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This feels like an over-simplification of the benefits. I have yet to be convinced that filling an area with salted water, which by evaporating will only increa

This feels like an over-simplification of the benefits. I have yet to be convinced that filling an area with salted water, which by evaporating will only increase the salt concentration, can host a thriving ecosystem. I'm also having trouble buying the argument that to lower the salt concentration we can extract it and sell the salt. Sure we can, but are talking about the same scale here? Moreover, it may look like a hostile place, but I'm sure that in all the examples given there are populations there, maybe nomadic, and there are organisms that live there. Finally, I find it interesting than when illustrating the Quattara seat, the author has added green around it, but I see no reason for that greening to be there at all when a few hundred kilometres north on the border of the current Mediterranean sea there's nothing. After all, same region, roughly same altitude, same water, but even higher salt concentration. So yeah, I love the futurism aspect of the article, it makes me dream of a techno-solution, but I remain unconvinced though I'd love to be wrong.

konschubert 3y ago
> I'm also having trouble buying the argument that to lower the salt concentration we can extract it and sell the salt. Sure we can, but are talking about the same scale here? Besides, this is not economical.
throwaway290 3y ago
> I see no reason for that greening to be there at all when a few hundred kilometres north on the border of the current Mediterranean sea there's nothing. Northern Africa is dry now, but as the north warms up this may actually change (https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2017/11/09/northern-africa-driest-places-earth/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2017/11/09/northern-...). > I'm sure that in all the examples given there are populations there Which should benefit from this the most. > there are organisms that live there. I just don't get the argument. Are you worried about some organisms in one of the least hospitable places? Some organisms that may live there and thrive in dry salt, but not if it was wet? What makes you specifically worried about those organisms that you dislike the potential for more and more diverse organisms if it was a sea instead of salty sand?
- alex_duf 3y ago
  >Which should benefit from this the most. But that's making an assumption about their desire, maybe they don't love the idea of being displaced and having to have another activity (tourism or whatever) in order to live. Regarding the organisms living there, my point is we don't know what effect getting rid of such an ecosystem could have in the global scale. Maybe whatever bacteria / insect / small mammal that manages to survive there is useful for a species of bird that stops there on their way to another reproduction site. We can look at it and think by filling it with water it will be "better", whatever better means, but there are serious unknown unknowns that we can't take into account.
  - DrScientist 3y ago
    Exactly - history is littered with unintended consequences.
    - throwaway290 3y ago
      The ship for "maybe we should not do something lest we disrupt the ecosystem with unintended consequences" has sailed.
      - Planktonne 3y ago
        The solution to negative unintended consequences is not to trigger more and hope that the next lot are positive.
        throwaway290 3y ago
        Maybe a solution to unintended negative consequences from destructive activities that never cared about environmental impact until too late is more so a constructive project with intended positive consequences and specific environmental goals and less so the default alternative of "keep doing those destructive projects as before and stall anything else"
  - 3y ago
singularity2001 3y ago
I always find it disappointing to see how little evaporation adds to the local greening (also see the boarders of Red Sea)
- MichaelZuo 3y ago
  Well the Red Sea Coast has plenty of small plants, just no forests, large grasslands, etc... due to local climate. It's probably unlikely for a verdant grassland to pop up next to the Qatta depression, but a lot of small plants I can believe.
  - Haga 3y ago
    [dead]
- lasfter 3y ago
  [1] argues a crucial component of greening is trees "pumping" water from the oceans inland and creating nutritious soil. Otherwise evaporated water is simply blown away by the wind. I'm sure other local terrain (e.g., mountains) play a part in locally retaining evaporated water and creating conditions for rain. [1] The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate—Discoveries from A Secret World by Peter Wohlleben.
- mike-the-mikado 3y ago
  It is claimed that a lack of trees leads to a lack of rain (leading to a lack of trees) https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/mar/20/our-biggest-challenge-lack-of-imagination-the-scientists-turning-the-desert-green https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/mar/20/our-bigg...
moffkalast 3y ago
Well given that a fair bit of the Netherlands was made this way, I would think it's not impossible to make it usable land.
- lambdasquirrel 3y ago
  The Netherlands does not sit in a dry arid area though. When they reclaimed / drained it, it became like the areas near it.
- a2800276 3y ago
  Pretty sure that none of the Netherlands were created by flooding large depressions in a desert. Quiet the opposite, in fact.
goda90 3y ago
I think tidal canals would be the better option than pipelines. Dig channels deep and wide enough that the water of the seas actually mingle, letting dissolved salts spread out into the wider ocean.
- ajmurmann 3y ago
  With quite a bit of extra digging this could get us an alternative to the Suez Canal which I believe many countries would be interested in and would strengthen global trade.
  - vasco 3y ago
    They already added lanes to the suez canal and I imagine it'd be way more cost effective to keep expanding those as needed.
    - ajmurmann 3y ago
      There is a political advantage not to be solely depending on Egypt.
- bell-cot 3y ago
  For that "deep and wide enough" to work out, just how deep and wide would the canal need to be? Such mingling happens at the Dardanelles - but it's half a mile or so wide, and ~180 feet deep. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dardanelles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dardanelles
BurningFrog 3y ago
70% of the planet is filled with salted water, which are thriving ecosystems. Is there any reason I'm missing why expanding the ocean won't just give us more ocean?
- alex_duf 3y ago
  That's a fair point, I only had a land ecosystem in mind when writing it, sure there would probably be plenty of sea life in there.
- bradleyjg 3y ago
  I think most of the oceans are a barren wasteland. That said, as a shallow and, at least at first, nutrient rich part of the ocean it could be a flourishing part of it. But if it’s filled via underground pipe, it’ll be isolated from sources of ocean life.
  - zaphar 3y ago
    I think most of the oceans are a barren wasteland. This is as far as I know, incorrect. I'm not sure why you think it would be true. Oceans, aside from areas like the Dead Sea are some of the most vibrant and life filled ecosystems we have. Even at the most crushing depths far from the sun there are entire ecosystems on the ocean floor.
    - bradleyjg 3y ago
      From articles like this one: https://edu.rsc.org/feature/iron-ocean-seeding/2020176.article https://edu.rsc.org/feature/iron-ocean-seeding/2020176.artic... Could be wrong.
    - black_puppydog 3y ago
      But as you say: except for the dead sea. In my mind, these new seas would have a steady influx of salt water, but only sweet water would evaporate out of them. And since I don't see the mechanism by which salt would get sequestered or removed from these bassins, I'd also guest their salt concentration would rise quite quickly. Of course, it might still be interesting to have a huge water surface in the area that effectively serves as a rain generator, but it might not be the same thriving ecosystem we imagine when we say "ocean".
coryfklein 3y ago
Agreed. The biggest point that seemed missing to me: the author talked so much about increased evaporation, but isn't water vapor one of the worst greenhouse gases? Sure you mitigate sea level rise, but at the cost of increasing temperatures? That doesn't seem like a great tradeoff.
- bonzini 3y ago
  The water just moves, doesn't it? He's saying to build a canal.
  - coryfklein 3y ago
    I guess it depends on whether such canals increase the net surface area. If you raise the ocean by 3mm across the globe, does it result in the same net increase in surface area as flooding a large swath of the Sahara?
- snewman 3y ago
  You are correct that water vapor is the primary greenhouse gas. Despite that, water vapor emissions are not generally considered to impact warming. I think that is because the water content of the atmosphere is already in balance due to the massive amount of evaporation and condensation (e.g. rain) that is constantly going on. If we dump some extra water vapor into the atmosphere, that will balance out as a bit of extra rain and/or a bit less evaporation somewhere else; atmospheric water vapor levels won't change. I don't know whether a large scale, ongoing intervention, such as permanently flooding a large area, could nudge this balance sufficiently to result in a sustained (if small) increase in atmospheric water vapor content, and thus an increase in warming. An interesting question! I wrote about the role of water vapor in global temperatures a while back at https://climateer.substack.com/i/60052576/you-thought-the-main-greenhouse-gas-was-co-but-its-actually-water-vapor https://climateer.substack.com/i/60052576/you-thought-the-ma.... My primary source was an IPCC report, specifically the sidebar on pages 8 and 9 of this PDF: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WG1AR5_Chapter08_FINAL.pdf https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WG1AR5_Chapt....
cryptonector 3y ago
Presumably all these could be allowed to get saltier than the seas they fill from. That would allow more water to evaporate, which would speed up the water cycle, which has a net cooling effect on the planet, and which would cause more precipitation that would then help green the planet. It would also tend to lower sea levels. Win win win win!
Kortaggio 3y ago
XKCD talked about why flooding Death Valley in this manner would be a bad idea, because unless you remove all the salt and sediments left behind from evaporation it would create a toxic waste pool https://what-if.xkcd.com/152/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/152/

konschubert 3y ago

> I'm also having trouble buying the argument that to lower the salt concentration we can extract it and sell the salt. Sure we can, but are talking about the same scale here? Besides, this is not economical.

throwaway290 3y ago

> I see no reason for that greening to be there at all when a few hundred kilometres north on the border of the current Mediterranean sea there's nothing. Northern Africa is dry now, but as the north warms up this may actually change (https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2017/11/09/northern-africa-driest-places-earth/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2017/11/09/northern-...). > I'm sure that in all the examples given there are populations there Which should benefit from this the most. > there are organisms that live there. I just don't get the argument. Are you worried about some organisms in one of the least hospitable places? Some organisms that may live there and thrive in dry salt, but not if it was wet? What makes you specifically worried about those organisms that you dislike the potential for more and more diverse organisms if it was a sea instead of salty sand?

alex_duf 3y ago
>Which should benefit from this the most. But that's making an assumption about their desire, maybe they don't love the idea of being displaced and having to have another activity (tourism or whatever) in order to live. Regarding the organisms living there, my point is we don't know what effect getting rid of such an ecosystem could have in the global scale. Maybe whatever bacteria / insect / small mammal that manages to survive there is useful for a species of bird that stops there on their way to another reproduction site. We can look at it and think by filling it with water it will be "better", whatever better means, but there are serious unknown unknowns that we can't take into account.
- DrScientist 3y ago
  Exactly - history is littered with unintended consequences.
  - throwaway290 3y ago
    The ship for "maybe we should not do something lest we disrupt the ecosystem with unintended consequences" has sailed.
    - Planktonne 3y ago
      The solution to negative unintended consequences is not to trigger more and hope that the next lot are positive.
      - throwaway290 3y ago
        Maybe a solution to unintended negative consequences from destructive activities that never cared about environmental impact until too late is more so a constructive project with intended positive consequences and specific environmental goals and less so the default alternative of "keep doing those destructive projects as before and stall anything else"
- 3y ago

singularity2001 3y ago

I always find it disappointing to see how little evaporation adds to the local greening (also see the boarders of Red Sea)

MichaelZuo 3y ago
Well the Red Sea Coast has plenty of small plants, just no forests, large grasslands, etc... due to local climate. It's probably unlikely for a verdant grassland to pop up next to the Qatta depression, but a lot of small plants I can believe.
- Haga 3y ago
  [dead]
lasfter 3y ago
[1] argues a crucial component of greening is trees "pumping" water from the oceans inland and creating nutritious soil. Otherwise evaporated water is simply blown away by the wind. I'm sure other local terrain (e.g., mountains) play a part in locally retaining evaporated water and creating conditions for rain. [1] The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate—Discoveries from A Secret World by Peter Wohlleben.
mike-the-mikado 3y ago
It is claimed that a lack of trees leads to a lack of rain (leading to a lack of trees) https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/mar/20/our-biggest-challenge-lack-of-imagination-the-scientists-turning-the-desert-green https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/mar/20/our-bigg...

moffkalast 3y ago

Well given that a fair bit of the Netherlands was made this way, I would think it's not impossible to make it usable land.

lambdasquirrel 3y ago
The Netherlands does not sit in a dry arid area though. When they reclaimed / drained it, it became like the areas near it.
a2800276 3y ago
Pretty sure that none of the Netherlands were created by flooding large depressions in a desert. Quiet the opposite, in fact.

goda90 3y ago

I think tidal canals would be the better option than pipelines. Dig channels deep and wide enough that the water of the seas actually mingle, letting dissolved salts spread out into the wider ocean.

ajmurmann 3y ago
With quite a bit of extra digging this could get us an alternative to the Suez Canal which I believe many countries would be interested in and would strengthen global trade.
- vasco 3y ago
  They already added lanes to the suez canal and I imagine it'd be way more cost effective to keep expanding those as needed.
  - ajmurmann 3y ago
    There is a political advantage not to be solely depending on Egypt.
bell-cot 3y ago
For that "deep and wide enough" to work out, just how deep and wide would the canal need to be? Such mingling happens at the Dardanelles - but it's half a mile or so wide, and ~180 feet deep. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dardanelles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dardanelles

BurningFrog 3y ago

70% of the planet is filled with salted water, which are thriving ecosystems. Is there any reason I'm missing why expanding the ocean won't just give us more ocean?

alex_duf 3y ago
That's a fair point, I only had a land ecosystem in mind when writing it, sure there would probably be plenty of sea life in there.
bradleyjg 3y ago
I think most of the oceans are a barren wasteland. That said, as a shallow and, at least at first, nutrient rich part of the ocean it could be a flourishing part of it. But if it’s filled via underground pipe, it’ll be isolated from sources of ocean life.
- zaphar 3y ago
  I think most of the oceans are a barren wasteland. This is as far as I know, incorrect. I'm not sure why you think it would be true. Oceans, aside from areas like the Dead Sea are some of the most vibrant and life filled ecosystems we have. Even at the most crushing depths far from the sun there are entire ecosystems on the ocean floor.
  - bradleyjg 3y ago
    From articles like this one: https://edu.rsc.org/feature/iron-ocean-seeding/2020176.article https://edu.rsc.org/feature/iron-ocean-seeding/2020176.artic... Could be wrong.
  - black_puppydog 3y ago
    But as you say: except for the dead sea. In my mind, these new seas would have a steady influx of salt water, but only sweet water would evaporate out of them. And since I don't see the mechanism by which salt would get sequestered or removed from these bassins, I'd also guest their salt concentration would rise quite quickly. Of course, it might still be interesting to have a huge water surface in the area that effectively serves as a rain generator, but it might not be the same thriving ecosystem we imagine when we say "ocean".

coryfklein 3y ago

Agreed. The biggest point that seemed missing to me: the author talked so much about increased evaporation, but isn't water vapor one of the worst greenhouse gases? Sure you mitigate sea level rise, but at the cost of increasing temperatures? That doesn't seem like a great tradeoff.

bonzini 3y ago
The water just moves, doesn't it? He's saying to build a canal.
- coryfklein 3y ago
  I guess it depends on whether such canals increase the net surface area. If you raise the ocean by 3mm across the globe, does it result in the same net increase in surface area as flooding a large swath of the Sahara?
snewman 3y ago
You are correct that water vapor is the primary greenhouse gas. Despite that, water vapor emissions are not generally considered to impact warming. I think that is because the water content of the atmosphere is already in balance due to the massive amount of evaporation and condensation (e.g. rain) that is constantly going on. If we dump some extra water vapor into the atmosphere, that will balance out as a bit of extra rain and/or a bit less evaporation somewhere else; atmospheric water vapor levels won't change. I don't know whether a large scale, ongoing intervention, such as permanently flooding a large area, could nudge this balance sufficiently to result in a sustained (if small) increase in atmospheric water vapor content, and thus an increase in warming. An interesting question! I wrote about the role of water vapor in global temperatures a while back at https://climateer.substack.com/i/60052576/you-thought-the-main-greenhouse-gas-was-co-but-its-actually-water-vapor https://climateer.substack.com/i/60052576/you-thought-the-ma.... My primary source was an IPCC report, specifically the sidebar on pages 8 and 9 of this PDF: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WG1AR5_Chapter08_FINAL.pdf https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WG1AR5_Chapt....

cryptonector 3y ago

Presumably all these could be allowed to get saltier than the seas they fill from. That would allow more water to evaporate, which would speed up the water cycle, which has a net cooling effect on the planet, and which would cause more precipitation that would then help green the planet. It would also tend to lower sea levels. Win win win win!

Kortaggio 3y ago

XKCD talked about why flooding Death Valley in this manner would be a bad idea, because unless you remove all the salt and sediments left behind from evaporation it would create a toxic waste pool https://what-if.xkcd.com/152/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/152/