Nicole Karlis: Why Trump is obsessed with buying Greenland // Can humanity survive without the Amazon rainforest?

What exactly is this so-called economic potential? For one, Greenland’s vast mineral and energy resources include iron ore, lead, zinc, diamonds, gold, rare earth elements, uranium and oil, to name a few. As the Arctic ice continues to melt due to global warming, these minerals and natural resources will become more accessible for extraction.

In other words, instead of trying to preserve what sea ice is left in the Arctic Ocean, Trump and the Republican party want to capitalize on its demise. That the majority of the Republican party, Trump included, publicly deny climate change makes this irony even richer.

Can humanity survive without the Amazon rainforest?
the farmers who have started the fires were encouraged by Brazil’s right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro, a climate skeptic.  In July alone, the Amazon lost 519 square miles of rainforest, an area more than twice the size of Tokyo, due to deforestation.

As Salon has previously explained, sea ice in the Arctic Ocean can be compared to ice cubes in a glass of water. As the ice melts, it does not directly change the water level in your glass because the ice was already there — but at some point, it ceases to keep the glass cold. In the case of Earth, the glass of water is the world’s oceans. Scientists have warned that, as the sea ice melts, this will investiably raise the temperature of the ocean faster.

In 2018, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) annual Arctic Report Card noted that only five percent of the Arctic Ocean’s old sea ice remains, and part of that is in Greenland. This summer, ice sheets in Greenland have been melting faster in the last decade. Greenland also experienced two of the biggest melts since 2012.

Greenland has long been considered a frontier for oil, gas, and minerals, but conditions have been too harsh to be economically feasible. Exactly how mineral-rich the land beneath the ice sheets really are is unknown, as it has not been possible to explore these depths... read more:

https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/why-trump-is-obsessed-with-buying-greenland/