Rivers of Sand In Greenland

                                                                        New York Times

On Monday, we wrote about the sand crisis in India.  Rivers are being stripped of sand by rival gangs because the world is pretty much built on sand (or cement to more precise).  So while in India sand has become a precious commodity, far away as climate change continues unabated, Greenland's rapidly melting glaciers are depositing rivers of fine grained sand into the ocean at a prodigious rate

…because of the erosive power of ice, there is a lot of sand in Greenland. And with climate change accelerating the melting of Greenland’s mile-thick ice sheet — a recent study found that melting has increased sixfold since the 1980s — there is going to be a lot more.

“It’s not rocket science,” Dr. Bendixen said. “One part of the world has something that other parts of the world are lacking.” 

Dr. Bendixen is planning a two-year study to answer basic questions about the idea, including its feasibility and the environmental effects of extracting and exporting large amounts of the material. 

India's sand drama aside, most of the components of cement are procured within 50 miles of their point of use.  Shipping sand from Greenland to India or China will depend on the capacity of industry in Greenland to mine the sand and ship it around the world in a cost effective manner.

In the end climate change may do in most of human civilization, but over the short run it will also create opportunities in some corners of the world that didn't exist in the past.