It’s getting warm again, which means it’s time for for the polar ice caps to start melting, and for glorious Northwest Passages to open up everywhere, and for shipping and extraction and all things industrial to bloom.
The boat ride from Shanghai to Hamburg is a lot quicker this way, but I don’t know, shit feels weird. Ironically, we would save millions of tonnes of fuel by using these routes. Maybe even enough tonnes of fuel for the ice to freeze back over! Also and in addition, better hope there’s not a spill up there while they drill baby drill. (Shit would get real.)
Yeah, there’s oil up there, waiting to be extracted. Probably 15% or so of the world’s undiscovered reserves. Also gold, diamonds, everything really. And as the ice melts and giant ribbons of this stuff become exposed for the first time ever, expect a new gold rush up there in the coming years, and like every gold rush, people will be trying to murder each other to get the gold, so we will have a fun new cold war driven by insatiable CEOs of oil companies and the like. No wonder Mitt Romney considers “the Soviets” to be Enemy Number One.
Also and lastly, if a Swedish plane hadn’t crashed last month, we’d have never found out about these awesome NATO war games, which included a scenario in which “a ‘strange group of people’ have settled in northern Sweden and established a state called ‘Gardaland’ from which they have invaded an area in Norway, after which NATO intervenes under a United Nations mandate.” Which sounds about right.
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I thought the lads from "Top Gear" already claimed it for England when they drove there.
Did they have a flag?
I hope they didn't tarnish the Brits' reputation for the cunning use of flags.
Gotta have a flag. That's how we conquered the moon so President Newt could build his moon base and robot-wife factories.
So I reckon that the opening that will let us gain entrance to savage Pellucidar is going to be accessible too.
Dibs on the chick with the fur bra!
That's no bra, she's topless!
Can Palin see it from her house?
Dude, she can see it from her knees!
Tonnes? Excuuuuuuuse me.
Looks like the boss sent John-boy to Eton or something.
Probably McGill.
WTF is a tonne? Sounds french.
From henceforth tonnes shall be called "Freedom Pounds."
Prolly went to Canadia for some weed and never came back.
We shall read this post with our pinkies up, shan't we?
Wait, the energy companies are planning on drilling in the no-longer-frozen Arctic? But I thought that they all said they didn't think global warming was real? Gasp, it almost makes it seem like they were lying.
It's cyclical! The climate's a cycle! It's all cycles! Etc.
Canada always wanted to be a world leader… now they have to defend it. Good luck, Gordon!
Donald Trump will be wanting to put in a golf course and hotel. Maybe "Frozen Margaritaville."
Yeah. but the problem is unfrozen tundra is commonly referred to as "swamp"
Professor Schoenkopf spells it "tonne-dra."
Trump built in New Jersey … no mere swamp is going to stop him.
Wikipedia-ing Gardaland…
"Gardaland is the third-most-popular theme park in Europe and is between Peschiera and Lazise, at Lake Garda in Italy."
Also on Lake Garda, the town of Salo, headquarters of Mussolini's puppet government for the Italian Social Republic, 1943-45.
All of this is meaningless, because Global Climate Change is a lie, right?
Advocated only by mass murders and sociopaths.
Such a pity those polar bears and baby seals are in the way of us getting more of that delicious oil.
Well, we could harvest them for meat and fur, but the meat's probably poison and who needs fur in post-global-warming Gardalandistan? Grind 'em up to make pink slime and feed it to the children of the poors.
Next.
Also.
That's what clubs and helicopter gunships are for, silly!
We can make oil out of seals, right?
Who cares? Kill it! Burn it! Drill it! WHOOOO!
Please. Global warming is a hoax, like Watergate, Piltdown Man, and the Holocaust.
Aren't Mel Gibson and Marine Le Pen hoaxes too, also?
Have you ever seen them in the same place? Imma just sayin'
Long Live Piltdown Man!
You forgot The Moon Landing.
The good news about this is that it could lead to the most awesome war ever: Canada vs. Sweden!
Ya Olle, open fire!
War? Sounds more like Olympic hockey semi-finals.
Except in this scenario, all the hockey players drown, because there's no more ice.
Some version of hockey on jet skis would be awesome.
Jousting. I want to see jousting on jet skis.
The blond versus the bland
Yeah, but who will be first to SWIM to the north pole?
The Great White
WhaleChristie?But Christie's size fucks with the earth's magnetic polarity and consequently he can always pursue, but never arrive, at the North Pole. Also, swim there? Maybe float and beach himself…
Why, I CIA war-dolphins, of course.
All that really matters to us real Merkins is where the Super Walmart and Chipotle will be.
Climate Change is just a theory, by Ted Kaczynski. Besides, didn't Raygunn finish the Soviets off?
"Mr. Gorbachev, defrost that ice cap!"
That's what they wanted you to think!
– Today's GOP.
I think we should put Newt in charge of a 20-year on-site fact-finding mission up there, along with "Ice Queen" Callista. It'll be good practice for his lunatic I mean LUNAR colony. Lou Sarah can tag along as their Sacagawea and meth-supplier.
ALT-TEXT win, JS.
I think this plot has the making of a good eighties movie.
Needs more Ernest Borgnine.
Indeed it does.
I've seen it. It kind of sucked.
Bad enough that we've spent trillions of dollars to defend the interests of the fucking Saudi royals, now we'll have to spend trillions more defending the interests of the fucking Sami royals.
According to wikipedia a "tonne" is the same thing as a "megagram" which sounds way more badass. Long live Megagram!
Megagram vs. Poundzilla!!!
Didn't he fight Godzilla in Mothra Reborn? Or am I thinking of Jet Jaguar and Megalon?
Godzilla vs. Megagram
Wait a minute. Isn't Megagram the leader of the Decipticons?
Today, we are all Gardalanders.
“a ‘strange group of people’ have settled in northern Sweden and established a state called ‘Gardaland’ from which they have invaded an area in Norway, after which NATO intervenes under a United Nations mandate.”
I, for one, welcome our Gardaner overlords.
a scenario in which “a ‘strange group of people’ have settled in northern Sweden and established a state called ‘Gardaland’ from which they have invaded an area in Norway
Was that strange group called the "Troglophane"?
Cause I'm down with NATO whacking those bastards.
Я понял. Я передам эту информацию Владимиру.
Commie!
But for the crash of a Swedish plane, and the Norwegian military website set up to publicise it, we'd have never known of this super-secret, routine training mission. http://mil.no/excercises/coldresponse2012/pages/d…. #altjournalismfail
Fiendishly clever – hidden in plain sight!
Mr Preznit! We can NOT ALLOW an Iceberg Gap!
This would be an opportune time for that hole at the top of the world to make its appearance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow_Earth
We need to fight the polar bears there so we don't have to fight them here!
you are underestimating the military might of the panzerbjorne.
Svalbard's armored bears would crush those Canuk bears, no doubt.
I call dibs on Kronstadt!
STOP IT!!
I thought Rock Hudson settled on that on Ice Station Zebra back in the last century, before iPhones were invented.
Actually, fun fact about that Very Cold War in the Arctic: all matters like Arctic Ocean mineral rights are governed by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. And, funny story, the United States is essentially the only country with Arctic interests (or indeed, Blue Sea interests of any sort, honestly) to refuse to sign UNCLOS, more or less because black helicopters.
So basically, we ceded Arctic Ocean mineral rights to the commie Soviets and the socialist Norweigians, because we US Americans are worried about commie socialist UN one-world government.
It's ours because we WANT it!
I can see Russia from there!
Yeah, because it's right there.
will we ever admit that the only thing gold is good for is electrical conductivity and that diamonds are only good for drill bits?
The Ron Paul/DeBeers alliance will destroy you for your impertinence!
If we ask real nice, maybe Canada will agree to annex us.
Mitt is concerned about the Soviets in the Arctic because that is where he hid his courage and leadership before the campaign started.
Alaska's already there
Why are we not surprised.
We could trade our Somali pirates for Alaskan pirates!
This is good news for Ted Kaczynski!
FREEDOM FOR GARDALAND!
That's a great map, BTW.
Don't forget that the People's Republic of China is trying to buy a huge hunk of Iceland since it is broke and therefore cheap.
Bring some sunscreen and shorts for the Arctic beaches …
Awe fux, you mean carbon offsetting my last sin trip to Amsterdam didn't save the planets? What about all the things I posted to my Facebook wall? My Prius didn't fix it either!?!?!? What do you mean my green wristband doesn't "do" anything? I bring my own canvas shopping bags dammit!
There's already a strange group of people settled in northern Sweden biding their time until the coming zombie apocalypse: The Sami.
You had the Rightards at "War".
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