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New Norwegian land could emerge from the Atlantic Ocean
- effnorwood 4y ago[dead]
- simonebrunozzi 4y agoHmm... A new micronation?
- bell-cot 4y agoArticle's subtitle: "Many active volcanoes can be found on the seabed within Norway's maritime borders. Some are now only a few metres below sea level. " The first para mentions that it's west of Jan Mayen ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Mayen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Mayen ). So - not exactly high-value real estate. Even before you factor in the lush "above 70 degrees north, on the edge of the Greenland Sea" climate.
- scheme271 4y agoIt might be really high value if it gives Norway claims to much more area and a larger exclusive economic zone in the Atlantic.
- bell-cot 4y agoMaybe. If the peak of an active volcano or few actually counts for your EEZ. If the peak doesn't blow up or get washed away before it's been there long enough to count. IANAL. If/how/when EEZ's change, when a sliver of new land pops up, strikes me as a pretty rare & special legal specialty.
- hadlock 4y agoChina's made an entire business of expanding their territory by putting airfields on top of half-underwater islands. The Spratlys are horseshoe shaped atolls but have proven it can be done effectively and defensibly. (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/21/china-has-fully-militarized-three-islands-in-south-china-sea-us-admiral-says https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/21/china-has-full...) You also get a ~200 mile EEZ for fishing and mineral rights, and a 6-12 mile territorial waters in the area as well. Portugal has been working on staking out an enormous chunk of the north atlantic for the last decade or so using similar strategy.
- bell-cot 4y agoWhat China - a superpower with a very confrontational and combative attitude - can get away with in its own back yard might be quite different from what modest little Norway can or would try to do in the Greenland Sea. Also, talk to a few volcanologists and marine engineers about trying to build airfields on the tops of barely-above water active volcanoes. (Vs. China is building on shallow, solid, inactive atolls.)
- klyrs 4y ago> Also, talk to a few volcanologists and marine engineers about trying to build airfields on the tops of barely-above water active volcanoes. Discount plane parking/moorage/incineration?
- toast0 4y agoMoorage with built-in incineration solves the problem of what to do with the boats when the owners disappear.
- zardo 4y agoAnd Norway has plenty of EEZ, China is short on it.
- mytailorisrich 4y agoI think we need to understand that China is not "confrontational and combative" in a negative way. Think of it more like the kid who's been bullied for years and years and when puberty hits is finally able to stand his ground. That's China, and they're not the only ones who have been bullied over the last centuries and who may be able to stand their ground soon.
- unixhero 4y agoMaybe there is oil there
- slicktux 4y agoHave not read it…but is it due to isostatic rebound?
- bell-cot 4y agoThat was my first thought, too. But instead it's just-barely-submarine volcanoes on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
- jofer 4y agoThe article is actually talking about volcanic activity building things up. I.e. active volcanoes building up relative to the seafloor immediately around them. Isostatic rebound is also occurring for the overall area, though. It's just a smaller effect (millimeters to centimeters per year) vs the meters to hundreds of meters that can occur from an eruption. (For those who don't know, isostatic rebound is occurring for large areas where the ice sheets were very thick during the last ice age. The lithosphere (rigid portion of the earth) "flexed" downward as a result, and it's currently still flexing back now that the ice is gone. The mantle has a very high viscosity, though, and needs to "flow" into the space as the lithosphere flexes back. That means it's a process that takes tens of thousands of years to equalize. "Flow" is in quotes, because most folks don't think of solids flowing. The mantle is solid rock, but solid rock does flow.)
- alex_suzuki 4y agoThat photo of the Beerenberg volcano in the first part of the article is stunning.
- sacrosancty 4y ago[dead]
- api 4y agoThis headline instantly conjured up an image of Norwegian black metal bands thrashing away as a black basalt island rises slowly out of the abyss with smoke and fire and lightning...
- 2000UltraDeluxe 4y agoI'd buy that album!
- dubcanada 4y agoHow would this work? If suddenly a brand new island appeared, who owns it? Assuming it's off Norways coast, Norway owns it. But what happens if it's between two country coasts or nobodies?
- peteradio 4y agoIt's actually covered under the universal dibs clause. Dibs!
- mattficke 4y agoIf it’s within 200 miles of land, there’s established protocol under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea[0] to demarcate maritime boundaries based on land borders. If the border went through the island there would need to be some sort of treaty negotiation to establish sovereignty. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Convention_on_the_Law_of_the_Sea https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Convention_on...
- midasuni 4y agoSo asssume there’s a 20 mile gap between, and the island appears 18 miles of country A’s coast, clearly it’s part of country A. Is the new maritime border still at the 20 mile mark or is it equidistant between the new island, 11 miles off shore and 11 miles from country B. But there great swathes of habitable land where we can’t agree globally on what country it is, so as usual it comes to down diplomacy.
- mattficke 4y agoThe short version is that overlapping maritime borders are resolved by drawing the various buffer zones out from the shoreline of all coastal land of each country, and where they conflict take the approximate midpoint of the overlapping area as the border. Small islands can therefore have an outsized impact on extending the territorial waters of a country, which is why there are so many territorial disputes over seemingly-insignificant uninhabited islands. There's not always an unambiguous resolution to competing claims, see for example: - China's "nine-dash line" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine-dash_line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine-dash_line - The Israeli–Lebanese maritime border dispute (which was only resolved last year) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli%E2%80%93Lebanese_maritime_border_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli%E2%80%93Lebanese_marit...
- 11235813213455 4y agomeanwhile sea is gaining space with global warming
- Arnt 4y agoNor in/near Norway. Greenland is melting, which changes the earth's centre of gravity, which in turn leads the area around Greenland (all the way to Norway) to rise. Iceland, Baffin Island and some other islands near Greenland rise decisively more than the ocean, mainland Norway perhaps a bit more. This volcano near Jan Mayen might get a 10m boost over the next 200 years.
- hanoz 4y agoHow does the earth's centre of gravity changing cause land to rise?
- jojobas 4y agoWater from melting ice is distributed around the globe, shifting CoG away from Greenland. This new water distribution is therefore uneven, more water getting to the other side.
- hanoz 4y agoYes, I understand how the redistribution of water would cause the centre of gravity to change, but not how the changed centre of gravity would the land to rise.
- boomboomsubban 4y agoRise relative to sea level.
- jojobas 4y agoAll the water starts to be attracted to the point slightly further from Northern Europe.
- moloch-hai 4y agoThe land is rising, because it doesn't have miles of ice on top, at 8 mm/y. Give it a few millennia. No volcanoes needed.
- bell-cot 4y agoMainland Norway, yes. The misleadingly-titled article is about events ~600 miles away from mainland Norway, along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
- moloch-hai 4y agoOK. But the Sea of Bothnia is getting shallower too. I don't see any reason for new islands out there to belong to Norway. Probably they could be considered mine, just as well.
- gnarbarian 4y agoif we had a conference there could we get away without a land acknowledgement or make one out to surtr just to be safe?
- bbarn 4y agoThe banner picture threw me off. I used to look at the silhouette of that island from my window on clear days and knew right away that was Iceland and not Norway.