
Atlantropa - tosh
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantropa
======
BatFastard
I can see a new grand purpose to this plan. To protect the mediterranean coast
from the RAISING sea caused by global warming. Rather than each town and
country trying to protect itself.

As we are finding out, power is getting cheaper and cheaper all the time, and
North Africa is a great source of sun power. So the need to generate power is
reduced. This would eliminate many of the objections to the plan.

~~~
BatFastard
Would probably only need 1 dam at Gibraltar. I wonder if the Mediterranean has
a net info or outflow of water?

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pmontra
As others have pointed out the Mediterranean Sea loses water and needs an
inflow to compensate. In the case of a dam at Gibraltar it should be easy to
let some water in. I wonder if we are able to build such a gigantic dam even
if we wanted to.

We probably need another one at Suez. According to Google Maps the elevation
of the channel is always less than 100 m, which is the worst case figure for
sea rise if all the ice of the world melts. Water would come in from the Red
Sea.

Btw, not all terrains are suitable for building dams.

~~~
BatFastard
There are already locks on the Suez I believe.

I would think that the Rock of Gibraltar would give the damn a decent base
rock formation underneath, but you have a good point.

~~~
pmontra
No locks. You can check at
[https://www.google.com/maps/@31.1497898,32.3699699,12z/data=...](https://www.google.com/maps/@31.1497898,32.3699699,12z/data=!3m1!1e3)

Furthermore all the area of the channel is low elevation. It will go under
water when the sea level raises. Ships will just sail over it.

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notahacker
>The Utopian goal was to solve all the major problems of European civilisation
by the creation of a new continent, "Atlantropa", consisting of Europe and
Africa and to be inhabited by Europeans

I think I can spot a flaw in the plan

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
The interesting thing to note is that the plan "reached great popularity".

In other words, when Europe has problems, when it needs lebensraum, it's a
great idea to migrate to another continent and even change its landscape to
accommodate our people. But, when Africans migrate to Europe, that's not so
popular.

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YeGoblynQueenne
From what I can tell, the project would result in the majority of Greek
islands sort of "fusing" together in one big landmass- and a good few of them
becoming part of mainland Turky.

As a Greek woman, I am very certain that my fellow Greeks would be _very
excited_ about this project.

... though, perhaps not in a good way?

~~~
chr1
Why would they become parts of mainland turkey? The land around islands would
become part of Greece.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
Actually, I think it would just be hotly contested between the two loving
neighbours, Greece and Turkey.

We have history in that neck of the woods. Too much of it, if you ask me.

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georgewsinger
This reminds me of Peter Thiel's point that the engineering proposals of the
past were more frequently ambitious (and also taken more seriously) than they
are today.

~~~
ryandrake
We can't get any major engineering projects done in the West anymore because
any idea will be held up indefinitely by the need to deliver thousands of
pages of environmental assessments, archaeological reports, traffic impact
reports, fish habitat studies, soil and erosion studies, pollution and
economic impact reports. Plus the hundreds of permits required, mandatory
consulting with native tribes, town hall meetings and public comment periods.
And then you'll be sued by everyone, so you can't so much as pick up a shovel
until each of the lawsuits and appeals have run their course...

Meanwhile, if China wants a city in that spot right there, they go and build a
city right there.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
So we should all be more like China with regards to our consideration of
environmental issues, the rights of indigenous people, pollution, etc etc?

And also with regards to the democratic nature of our decision making?

~~~
TimTheTinker
The problem (if you want to call it that) with democracy is that it reflects
societal problems at the government level.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
I think that's actually a feature, not a problem. A representative government
will be, well, representative, of the people who elected it into power. The
various social currents in beliefs and morals will find an expression in the
persons of elected leaders.

What is really a problem, I think, is the lack of responsible and well-
informed citizens as well as competent and altruistic leaders. This seems to
be the case in modern, western-type democracies: we vote incompetent idiots in
power, because there's no good alternatives and we wouldn't know one if it hit
us in the head with a bundle of fasces.

The idea that you can replace responsible citizens and competent leaders with
a ruling elite of (more or less) enlightened individuals given catholic powers
for life is an idea at least as long as democracy itself (possibly discoursed
over even earlier than Plato's The Republic). Personally, I'm not sympathetic
to it.

There are other altneratives. Many of my friends and some intellectuals I love
to listen to facour anarchy, but I dont' think that sort of thing really works
for any length of time.

And, if we could solve the big problem of how to govern ourselves, we would
probably soon afterwards find solutions to the bigger problems that confront
us as a species: climate change, nuclear proliferation, poverty etc.

~~~
pavel_lishin
> _The idea that you can replace responsible citizens and competent leaders
> with a ruling elite of (more or less) enlightened individuals given catholic
> powers for life is an idea at least as long as democracy itself (possibly
> discoursed over even earlier than Plato 's The Republic). Personally, I'm
> not sympathetic to it._

Isn't this just royalty, and the concept of _noblesse oblige_? One of the very
things that the United States was formed as an antithesis to?

~~~
bllguo
Only if you conveniently ignore the word "enlightened," which also happens to
be the most important word there.

More like a meritocratic oligarchy?

~~~
pavel_lishin
You think the monarchs and nobility didn't think they were enlightened?

Or do you just mean enlightened by _your_ standards?

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elsurudo
Neat to think about, but a bit arrogant regarding our abilities. Each of those
dams would have been a single point of failure, the failure of which would
have meant utter devastation of a scale probably not seen... ever.

~~~
Mountain_Skies
Glad I'm not one of the millions who live below the Three Gorges Dam.

~~~
vidarh
It would make Banqiao dam failure minor:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam#1975_Banqiao_Dam_F...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam#1975_Banqiao_Dam_Flood)

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pavlov
In Star Trek TNG, when Picard is resting on Earth after having been abducted
and assimilated by the Borg, he is offered the opportunity to lead this
project in the 24th century.

He doesn’t take the job (sorry if this information spoils TNG seasons 4-7 for
you).

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headmelted
I find this fascinating, even if it does seem unrealistic.

Even if this were achievable, I'm curious to know what the environmental
impacts of displacing such a massive body of water would be to aquatic life in
the mediterranean.

It does seem like something that could have become more realistic after the EU
got off the ground had there still have been someone to push for the idea.

~~~
chr1
For aquatic life of mediterranean this will mean an end since salinity of the
see would keep growing.

More realistic approach is restoring lakes of Sahara [1] by combination of
desalination plants, solar towers, and huge solar battery installation to cool
down the region and get more rain.

It is going to require rather large investment, but it would pay off, by
providing place for projected 4 billion Africans to live, and providing a way
to slow down the rise of the sea level.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chad_Basin#/media/File:Megatsc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chad_Basin#/media/File:Megatschad_GIS.PNG)

~~~
eru
Isn't a big part of that area below sea level? So for a start you'd just need
to dig a channel to the Mediterranean or Nile and wait. No extra energy
required at that step--you could even harness some from the flow.

See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahara_Sea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahara_Sea)
and
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qattara_Depression](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qattara_Depression)

~~~
chr1
Yes a big part is under the sea level, and would be a good first step. But the
most of the potential for storing water is in higher level lakes and aquifer.

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thriftwy
They wanted to basically create more heartland at the cost of coasts.

Problem being, in XXI century nobody wants the heartland. Nobody wants "land"
to settle on anymore. Land is a liability where farmers who demand subsidies
and channel them to Monsanto live. Everybody want coast to settle near. So
it's not so much geoengineering as geoterrorism.

~~~
mech422
wow - biased much ? personally, having lived near the coast and now living in
an inland desert - I can say I vastly prefer the desert. 'everybody' indeed...

~~~
Chris2048
And is your rent higher or lower in the desert?

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timthelion
I agree that more people want to live on the coasts, but this is not a valid
metric, given there is much more inland real-estate than coastal real-estate.

~~~
Chris2048
It would seem since there is already more supply, increasing inland supply
even more won't increase its desirability..

Are you saying coastal property is only desirable because it is rare?

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thriftwy
If it's only desirable because it is rare, still the project would destroy all
the existing coastal supply making what's left grotesquely overpriced. Also
all the people of cities on coasts currently will be virtually expropriated.

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novium
Tom Scott has a video about it if you prefer video content
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEdsQmjLMKs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEdsQmjLMKs)

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pinewurst
The Wikipedia article mentioned Willy Ley's "Engineers' Dreams" which I
remember from my youth (in the Pleistocene, apparently) as being really
interesting.

[https://www.amazon.com/Engineers-Dreams-Willy-
Ley/dp/9997483...](https://www.amazon.com/Engineers-Dreams-Willy-
Ley/dp/9997483219/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1509724923&sr=8-2&keywords=engineers+dreams&dpID=51ZyP7D-L6L&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch)

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amai
The successor of this project is basically
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec)
.

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dfox
I cannot see how the dams would be able to generate electricity. The water has
to flow somewhere and obviously there is no sea to dump it into which is under
the sea level.

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umlaut
The dam would still allow some water into the Mediterranean, which is why it's
"only" a drop of 100m-200m in mean sea level in the Mediterranean.

~~~
dfox
Well, still the remaining water in new lower mediterranean has to go somewhere
for this to be sustainable and I don't believe that just evaporation would be
enough for any significant power generation capacity.

~~~
learn_more
If the only outflow was was from evaporation, the salinity would keep
increasing. Eventually the salt would have to be removed somehow. Perhaps some
of the energy harvested at the Straits of Gibraltar could be used to exchange
some of the water to keep the salinity down.

