
Atlantropa - smacktoward
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantropa
======
TadaScientist
I was very excited about this project when I was a teenager - another was a
"simple" dam just at Marmara/Black sea / Istanbul.

However, as any adult can see the financial impact vastly supersedes the
potential benefits.

Besides the obvious impact to the local seaside communities in Southern
Europe, you would have to deal with unstable regimes in northern Africa and
Turkey and the geopolitical side of things. Wars have been fought for much
less important things than land and resources.

Moreover the ecological effects would be impossible to calculate. There are
other seemingly less important issues such as immigration.

So, in all, ok - the central planning from a German scientist does get some
creativity points, but we are not in Mars, trying to terraform it; we are in a
heavily populated part of Earth which has civilisations at its shores for the
last 4000 years.

~~~
jessriedel
Becoming an adult doesn't give you the power to do a cost-benefit analysis for
a continent-wide megascale project in your head. You can reject this proposal
out of hand for rights-based reasons, but you have no idea whether the costs
outweigh the benefits.

~~~
TadaScientist
Ouch!

Unsurprisingly I agree with your first sentence. But, I do disagree on your
second: I, and others, can see the costs, and I am not referring solely to the
financial costs:

It absolutely means risk of war in the Balkans, Greece/Turkey, N Africa.

Elimination of most of the tourist income on the Med coasts

Endangerment of the biodiversity and ecological balance of the sea

Cause for droughts/flooding seen with other dams
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aswan_Dam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aswan_Dam)

Massive population dislocation in the region of tens of millions

I can go on but the point is what would the benefit need to be to consider
this project as net positive?

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hutzlibu
Lots of land and electricity. That is something huge in densely populated
europe.

But I also think the costs are bigger.

~~~
runarberg
Electricity, sure. Land, no. The reclaimed land will be highly salinated and
unusable on top of the climate being very hot and very dry meaning the
salinity level will be unlikely to change in the near future.

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tempguy9999
> The reclaimed land will be highly salinated

The dutch I thought have done quite well with lots of land reclaimed from the
sea. Why does it work for them, but not here?

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ceejayoz
Dutch plans relied on pumping out those areas, not letting them dry out.

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garmaine
How is that relevant with respect to salinity?

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ceejayoz
It's how the Great Salt Lake and the Dead Sea got super salty? The salt
doesn't evaporate away with the water, leaving a higher concentration of salt
in the remaining water. If it all evaporates away, you wind up with a salt
flat.

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tyho
The water wouldn't just disappear though, how much global sea level rise would
this cause?

The salt would not evaporate, how much would this affect the salinity of the
Med? What would be the impact on wildlife?

Every costal city in the Med would no longer be a costal city. I wonder how
the population would feel about that.

The dam across the Gibraltar strait would be the mother of all single points
of failure and a breach, through human error, natural disaster, terrorism or
war would presumably kill millions if not tens of millions. How would that
risk be addressed?

This is just off the top of my head, has there been any serious analysis of
these concerns? It would be interesting to read about how they would play out!

~~~
jtms
I doubt it would hypothetically kill many at all. The refilling of a body of
water that huge would take days even weeks given the size of the strait.
Likely a child could crawl out of the danger zone faster than the water would
rise.

~~~
vilhelm_s
Xkcd made a comic/animation about this scenario!

[https://xkcd.com/1190/](https://xkcd.com/1190/)

~~~
hutzlibu
That link alone only help insiders ... As it is a static image.

There used to be a player to play it like a movie, I just found this:

[http://geekwagon.net/projects/xkcd1190/mobile/](http://geekwagon.net/projects/xkcd1190/mobile/)

~~~
LeifCarrotson
The image is a link to that site.

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scythe
Forgive me if I’m mistaken, but wouldn’t shrinking the Mediterranean decrease
(possibly a lot) the amount of evapotranspiration, drying out the climate of
Southern Europe and North Africa? I can’t imagine how any amount of energy and
waterfront property justifies this. Drought causes war. As they say, we owe
our existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact it rains. I am in
favor of rain.

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puranjay
What's caused the death of the megaproject in the last 50 years? Even if they
weren't realized (and most weren't), all these megaprojects were fascinating
exercises in creativity and sheer ambition.

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dmitriid
Until the 80s we believed that we had unlimited supply of cheap energy. We no
longer believe that.

This affected a lot of thinking, planning, and creativity. In the 50s-60s
people dreamed of megaprojects. Now we look at a megaproject and go: "well,
no. it will take too much effort and power with no tangible benefit".

~~~
userulluipeste
_" Now we look at a megaproject and go: «well, no. it will take too much
effort and power with no tangible benefit»."_

My thought about this was that we ceased the rush for bigger and went looking
for smarter.

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jedimastert
Tom Scott has a great video[0] about a similar attempt to dam the San
Francisco Bay that got a lot closer to actually happening. So see if it was
practical, the US Army Corps of Engineering built a giant scale model of the
SF bay and put a dam on it to see what would happen.

[0]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i70wkxmumAw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i70wkxmumAw)

~~~
perchard
Awesome. It looks like the scale model discussed in the video is free to visit
at the Bay Model Visitor Center in Sausilito.

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paulhilbert
Seems like something there should be a 99pi episode about (maybe there is?)...

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mrfusion
You’re effectively turning the entire meditatarian (sp) into a giant solar
panel.

The sun evaporating all that water makes way for new water to flow through the
dams turbines.

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mkl
"Mediterranean": "Medi" = middle, "terra" = land/earth. It's the sea in the
middle of the land.

~~~
mrfusion
Thanks. Good pnumnomic (sp)!

~~~
Sharlin
Not sure if joking, but "mnemonic", from Greek _mnēmōn_ "mindful". Then
there's "pneumonic" which is something else entirely.

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chr1
The congo-chad canal part of the project could be built independently from the
rest [http://www.globalconstructionreview.com/news/italy-china-
pon...](http://www.globalconstructionreview.com/news/italy-china-
ponder-2400km-canal-save-lake-chad/)
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Chad_replenishment_proj...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Chad_replenishment_project)

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elif
I... Would not move into a house that depends upon 4 separate dams to not be a
death trap.

I have some faith in humanity and engineering, but not that much.

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jodrellblank
Youtube channel RealLifeLore has a video on it
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQh0CPNzSmY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQh0CPNzSmY)

They suggest that the climate change effects would be awful - the evaporated
water from the Med would raise global sea levels by ~10 metres, the Med sea
floor would be uninhabitable, a salt covered death valley temperature desert.
The rain fall in nearby regions like Balkans would ruin them and affect
agriculture all over Europe. The coastal cities on the edge of the Med. would
become cliff-top cities with their views and trade options ruined.

Plus there isn't enough concrete on the planet to build the damn to do it.

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tobr
As so often, there’s a related XKCD, but not of the usual type: _Time_ [1].
It’s probably the most ambitious XKCD project so far, with thousands of
thoroughly researched panels.[2]

1: [https://xkcd.com/1190/](https://xkcd.com/1190/) and
[http://geekwagon.net/projects/xkcd1190/mobile/](http://geekwagon.net/projects/xkcd1190/mobile/)

2:
[https://blog.xkcd.com/2013/07/29/1190-time/](https://blog.xkcd.com/2013/07/29/1190-time/)

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dr_dshiv
Similar to the Reber plan to get more land in SF by filling in the bay
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reber_Plan](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reber_Plan)

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denzil_correa
> Asia would forever remain a mystery to Europeans, and the British would not
> be able to maintain their global empire in the long run—hence a common
> European effort to colonise Africa was necessary.

This seems to be an outcome of "Scramble for Africa" to colonize and divide
Africa to avoid intra-European wars [0].

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scramble_for_Africa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scramble_for_Africa)

~~~
thefounder
Africa was already divided by that time maybe even more divided than it is
now.

~~~
mikeash
Different meaning of “divide.”

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fnord123
Looks like the biggest soft target in the world and destroying the dam would
make it possible to wipe out millions upon millions of lives in a single
action.

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jetrink
The Mediterranean Sea has a surface area of 2.5 million sqkm, while the Strait
of Gibraltar is only 14 km wide. If the Med were an Olympic-sized swimming
pool, the strait would be hose 4cm in diameter[1]. Even if the dam were built
such that the entire structure could be destroyed at once in a terrorist
attack, the flooding would be gradual and there would be time for people to
evacuate to higher ground.

1\. Assuming 200m elevation difference between the two bodies of water

~~~
fnord123
Given these calculations, I guess you're right. The surface area facing the
Atlantic with air on other side would be 200m x 14000m which would probably
require such a width of concrete to be structurally sound that only the
largest payloads would make so much as a relative dent in it.

~~~
isostatic
And those payloads (likely nukes or orbital bombardment) could kill far more
people by being aimed at a city.

~~~
ceejayoz
Perhaps.

We saw in 9/11, though, that raw death toll really isn't the thing that
matters. Having to evacuate hundreds of millions of people from the entire
Mediterranean would cost trillions; even a couple million Syrians relocating
has caused political upheaval.

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chaostheory
Could be wrong, but I first learned of this from watching Amazon's Man in High
Castle TV series.

~~~
js2
It's discussed, but not by name, in the book.

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mrfusion
Would there be locks on the main dam? A 600 ft drop seems like a lot for a
lock to handle.

~~~
ben_w
I imagine you go for something more like the Falkirk wheel:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falkirk_Wheel](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falkirk_Wheel)

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julienreszka
Yet another progressive Utopia that would result yet again in millions of
deaths.

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userulluipeste
Hmm... So we're talking about a dam to close the Black Sea, which is
collecting the water of Europe's the biggest two rivers. Where all that
cumulated water is supposed to go?

~~~
fhars
The level of the Black Sea is determined by the water flowing in from the
Mediterranean through the Dardanelles and the Bosporus which replaces the
evaporated water. A few rivers do not make much of a difference.

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TimTheTinker
As a software developer, this looks to me like multiple single points of
failure, thus a very bad idea -- if any of the dams fails, all development on
reclaimed land will be flooded.

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failrate
Bad idea for a geoengineering project (due to the potential for harm at
scale), great idea for a simulation game about geoengineering.

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mcguire
Well, you wouldn't have to worry about Venice flooding...it'd be a couple of
hundred miles from the sea.

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adolph
Part of the plan was to connect Venice to the remaining Mediterranean via a
canal.

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drinfinity
Good idea.

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thefounder
The author seems to have assumed that Europe will be a united country which is
a major oversight. Even if the UK lost its empire it didn't loose its desire
to be "great again". France and Italy seem to lean on the same side.

~~~
navaati
I don't know, that could go (for France at least, but prob Italy as well ?) in
one or two generation. A growing number of kids feel European and feel that
being part of Europe is great enough (esp. compared to the US and China,
national pride is still here of course, just shifted).

EDIT: more and more kids -> a growing number of kids

~~~
TomMarius
What about eastern EU?

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rimliu
Support for EU is very high there. There are some voices, usually with
nationalistic tendencies crying about te loss of sovereignty to the "new evil
union", but they are mostly ignored.

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TomMarius
Coming from that part, I wouldn't say that. Definitely nothing about "feeling
European".

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martin_a
That's sad. Why not?

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vetinari
What does "feeling European" even means?

Eastern EU doesn't have many reasons to be optimistic: the top 5 positions on
the top are taken by Westerners after recent elections (German, Belgian, Dutch
/ German - each for 2,5 year, Spanish, French); out of all European
institutions, only one is headquartered in the east (GNSS - Galileo - in
Prague). Etc, etc.

~~~
tpm
Yes but this is in a huge part self-inflicted; with thugs like Orban,
Kaczynski, Babis and their idea of the EU as a source of money without any
conditions attached and their destructive behavior towards institutions both
national and supra-national, it's little wonder they could not get their
people to the top posts.

Babis even explicitly said they could find anyone to suggest for the top posts
and Kaczynski's party tried to sabotage Tusk at every possible turn in the
last term.

Point is, many people in their countries feel very differently to the leaders
about the EU. Many work and marry abroad, there are lots of people from other
EU-countries in eastern Europe etc. We are indeed growing together even if it
doesn look like it on the surface.

