Effects of global warming: War over icy rocks?

One mixed blessing of global warming is that it may thaw out part of the vast territories of northern Canada, leaving the Canadian military with a huge job trying to protect the strategic new territory.

Canada sends warships to protect northern boundaries, 25.08.05 by David Usborne - Three Canadian warships were steaming through Arctic waters yesterday as Ottawa displayed a new and almost bellicose determination to protect the sovereignty of its northernmost boundaries. Two vessels, the Shawinigan and the Glace Bay, docked in Churchill on Sunday, marking a return by the Navy to the remote port on the shores of the Hudson Bay for the first time in 30 years. Meanwhile, a third frigate, the HMCS Fredericton, was travelling towards eastern Arctic waters. The Fredericton is ostensibly on patrol to impose fishing regulations but is expected to pass close to a tiny speck of an island that has recently become the subject of diplomatic head-butting between Canada and Denmark. Both countries are claiming the barren rock, named Hans Island, as theirs. For years, Canada has taken its control of the vast northern region mostly for granted. But with the melting of polar ice providing new access for shipping, the government is anxious about possible territorial rivalries, not just with Denmark, but also with Norway, Russia and the United States . . .

(Perhaps we'll see the day when Americans, trying to escape the hot stretches of the vast American desert, are trying to cross the fence into Canada!)