We Can Terraform the American West

Posted by jasondavies 10/26/2024

We Can Terraform the American West(caseyhandmer.wordpress.com)

246 points | 316 commentspage 4

hindsightbias 10/26/2024||

The cartels should just build nukes in Mexico and pump desalinated water north. Win-win.

downvotetruth 10/26/2024|

The foreign legion should just build nukes in France and transfer electricity east across the Maginot Line.

boxed 10/26/2024||

I mean.. the foreign legion didn't build them, but that's already a thing?

iluvcommunism 10/26/2024||

I’d like to see the Colorado river less used. The author has a lot of good ideas.

siliconc0w 10/26/2024||

I love Casey's stuff - just incredibly detailed, ambitious and reminds you of what the country used to do when it set its mind to it. His new company is across the street where they built the SR-71 which is fitting.

doug_durham 10/26/2024||

Casey is a person that is disconnected from reality. There is a reason that Nevada hasn't been terraformed. It isn't regulations or lack of will. It's physics. He would be better off if he spent more time building things and less time in his spreadsheets. Please read "Cadillac Desert" if you want to have more context.

anon84873628 10/26/2024||

The article refers to "Cadillac Desert" but seems to miss the part about how it was all a bad idea in the end.

skybrian 10/26/2024|||

It's always an interesting read, but he should hire someone to fix his website. (For example, when I first looked at it, all the pictures were missing.)

akira2501 10/26/2024||

> just incredibly detailed

Other than forgetting that literal drilled wells exist.

boxed 10/26/2024||

Ground water is a very limited commodity, one which we are exploiting beyond sustainability. You are just plain wrong here.

einpoklum 10/26/2024||

Why don't you guys (= US'ers) start by not spilling that much crude oil and toxins into your existing potable water sources? :-(

pfdietz 10/26/2024|

I think that problem is greatly exaggerated by those with certain motivations.

seadan83 10/26/2024||

It is not really.. there is massive polutionnof waterways. Iowa is one off the worst states for nitrogen pollution. In that state "just 24% of stream segments and 30% of lakes that were sampled were deemed healthy." [1]

I was traveling through iowa recently. There were ducks floating face down dead in polluted waterways. Algae so thick it looks like you could walk on it. It is quite bad..

[1] https://iowacapitaldispatch.com/2024/03/15/more-than-half-of...

pfdietz 10/26/2024||

That has nothing to do with crude oil. Nor toxins, really. Eutrophication of waterways occurs because of addition of nutrients that encourages growth, not toxins that prevent it.

seadan83 10/27/2024||

I agree not pertinent to crude oil. Toxin is a broad term. It is anything that when added at a sufficient quantity to create a toxic environment. The waterways I refer to are poisoned by nitrogen. The overall discussion was about focusing on keeping existing environments clean as opposed to jumping to new (relatively) pristine environments. It is the idea 'if you can't take care of your existing toys, you don't get new ones.'

devin 10/26/2024||

As I understand it, desalination produces brine, and that needs to be disposed of. Where does all of that go?

emtel 10/26/2024|

Aside from fossil water, all of our fresh water comes from desalinated sea water, transported inland by clouds - which shows that there is no brine problem as long as the brine is dispersed widely enough in the sea. “How widely” is enough is something I wish OP discussed.

closetkantian 10/26/2024||

If only Saudi Arabia had spent their money on this stuff instead of NEOM.

lazystar 10/26/2024||

terraforming articles always remind me of my favorite "what if" plan - what if australia used nukes to create a canal right down the middle of the outback?

nathanasmith 10/26/2024||

Leave it alone. It's fine the way it is.

0xbadcafebee 10/26/2024|

It is terrifying to me that people like this author exist and are serious. Even more terrifying is the possibility that one day, someone in power will read this and think, hey, that's a good idea.

(also terrifying: who is upvoting blogs like this??? is there really a vast underground of people in favor of destruction of the [remaining] environment so we can add a trillion more acres of concrete strip-malls and Wal-Marts?)

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