
The Real-Life Plan to Drain the Mediterranean and Merge Africa and Europe - Thevet
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-bonkers-reallife-plan-to-drain-the-mediterranean-and-merge-africa-and-europe
======
yoloswagins
In 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/b51ad6d2a...](https://s-media-cache-
ak0.pinimg.com/736x/b5/1a/d6/b51ad6d2a2b14f06013c00b65429add3.jpg)

~~~
idlewords
There 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
Taking the move a mountain idiom a little too far.

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labster
Personally, 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
Did 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_S...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagues_%26_Pleasures_on_the_Salton_Sea)

~~~
labster
Not 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
Have 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.

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jerf
In 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
Don'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
But the archaeology would be _fantastic_.

~~~
flukus
We'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
There's a few thousand years of Mediterranean cargo and shipping distributed
over the seabed.

And I'm sure Atlantis is down there somewhere...

~~~
flushandforget
A rather good point about the Mediterranean being used as a shipping channel!
There would still need to be huge canals.

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YeGoblynQueenne
As 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.

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quanticle
What 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
A 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
I 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
I think a very long time indeed. The classic way to render fields unfit for
generations is to salt them.

~~~
dalke
I 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.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
And yet the Central Valley of California has square miles of dead land, due to
selenium salts(?) that build up. They don't go away. They creep to the surface
and appear as a crusty deposit. Salt is weird, and irrigation water evaporates
it doesn't 'wash away' anything.

~~~
dalke
Portions of the Central Valley do not flow to the sea. Salt stays in a basin.
To note, we were discussing land which emerged from the sea due to post-
glacial rebound, or where the sea was lowered through engineering effect, not
basins. Nor is Carthage in a basin.

Agricultural water runoff is a thing. The water doesn't all evaporate. Quoting
[http://www.watereducation.org/post/salinity-central-
valley-c...](http://www.watereducation.org/post/salinity-central-valley-
critical-problem) , "Every time a farmer irrigates a crop, salt ends up
concentrating in the runoff and groundwater."

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wcoenen
What'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)

~~~
btilly
If you pumped all of the Mediterranean into the rest of the world oceans, that
would raise sea level about 7.4 meters. (The volume of the Mediterranean is
about 3,750,000 km^3, the surface area of the rest of the world oceans is
about 507,500,000 km^2.)

I think a few existing coastal cities might object...

~~~
jsprogrammer
Alternatively, you could pump the water to land for desalination and
agriculture.

~~~
GunboatDiplomat
Where do you think the water goes after being consumed by humans or plants?

~~~
jessaustin
If we're talking about fantasy-scale ecological modifications, there's no
reason to ever turn off the pumps, is there?

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PhasmaFelis
Title 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.

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21
Dividing 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
> 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
> 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
And not only tourists. There are so many Germans than in a town they elected a
German major.

~~~
allendoerfer
Economically 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.

~~~
pipio21
How is young people moving to Germany contributing to Spain?

Earning? They spend most of their money where they live.

In the past engineers used to create wealth in Spain, creating 30 to 40% of
the Gross product in Industry in Spain. Now it is 10%.

I am engineer and I have a company in central Europe, I know.

Educated people moving to Germany to create wealth there is a disaster for
Spain. You are payed in salary 10 because you contribute at least 20 or 30 to
the country you work in.

Training an engineer cost Spain 40 to 50.000 euros in public education. Them
moving to USA or Germany is an enormous transfer of wealth.

~~~
guard-of-terra
I wonder why I don't know any IT consulting giants in Italy or Spain.

I mean, climate is awesome and prices are lower than in Switzerland or UK
where many of those are located, and quality of life is much better than in
Poland or Ukraine where more of them are located. Where's your IT consulting?
Maybe you ought to remove a few roadblocks for them? I'll be the first one to
move to Italy and pay taxes there if provided with workplace and visa.

~~~
allendoerfer
You cannot compare Ukrainian prices to Italian. Italy's GDP per capita is
almost 5 times the Ukrainian and the German is not even 1.5 times the Italian.
Add in a language barrier and you have your answer.

Also northern Italy is where all the industry sits and its productivity is
comparable to north-western Europe, the south is dragging Italy down.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_\(PPP\)_per_capita)

~~~
guard-of-terra
There's no reason why the language barrier will be there in Italy but not in
Ukraine. Will definitely not affect offshore devs coming on your turf (like
with Poland, which imports a lot of Ukrainian and Russian IT workforce).

If London and Zurich can afford IT consultancies, why not Italy? 'cause I've
not heard of those.

WRT "south dragging Italy down", I actually don't think this is true. I think
it's more like an excuse.

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GunboatDiplomat
Speaking 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
Turtledove 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.

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cpeterso
There is a one-hour documentary about the Atlantropa project on Vimeo:

[https://vimeo.com/92381391](https://vimeo.com/92381391)

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flushandforget
Moving 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.

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ZanyProgrammer
The Mediterranean was also damned at Gibraltar in the Star Trek The Motion
Picture novelization.

~~~
flukus
In TNG the built a whole new continent int the Indian ocean.

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gonvaled
Where would all that water go? Atmosphere? Isn't water vapor a greenhouse gas?

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Retric
Wonder how much this would have raised global sea levels.

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squozzer
The Mediterranean Valley would have been hella deep.

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gonvaled
1500 m average

~~~
Gibbon1
During the Messinian Salinity Crisis the deepest parts of the Mediterranean
basin would have had summer time temperatures of up to 80 C.

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skoczymroczny
So that's what they meant when they said they'll stop illegal migrants
drowning, they'll drain the sea.

