Greenland

BY THE NUMBERS

By The Numbers, a look at what’s in the news . . . by the numbers. These are just numbers, not suggestions that they mean more or less than what they are. We do not suggest that one number is connected to another. These are simply facts with no extraneous details, bias or slanted reporting. To borrow (and perhaps mangle a bit) a quote from legendary fictional detective Joe Friday, it’s just the numbers, ma’am!

We don’t know about you, but until all this talk about military invasions, the U.S. taking over another country’s territory, arctic national security issues and the like . . . Greenland wasn’t what one might call a top of mind item. And now that the threat of military force seems to have passed (thankfully), it appears that the U.S. might be getting more involved in the world’s largest island. That means this is a good time to check out Greenland . . . by the numbers.

835,000 to 840,000

The number of square miles that makes up Greenland. As noted above, Greenland is also the world’s largest (non-continental) island.  That’s about three times the size of Texas. (By the way, the second biggest island in the world is West Papua and New Guinea. Borneo is third.)

55,000

The approximate size of the population of Greenland.  That would make it about the size of Anderson or Terre Haute.

4

Greenland is four hours ahead of us Hoosiers.

5

We have all heard the president talk about Greenland’s strategic value with rare earth minerals. That boils down to five key groups: Neodymium and Praseodymium (used for electric vehicle magnets and everyone’s favorite – wind turbines; Dysprosium and Terbium (big with magnets); Yttrium and Scandium (used with things of high temperature); Niobium and Gallium (these strengthen steel for use in all sorts of things from jets to nuclear industries); and Lithium (the batteries that seem to power everything now). And just for the record . . . no, we have no idea how to pronounce most of those. We’re just hoping we got the spelling correct!

150

That’s how many U.S. service members are at Pituffik Space Base, which used to be called Thule Air Base – a U.S. military installation located in Greenland. However, that number used to be between 6,000 and 10,000 back during an era a lot of us remember as the Cold War. And considering where that base is located, it was cold indeed!

-4

Winter temps in January and February can easily fall below zero. In the summer, temps are still cool, but range from around 50 inland to the upper 60s on the coast.

1,400

About how many islands the country of Denmark has – including Greenland.  However, Greenland is an autonomous territory.  Autonomous or not, the Kingdom of Denmark didn’t take too kindly to threats that the U.S. might invade the island.

8

Although it’s not exact, there were at least eight countries opposed to the idea of the U.S. invading Greenland. Those included Great Britain, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Canada.

20,000

The capital city is Nuuk (and no, we don’t know how to pronounce that either) and has a population of just over 20,000 – making it one of the smallest capital cities in the world.

2/3

This is one of the key points – about two-thirds of Greenland falls within the Arctic Circle. Why is that important? Because as the sea ice in the Arctic continues to decline by more than 10 percent annually,  that will make Greenland’s natural resources (which also include offshore deposits of oil and gas) more accessible. Plus, Pituffik Space Base provides early missile warning and defense. The U.S. occupied Greenland during WW II to prevent the Nazis from going there and to protect the North Atlantic shipping lanes. The Nazis reportedly had plans to take Greenland, Labrador and Newfoundland if Britain had fallen during the war. Greenland was a Danish colony so there was a large German presence.

1951

After WW II it became official that the U.S. could continue to have a strong presence in Greenland when the 1951 Defense of Greenland agreement was signed.