{"id":12450,"date":"2026-01-15T03:15:26","date_gmt":"2026-01-15T03:15:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=12450"},"modified":"2026-01-15T03:15:26","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T03:15:26","slug":"americans-have-been-quietly-plundering-greenland-for-over-100-years-since-a-navy-officer-chipped-fragments-off-the-cape-york-iron-meteorite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=12450","title":{"rendered":"Americans have been quietly plundering Greenland for over 100 years, since a Navy officer chipped fragments off the Cape York iron meteorite"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump\u2019s insistence that the U.S. will acquire Greenland \u201cwhether they like it or not\u201d is just the latest chapter in a codependent and often complicated relationship between America and the Arctic\u2019s largest island \u2013 one that stretches back more than a century but has recently been on the rocks.<\/p>\n

On Jan. 14, 2026, U.S., Danish and Greenlandic officials met at the White House to discuss Trump\u2019s comments. The foreign minister of Denmark later told reporters that while the two sides had a \u201cfundamental disagreement,\u201d they would \u201ccontinue to talk.\u201d In Congress, Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell also criticized Trump\u2019s threats, saying seizing Greenland would mean \u201cincinerating the hard-won trust of loyal allies in exchange for no meaningful change in U.S. access to the Arctic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although Americans have long pursued policies in Greenland that U.S. leaders considered strategic and economic imperatives, Trump\u2019s approach is more agressive than any previous president. As I recounted in my 2024 book, \u201cWhen the Ice is Gone,\u201d about Greenland\u2019s environmental, military and scientific history, some prior American ideas for Greenland were little more than engineering fantasies, while others reflected unfettered military bravado.<\/p>\n

\"A

Inuit and their dog team stand in front of a U.S. military radar installation at Thule, Greenland, that scanned the skies for Soviet bombers and missiles during the Cold War. More than 100 native Inuit were removed from their land during base construction. NF\/SCANPIX\/AFP via Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But today\u2019s world isn\u2019t the same as when the United States last had a significant presence in Greenland, decades ago during the Cold War.<\/p>\n

Before charging headlong into this icy island again, the U.S. would be remiss not to learn from past failures and consider how Earth\u2019s rapidly changing climate is fundamentally altering the region.<\/p>\n

Early U.S. plundering of Greenland\u2019s metals<\/h2>\n

In 1909, Robert Peary, a U.S. Navy officer, announced that he had won the race to the North Pole \u2013 a spectacular claim debated fiercely at the time. Before that, Peary had spent years exploring Greenland by dogsled, often taking what he found.<\/p>\n

In 1894, he convinced six Greenlanders to come with him to New York, reportedly promising them tools and weapons in return. Within a few months, all but two of the Inuit had died from diseases.<\/p>\n

\"A

People moved the 34-ton Cape York meteorite fragment named Ahnighito from the Greenland coast to Robert Peary\u2019s ship, which took it to New York in 1897. Account Of The Discovery And Bringing Home Of The ‘Saviksue’ or Great Cape York Meteorites. New York 1898\/Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Peary also took three huge fragments of the Cape York iron meteorite, known to Greenlanders as Saviksoah. It was a unique source of metal that Greenlandic Inuit had used for centuries to make tools. The largest piece of the meteorite, Ahnighito, weighed 34 tons. Today, it sits in the American Museum of Natural History, which reportedly paid Peary $40,000 for the space rocks.<\/p>\n

World War II: Strategic location and minerals<\/h2>\n

World War II put Greenland on the map strategically for the U.S. military. In spring 1941, Denmark\u2019s ambassador signed a treaty giving the U.S. military access to Greenland to help protect the island from Nazi Germany and contribute to the war effort in Europe. That treaty remains in effect today.<\/p>\n

The new American bases in western and southern Greenland became crucial refueling stops for planes flying from America to Europe.<\/p>\n

\"An

A political cartoon by Herbert L. Block, published in April 1941, shortly after a treaty authorized the U.S. to build military bases in Greenland. A Herblock Cartoon, \u00a9 The Herb Block Foundation<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Hundreds of American soldiers were garrisoned at Ivittuut, a remote town on the southern Greenland coast where they protected the world\u2019s largest cryolite mine. The rare mineral was used for smelting aluminum, critical for building airplanes during the war.<\/p>\n

And because Greenland is upwind from Europe, weather data collected on the island proved essential for battlefield forecasts as officers planned their moves during World War II.<\/p>\n

\"A

The Ivittuut cryolite mine in southwestern Greenland, shown in 1940. U.S. troops guarded the mine, essential for aluminum production, during World War II. U.S. Coast Guard via Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Both the Americans and Germans built weather stations on Greenland, starting what historians refer to as the weather war. There was little combat, though allied patrols routinely scoured the east coast of the island for Nazi encampments. The weather war ended in 1944 when the U.S. Coast Guard, and its East Greenland dogsled patrol, found the last of four German weather stations and captured their meteorologists.<\/p>\n

\"Men

American soldiers capture members of Germany\u2019s Edelweiss II weather station in northeastern Greenland in 1944. U.S. Coast Guard via Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Cold War: Fanciful engineering ideas vs the ice<\/h2>\n

The heyday of U.S. military engineering dreams in Greenland arrived during the Cold War in the 1950s.<\/p>\n

To counter the risk of Soviet missiles and bombers coming over the Arctic, the U.S. military transported about 5,000 men, 280,000 tons of supplies, 500 trucks and 129 bulldozers, according to The New York Times, to a barren, northwest Greenland beach \u2013 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) from the North Pole and 2,752 miles (4,430 kilometers) from Moscow.<\/p>\n

There, in one top-secret summer, they built the sprawling American air base at Thule. It housed bombers, fighters, nuclear missiles and more than 10,000 soldiers. The whole operation was revealed to the world the following year, on a September 1952 cover of LIFE magazine and by the U.S. Army in its weekly television show, \u201cThe Big Picture.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Trucks

A wave of U.S. military engineers lands on the shores of northwestern Greenland to build Thule Airbase in summer 1951. Keystone-France\/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But in the realm of ideas born out of paranoia, Camp Century and Project Iceworm were the pinnacle.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Army built Camp Century, a nuclear-powered base, inside the ice sheet by digging deep trenches and then covering them with snow. The base held 200 men in bunkrooms heated to 72 degrees Fahrenheit (22 Celsius). It was the center of U.S. Army research on snow and ice and became a reminder to the USSR that the American military could operate at will in the Arctic.<\/p>\n

\"Military

Metal arches placed over trenches cut into the snow-formed roofs at Camp Century. The arches were covered with snow and ice, removed, and reused. A similar idea had been planned for rail lines through the ice. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 1960<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\"Trucks

An aerial view shows Camp Century, which was powered by a portable nuclear reactor. US Army<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Army also imagined hundreds of miles of rail lines buried inside Greenland\u2019s ice sheet. On Project Iceworm\u2019s tracks, atomic-powered trains would move nuclear-tipped missiles in snow tunnels between hidden launch stations \u2013 a shell game covering an area about the size of Alabama.<\/p>\n

In the end, Project Iceworm never got beyond a 1,300-foot (400-meter) tunnel the Army excavated at Camp Century. The soft snow and ice, constantly moving, buckled that track as the tunnel walls closed in. In the early 1960s, first the White House, and then NATO, rejected Project Iceworm.<\/p>\n

\"A

A U.S. Army truck with railroad wheels sits on a 1,300-foot-long track beneath the snow at Camp Century, Greenland. This is the closest the military got to realizing Project Iceworm. Robert W. Gerdel Papers, Ohio State University<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 1966, the Army abandoned Camp Century, leaving hundreds of tons of waste inside the ice sheet. Today, the crushed and abandoned camp lies more than 100 feet (30 meters) below the ice sheet surface. But as the climate warms and the ice melts, that waste will resurface: millions of gallons of frozen sewage, asbestos-wrapped pipes, toxic lead paint and carcinogenic PCBs.<\/p>\n

Who will clean up the mess and at what cost is an open question.<\/p>\n

Greenland remains a tough place to turn a profit<\/h2>\n

In the past, the American focus in Greenland was on short-term gains with little regard for the future. Abandoned bases, scattered around the island today and in need of cleanup, are one example. Peary\u2019s disregard of the lives of local Greenlanders is another.<\/p>\n

History shows that many of the fanciful ideas for Greenland failed because they showed little consideration of the island\u2019s isolation, harsh climate and dynamic ice sheet.<\/p>\n

\"Large

World War II-vintage trucks abandoned at a U.S. airfield in east Greenland were still there decades later. Posnov\/Moment via Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Trump\u2019s demands for American control of the island as a source of wealth and U.S. security are similarly shortsighted. In today\u2019s rapidly warming climate, disregarding the dramatic effects of climate change in Greenland can doom projects to failure as Arctic temperatures climb.<\/p>\n

Recent floods, fed by Greenland\u2019s melting ice sheet, have swept away bridges that had stood for half a century. The permafrost that underlies the island is rapidly thawing and destabilizing infrastructure, including the critical radar installation and runway at Thule, renamed Pituffik Space Base in 2022. The island\u2019s mountain sides are crashing into the sea as the ice holding them together melts.<\/p>\n

The U.S. and Denmark have conducted geological surveys in Greenland and pinpointed deposits of critical minerals along the rocky, exposed coasts. However, most of the mining so far has been limited to cryolite and some small-scale extraction of lead, iron, copper and zinc. Today, only one small mine extracting the mineral anorthosite, which is useful for its aluminum and silica, is running.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the ice that matters<\/h2>\n

The greatest value of Greenland for humanity is not its strategic location or potential mineral resources, but its ice. https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/9lnP0Rjb2E0?wmode=transparent&start=0 A NASA animation of satellite data shows Greenland\u2019s ice sheet mass losses between 2002 and 2023, measured in meters of water equivalent in the ice.<\/p>\n

If human activities continue to heat the planet, melting Greenland\u2019s ice sheet, sea level will rise until the ice is gone. Losing even part of the ice sheet, which holds enough water to raise global sea level 24 feet in all, would have disastrous effects for coastal cities and island nations around the world.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s big-time global insecurity. The most forward-looking strategy is to protect Greenland\u2019s ice sheet rather than plundering a remote Arctic island while ramping up fossil fuel production and accelerating climate change around the world.<\/p>\n

Paul Bierman, Professor of Natural Resources and Environmental Science, University of Vermont<\/em><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com<\/p>\n

#Americans #quietly #plundering #Greenland #years #Navy #officer #chipped #fragments #Cape #York #iron #meteorite<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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