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The Real-Life Plan to Drain the Mediterranean and Merge Africa and Europe
- squozzer 10y agoThe Mediterranean Valley would have been hella deep.
- yoloswagins 10y agoIn the Bay Area, we had the Reber Plan[1], to turn the bay into two fresh water lakes by building dams between Richmond-San Rafael, and Oakland-San Francisco. Great photo of what it could have looked like[2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reber_Plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reber_Plan [2] https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/b5/1a/d6/b51ad6d2a2b14f06013c00b65429add3.jpg https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/b5/1a/d6/b51ad6d2a...
- cpeterso 10y agoYou can visit the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Bay Model in Sausalito. It is a huge room-sized model of the Bay you can walk around with rising and falling tides. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Army_Corps_of_Engineers_Bay_Model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Army_Corps_of_Engineers_B...
- idlewords 10y agoThere was also a plan in 1965 to fill part of the Bay by leveling San Bruno Mountain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Bruno_Mountain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Bruno_Mountain
- flushandforget 10y agoTaking the move a mountain idiom a little too far.
- samstave 10y agoThis is amazing... I didnt realize that there was enough elevation diff in order for such a plan to occur. Off-hand, do you know what the elevation difference is??
- yoloswagins 10y agoThe bay is very, very shallow[1]. Off hand, the average depth is less than 7 feet. Most of the depth is around the golden gate itself. Around the king tides, an island forms just off of Ashby Ave, in Berkeley. [1] http://makerandmoss.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/81ackqtijtL._SL1500_.jpg http://makerandmoss.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/81ackqtij...
- lebca 10y agoYou're not wrong about the bay being mostly shallow. To clarify though, the bay's average depth in the southern and northern areas is closer to 15-17 ft and near the Golden Gate Bridge and Treasure Island area is closer to 40ft[1]. Maybe the median depth is closer to 7 feet. [1] http://omp.gso.uri.edu/ompweb/doee/science/descript/baysfran.htm http://omp.gso.uri.edu/ompweb/doee/science/descript/baysfran...
- cloudjacker 10y agothat airport terminal though, horrible idea in hindsight
- DanielBMarkham 10y agoWith housing costs what they are in SFBA, this actually makes a lot of sense. I'd like to see some economics forecasts though -- and which municipality would control the new land? This could be a chance for the state legislature to step in, declare it a state park, then add high-rises and lots of green open spaces. You could build the area up right the first time around, instead of this decades-old NIMBY thing going on now. Sounds more promising than that HSR thing they're still arguing about.
- flushandforget 10y agoWhy not the whole bay in the plan?
- aboonaboo 10y agoOh please no
- sctb 10y agoWe've banned this account for continuing to violate the guidelines after we asked you to stop. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- cpeterso 10y agoThere is a one-hour documentary about the Atlantropa project on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/92381391 https://vimeo.com/92381391
- PhasmaFelis 10y agoTitle is inaccurate. Atlantropa was never meant to "drain" the Mediterranean, just lower the water level by 200m--compare to the current 1500m average/5267m maximum. Most of the original water surface area would remain, as the diagram in the article shows. Still pretty impractical, of course.
- jerf 10y agoIn the long term, maybe it's a fantastic idea. But in the short term, the economic damage of all those ports suddenly ceasing to be ports alone, to say nothing of all the other disruption, probably means the idea fundamentally has too high an activation energy to happen in any forseeable future. (activation energy in chemistry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activation_energy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activation_energy ) But very interesting to think about. Also XKCD did a comic series that probably technically constitutes the majority of XKCD's output by area which is worth looking at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_(xkcd) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_(xkcd)
- guard-of-terra 10y agoDon't think it's a good idea at all. Waste precious coasts to get more more mundane heartland? Who ordered that? For nations that do not grow? In the world where agriculture is barely profitable? Why would you need land, seriously, in 2016? Look at Hong Kong and Singapore, land is liability. Interesting how perspective changed in a hundred years.
- sevenless 10y agoBut the archaeology would be fantastic.
- flukus 10y agoWe'd only have to drop the water level by 10/20 meters or so for the archaeology wouldn't we? The black sea was only ~5000 years ago, now that would have some good archaeology.
- sevenless 10y agoThere's a few thousand years of Mediterranean cargo and shipping distributed over the seabed. And I'm sure Atlantis is down there somewhere...
- 10y ago
- wcoenen 10y agoWhat's not even mentioned in the article is that this could protect the entire Mediterranean coast line against rising sea levels[1]. [1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11069-015-1821-8 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11069-015-1821-8
- pmontra 10y agoI was thinking the same. We'd need only the dam of Gibraltar for that and let enough water in to compensate evaporation. The article includes a warning about long term increases of salinity and the need to pump salty water from the deep layers of the Mediterranean to the Atlantic.
- jsprogrammer 10y agoHow would sea creatures get in and out?
- GunboatDiplomat 10y agoThat seems like a minor objection.
- jsprogrammer 10y agoWhat do you mean?
- bskdjx 10y agoI don't think many, if any, cross it as it is. Not as a necessity in their life cycle anyway. The strait is really narrow, with really strong currents and a huge change in salinity. Not fun.
- pmontra 10y agoI didn't think about this. A quick search and I found one population of tuna that live in the Atlantic and breeds in the Mediterranean http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/unraveling-the-secrets-of-the-tunas-migration-routes.html http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/unraveling-the-se... Probably they're not the only sea creatures that cross Gibraltar so this is a concern. Non a minor objection, but one among the many that would be raised. Think also about the political and military implications of a bridge from Africa to Europe.
- labster 10y agoPersonally, I think we should go the other way and build this thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qattara_Depression_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qattara_Depression_Project I'd prefer the Nile variant, which would be hard to do for sure. But like the Salton Sea, flooding parts of the desert seems to have ecological benefits.
- r00fus 10y agoDid you read up on the Salton Sea? [1] Ecological Benefits: "Once known as the “California Riviera”, the Salton Sea is now called one of America’s worst ecological disasters: a fetid, stagnant, salty lake, that coughs up dead fish and birds by the thousands in frequent die-offs that occur." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagues_%26_Pleasures_on_the_Salton_Sea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagues_%26_Pleasures_on_the_S...
- labster 10y agoNot sure how I'm supposed to read up with a movie... But yes I've driven by a few times and the smell was less than awesome. But you're talking about the technical debt of the Salton project. It was pretty great at first and we were adding a new species every week. But eventually, support for the project was diverted and it dried up. Now the whole thing reeks of code smell and everybody knows we need to fix the thing -- but it's in a remote area so it's hard to convince management that the project is worth the resources to save.
- r00fus 10y agoHave you stopped to consider that this might be the natural outcome of such an endeavor? Perhaps support was diverted simply because the benefits simply weren't going to outweigh the costs... ever.
- freehunter 10y ago"Flooding the depression to -20 m would lower the height of the world ocean by 2.16 milimeters" Hmm, maybe that could be a way to offset flooding from climate change, by redistributing the water elsewhere into low-lying but dry land.
- 21 10y agoDividing the new land would be crazy. Maybe even inner countries (Germany, ...) would want a piece. And there is also this theory that the great Bible flood was the Mediterranean Sea spilling into the Black Sea. If the Gibraltar dam fails we would see the mother of all floods from the Atlantic rushing in. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_hypothesis
- allendoerfer 10y ago> inner countries (Germany, ...) Inner country in what sense? Germany has two coasts. A claim would still be reasonable, as Mallorca is Germany's 17th state. An epic battle would arise early in the morning, as usual started by the Germans claiming the land by putting towels on it, but soon they would have to fight off Brits in their sunburned bright red warpaint.
- flukus 10y ago> A claim would still be reasonable, as Mallorca is Germany's 17th state For those wondering what the hell this is about, apparently it's a running joke about the number of German tourists there.
- euyyn 10y agoAnd not only tourists. There are so many Germans than in a town they elected a German major.
- allendoerfer 10y agoEconomically Spain is benefiting in two ways from the freedom of movement of the EU: Old people from Germany moving to Spain, spending, young people from Spain moving to Germany, earning. Socially this might not be desired and environmentally – at least on Mallorca – it is a disaster.
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- throwaway9886 10y agoI'm surprised nobody mentioned it. Judging by what is happening now in Europe, it's good none of this has happened yet. Fingers crossed it never happens.
- lostlogin 10y agoTreating one part of the world poorly for a long time turns out to have repercussions. Perhaps have a closer connection would help improve future decision making?
- cup 10y agoNobody mentioned it presumably because it's a racist view.
- 9981283198 10y agoControlling immigration is racist?
- GunboatDiplomat 10y agoSpeaking of a drained Mediterranean, Harry Turtledove wrote a called Down in the Bottomlands, about a world where the Mediterranean did not refill after the Messinian Salinity Crisis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_in_the_Bottomlands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_in_the_Bottomlands
- vxNsr 10y agoTurtledove was my favorite author for about 2 months until I was unable to tell any of his characters apart because he gave them all the same dry, ultra sarcastic humor and vulgar vocabulary. Still his ideas were very interesting.
- ZanyProgrammer 10y agoThe Mediterranean was also damned at Gibraltar in the Star Trek The Motion Picture novelization.
- flukus 10y agoIn TNG the built a whole new continent int the Indian ocean.
- gonvaled 10y agoWhere would all that water go? Atmosphere? Isn't water vapor a greenhouse gas?
- quanticle 10y agoWhat I don't understand is how Sörgel claimed that this plan would create more farmland. Wouldn't any land exposed by drops in sea level be irredeemably contaminated by salt, just like land being inundated by rising sea levels?
- arethuza 10y agoA fair bit of land in areas that was heavily glaciated was formerly below sea level and has been raised by post-glacial isostatic rebound - a lot of this is farmed so I don't think there is a fundamental problem.
- dalke 10y agoI think the problem is getting enough rainfall to rinse salt from the topsoil. I don't know how much is needed. Parts of Sweden were in the Baltic during Viking times but are now farmland, so perhaps no more than a few hundred years? Then again, there's more rain in those areas of northern America and Europe where the glaciers were than in the Mediterranean.
- JoeAltmaier 10y agoI think a very long time indeed. The classic way to render fields unfit for generations is to salt them.
- dalke 10y agoI wondered how long it took for the fields of Carthage to be fertile again. If my supposition is correct, it should need only a few years for normal rain to carry it away, not generations. I found https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salting_the_earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salting_the_earth which suggests that the salting was more symbolic, or a curse, and that "There is no evidence that sufficient amounts of salt were used to render large tracts of land unusable." Given how expensive salt was, it seems like it would be horrendously expensive to do that in the classical era.
- skoczymroczny 10y agoSo that's what they meant when they said they'll stop illegal migrants drowning, they'll drain the sea.
- YeGoblynQueenne 10y agoAs expected, this was not thought up by anyone who actually lived or grew up in a country along the coast of the Mediterranean. The way the Aegean islands were supposed to be replaced by a plateau is particularly freaky, like hearing a plastic surgeon tell you they plan to replace your head with that of a donkey. A truly callous, tone-deaf proposal, even given its historical context.
- flushandforget 10y agoMoving water really enhances places aesthetically. I noticed that the disused Clyde docklands in Glasgow (UK), were being filled in a few years back. A missed opportunity for waterside property.
- Retric 10y agoWonder how much this would have raised global sea levels.