Really interesting read, and while the numbers are a little hand wavy even if they were out on the cost by an order of magnitude it would still be very cheap.
The USA has lost its appetite for these mega projects, sadly.
If look at it as a way to spend huge piles of money to subsidize a lifestyle it suddenly is less charming
That would pay for itself in two years at 1% R/E tax and <10% interest.
I didn't read the entire article, but the reason it won't happen at this scale is because you could never acquire the property rights to be able to do it, not because it's a bad investment.
Looking around at this thread, it's easy to see why. People value ecological conservatism over economic progress.
Of course, the type of economic progress we've had over the last few decades has been a mixed bag, due to structural deficiencies. But I don't agree with throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
The general cynicism and negativity makes me really sad. Esp for a community of builders and problem solvers.
Phrasing such a proposal as "economic progress" is entirely irrational. This is a solution looking for a problem. We have zero, zero, zero economic need for this.
We have a tremendous amount of empty space, and while I know a desert isn’t technically lifeless, I suspect hypothetical supporters would be willing to accept (or even would prefer to establish) enormous swaths of the almost unfathomably large uninhabited West being made into new National Parks and wildlife reserves so that the desert animals and plants could be preserved. I know I would want that.
I would argue that there’s nothing immoral about expanding our population from 8 billion to 10 billion, any more than there was going from 500,000 to 1,000,000 centuries ago. Both were done at the expense of altering and ultimately domesticating land once used for other animals and plants.
What are the problems of nitrogen pollution and CO₂ pollution? Both of those significantly promote the growth of plants.
CO2 drives greenhouse effect. To my knowledge, C02 eeenrichment of plants does not come close to offsetting the overall addition of CO2. If it did, why are atmospheric CO2 ppm counts going up?
[1] https://iowacapitaldispatch.com/2024/03/15/more-than-half-of...
Nitrogen pollution is from the nitrogen that blows and runs off of farms. It is a staggering amount: "globally farmers apply around 115 million tonnes of nitrogen to our crops every year. Only around 35% of this is used by them, meaning 75 million tonnes of nitrogen runs off into our rivers, lakes and natural environments. This is our “excess nitrogen”. It is quite staggering that almost two-thirds of our applied nitrogen becomes an environmental pollutant." [1]
I talked to a compost expert recently. He claimed if the nitrogen were fermented first to be bio available, it would require less and no longer be a pollutant. There are solutions, but until then farmers just accept that one third of nitrogen applied actually makes it into the farm soil
Apparently a lot of marine life gets absolutely wrecked when you pump in water from the California coast, but I see it mostly as a unique engineering challenge.
This should be possible!
I didn't use the word good anywhere or even offer a value judgement, I simply called it interesting.
Also your tone sucks and makes me not want to discuss in good faith with you.