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Bill Gates Just Bought 25,000 Acres in the Arizona Desert (kgw.com)
What's the world's second-richest man up to now? A Phoenix news station reports:
One of Bill Gates' investment firms has spent $80 million to kickstart the development of a brand-new community in Arizona's far West Valley. The large plot of land is about 45 minutes west of downtown Phoenix off I-10 near Tonopah. The proposed community, made up of close to 25,000 acres of land, is called Belmont. According to Belmont Partners, a real estate investment group based in Arizona, the goal is to turn the land into its own "smart city."
"Belmont will create a forward-thinking community with a communication and infrastructure spine that embraces cutting-edge technology, designed around high-speed digital networks, data centers, new manufacturing technologies and distribution models, autonomous vehicles and autonomous logistics hubs," Belmont Partners said in a news release.
A former columnist for the Phoenix newspaper writes that "Unless Gates plans to turn the land into a preserve, he might want to know a few things that the locals didn't tell him..." First, Arizona doesn't have enough water to continue these kind of developments, no matter what the mouthpieces of the Real Estate Industrial Complex say... Second, climate change poses a clear and present danger to Arizona now. Summers are significantly hotter and lasting longer than a few decades ago. Massive wildfires are common, another new phenomenon. Whether Phoenix will even be inhabitable by mid-century is an open question. Already, it is a man-made environment totally dependent on electricity to power air conditioning and gasoline delivered by vulnerable pipelines. All of which make it questionable whether all the dreamed developments ever get built, much less last long.
"To be fair, wealthy people who were clever in one area -- especially tech -- often think they know a lot about everything," the columnist concludes. "If this is the case here, he might want to study up."
"Belmont will create a forward-thinking community with a communication and infrastructure spine that embraces cutting-edge technology, designed around high-speed digital networks, data centers, new manufacturing technologies and distribution models, autonomous vehicles and autonomous logistics hubs," Belmont Partners said in a news release.
A former columnist for the Phoenix newspaper writes that "Unless Gates plans to turn the land into a preserve, he might want to know a few things that the locals didn't tell him..." First, Arizona doesn't have enough water to continue these kind of developments, no matter what the mouthpieces of the Real Estate Industrial Complex say... Second, climate change poses a clear and present danger to Arizona now. Summers are significantly hotter and lasting longer than a few decades ago. Massive wildfires are common, another new phenomenon. Whether Phoenix will even be inhabitable by mid-century is an open question. Already, it is a man-made environment totally dependent on electricity to power air conditioning and gasoline delivered by vulnerable pipelines. All of which make it questionable whether all the dreamed developments ever get built, much less last long.
"To be fair, wealthy people who were clever in one area -- especially tech -- often think they know a lot about everything," the columnist concludes. "If this is the case here, he might want to study up."
I grew up in Arizona, and let me tell you, a couple decades ago it was HOT. Like, 122 F in Tucson and Phoenix was not unheard of. Now, it's fairly likely to hit that every year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcosanti
Since the 1950s, people have thought that the cheap land could be tamed and "new ideas" would just blossom out of the goodness in people's hearts. Arcosanti is a great example, but not the only one. Last I saw the place, it had a gift shop where the hippy owners took money selling semi-erotic paintings and charcoal drawings, and invited the young folks to spend some quality time mixing concrete with desert sand... or pose for the artist. There's never going to be an Arcosanti the way it was originally envisioned, or even with a population over 10.
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According to Belmont Partners, a real estate investment group based in Arizona, the goal is to turn the land into its own "smart city."
I'm really interested in how they plan to deal with the water issue, it seems like a show-stopper. Maybe they can build something to recover water from the dry arid air - because otherwise they're going to have to pipe it in, and the Colorado River is already over used... They must have considered this issue when they bought the dry desert land...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
The naysayment regarding water is dumb.
It is also dumb for another reason: 90% of the water in Phoenix goes to water lawns. So just build the new city without grass, and use xeriscaping instead. Problem solved.
They bought the land to develop because a big freeway is supposed to go right through the middle. They'll extort the state for a ton of money, make a huge amount of profit and then exit before the community is fully done. So the long term viability of the site is irrelevant.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Bill must think of the desert as an empty sandbox for him to play in, but there is a vibrant community already there in the plants and animals that have evolved to survive in the climate and terrain . Use the google, there's a website about it: https://www.desertusa.com/. What knowledge will be lost about the Anasazi and Sinagua people? I've walked on pre-Columbian trails where people migrated from the hot Colorado desert to the cool Laguna and Palomar mountains as the seasons changed.
"To be fair, wealthy people who were clever in one area -- especially tech -- often think they know a lot about everything,"
Unlike say columnists?
C'mon, I'm sure Bill didn't just smoke a blunt and decide to go build a new city in the desert. You can bet there's a ton of experts involved who have already thought about whatever it is Mr Columnist or Mr Forum poster thinks and then some. Because that's the thing with smart people, they think about all the things you think about, plus some more.
Why did we need this ignorant opinion in the summary? It only serves to dumb down the real story which could be something really interesting.
"First, Arizona doesn't have enough water to continue these kind of developments,"
Just if for some reason you want to have lawns around each house, that ship has sailed, not only in Arizona.
"Summers are significantly hotter and lasting longer than a few decades ago."
Great! The solar roofs on every house and garage will like that. That's one of the reasons they chose Arizona.
"Massive wildfires are common, another new phenomenon. "
That's why they chose the desert, with no trees, no fires.
"Already, it is a man-made environment totally dependent on electricity to power air conditioning "
Yes, great for solar and no heating in winter, what's not to like?
"and gasoline delivered by vulnerable pipelines."
Gasoline? This is new 21th century, nobody needs gasoline anymore. These people will drive Teslas, not F150s.
I just checked, Arizona is landlocked. If desalination was the plan, surely it would make sense to move the project closer to the ocean?
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Look, Bill Gates can get a lot of things wrong, that much anyone can tell.
But quite frankly the smugness of the columnist is quite hillarious, on how stupid someone can be.
As if he's more equipped to know how Bill's investment will pan out from a very superficial reading, like in comparison to a guy who made his top 3 world fortune position out of a garage upstart and is currently driving one of the most effective and important foundations in the world. Smugness tied to ignorance, good way to show the entire world how much of an idiot you are.
With the sort or money and power Gates has, he can turn any desolate land into paradise. He could build a tropical paradise out of Antarctica. It's the sort of backing that made places like Las Vegas and Disney.
Climate change, massive wildfires, hotter summer? Does this guy even know who he's talking about? There's a whole range of ways to make the region profitable.
And even if he doesn't, people have to understand that the stuff Bill Gates invest on these days are not always running around profit.
You can hate his Microsoft years and whatnot all you want, and you can throw arguments about tax deductions and whatnot against his foundation all you want, the fact is that there's probably no one else in the world right now investing more on charitable causes. We're talking billions of dollars often on causes that will have no financial return.
People often don't realize how much he and his foundation did because most of the stuff it's currently investing on are ways to address basic health, hygiene and sanitation problems in the poorest countries, so we don't directly see results as much, but for certain regions in the world his contributions probably advanced things several decades in years time.
He's not the kinda guy who is gonna be worried about infrastructure problems in an arid region. He's the guy who has the best chances of finding out a way of solving such problems there, and then selling or sharing the knowledge to do the same to other parts of the world.
If Los Angeles could produce its own water by desalination, inland areas would be able to retain the water we are now sending them. But until that happens each state on the Colorado River gets a specific annual allocation of the water in it. The Phoenix metro area has a local supply of mountain drainage, but Arizona law requires that any new development prove out a 100-year supply of water before it can be built. Water is the limiting factor for any development in this state.
Energy will not be a problem. The area gets over 300 days of hard clean sunlight a year, and is next to a large nuclear plant. But Gates is going to have to change the name. There is already a Bellemont on I-40 in the mountains, a large new residential development near Flagstaff.
Everyone's got an argument where 'plenty of solar power' solves each of the myriad problems of living in a sun-baked desert. The far easier solution is not to live in a sun baked desert.
Location is still the most important consideration in sustainable development, because the annual energy cost of living is proportional to how far the temperature is from 70 oF. Everything after that is just mitigating the cost of the environment you've chosen. We could live in a comfortable area, or we could install a big power plant to make it comfortable. We could live somewhere with reliable access to clean water, or we could install a big power plant to harvest, purify, or import water. We could live somewhere with easy transportation, or we could install a big power plant to knock down mountains and catapult goods from 1000 miles away.
Just because your big power plant is solar, doesn't prevent it being wasteful.
And people are saying the people already living there are in trouble. Not enough water, requires a lot of energy just to stay livable by our modern standards, and on top of that it's going to be far from work so that means even more energy to move people back and forth between home and work twice a day.
#DeleteFacebook
I know a place that condensed so much water from the air that in the end they flooded the entire place. There's a bad side to this story though, the place was full of warlords fighting for a spice of some kind.
#DeleteFacebook
I found...
There's no shade.
There's no water (except at the golf courses)
All the plants have thorns
All the insects are venomous
All the animals are venomous
It's too hot to be outside for about 9 months of the year.
Everything about the place screams "humans do not belong here!", yet most of the population lives in the Valley of the Sun.
I guess that explains the voting record...
As the population of humans on the planet continues to grow, it will becomes increasingly necessary to move into and settle regions previously considered inhospitable.
Learning to live in new environs is what resourceful life does when it refuses to die and depopulate at the edge of the Petri dish.
If we cannot figure out how to live (and eventually thrive) in the earthly atmosphere of the Arizona desert with its excessive heat and limited water, off-planet settlements are the dreams that come from pipes.
Your first sentence gives the answer for the last sentence. The numbers of humans are what makes it difficult.
Humans living in arid places has been done for a long time. Some incredible adaptation has occurred in Africa. But that is humans adapting to the local conditions. People have lived in America's southwest deserts as well, perhaps not as acclimated as Bedouins, but they got by. Even in Death Valley.
The difference is in the numbers. We try to convert the desert to what we think is ideal. We like the grass in our lawns, we like nice water fountains, and we like a lot of people inhabiting these places. This is completely unsustainable.
Going to Mars, it will be a few people, and probably living in containers like domes or maybe even underground. That isn't comparable to trying to turn the Southwest desert into paradise. 10 or 20 people - possible. Millions? Nope.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
And people are saying the people already living there are in trouble. Not enough water, requires a lot of energy just to stay livable by our modern standards, and on top of that it's going to be far from work so that means even more energy to move people back and forth between home and work twice a day.
Sure, but of the 200K years mankind's footprint has been expanding on the planet, most of it has been spent exploiting the rich natural reserves of the planet.
The conservation of (and stretching of) resources has arguably only advanced in times of extreme shortage. The exponential growth (intended) of crop yields to keep feeding a booming population is but one example. People are resourceful, intelligent creatures for the most part, yet often complacent unless propelled by hardship.
It's not Arrakis, but living in desert cities has already prompted water conservation and recycling unheard of a few generations ago.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
All the critics here who are chorussing "oh, Gates is so stupid, he doesn't know that Arizona is uninhabitable" are silly: we already know it's possible because 1.6 million people already live there.
Cool story bro, except it isn't that the desert is uninhabitable, it's that there are limits and you are pressing them. While your real estate brochure version of living in the desert is cool, it seems to assume that there will always be plenty of water, plenty of air conditioning, and will be just like living in 70 degrees all year round - perfect comfort.
And it's sort of funny - why move to an area when all you want to do is alter the environment to something the environment isn't.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The DOE was created in 1977 - we did pretty well without it up until that time. Interesting to note, too, that the only nuclear power plant emergency we've had - Three Mile Island - happened after the creation of the DOE. Perhaps creating a big, overreaching, overarching Federal Department allows local/regional control to relax because "the Feds got it covered"...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
New Jersey is not that bad.
Digressing here, but New Jersey is a state of incredible contrasts. The northern part is "which exit you live at" land, and the one most people think of. Urban AF. Then going south it becomes pine forests and a lot less population density, finally ending in Cape May, which is exceptionally different.
And in the meantime, they somehow produce enough food to support Chris Christie, and you know that can't be easy.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
All the critics here who are chorussing "oh, Gates is so stupid, he doesn't know that Arizona is uninhabitable" are silly: we already know it's possible because 1.6 million people *already* live there.
You are committing a fallacy. You are assuming the past and the future will always resemble each other. It will not in this case as there are resource limits and the resources are shrinking see: https://uanews.arizona.edu/sto...
Jared Diamond wrote a nice book on what happens to societies when a critical resource(s) are depleted.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
"The DOE was created in 1977 - we did pretty well without it up until that time."
Sigh. Another fucking Libertarian cretin...
DOE was a reorganization of ERDA, which was a reorganization of the AEC. It raised some three decades of Nuclear Research to the Cabinet level, which was an extremely good thing. It also took most of the Weapons Delivery out of the Research side, and transferred it to the Cabinet level DOD.
Along the other ongoing realignments, the Nuclear Industry now reported to the NRC, which was not at Cabinet level.
DOE had nothing to do with the US Industrial mess that was Three Mile Island. The DOE shares some responsibility for some Research Reactors with the NRC, that's all.
Research Reactors and other aspects of Physics Research were not the only areas of DOE concern. It's the Department Of Energy, all Energy, you myopic mosquito. That includes Nuclear, Solar, Petrochemical/Coal, Wind, Renewable, and a few dozen things that you've never thought of and would never comprehend if you did. Yes, they inherited the responsibility for the Nation's Nuclear Stockpile, because frankly nobody else could be trusted with it. Oh, and it's no coincidence that DOD tilts Right, NRC is Business Friendly, and much of DOE tilts Left. Very bright people tend to be cautious Liberals, which is why Perry and his lapdogs wanted the DOE abolished, and because they are relative blundering idiots, had no idea what to replace it with.
Next Generation Reactors, whether Fission or Fusion, are still primarily the responsibility in the US of the DOE, because Industry has utterly failed here. I wish Terrapower well... but they've been around for a decade now and produced nothing but ideas, and in fact are currently surviving on DOE funding.
Should they get more funding? Perhaps. But that means giving the DOE more funding, which is anathema to the turd currently serving as DOE Secretary. He wants more money for Oil and Coal only.