[ExI] so just buy it

[Keith Henson]

If it were worth building data centers and power plants in the far
north, people would be at least talking about it.  Back of the
envelope tells you why there is no such talk.  The cost to do anything
in the high Arctic is at least 3 times what it would be in places with
infrastructure.  Look up the Alaska pipeline for an example.

For the real world, you can't just focus on something like the
temperature; you have to keep in mind the whole picture.

Keith

On Fri, Jan 23, 2026 at 3:57 PM spike jones via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>
> ...> On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat
> Subject: Re: [ExI] so just buy it
>
> On Fri, Jan 23, 2026 at 5:58 PM spike jones via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> >>... Amid all this Greenland conflict, it occurred to me we aughta just see if Musk or Ellison will buy it.  Musk could offer every Greenlander one miiiiilllllion dollars, if they agree to make like Billy Joe and Bobby Sue, take the money and run, get the US to agree to take them.
>
>
> >...They have said no, to any price.
>
> Their loss and ours.  In the meantime, we still have Alaska, with all that Arctic sea shoreline up there.  We could run nukes, use fresh cooling water, send it thru a huge heat exchanger with the heat being dumped into sea water and right back out.  Maybe it could all be done without having to mess with towers.  Submarines do it that way.
>
> >...2) ... given Musk's demonstrated values, it can be concluded that Greenland would not be worth that much money to him...
>
> Ja, Musk might be out of the picture.  I heard (but have not confirmed) that Musk believes the singularity is upon us, so close that any effort to build new powerplants starting from scratch is too late.  He might be right about that.  He's an S-alpha-1.  Apparently he believes that superintelligence can occur with current computing resources and power capacity.
>
> I don't want to disagree with Musk, but I do.  I have a feeling that there will be flat spots on the runup to superintelligence, just as humanity had technological stasis repeatedly in the time since we have had our current mental capacity.  I am staying with my own prediction that the singularity is about a dozen to fifteen years out, and that it does require building up the electric power distribution infrastructure.
>
> spike
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