Post: #11

Facts about Greenland (from the CIA FactBook):

General: Greenland, the world's largest island, is about 81% ice-capped. Vikings reached the island in the 10th century from Iceland; Danish colonization began in the 18th century, and Greenland was made an integral part of Denmark in 1953. It joined the European Community (nowthe EU) with Denmark in 1973, but withdrew in 1985 over a dispute centered on stringent fishing quotas. Greenland was granted self-government in 1979 by the Danish parliament; the law went into effect the following year. Greenland voted in favor of increased self-rule in November 2008 and acquired complete responsibility for internal affairs in June 2009. Denmark, however, continues to exercise control of Greenland's foreign affairs, security, and financial policy in consultation with Greenland's Home Rule Government.

Location: Northern North America, island between the Arctic Ocean and the North Atlantic Ocean, northeast of Canada (72 00 N, 40 00 W)

Area:

total: 2,166,086 sq km
country comparison to the world: 13

land: 2,166,086 sq km (410,449 sq km ice-free, 1,755,637 sq km ice-covered) (slightly more than three times the size of Texas)

Maritime Claims:

territorial sea: 3 nm
exclusive fishing zone: 200 nm or agreed boundaries or median line
continental shelf: 200 nm or agreed boundaries or median line

Climate: arctic to subarctic; cool summers, cold winters

Terrain: flat to gradually sloping icecap covers all but a narrow, mountainous, barren, rocky coast

Highest Point: Gunnbjorn 3,700 m

Natural Resources: coal, iron ore, lead, zinc, molybdenum, diamonds, gold, platinum,niobium, tantalite, uranium, fish, seals, whales, hydropower, possibleoil and gas

Land Use:

arable land: 0%
permanent crops: 0%
other: 100% (2005)

Natural Hazards: continuous permafrost over northern two-thirds of the island

Environment - current issues: protection of the arctic environment; preservation of the Inuit traditional way of life, including whaling and seal hunting

Geography Note: dominates North Atlantic Ocean between North America and Europe; sparsepopulation confined to small settlements along coast; close toone-quarter of the population lives in the capital, Nuuk; world'ssecond largest ice cap

Population:
57,600 (July 2009 est.)
country comparison to the world: 206
[URL=https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2119rank.html?countryName=Greenland&countryCode=gl®ionCode=na&rank=206#gl][/URL]
Age Structure:

0-14 years: 23% (male 6,727/female 6,533)
15-64 years: 70.1% (male 21,696/female 18,669)
65 years and over: 6.9% (male 2,000/female 1,975) (2009 est.)

Population Growth Rate: 0.062% (2009 est.)
Birth Rate: 14.76 births/1,000 population (2009 est.)
Death Rate: 8.14 deaths/1,000 population (July 2009 est.)
Net Migration Rate: -5.99 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2009 est.)

Visit here for more details of the population:

Economy: The economy remains critically dependent on exports of shrimp and fish and on a substantial subsidy - about $700 million in 2008-09 - from the Danish Government, which supplies about 60% of government revenues. The public sector, including publicly-owned enterprises and the municipalities, plays the dominant role in the economy. Several interesting hydrocarbon and mineral exploration activities are ongoing and in 2007 a US firm signed an agreement with the Greenland Home Rule government to study the feasibility of building a multi-billion dollar aluminum smelter and hydro power plant. Denmark plans to reduce its subsidies to Greenland as revenues from oil exports come on stream.

For more on all the specifics of this country:

Diane

Post: #12

Diane

Post: #13

(12-06-2009 12:51 AM)Data4 Wrote:  I'd read somewhere that Erik the Red originally gave Greenland its name as a ruse to get people to colonize it. Sure, it may have been green in eons past, but the current nomenclature doesn't refer to that.

There was a program on Discovery about how during the age of the Vikings, Greenland was green. They covered what happened to the population as the island iced over and how that icing was directly responsible for the vikings coming to the "New World" aka "Vinland".

Post: #14

(12-08-2009 1:46 PM)Mtnjim Wrote:  There was a program on Discovery about how during the age of the Vikings, Greenland was green. They covered what happened to the population as the island iced over and how that icing was directly responsible for the vikings coming to the "New World" aka "Vinland".

That must have been during the warming period that all these environmentalists are trying to eh.. (cough)... "prove" never happened. It must have been since Greenland's land mass is 80% located within the arctic circle.

Diane

Post: #15

Actually, it's a well known , followed a few hundred years later by a .

Post: #16

Check out the graphs and data on this link... this shows what I was talking about before, how the fortran programmers added the |absolute| value of temperatures for their averages rather than subtracting when the temperature went down. This is a perfect illustration of how that shows up on a graph.



Diane

Post: #17

Well at least we got a reprieve this time around!

Post: #18