Things You Didn't Know about Greenland [View all]

Probably pretty much everything about Greenland is something you didn't know.

The USA actually has a military base in northern Greenland. It used to be called Thule Air Base, but is now Pituffik Space Base. There are about 150 Space Force personnel there, plus a few hundred contract workers. You haven't heard of that base either, probably, because not much goes on there. The new name is often misread as "Pity Fuck Space Base," but that's not nice. It's a joke, just like the US Space Force.

Although Greenland is the largest non-continental island on the planet, it's total population is only about 56,900. Why? Because most of Greenland is uninhabited, since it's covered with the largest ice sheet on land on that planet. Nobody lives there, because, well, nobody can live there.

Trump wants to "buy" Greenland. Well, that has been tried before. "In 1867, United States Secretary of State William H. Seward worked with former senator Robert J. Walker to explore the possibility of buying Greenland and, perhaps, Iceland. Opposition in Congress ended this project." (Wikipedia). Congress was wise. "Following World War II, the United States developed a geopolitical interest in Greenland and in 1946 offered to buy the island from Denmark for $100,000,000; the Danish rejected the offer." (Wikipedia). No thanks, said Denmark.

Why buy Greenland? Well, it's rich in mineral resources. Or so the story goes. Problem is that the nasty weather there, along with all that ice, makes mining those resources impractical. There aren't really any good reasons to want to buy Greenland. It's not important strategically, either, despite being up there in the arctic. I don't believe that Donald Trump has ever been there. Nobody really goes there. It's not a nice place to visit, frankly

On the other hand, it's big. If you want to own a big chunk of land on the Earth, Greenland might be something of a bargain, but you'd just be buying bragging rights. The resources still aren't economically viable to exploit, despite global climate change melting some of that enormous ice sheet.

Still, Donald Trump doesn't make any sense most of the time, anyhow. Greenland isn't Denmark's property now, anyhow. It's an autonomous territory of Denmark. The Greenlanders DO NOT WANT to be owned by Trump or the United States. What's he going to do? Invade Greenland? Seems pretty stupid to me. I don't think that's going to happen.

Now that that's settled, everyone can go back to their Christmas holiday festivities and stop fretting about Greenland. It's not going to become the next US territory. Nobody wants that, except Donald J. Trump.