OK, that part sounds intriguing. I’ll be interested to see how that turns out. However, why the *$#% would you build it in the desert? WTF? Who wants to live in 90-130° weather half of the year?...
The investor cites capitalism's "significant flaws," attributing many of them to "the land ownership model that America was built on."
OK, that part sounds intriguing. I’ll be interested to see how that turns out.
However, why the *$#% would you build it in the desert? WTF? Who wants to live in 90-130° weather half of the year? Or rather are there 5 million people who want that? Phoenix is the 4th largest metropolitan area in the US and only has 1.7 million people. I see nothing about what sorts of businesses (and hence jobs) will be there in the article. It seems like there could be better places to build it, but I’m not the genius billionaire, so I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
On one hand, I think billionaires trying to 'save' humanity is a little too dystopian/comic-book-esque for my liking but on the other hand at least there are some who seem like they aren't content...
On one hand, I think billionaires trying to 'save' humanity is a little too dystopian/comic-book-esque for my liking but on the other hand at least there are some who seem like they aren't content to just sit on their little mountains of gold.
But anyways IMO you left the most interesting part of the quote out:
On Telosa's official website, Lore explains that he was inspired by American economist and social theorist Henry George.
This billionaire's pet project aside, I think Georgism really has a chance of picking up steam in the next decade. I feel like its starting to enter the public consciousness. A tax that aggressively captures the rent value of land could be a major unifier between left and liberal economics, simplify complex tax regimes and reduce inequality.
Let the individuals who now hold it still retain, if they want to, possession of what they are pleased to call their land. Let them continue to call it their land. Let them buy and sell, and bequeath and devise it. We may safely leave them the shell, if we take the kernel. It is not necessary to confiscate land; it is only necessary to confiscate rent.
The one benefit I can see is that there's big chunks of desert land out there that aren't currently being used for human development. Anything that's arable or close to a significant waterway will...
The one benefit I can see is that there's big chunks of desert land out there that aren't currently being used for human development. Anything that's arable or close to a significant waterway will already have ownership, and a lot of the rest of it is national parks or otherwise difficult to build upon. Acquiring 150,000 acres requires that they not be buying a quarter-acre at a time from existing residential landowners. If they had to do it like that, it'd take decades to acquire the contiguous land.
Of course, it's not being used because it's remote and without significant resources. I'm interested in what would make this city worth moving to.
I don't think the choice of desert is that strange. For one, clearly land for cheap is a must, so that eliminates the coast, rivers, great lakes, and any number of already developed land. Then,...
I don't think the choice of desert is that strange. For one, clearly land for cheap is a must, so that eliminates the coast, rivers, great lakes, and any number of already developed land.
Then, mountainous areas are not desirable because you have to work, around, or against the geography to built human habitation. A desert is a nice, empty canvas for the urban planners to do whatever they want with. Furthermore, while it is a challenging climate, it is, at least, a challenging climate that is mostly the same challenge year round.
Deserts also conveniently have a great source of renewable energy from solar that is horizontally scalable.
From the get-go, the need for cheap land means that the naturally "good places" for human habitability are already, well, habitated, and when they're habitated it becomes not only expensive, but difficult to get contiguous land unless you start eminent domaining people.
What would be stopping us from building giant saltwater pipelines to do desalination in the deserts? Between solar panels and solar stills, seems like potentially plenty of energy. Especially if...
What would be stopping us from building giant saltwater pipelines to do desalination in the deserts?
Between solar panels and solar stills, seems like potentially plenty of energy. Especially if its a fresh city with a water-concious design (like not using potable water in toilets).
Just to pop in on the de-sal silver bullet comments. Desalination has some significant hurdles from a energy perspective (which is why they are largely paired with nuclear plants) and incredibly...
Just to pop in on the de-sal silver bullet comments. Desalination has some significant hurdles from a energy perspective (which is why they are largely paired with nuclear plants) and incredibly negative impacts to the nursery habitats in which the salt water originates (the larval stage life forms and feed stock that maintain marine ecosystems are almost wholesale sucked up and cooked). I love the discussion on how humanity can live sustainably on our planet, but the narrative needs to be about putting people where resources are abundant not insane terraforming because land is cheap.
Agree there are definitely challenges to be considered with any saltwater proposal. However, the ecological disasters are not going to get better. Engineer now for 20+ years later. What starts out...
Agree there are definitely challenges to be considered with any saltwater proposal.
However, the ecological disasters are not going to get better.
Engineer now for 20+ years later. What starts out as scifi (or wild speculation) now could be an engineer's dream later.
I'm not sure I get your point though. To me this feels like what we've seen with dams across the west. They underproduce in terms of electricity and have huge impacts to riverine systems and the...
I'm not sure I get your point though. To me this feels like what we've seen with dams across the west. They underproduce in terms of electricity and have huge impacts to riverine systems and the associated species. The dream in that case is more of a nightmare that we're only just starting to address. Check out the Klamath Dam removal if you're interested.
I could be misinterpreting your comment, and if so I apologize, but we know a good number of the impacts of desal at this point and without some pretty radical technological changes (and if they come I am all for it) there doesn't seem to be a real feasible way to avoid those impacts. Marine areas are actually improving in a lot of areas thanks to the introduction of MPAs and fishing limits.
My suggestion is that projects like this should take place in areas with the resources available. New England seems like a potential location as precipitation trends seems to be increasing there and could feasibly support a much larger population.
Dams are incredibly useful. They give large buffer of water supply while also providing electricity. The water supply is almost more important than any electricity. Though the electricity is also...
Dams are incredibly useful. They give large buffer of water supply while also providing electricity. The water supply is almost more important than any electricity. Though the electricity is also important because it can provide baseline load at night when solar can't, far less disruptive than other storage methods. On the east coast, they are generally far less disruptive and large. The west coast does need more solutions for water, given problems of relocating a very large population.
I personally would suggest more, smaller dams, as they take far less time to build and dismantle. Heck, even natural dams (like beaver dams) which don't provided electricity help. Apparently newer designs are starting to factor that in
That said, any city is going to be incredibly disruptive to local wildlife. Disposal of waste alone poses huge challenges.
One last very controversial thought. We can't save every species. We've gone too far for that. While damns hurt salmon, there are other fish that do just fine in lakes formed by dams. This is not to say we shouldn't try, but we have a bit of a Sophie's choice surrounding 'disrupting wildlife' and 'providing for everyone'.
Sustainable, less polluting cities will help. Especially if higher density which enables returning more land to wilderness in more arable lands more capable of sustaining large biomass.
I agree with nearly all your points, particularly your last one. All of them add up to some really interesting ideas around new development. I'm working on a project right now in the central...
I agree with nearly all your points, particularly your last one. All of them add up to some really interesting ideas around new development. I'm working on a project right now in the central valley looking at the bio-diversity and carbon offset effects of creating fake beaver dams in smaller creeks and rivers. People are definitely working on some really interesting and innovating stuff. I can get a little doom and gloom but I think it's because so many of these "solutions" are lauded as a silver bullet. I love your last thought "Especially if higher density which enables returning more land to wilderness in more arable lands more capable of sustaining large biomass." And I'd like to riff on it.
Sorry if this is too much but I love thinking about innovative infrastructure and climate resilience. I think a big grip I have with the thinking in the proposed "revolutionary city" is that it effectively goes "well things are bad so fuck everything and start fresh". To me that is just going to make new problems. We have a ton of already developed and underutilized land. Why not revitalize one of the 21st century ghost towns in the midwest like Detroit or Cleveland? Cost? I mean if you're going to drop 400 billion, lets put some of that into pollution mitigation and superfund site cleanup. I'm sure it will be a more complex project as you would need to work with local stakeholders and address current issues, but that would allow you to get out in front of the same problems a new city would face 10-20 years down the line. It just feels like the incredibly capitalistic mindset that cutting losses, regardless of the impact, is preferable to fixing an standing issue. There are some really interesting revitalization projects going on in cities from Detroit to Grand Rapids and I think those programs, with community co-development, could provide a much bigger impact than a brand new city. I'm fully with you, lets build up in the cities we have with the infrastructure in place to support it rather than chasing the shiny new thing.
I'd say you're not wrong, but it's a lot easier to build new subways, lay conduit, etc on fresh soil, than trying to retrofit existing infrastructure. You probably add years to build time to...
I'd say you're not wrong, but it's a lot easier to build new subways, lay conduit, etc on fresh soil, than trying to retrofit existing infrastructure. You probably add years to build time to retrofit even a small town. This is also the reasoning for re-writing code instead of refactoring it.
Comparing cities to a program, an average older city looks like a Rust application wrapping a Python script, which wraps a shell script wrapping a COBOL program which depends on some other data generated from a 1960's mainframe.
You ever see what an asbestos removal looks like? Or go underground and try to see which pipes/conduits do what? Or how every home built before like 1980 has a lead paint warning? That's just some surface-level stuff that would need dealt with for a retrofit.
We should work to address pollution for sure, but in the end, just let nature reclaim the old infrastructure. Our infrastructure isn't as strong as we'd like to think.
I totally get the cost benefits aren't there, but when we say "let nature reclaim it" it really just means let's forget about this brownfield site. Outside of waiting thousands of years we'll have...
I totally get the cost benefits aren't there, but when we say "let nature reclaim it" it really just means let's forget about this brownfield site. Outside of waiting thousands of years we'll have to address at some point.
Starting fresh is definitely easier, but that's why this proposal feels like a copout to me. It's effectively a "fuck it, the fed will deal with our mess".
I'm skeptical as well, but I think it's a bit much to say that desalination plants must have a bad impact on the environment. It seems like a design issue? For example, the environmental impact on...
I'm skeptical as well, but I think it's a bit much to say that desalination plants must have a bad impact on the environment. It seems like a design issue? For example, the environmental impact on marine ecosystems will depend on where you put the intakes and outputs.
Also, with current cost trends I expect solar to be cheaper than nuclear, particularly if intermittent power is okay. It seems like it would be for desalination.
I think it would be weird not to put a desalination plant next to the ocean, though.
I'm not trying to demonize desal, it's just been sold as a silver bullet to the water crisis we're witnessing throughout the majority of the western states. Desal will inevitably have a negative...
I'm not trying to demonize desal, it's just been sold as a silver bullet to the water crisis we're witnessing throughout the majority of the western states. Desal will inevitably have a negative impact on the marine environment, any really large scale extractive process will. Like fishing, damages from desal can be lessened but they will still be there. I'm not saying we completely avoid environmental damage, any human centered activity will likely cause some damage. I just don't understand why they couldn't select a more hospitable environment for the project. Secondly, the problem is a question of scale. If you are going to create a city of 5 million people (five times larger than San Francisco), that's a lot of water to get from desal. So we're not talking about one plant.
I also completely agree that we could use solar instead. The benefit of pairing with gas or nuclear is that the cooling needs of those facilities already effectively cook the salt water pumped through their systems so you are using water that is already sterile and the impact to marine life has already occurred. Again, not endorsing those systems, just that if they are already operating you might as well use the water too. But beyond that is the magnitude of energy needed. I don't think they can have "sustainable energy production and a purportedly drought-resistant water system" if you need excessive energy to ensure the latter. The current power to water ratio is below:
“In order to supply water to 300,000 people, the Carlsbad desal plant will require the equivalent of a 31.3 megawatt power plant operating around the clock — enough electricity to power nearly 40,000 average California households for a year.”
I guess my proposal is rather than bring the resources to us we should be building where the resources already exist and will continue to exist into the future with current climate models.
Well, I'd rather talk about actual desalination plants than pie-in-the-sky schemes. I'd be surprised if the proposed city described in this article got anywhere. The Wikipedia article about the...
Well, I'd rather talk about actual desalination plants than pie-in-the-sky schemes. I'd be surprised if the proposed city described in this article got anywhere.
The Wikipedia article about the Carlsbad plant is interesting. Putting it right next to an existing power plant and connecting the intake and outflow seems like a smart way to do it, though apparently the power plant needs to be replaced.
It sounds like it's mostly successful? do you know anything more about it? Where is that quote from?
If the electricity needed to power 40,000 homes is used to supply 300,000 homes with water then that's 13% more electricity used per home. It's unfortunate but seems livable?
Definitely! Pie in the sky always seems to get the most attention and funding unfortunately. I don't know a ton about the Carlsbad plant other than it seems to be next in a long line of coastal...
Definitely! Pie in the sky always seems to get the most attention and funding unfortunately.
I don't know a ton about the Carlsbad plant other than it seems to be next in a long line of coastal power/desal plants that seem to be going offline. There was one in San Luis Obispo that was paired with a nuclear called Diablo Canyon that is going offline, the power plant at Moss Landing has gone that way as well. One of the most interesting ideas proposed with the Moss landing facility was to turn it into a giant water driven battery to offset peak usage times. I think as we move away from traditional forms of energy it will change our relationship with desalination pretty significantly. Here in the central coast we have moratoriums on construction until issues around water access is solved so there is a pretty significant incentive to tacking this issue.
The quote was from a info page on desal in general, not for or against just general info. The one issue in your retyping is that it is 40,000 homes and 300,000 people. I think in the United States we usually count an average of 4 persons to a home so it's over to 50% at 160,000 people to 300,000 people (if we convert apples to apples). That makes it a little less palatable.
(Also I'm going to address your other comment here) I totally agree that there doesn't seem to be another option. If you want to do a real deep dive into ridiculous policy check out California's issues with water rights in general. The way we bake them into land rights has effectively circumvented any ability for us to regulate them effectively. That's why you can grow alfalfa, which takes up double the water needed as almonds, as a cattle feed or a low value export crop.
Desalination could work, but piping in water from (I assume) the ocean would require getting permission to build the pipeline from the ocean to the interior of a desert. It likely would be...
Desalination could work, but piping in water from (I assume) the ocean would require getting permission to build the pipeline from the ocean to the interior of a desert. It likely would be difficult to obtain that permission, even more so if land had to be purchased to build the pipeline on. There would also be the environmental review process such a large project would require to consider as well.
To reply all (@Loire, @FirstTiger, @skybrian, @MimicSquid): We do this with oil all the time. Water would have its own challenges, but I am fairly certain a saltwater spill would be far less...
We do this with oil all the time. Water would have its own challenges, but I am fairly certain a saltwater spill would be far less detrimental than an oil one.
And given the numerous challenges regarding freshwater in the nearish future, probably a worthwhile one to investigate.
Water is normally far cheaper than oil. If you’re willing to pay a high enough price for water you can do all sorts of things, even ship it around the world. (Consider bottled water.) Water in...
Water is normally far cheaper than oil. If you’re willing to pay a high enough price for water you can do all sorts of things, even ship it around the world. (Consider bottled water.) Water in bulk is very heavy for its price, when considering how much farmers are normally willing to pay, since they use water by the acre-foot.
This difference in prices means that the markets are structured differently. Changes in supply or demand anywhere cause oil futures to change globally, since these markets are connected by oil tankers and pipelines. But since water is far cheaper, it’s a bunch of disconnected local markets and agreements based on watersheds and water systems. (For example, the Colorado river or the Nile river.) Water shortages are local or regional.
But cities are willing to pay more than farms, which makes paying for desalination plants practical. It’s still the most expensive source of water for them and sometimes voters are unwilling to approve it.
We’re just talking here, but real engineering would be done with numbers. You’d have to consider all the costs of getting water as part of running the city, along with all the other costs. If water in this new city is very expensive compared to other places, only well-off people would want to live there.
When rich people are willing to lose a lot of money on vanity projects then you can get something like Dubai or the projects that the Saudis build. But we already know that this billionaire isn’t willing to do that, so the project will depend on convincing other investors that the numbers work.
Freshwater may be cheap now, yes. But the problem has been getting worse for years, and at the end of the day you can't drink oil. This is the kind of thing that needs to fall under 'Green...
Freshwater may be cheap now, yes. But the problem has been getting worse for years, and at the end of the day you can't drink oil.
This is the kind of thing that needs to fall under 'Green Infrastructure'. Because more than anything else, we need water to live.
Well, yes, water will likely be somewhat more expensive in some places like the Western US. Generally what happens is that cities outbid agriculture for water, so farming ends up moving somewhere...
Well, yes, water will likely be somewhat more expensive in some places like the Western US. Generally what happens is that cities outbid agriculture for water, so farming ends up moving somewhere else, or switches to crops that use less water. It's a slow process though, due to the complexity of water rights.
Building a new city in the West would make that trend worse. I like the idea of building it somewhere in the Appalachians better.
I would be curious to do the math to know how much waste salt (and other stuff) there would be. The ocean fluctuates in salt levels all the time, given the salt doesn't (afaik) re-enter the...
I would be curious to do the math to know how much waste salt (and other stuff) there would be.
The ocean fluctuates in salt levels all the time, given the salt doesn't (afaik) re-enter the atmosphere for later rainfall.
Alternatively, perhaps just have a man-made 'Great Salt Lake'.
I daresay that new industry would develop there if there was an ongoing supply of inexpensive seasalt. Unless the supply was really truly beyond the ability of anyone to use, people would find a...
I daresay that new industry would develop there if there was an ongoing supply of inexpensive seasalt. Unless the supply was really truly beyond the ability of anyone to use, people would find a way to make money off of it.
It’s a common criticism, but this isn’t necessarily so with proper design that does enough dilution. It would probably be easier to fix this than implementing some of the other schemes people have...
It’s a common criticism, but this isn’t necessarily so with proper design that does enough dilution. It would probably be easier to fix this than implementing some of the other schemes people have suggested.
Well, water is heavy and desalination uses a lot of energy already. But there is a saying that “water flows uphill towards money.” I am not a water engineer.
Well, water is heavy and desalination uses a lot of energy already. But there is a saying that “water flows uphill towards money.” I am not a water engineer.
Solar stills don't need too much electricity, relying instead on heat from the sun/environment to evaporate. Much more efficient in a desert otherwise very lacking in humidity.
Solar stills don't need too much electricity, relying instead on heat from the sun/environment to evaporate.
Much more efficient in a desert otherwise very lacking in humidity.
In the desert, land is cheap and solar energy is plentiful. If your energy and water supplies 100% renewable, building in the desert could have a smaller environmental impact than building in a...
In the desert, land is cheap and solar energy is plentiful. If your energy and water supplies 100% renewable, building in the desert could have a smaller environmental impact than building in a greener area.
The heat in the areas they are scouting won't be as bad as you think either. 130° F temperatures happen in Death Valley, but not Utah or even Arizona.
The ideas of what should go into a city are good, but he seems to be missing the key ingredient which is that a city needs an economy in order to function. What are the people here supposed to do...
The ideas of what should go into a city are good, but he seems to be missing the key ingredient which is that a city needs an economy in order to function. What are the people here supposed to do to make a living? Is it near a major trade-port or railway hub that can attract merchants? Is it a fertile alluvial plain that grows crops and exports food? Are there mineral deposits that people can mine? Is it the capital of a large empire that can bring in tax money and export administration? Can it attract enough tourists to keep an economy roaring?
If there isn't an economic activity (or actually many activities) to support people's livelihoods then it's not really a city. It's a public housing development in the middle of nowhere. You need an economic foundation first and then you can worry about the built environment. You could maybe bootstrap it by just paying people a stipend to live there for a while until people start developing businesses that bring money in. But a mere billionaire isn't going to be able to do that for long. There's probably 5 people on Earth with that kind of personal wealth, none of them are this guy, and even those guys have all their wealth tied up in equities so it's not actually liquid enough to do that.
I'd wager with COVID-induced remote work opportunities, turning it into a remote-worker's paradise could serve as that jump start. Hell, with fast internet and some sort of closed-loop evaporative...
I'd wager with COVID-induced remote work opportunities, turning it into a remote-worker's paradise could serve as that jump start. Hell, with fast internet and some sort of closed-loop evaporative cooling (see desalination idea) it might be a great spot for server farms.
Building some municipal fiber internet should do the trick. Perhaps paired with high-speed rail connecting to other nearby metro areas. We have all sorts of government grants for developing (and starting businesses) in under-served and poor neighborhoods...perhaps re-allocating some of those or creating new ones could help with that.
Doesn't take much capital to start up a food truck.
It doesn’t take much to start a food truck sure, but you need enough disposable income sloshing around for people to spend money on it. I’m not sure remote work alone can do it because digital...
It doesn’t take much to start a food truck sure, but you need enough disposable income sloshing around for people to spend money on it. I’m not sure remote work alone can do it because digital nomads, as a rule, tend to be nomadic. They’re not going to lay down roots and do the work of “place making.”
I want to flag the issue of desalination that has become so popular in this thread. While there are issues with transportation that the discussion above is doing a great job tackling, the two...
I want to flag the issue of desalination that has become so popular in this thread. While there are issues with transportation that the discussion above is doing a great job tackling, the two leading issues around desal are being largely ignored: energy and ecology.
From a energy perspective, desal requires a huge amount of energy, which is why they are largely paired with nuclear plants. There are some advantages that come with pairing existing cooling infrastructure, but without significant expansion of coastal nuclear or gas plants (please god no) desal doesn't make a ton of sense in the near future.
I would also argue the largest impact is to the nursery habitats in which the salt water originates. The beginning stages of life for nearly all marine life and the main feedstock on which they rely are heavily impacted by desal. Even with modern mitigation measures such as inflow gates and dispersed inflow, the main lifeline of marine life are almost wholesale sucked up and cooked. Google recent desal projects across the coastal united states that are failing pass initial proposal stages.
I love the discussion on how humanity can live sustainably on our planet, but the narrative needs to be about putting people where resources are abundant not insane terraforming because land is cheap. This feels like another attempt from the elite class to "change the system" without really changing anything. The economics are novel and every other issue has been ignored.
That's a pretty cool innovation. If that works functionally at scale then awesome, the energy input is fixed. I read this comment after replying to your other one, so i didn't understand the part...
That's a pretty cool innovation. If that works functionally at scale then awesome, the energy input is fixed. I read this comment after replying to your other one, so i didn't understand the part about the "engineer's dream" but I think I do now. I still have gripes about origin of water and impacts to marine life though. Saudi Arabia is a bigger "sea desert" than anywhere on the western seaboard. We have a particularly vivid marine ecosystem because of the upwelling that occurs here, so what works in Saudi might not function similarly here.
That said, I'm really excited at the possibility of a carbon neutral desal system and really appreciate you sharing the article. If you want a pretty even keeled debate about marine impacts check out the Moss Landing desalination project and the debate that has followed it.
Where can I read about this? I'm interested in the Moss Landing project. The discussion I've seen is pretty shallow and the fight over it is very nasty. From a drought-preparation standpoint I...
Where can I read about this? I'm interested in the Moss Landing project.
The discussion I've seen is pretty shallow and the fight over it is very nasty. From a drought-preparation standpoint I think the opposition is short-sighted. I'm skeptical that the Carmel river and the water recycling project alone will be enough to get the area through the dry years if have longer droughts. Monterey has pretty strict water conservation already.
I know I shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but a website that hangs for 28 seconds and then takes another 30 to load fonts is not something that gives me great faith in their attention to detail.
I know I shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but a website that hangs for 28 seconds and then takes another 30 to load fonts is not something that gives me great faith in their attention to detail.
Looks like it's fallen over entirely now (500 error) so I'm guessing the server was already struggling when I pulled it up earlier. Still not a great look, especially for what looked like a static...
Looks like it's fallen over entirely now (500 error) so I'm guessing the server was already struggling when I pulled it up earlier. Still not a great look, especially for what looked like a static site, but I probably shouldn't be too harsh about what could just be teething problems and unexpected early traffic.
Changed the link to the primary source at CNN, since IIRC @Deimos has previously said that Outline links should not be submitted (unless the primary source is unavailable). It can always be...
Changed the link to the primary source at CNN, since IIRC @Deimos has previously said that Outline links should not be submitted (unless the primary source is unavailable). It can always be changed back if I am misremembering though.
OK, that part sounds intriguing. I’ll be interested to see how that turns out.
However, why the *$#% would you build it in the desert? WTF? Who wants to live in 90-130° weather half of the year? Or rather are there 5 million people who want that? Phoenix is the 4th largest metropolitan area in the US and only has 1.7 million people. I see nothing about what sorts of businesses (and hence jobs) will be there in the article. It seems like there could be better places to build it, but I’m not the genius billionaire, so I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
On one hand, I think billionaires trying to 'save' humanity is a little too dystopian/comic-book-esque for my liking but on the other hand at least there are some who seem like they aren't content to just sit on their little mountains of gold.
But anyways IMO you left the most interesting part of the quote out:
This billionaire's pet project aside, I think Georgism really has a chance of picking up steam in the next decade. I feel like its starting to enter the public consciousness. A tax that aggressively captures the rent value of land could be a major unifier between left and liberal economics, simplify complex tax regimes and reduce inequality.
The one benefit I can see is that there's big chunks of desert land out there that aren't currently being used for human development. Anything that's arable or close to a significant waterway will already have ownership, and a lot of the rest of it is national parks or otherwise difficult to build upon. Acquiring 150,000 acres requires that they not be buying a quarter-acre at a time from existing residential landowners. If they had to do it like that, it'd take decades to acquire the contiguous land.
Of course, it's not being used because it's remote and without significant resources. I'm interested in what would make this city worth moving to.
I don't think the choice of desert is that strange. For one, clearly land for cheap is a must, so that eliminates the coast, rivers, great lakes, and any number of already developed land.
Then, mountainous areas are not desirable because you have to work, around, or against the geography to built human habitation. A desert is a nice, empty canvas for the urban planners to do whatever they want with. Furthermore, while it is a challenging climate, it is, at least, a challenging climate that is mostly the same challenge year round.
Deserts also conveniently have a great source of renewable energy from solar that is horizontally scalable.
From the get-go, the need for cheap land means that the naturally "good places" for human habitability are already, well, habitated, and when they're habitated it becomes not only expensive, but difficult to get contiguous land unless you start eminent domaining people.
Okay, but you still need to get water somewhere. I think that rules out most of the western US.
What would be stopping us from building giant saltwater pipelines to do desalination in the deserts?
Between solar panels and solar stills, seems like potentially plenty of energy. Especially if its a fresh city with a water-concious design (like not using potable water in toilets).
Just to pop in on the de-sal silver bullet comments. Desalination has some significant hurdles from a energy perspective (which is why they are largely paired with nuclear plants) and incredibly negative impacts to the nursery habitats in which the salt water originates (the larval stage life forms and feed stock that maintain marine ecosystems are almost wholesale sucked up and cooked). I love the discussion on how humanity can live sustainably on our planet, but the narrative needs to be about putting people where resources are abundant not insane terraforming because land is cheap.
Agree there are definitely challenges to be considered with any saltwater proposal.
However, the ecological disasters are not going to get better.
Engineer now for 20+ years later. What starts out as scifi (or wild speculation) now could be an engineer's dream later.
I'm not sure I get your point though. To me this feels like what we've seen with dams across the west. They underproduce in terms of electricity and have huge impacts to riverine systems and the associated species. The dream in that case is more of a nightmare that we're only just starting to address. Check out the Klamath Dam removal if you're interested.
I could be misinterpreting your comment, and if so I apologize, but we know a good number of the impacts of desal at this point and without some pretty radical technological changes (and if they come I am all for it) there doesn't seem to be a real feasible way to avoid those impacts. Marine areas are actually improving in a lot of areas thanks to the introduction of MPAs and fishing limits.
My suggestion is that projects like this should take place in areas with the resources available. New England seems like a potential location as precipitation trends seems to be increasing there and could feasibly support a much larger population.
Dams are incredibly useful. They give large buffer of water supply while also providing electricity. The water supply is almost more important than any electricity. Though the electricity is also important because it can provide baseline load at night when solar can't, far less disruptive than other storage methods. On the east coast, they are generally far less disruptive and large. The west coast does need more solutions for water, given problems of relocating a very large population.
I personally would suggest more, smaller dams, as they take far less time to build and dismantle. Heck, even natural dams (like beaver dams) which don't provided electricity help. Apparently newer designs are starting to factor that in
That said, any city is going to be incredibly disruptive to local wildlife. Disposal of waste alone poses huge challenges.
One last very controversial thought. We can't save every species. We've gone too far for that. While damns hurt salmon, there are other fish that do just fine in lakes formed by dams. This is not to say we shouldn't try, but we have a bit of a Sophie's choice surrounding 'disrupting wildlife' and 'providing for everyone'.
Sustainable, less polluting cities will help. Especially if higher density which enables returning more land to wilderness in more arable lands more capable of sustaining large biomass.
I agree with nearly all your points, particularly your last one. All of them add up to some really interesting ideas around new development. I'm working on a project right now in the central valley looking at the bio-diversity and carbon offset effects of creating fake beaver dams in smaller creeks and rivers. People are definitely working on some really interesting and innovating stuff. I can get a little doom and gloom but I think it's because so many of these "solutions" are lauded as a silver bullet. I love your last thought "Especially if higher density which enables returning more land to wilderness in more arable lands more capable of sustaining large biomass." And I'd like to riff on it.
Sorry if this is too much but I love thinking about innovative infrastructure and climate resilience. I think a big grip I have with the thinking in the proposed "revolutionary city" is that it effectively goes "well things are bad so fuck everything and start fresh". To me that is just going to make new problems. We have a ton of already developed and underutilized land. Why not revitalize one of the 21st century ghost towns in the midwest like Detroit or Cleveland? Cost? I mean if you're going to drop 400 billion, lets put some of that into pollution mitigation and superfund site cleanup. I'm sure it will be a more complex project as you would need to work with local stakeholders and address current issues, but that would allow you to get out in front of the same problems a new city would face 10-20 years down the line. It just feels like the incredibly capitalistic mindset that cutting losses, regardless of the impact, is preferable to fixing an standing issue. There are some really interesting revitalization projects going on in cities from Detroit to Grand Rapids and I think those programs, with community co-development, could provide a much bigger impact than a brand new city. I'm fully with you, lets build up in the cities we have with the infrastructure in place to support it rather than chasing the shiny new thing.
I'd say you're not wrong, but it's a lot easier to build new subways, lay conduit, etc on fresh soil, than trying to retrofit existing infrastructure. You probably add years to build time to retrofit even a small town. This is also the reasoning for re-writing code instead of refactoring it.
Comparing cities to a program, an average older city looks like a Rust application wrapping a Python script, which wraps a shell script wrapping a COBOL program which depends on some other data generated from a 1960's mainframe.
You ever see what an asbestos removal looks like? Or go underground and try to see which pipes/conduits do what? Or how every home built before like 1980 has a lead paint warning? That's just some surface-level stuff that would need dealt with for a retrofit.
We should work to address pollution for sure, but in the end, just let nature reclaim the old infrastructure. Our infrastructure isn't as strong as we'd like to think.
I totally get the cost benefits aren't there, but when we say "let nature reclaim it" it really just means let's forget about this brownfield site. Outside of waiting thousands of years we'll have to address at some point.
Starting fresh is definitely easier, but that's why this proposal feels like a copout to me. It's effectively a "fuck it, the fed will deal with our mess".
I'm skeptical as well, but I think it's a bit much to say that desalination plants must have a bad impact on the environment. It seems like a design issue? For example, the environmental impact on marine ecosystems will depend on where you put the intakes and outputs.
Also, with current cost trends I expect solar to be cheaper than nuclear, particularly if intermittent power is okay. It seems like it would be for desalination.
I think it would be weird not to put a desalination plant next to the ocean, though.
I'm not trying to demonize desal, it's just been sold as a silver bullet to the water crisis we're witnessing throughout the majority of the western states. Desal will inevitably have a negative impact on the marine environment, any really large scale extractive process will. Like fishing, damages from desal can be lessened but they will still be there. I'm not saying we completely avoid environmental damage, any human centered activity will likely cause some damage. I just don't understand why they couldn't select a more hospitable environment for the project. Secondly, the problem is a question of scale. If you are going to create a city of 5 million people (five times larger than San Francisco), that's a lot of water to get from desal. So we're not talking about one plant.
I also completely agree that we could use solar instead. The benefit of pairing with gas or nuclear is that the cooling needs of those facilities already effectively cook the salt water pumped through their systems so you are using water that is already sterile and the impact to marine life has already occurred. Again, not endorsing those systems, just that if they are already operating you might as well use the water too. But beyond that is the magnitude of energy needed. I don't think they can have "sustainable energy production and a purportedly drought-resistant water system" if you need excessive energy to ensure the latter. The current power to water ratio is below:
“In order to supply water to 300,000 people, the Carlsbad desal plant will require the equivalent of a 31.3 megawatt power plant operating around the clock — enough electricity to power nearly 40,000 average California households for a year.”
I guess my proposal is rather than bring the resources to us we should be building where the resources already exist and will continue to exist into the future with current climate models.
Well, I'd rather talk about actual desalination plants than pie-in-the-sky schemes. I'd be surprised if the proposed city described in this article got anywhere.
The Wikipedia article about the Carlsbad plant is interesting. Putting it right next to an existing power plant and connecting the intake and outflow seems like a smart way to do it, though apparently the power plant needs to be replaced.
It sounds like it's mostly successful? do you know anything more about it? Where is that quote from?
If the electricity needed to power 40,000 homes is used to supply 300,000 homes with water then that's 13% more electricity used per home. It's unfortunate but seems livable?
Definitely! Pie in the sky always seems to get the most attention and funding unfortunately.
I don't know a ton about the Carlsbad plant other than it seems to be next in a long line of coastal power/desal plants that seem to be going offline. There was one in San Luis Obispo that was paired with a nuclear called Diablo Canyon that is going offline, the power plant at Moss Landing has gone that way as well. One of the most interesting ideas proposed with the Moss landing facility was to turn it into a giant water driven battery to offset peak usage times. I think as we move away from traditional forms of energy it will change our relationship with desalination pretty significantly. Here in the central coast we have moratoriums on construction until issues around water access is solved so there is a pretty significant incentive to tacking this issue.
The quote was from a info page on desal in general, not for or against just general info. The one issue in your retyping is that it is 40,000 homes and 300,000 people. I think in the United States we usually count an average of 4 persons to a home so it's over to 50% at 160,000 people to 300,000 people (if we convert apples to apples). That makes it a little less palatable.
(Also I'm going to address your other comment here) I totally agree that there doesn't seem to be another option. If you want to do a real deep dive into ridiculous policy check out California's issues with water rights in general. The way we bake them into land rights has effectively circumvented any ability for us to regulate them effectively. That's why you can grow alfalfa, which takes up double the water needed as almonds, as a cattle feed or a low value export crop.
As far as the Moss Landing Project Goes there are a ton of links online. My favorite is a white paper put together by a consortium in the bay but I'll link a few others including from a 3rd party environmental impact group, regional governmental report, and by the pacific institute. It's a really interesting project and I've kind of waffled between both sides. In the end, many of the final decisions come down to it having high cost, low offset of water issues, and high ecological impacts. Super happy to dive deeper if you're interested.
Desalination could work, but piping in water from (I assume) the ocean would require getting permission to build the pipeline from the ocean to the interior of a desert. It likely would be difficult to obtain that permission, even more so if land had to be purchased to build the pipeline on. There would also be the environmental review process such a large project would require to consider as well.
To reply all (@Loire, @FirstTiger, @skybrian, @MimicSquid):
We do this with oil all the time. Water would have its own challenges, but I am fairly certain a saltwater spill would be far less detrimental than an oil one.
And given the numerous challenges regarding freshwater in the nearish future, probably a worthwhile one to investigate.
Water is normally far cheaper than oil. If you’re willing to pay a high enough price for water you can do all sorts of things, even ship it around the world. (Consider bottled water.) Water in bulk is very heavy for its price, when considering how much farmers are normally willing to pay, since they use water by the acre-foot.
This difference in prices means that the markets are structured differently. Changes in supply or demand anywhere cause oil futures to change globally, since these markets are connected by oil tankers and pipelines. But since water is far cheaper, it’s a bunch of disconnected local markets and agreements based on watersheds and water systems. (For example, the Colorado river or the Nile river.) Water shortages are local or regional.
But cities are willing to pay more than farms, which makes paying for desalination plants practical. It’s still the most expensive source of water for them and sometimes voters are unwilling to approve it.
We’re just talking here, but real engineering would be done with numbers. You’d have to consider all the costs of getting water as part of running the city, along with all the other costs. If water in this new city is very expensive compared to other places, only well-off people would want to live there.
When rich people are willing to lose a lot of money on vanity projects then you can get something like Dubai or the projects that the Saudis build. But we already know that this billionaire isn’t willing to do that, so the project will depend on convincing other investors that the numbers work.
Freshwater may be cheap now, yes. But the problem has been getting worse for years, and at the end of the day you can't drink oil.
This is the kind of thing that needs to fall under 'Green Infrastructure'. Because more than anything else, we need water to live.
Well, yes, water will likely be somewhat more expensive in some places like the Western US. Generally what happens is that cities outbid agriculture for water, so farming ends up moving somewhere else, or switches to crops that use less water. It's a slow process though, due to the complexity of water rights.
Building a new city in the West would make that trend worse. I like the idea of building it somewhere in the Appalachians better.
I would be curious to do the math to know how much waste salt (and other stuff) there would be.
The ocean fluctuates in salt levels all the time, given the salt doesn't (afaik) re-enter the atmosphere for later rainfall.
Alternatively, perhaps just have a man-made 'Great Salt Lake'.
I daresay that new industry would develop there if there was an ongoing supply of inexpensive seasalt. Unless the supply was really truly beyond the ability of anyone to use, people would find a way to make money off of it.
I wonder if there would develop a downstream market using salt splitting.
Potentially foolish question: why can't you put it back in the ocean?
Hypersalinity is harmful to the things that live in the ocean, so while yes, you can do that, it'd be worse than many other choices.
It’s a common criticism, but this isn’t necessarily so with proper design that does enough dilution. It would probably be easier to fix this than implementing some of the other schemes people have suggested.
I suppose it's really just one more challenge for the wastewater treatment setup to address.
Well, water is heavy and desalination uses a lot of energy already. But there is a saying that “water flows uphill towards money.” I am not a water engineer.
Solar stills don't need too much electricity, relying instead on heat from the sun/environment to evaporate.
Much more efficient in a desert otherwise very lacking in humidity.
Apparently it's somewhere in the desert, or in "the Appalachian region" (a pretty large, non-arid region depending on how you define it).
In the desert, land is cheap and solar energy is plentiful. If your energy and water supplies 100% renewable, building in the desert could have a smaller environmental impact than building in a greener area.
The heat in the areas they are scouting won't be as bad as you think either. 130° F temperatures happen in Death Valley, but not Utah or even Arizona.
The ideas of what should go into a city are good, but he seems to be missing the key ingredient which is that a city needs an economy in order to function. What are the people here supposed to do to make a living? Is it near a major trade-port or railway hub that can attract merchants? Is it a fertile alluvial plain that grows crops and exports food? Are there mineral deposits that people can mine? Is it the capital of a large empire that can bring in tax money and export administration? Can it attract enough tourists to keep an economy roaring?
If there isn't an economic activity (or actually many activities) to support people's livelihoods then it's not really a city. It's a public housing development in the middle of nowhere. You need an economic foundation first and then you can worry about the built environment. You could maybe bootstrap it by just paying people a stipend to live there for a while until people start developing businesses that bring money in. But a mere billionaire isn't going to be able to do that for long. There's probably 5 people on Earth with that kind of personal wealth, none of them are this guy, and even those guys have all their wealth tied up in equities so it's not actually liquid enough to do that.
I'd wager with COVID-induced remote work opportunities, turning it into a remote-worker's paradise could serve as that jump start. Hell, with fast internet and some sort of closed-loop evaporative cooling (see desalination idea) it might be a great spot for server farms.
Building some municipal fiber internet should do the trick. Perhaps paired with high-speed rail connecting to other nearby metro areas. We have all sorts of government grants for developing (and starting businesses) in under-served and poor neighborhoods...perhaps re-allocating some of those or creating new ones could help with that.
Doesn't take much capital to start up a food truck.
It doesn’t take much to start a food truck sure, but you need enough disposable income sloshing around for people to spend money on it. I’m not sure remote work alone can do it because digital nomads, as a rule, tend to be nomadic. They’re not going to lay down roots and do the work of “place making.”
Unless I'm mis-interpreting what you wrote, you'll need to be careful with evaporative cooling adding too much humidity to the air in a server room.
Example
Perhaps something like this integrated into a desalinization effort
I want to flag the issue of desalination that has become so popular in this thread. While there are issues with transportation that the discussion above is doing a great job tackling, the two leading issues around desal are being largely ignored: energy and ecology.
From a energy perspective, desal requires a huge amount of energy, which is why they are largely paired with nuclear plants. There are some advantages that come with pairing existing cooling infrastructure, but without significant expansion of coastal nuclear or gas plants (please god no) desal doesn't make a ton of sense in the near future.
I would also argue the largest impact is to the nursery habitats in which the salt water originates. The beginning stages of life for nearly all marine life and the main feedstock on which they rely are heavily impacted by desal. Even with modern mitigation measures such as inflow gates and dispersed inflow, the main lifeline of marine life are almost wholesale sucked up and cooked. Google recent desal projects across the coastal united states that are failing pass initial proposal stages.
I love the discussion on how humanity can live sustainably on our planet, but the narrative needs to be about putting people where resources are abundant not insane terraforming because land is cheap. This feels like another attempt from the elite class to "change the system" without really changing anything. The economics are novel and every other issue has been ignored.
Solar stills don't neccessarily need electricity.
They do need heat, and solar energy, direct with no electricity conversion, makes more sense IMO.
That's a pretty cool innovation. If that works functionally at scale then awesome, the energy input is fixed. I read this comment after replying to your other one, so i didn't understand the part about the "engineer's dream" but I think I do now. I still have gripes about origin of water and impacts to marine life though. Saudi Arabia is a bigger "sea desert" than anywhere on the western seaboard. We have a particularly vivid marine ecosystem because of the upwelling that occurs here, so what works in Saudi might not function similarly here.
That said, I'm really excited at the possibility of a carbon neutral desal system and really appreciate you sharing the article. If you want a pretty even keeled debate about marine impacts check out the Moss Landing desalination project and the debate that has followed it.
Where can I read about this? I'm interested in the Moss Landing project.
The discussion I've seen is pretty shallow and the fight over it is very nasty. From a drought-preparation standpoint I think the opposition is short-sighted. I'm skeptical that the Carmel river and the water recycling project alone will be enough to get the area through the dry years if have longer droughts. Monterey has pretty strict water conservation already.
Found the website for the project: https://cityoftelosa.com/
I know I shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but a website that hangs for 28 seconds and then takes another 30 to load fonts is not something that gives me great faith in their attention to detail.
I did not have that problem on mobile firefox on gig internet. It was very image heavy. Adblocker might have given unfair advantage though.
Looks like it's fallen over entirely now (500 error) so I'm guessing the server was already struggling when I pulled it up earlier. Still not a great look, especially for what looked like a static site, but I probably shouldn't be too harsh about what could just be teething problems and unexpected early traffic.
Changed the link to the primary source at CNN, since IIRC @Deimos has previously said that Outline links should not be submitted (unless the primary source is unavailable). It can always be changed back if I am misremembering though.
...and part 2 of me messing up the link while posting from mobile :P