Since Greenland is at lower latitude than the pole, the Solar insolation can be significantly higher. If a strong enough warmer wind blows in from the sea, the sea ice and lower altitude edge of the Greenland ice sheet may melt, and has melted many times before (why do you think it is called Greenland). Ice melting at the very edge has led to scare scenes of massive melting, but it cannot happen at the higher altitudes (where almost all of the ice volume is located) at temperature variations that are happening, or that are even projected to occur by the scare models. |
| Posted by: Lagom 2009-06-23 14:17 |
| #16 Good lord, are there no editors left at the NYT? Sure. But they can only do that when they're not working in the mailroom. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2009-06-23 11:57 |
| #15 Cuzco is indeed beautiful in the spring time. |
| Posted by: Gromosing tse Tung9384 2009-06-23 11:09 |
| #14 LOL! Thing wins today's Award For Snark(tm). |
| Posted by: Scooter McGruder 2009-06-23 10:12 |
| #13 Look, if you want a country more suited for humans and their damn thermophilia there's still lots of land available in the Sahel. In the meantime could y'all please kindly stop complaining about those few lands at the fringe of the world that are still habitable by my people without _too much_ of an air conditioning bill? |
| Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2009-06-23 10:07 |
| #12 We can call this one "The Abominable Snow-job." |
| Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy 2009-06-23 10:02 |
| #11 I think the editors were playing a game of Mad Libs, using their "Look! Pygmies!" Story Template #149. |
| Posted by: Grenter, Protector of the Geats 2009-06-23 09:59 |
| #10 This reminds me of a story from the heyday of dead tree media, the 1920s. A big NYC paper sent an eager young reporter to western Pennsylvania to cover some damaging floods. The neophyte soon wired his first report, opening with the immortal words, "God sat on a hill and laughed as the town of (whatever) died in the raging torrent." Within minutes, the hard-boiled editor wired back, "Forget flood. Interview God. Get pictures." |
| Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy 2009-06-23 09:57 |
| #9 You're right, Para, this is loaded with throbbing purple prose, like the travel diary of some 1920s debutante. Thrillingly, the Greenlandic government now gets to call itself by its Inuit name, Naalakkersuisut Not much excitement in this reporter's life, I guess. "Its harbor is impossibly quaint and its views breathtakingly beautiful;" ...just to die for, simply divine and so simpatico, like Cuzco in the springtime.... Greenland's new, charismatic prime minister, Kuupik Kleist, ....and so charming and well-spoken for, well, you know. |
| Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy 2009-06-23 09:34 |
| #8 Fondly... solemn... giddy... Good lord, are there no editors left at the NYT? |
| Posted by: Parabellum 2009-06-23 08:39 |
| #7 Ed, the |
| Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy 2009-06-23 08:33 |
| #6 Was green compared the rock of Iceland. Then Gaia Global Cooling set in. Not that you'd know given that according to the 'experts' and MSM, climate change has only occurred in since the on set of the industrial age. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2009-06-23 08:28 |
| #5 RJ, Greenland was green at the time. Didn't last, though. |
| Posted by: Deacon Blues 2009-06-23 07:54 |
| #4 The Danes probably got had enough of subsidizing every man, woman and child to the tune of $11,000 per year. That's a lot fish exports to take up the slack. |
| Posted by: ed 2009-06-23 07:34 |
| #3 Do they have leftists there? I'm looking to move to a place that doesn't discriminate against Vikings, and that has no leftists. |
| Posted by: Snorri Sturlusson 2009-06-23 07:04 |
| #2 Weren't Muslims there first? |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2009-06-23 01:10 |
| #1 I was taught the Vikings misnamed "Iceland" which is green, and "Grenland", whih is mostly ice, on purpose to deter invaders. |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2009-06-23 00:23 |