Isn't the main obstacle to creating an inland sea in the Sahara, the long term salination of the water body? The one way flow of sea water into the inland sea would result in increasing concentration of salt, until you end up with a body of water so saline that it is good for nothing. Like the Dead Sea. However, if they could build a sea which has a steady flow of water in and out, thereby ensuring proper oxygenation and no more than normal sea levels of salt. That would be a project worth pursuing.
Probably not, depending on how wide the canal is. The Mediterranean itself is a closed body of water with a relatively narrow inlet, but there's enough exchange between it and the Atlantic that it's only slightly more saline, more so in the east than the west and more in the summer than at other times. And depending on how the sea influenced the climate in the area, there might be increased inflow of fresh water from new rivers. The Dead Sea, by contrast, is fed ONLY by the Jordan and cannot possibly send any water upstream.
The other side problem is the discussion about the Sand from the Sahara effectly act as fertilizer for the Amazon Rainforest. Wouldn't that be a problem as well...
Just melt the polar ice caps, all ice is freshwater and when it melts into the ocean it'll alter the salinity ratio, in turn increasing evaporation. If you do it correctly, you should be able to get things back to around 10k years ago when we had the Sahara grasslands.
@RK Not to mention all the potential knowledge and other benefits the desert species could give us if we don't absolutely annihilate their environment.
1:10 - Chapter 1 - Opening up a continent 3:30 - Chapter 2 - In come the french 8:50 - Chapter 3 - An explosive Idea 12:10 - Chapter 4 - The dream that never dies
Would love to see a Megaprojects or side projects video about some of the largest communication towers around the world. These things push 2,000 feet, and poor schmucks like me go up and work on them 😂
4:23 You forgot to square your conversion factor. While 5000 km is indeed roughly 3000 miles, 5000 square km is about 1930 square miles. The Great Salt Lake has a widely varying surface area. Its recent peak area, in the late 1980s, was roughly 3300 sq mi, which is much greater than 5000 sq km (1930 sq mi). Its current area is listed as between 800 and 950 sq mi, which is indeed about half of 5000 sq km (1930 sq mi). So this statement was correct in part, depending on your intended meaning.
would it not just be easier for him to stop talking about imperial measurements, and get the punters from the good old US of A a reality check and become more educated.......
Never once mentioned the aquifers that lie beneath the Sahara and the fact that they are some of the oldest and largest on earth. There is literally a giant freshwater sea below the Sahara.
100 years ago, a similar plan was to flood Lake Eyre (South Australia ) with seawater, creating more clouds and rain. Same problem - terrain too high and too far from the ocean
I'm pretty sure the problem was too much evaporation. The plan called for water in North Queensland to be redirected south and actually looked kind of plausible, but had made its' calculations using European temperatures rather than Australian ones.
@@twrampage l think if it was done, the rainfall patterns to the east of the lake would benifit from the evaporation, and we could have salt prodution similar to the one on the Dead Sea.
There are weather experts who doubt that man made inland seas would create extra rainfall in adjacent desert regions, and point to many other regions where there are deserts right next to large bodies of water. But then again, these weather _experts_ are often wrong about certain factors around _climate change, global warming/cooling._ So maybe the only way to find out is to build it.
That area in southwestern Tunisia/eastern Algeria has one of largest sweetest water reserves in the world (remnants of the African humid periode) and the salt lakes used to be freshwater mega lakes connected by complex river systems running through the desert all the way to Atlantic Mauritania flooding it with sea water dooms the water quality and some of the oldest and biggest oases nearby and the last surviving savannah in north Africa...
Exactly what i was going to write. If you know anything about the Sahara, you would know this. Lots of fresh water still there, and is being used by the people.
The only way to build any kind of inland body of water in the Sahara or any kind of desert for that matter and not have it turn into a repeat of the Salton Sea or Lake Arial would be to use de salination plants to process sea water into distilled water. And that requires StarWars technology, cause water and salt Love each other there is next to nothing more energy intensive than separating the two and pumping it upland.
@@jonathanburmeister1946solar and wind power. Probably also a good alternative for the shit ton of money being poored into the continent for food if you would focus on getting water to places.
plus evaporation doesn't even cause additional rain near the evaporation site, that's been shown over & over again. Beyond me why people don't call these project dreamers out on that one everytime they start talking about this ridiculous environmental vandalism
A handful of people living in the desert... It's worth the small sacrifice. Plus with increased rainfall probably build your own reservoirs or build desalinization plants along the inland sea using the abundant solar to power it.
With rising sea levels, this will become ever more of an interesting idea. And increased cloud cover will lower temperatures which could create a feedback loop where the land becomes ever more populated with vegetation, increasing cloud cover, increasing vegetation.
@@mehere8038 this hypothesis is in regards to agriculture and not "vegetation". The UN green belt initiative also focuses on shrubs and later trees for water retention. I encourage you to educate yourself before posting and not being mean spirited like the other dude
@@vonunterberg4313 Look at the climate data on Lake Eyre in Australia. It's a HUGE inland lake that intermittently fills with water in the middle of the desert. There is no change to rainfall when it is full vs empty, despite 10mms of evaporation a day for months over a 10,000km square area (far bigger than the Sahara proposals). There is some low level evidence that Lake Eyre may have a slight impact on rainfall levels in New Zealand when it hits their mountains, 3,600kms away but it certainly doesn't impact local weather. If the Sahara plan was viable, Lake Eyre would show it & Lake Eyre would have received the infrastructure to permanently fill it LONG ago! It is MUCH more viable to do that than do the Sahara, both in practical terms & also because of the economic situation of the country in which each are located, but Lake Eyre has not been done, due to the evidence clearly showing it does not impact the local climate! High mountains are needed to do that! & lets also be clear, planting trees in arid & semi-arid areas ALWAYS fails! If the climate rating is for semi-arid or above, ONLY grasses are possible to grow. C4 grasses use 30 times less water per molecule of carbon sequestered compared to any C3 plant. ALL trees are C3 plants. Semi-arid grasslands can NEVER be converted into forests! Only previously forested areas that have suffered deforestation can be reforested successfully
Aye. Any place that receives below a certain amount of precipitation (whether that's rain, snow, ice, etc), qualifies as a desert. So we have hot and frozen deserts all over the world. Isn't nature fascinating?
I wonder if any other deserts will grow larger. Gobi is growing like over 3,600km a year or around 1,400 square miles. Which is just mind boggling. Sahara mean while growing at 30 miles. Give it a century if it doesn't stop! I remember hearing the Sahara might start shrinking in some theories, but who knows.
I'm Tunisian, and this is the first time to hear about the project. Tunisia's economic and political situation is far from being able to execute any mega projects, so the wait will continue.
The good news is, these projects were stupid and couldn't work anyway. So you get to save that money, and use it on fixing your economic and political situation.
@@zimriel Even if government somehow decides to go forward and make the project public, the country would go into chaos since it will literally require drowning densily populated cities, their heritage and agricultre. The sad news is, even if the project is far from taking place, the money is not fixing our economic and political situation.
It might seems great at first indeed, but it could effect palm trees in the south due the new humid weather and our dates industry, besides there are risks regarding the increase of the sea level in close areas
The idea of a flooded Sahara Desert also occurs in The Secret People by John Wyndham. In the 2017 film Aquaman, the Sahara desert was once a sea inhabited by an Atlantean tribe.
@@TheBarretNL nah he's right, before we had the Sahara, Mediterranean, Black Sea and Caspian sea there was once a ancient sea there called the Tethys Sea, which has since turned into the seas we know today and the Sahara.
Can't remember if it was specifically about the Sahara or not. But according to NatGeo there is a portion of the desert that occasionally receives enough rainfall to create a temporary inland sea among the dunes. Does anyone else remember that article, the year and/or the issue?
I think I've seen a few of the articles your thinking. If you have the digital archive, you might want to search for articles on the Bonneville salt flats, the dead sea (actually the salt flats around the dead sea), and other salt flats.
i just replied talking about something like that. it rains and can put your car underwater in an hour then when it stops the water disappears like nothing happened. a normal tuesday.
Maybe you're thinking of the Okavango Delta in Botswana? It's a weird place, where a seasonal river flows from highlands into a basin where it turns into a huge inland delta that creates marshland for part of the year. I happened to notice it recently on Google Earth, and it's very peculiar: clearly a river flowing down from a mountainous area, but then it just spreads out and disappears.
This is just a cursory overlook of some of the plans. No mention of if it would work or why it would absolutely fail. 1. The air is bone dry over the entire region. A large inland sea would certainty make it less dry, but not wet enough to rain I'd wager. 2. The sea would quickly fill with salt and no more water would flow.
Even if we find a way to do this, we would still need to overcome the issue of super salinity. The Mediterranean Sea is already having difficulties with increasing salinity due to less freshwater entering it, and a highly restricted flow through the Gibraltar Strait limiting exchange between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. A second inland sea so far from the coast with only the Mediterranean as a feed source is going to have greater problems with salinity that will need to be managed somehow.
It could be possible, if you find a suitable "pool(s)" to fill, and desalinate water through vaporization, and direct re-condensated water to the "pool(s)" using gravity. No electricity needed, but would propably need much of infra and maintenance (+securing sabotage of infra), thus costing a lots of money. Guess that is why many would rather make those "pools" new salt lake(s) with a simple canal from the sea.
The salt could be extracted, processed, and sold as table salt, ice melt, and even for large-scale sodium-ion batteries, which could be used to build up a sustainable energy grid. This would help further drive Egypt's economy, making it a win-win all around.
Either Nile + irrigation runoff and treated wastewater water (perhaps already from desalination units) can be used, but that perhaps would not be sufficient, or as saltier water is heavier, there could be set of tunnels at the bottom of the lake that would alow saltier water to return back into the sea while upper set of tunnels or canal would feed it with new water. If properly designed, the water would perhaps circulate in the lake.
The solution is a two lake setup- water flows from the Mediterranean to the first lake, a dam is in the first lake dividing between a second lake where salt water evaporates. The first lake is only slightly saltier than the Mediterranean because water is always flowing through and out of it. The second, lower lake is for salt, lithium and magnesium production
Well, the idea to fertilize the Sahara and in general, Northen Africa was also part of the Grand Atlantropa-Afrika Plan by Herrmann Sörgel. By damming the Congo River in a part of it's valley pretty narrow, just before it's final journey to the sea, it would have risen (according to my calculations, being an hydro engeneer) it's water for an height esitmated between 450/500 and 550/600 meters. Using a lower point in the Northen Congo mountains chain containing the basin, the enormous and * 'till this day would be still BY FAR * greatest artifical lake in the world with the highest dam in the world * Rogun dam, Tajikistan, will reach 350 meters, when completed quite soon * the water would had found a natural spillway, from which the great majority of the Congo River inflow would run down in a great waterfall (in some variants it's used by a power plant, seems legit) towards the Lake Chad. Using again the morphology and orography of the area, the quite little natural lake's big sorrounding depression could have been filled with the Congo River's inflows, and BE TURNED IN A FREKING RESERVOIR BIGGER THEN LAKE VICTORIA IN EXTENSION AND VOLUME. And from there, finally, a series of canals could theorically feed all Northern Africa. Side effect, and good one indeed, in Congo, downstream the majestically giant dam, several channels would also would have provided bonifications, preventing malaria, and also to be used for agricoltural use. Same thing, according to Sörgel, would have happened to the desertic areas with his great Lake Chad canals, creating in a span of about 20 to 50 years, basically the greatest grain, fruit and veggies cultivation in the World. Sadly after some promises by Amercan Governament (we are talking about the Early Cold War post-WWII Period), with the fall of European Colonies, the governaments that saw Africa as the a potental great "Grain and Fruit Basket" for internal welth and growth (and ofc profits by the exports), abandoned Sörgel's dreams and the Afrika Project ended just like the well... fascinating but absourd Mediterranean Drying Project. And most of us know how Herrmann life full of majestic dreams ended like. And that's why I see him like the 20th Century's First Half's Nikola Tesla, if you may.
Pipeline to establish the lake then build the canal afterwards. Establish a rail line next to the pipeline, solar desalination and Establish a string of oasis along the way, use permaculture (and similar) techniques to help slow evaporation + fog nets.
@@lethal_tempo could be mitigated by solar desalination plants and pumped into a series of Wadis and ponds upstream with shade and fog nets to reduce evap while using permaculture to establish the pioneer trees for shade and soil fixing/building. It's a commitment and needs timeline upwards of 1-2 generations. But the desert can be reclaimed.
There was an inland sea in the middle of it, once upon a time. And there are loads of water underneath it, strange, isn't it? Underground aquifers in the geology.
There is a cycle that moves the monsoon rains north. There are cave paintings in the Sahara that show animals we associate with areas to the south. The current Lake Chad is a remnant of a much larger lake. When the last cycle ended (I don't know, maybe 10k years ago?), desertification began quickly. Some of the inhabitants likely migrated to the Nile valley. This would have been pre-dynastic Egypt, so just tantalizingly on the edge of history, and more the province of archaeologists and paleontologists. "History became legend. Legend became myth" ... so to speak. The cycle has been repeated any number of times. You might search for "green sahara".
@@jackryan4313 Well, the quote is actually Tolkien's. I had to stop myself from adding "this has all happened before and it shall all happen again". But it will; it's related to a slight "wobble" in the earth's rotation. A full cycle is about 20K years. Or so they say.
I’m very curious about the idea of using inland seas as in effect giant hydraulic batteries to store energy. Pump water up during sun and wind, spin turbines as needed by draining water back down.
There's another issue with flooding any significant parts of the Sahara: the Amazon basin depends heavily on the nutrient rich dust clouds that blow across the Atlantic from the Sahara and are deposited in rainwater there. Disrupt this flow, and while you might get an increase in arability in Africa, it would likely come at a corresponding decrease in South America. A good reminder for those who want to put huge wind farms in the Sahara as well. There are consequences to messing with Earth's natural patterns that we can only pretend to truly understand.
Yeah, and environmental scientists predicted that Lake Mead and Lake Powell would have taken years to get back to the level they are at now. The reality is *you can't predict climate change.* So you therefore cannot say that bringing water to an arid region would do more harm than good, because you don't actually know that to be the case.
@milesedgeworth1297 FYI, when the Boulder Dam was originally built there was only one-one dam upstream from it. Guess the number there are today? It's more than one. I forgot the latest number, but it's greater than 20.
Don't the countries along the north African coast all rely on the fresh water aquifers beneath the Sahara, so isn't there serious risk of polluting the fresh water reserve with salt water perculating down through the surface strata.
Not really. Confined aquifers are non-renewable specifically because there is an impermeable layer of rock above them that prevents percolation. The bigger issue is being reliant on a confined aquifer for fresh water.
Filling the Qattara depression is something I have been big into for over a decade now. I have no idea why we haven't. It lowers sea levels, it lowers global temperatures, it acts as a carbon sink, it will bring rain to the Tibesti mountains, it will even improve trade in the region. There is literally soooooo much benefit and soooooo little drawback. Both the Egyptian and Libyan governments have agreed in principal to the plans, very very very few people live there, the cost of the project is relatively tiny. They could even deal with the salinity problem by drawing the water from the end of the Nile instead of the Mediterranean. This would cost substantially more (probably 4 times as much, but still relatively little on the grand scheme of things) and would result in fertilizers polluting it instead of salt but the water could be far more easily processed and used for farming in the region. Oh and for the record when I say it costs little let me put it this way - The Netherlands spends about $7 billion a year on flooding. This would pay for the project and than some.
In light of this video, I wonder if you could also analyze the Trans Aqua project, the one that would connect a flow (like 3%) of the headwaters of the Congo River to Lake Chad. While not proposed as an inland fresh water sea and would only act as like an irrigation canal, is it more reasonable and doable?
I’ve said it on a couple videos but I’d love to see a megaprojects video on the “Soviet Battle Mole”. Dark vids did a small video on it but it wasn’t super in depth.
Soviet engineering projects exemplify the words "huge" "insane" and "dangerous" like an adolescent's power fantasy. Best viewed from a distance and not as a direct neighbor.
It would be possible to pump sea water into the Richat structure for evaporation and sea salt harvesting by digging a tunnel to the Atlantic and then use solar and wind powered pumps to bring the water up. That might work on a large commercial scale and may be attained without saltwater intrusion into ground water.
Australia definitely needs to do this with Lake Eyre. The only potential downfall I see is the last time it filled via natural means it was followed by the worst cyclone in our history.
The easier way to refill the lake is to raise the amount of rainfall. How? More plants. How watering them - solar desalination. At Port Augusta Sundrop farm has ONE plant usiung seawater from the Spencer Gulf and Sunlight to farm Tomatos. Now make hundred or a thousand of those plants - the make enough water to grow coastal forests which will evoporate water.
The last time Lake Eyre filled was 1899???? Cause that's when Australia's worst cyclone in history occurred isn't it! I have no idea wtf you're on about, or how water in the south of Australia would cause cyclones over a thousand kms to the north! Not how weather systems work! Lake Eyre does frequently fill/part fill as a result of the extra water from cyclones though, but not the other way around
Sit back and wait. Melting ice caps and rising sea levels will do 99% of the work for us. We'll still need to make sure the Eyre Sea doesn't turn hypersaline. A pipeline from somewhere in the north to pump the most saline water back out to the ocean will probably be required.
manmade saltwater inland sea is about as stupid square wheel. The limited inflow of new water through manmade channel would barely offset the evaporation which mean higher salinity and less fish. Salt would eventually seep into underground freshwater reservoirs below basically poisoning them forever. Much better idea is a freshwater sea in Australian desert created by diverting several rivers on the outskirts of the area.
Wouldn't it be a better idea to create a large, passive solar still at the coast? You could have it evaporate to a valley near the coast, and once that's filled, find another valley nearby further inland, until you have a series of freshwater canals projecting further and further inland and resupplying aquifers in it's vicinity and creating a series of oasis
The Atlantic Ocean is west of the Sahara and yet the Sahara is bone dry. This is because the atmospheric Hadley Cell desicates it, as it does the other mid latitude deserts in both the northern and southern hemispheres. Pumping in sea water will not change this. This is the same reason that the barmy idea to dig a canal to fill Lake Eyre in central Australia is pointless.
It would have to be an extremely wide and deep canal because of the amount of water that would need to pass along it and the amount of evaporation from both the new lake and the canal itself. Hard to see how it’s possible to establish a sound business case even if the engineering is available to do it. Even the Chinese North South Water Diversion project is uneconomic and causing lots of adverse side effects.
The Quattara depression is about 50 miles from the coast. Get some tunnel digging boring machines, dig a tunnel to the depression (and avoid all the overland difficulties) and then allow the Med to flood the tunnel. Recoup the tunnelling cost with the profits from creating vast new agricultural lands and tourism.
The Egyptians have made some studies on just this concept. It is doable with today's technology but who knows if it will ever happen. The Dead Sea in Israel and Jordan is another good prospect.
Or use the Qattaran depression for a desalination lake with solar covering the path for the energy for desalination. Also instead of dumping the brine sea water back into the ocean create basins long the path for sea salt harvesting.
Of all these plans the Qattara always struck me as the best of them. Problem is, what if Israel or Ethiopia or any other enemy of Egypt bombs the canal. Now there's a big salt flat blowing salt into the Nile's farmland.
Switzerland had built 57km tunnel, costs around 10 billion dollars. With the dimensions of the tunnel and assuming the tunnel is half full with the water speed of 1m/s. Gathering the data of Lake Mead evaporation of 3.6km cubed per year evaporation, which equals to around 1.7 m cubed per second. Qattara Depression is 30.6 times larger, so let's assume it has the same rate of evaporation, the depression will evaporate 51.8m cubed per second. My conclusion, using a 9m diameter tunnel to the depression is just enough to fill it with water. The flow rate doesn't feel right in my brain, the water speed can be just 0.1m/s. Then it will be just enough to fill 1/5 of the depression with discharge of 6.3 m3/s
you need 25.441 Khufu's Pyramid blocks to seal 1m length of the tunnel, the tunnel is 57090 meters long, you need 1,452,489. That number is remarkably less than Pyramids of Khufu's 2,300,000 limestone blocks. This project, with our current technology, is less ambitious than the extremely ambitious great pyramids.
4:23 5,000 km2 is not 3,000 mi2. 5/3 is approximately the conversion factor between linear km and linear miles. If you square them, the factor is closer to 25/9
Could this help fight sea level rise. Help create evaporation and rainfall, sounds possible especially for the areas below sea level, easy to pump downhill. That would be a Megaproject!
No. If all the ice melted only 4% of land would be lost and thats assuming people dont build sea walls and other stuff. Only 1/2 of all land is currently inhabited and thats with a pop density of less than 200 people/sq mi. NYC has a pop density of 25k+/sq mi. If youre worried about rising seas then live on a boat. Flooding the sahara will do nothing but destroy all the 500+ species that live there. Why cant we just bulldoze your house and put a pond there instead.
How about using Tactical Nukes or Pocket Nukes to dig the canal? They don't highly irradiate like the big ones so could be a more controlled and safe alternative to the mega ton devices! I mean the canal dont' need to be too wide or deep, water erosion will widen it overtime.
I think there has been various proposals to dig a channel to link Lake Eyre in South Australia to connect it to Spencer's Gulf to create an inland sea, to change the climate of the desert too.
Even thought Lake Eyre regularly fills on it's own, so it's easy to see that extra water in it has no impact on the rainfall & climate of the desert when it's full vs empty
Dust from the Sahara blowing over the Atlantic keeps the soil in the Amazon fertile. You can’t just massively change the climate of one part of the world without messing up another pet of it
@@jacob4920 Not an Ice Age, just a change in the Earth's tilt. The Sahara has a cycle where every 20,000 years(based on when the Earth's tilt changes) it goes "green" for the next 20,000 years before drying out again(with the last green period ending somewhere between 6,000 to 5,000 years ago). Funny enough, increased precipitation creating very large inland lakes is what usually starts the runaway effect that turns the Sahara green(and by green I don't mean tropical rainforest. The climate was "merely" lush savannah with grasslands, rivers and lakes). And it wouldn't destroy the Amazon rainforest either because the Amazon rainforest still existed during the last green Sahara period. The Saharan dust is helpful for the Amazon but it's not essential.
As a Tunisian I am baffled... I can't believe you mentioned every single western person related to this topic without bothering to mention a single Tunisian name even once... Bechir Laajmi Al Turki, was a renown Tunisian engineer and had a Phd in nuclear physics he was even the president of IAEA (that's the UN international atomic energy agency). He proposed the finalized plans of what came to be called bhar el Jrid (or sea of Jrid) and his plan still has traction among Tunisian youth today. He helped build the first(and only) nuclear power plant in Africa and gave lectures in the Atomic University of Carthage. His project was going to be funded by the USSR so our president Bourgiba who was friendly to the west refused.. In the 80s, our weak government was pressured by France to abandon our nuclear research, and Dr Turki dodged multiple assassination attempts from the Mosad. The story is even longer than this, but I hope next time you can treat us like sovereign human beings, not livestock on a western owned farm. Tunisian and Algerian governments conducted two separate studies and concluded this project was too expensive and benefits not clear, the recent attempt you mentioned is mainly led by a local business man from Douz, not "SciEntists frOm eVery CoutRy exCePt Tunisia" type of deal.. Last but not least, you said France didn't face any resistance when Tunisia was put under protectorate? I can't figure out if this is a honest mistake or deliberate misinformation on your part. Treaty of Bardo? Marsa convention? Trabilsi wars? Opposition from Italian minority Tunisians (Schiaffo de Tunsi)? Next time do your research or abstain from mentioning my country in your sub-standard videos.
What about the Qattara Depression (133 m below sea level; 60m average) southwest of Cairo. It is 19,605 sq km in surface area with a potential 1,213 cubic km of water.
Yes, this is missing. Had assumed it would be the main focus of a video on this topic, as it is currently being studied (again) by Egypt. (Bad idea for many reasons mentioned in other comments)
The biggest problem is with the continuing flow of salt water and evaporation from the lake the water would become too salty for life. Someone else mentioned creating a massive dam halfway through the lake connecting the two peninsulas on either shore. The first lake would have constant flow of water from the Mediterranean, the second, lower lake would be for salt production, lithium extraction. The first lake would maintain a steady salinity, the second lake would provide jobs for thousands of people. Water flowing from the Mediterranean to the first lake and into the second lower salt lake could also be used to generate electricity. Salinity in both lakes could be adjusted by increasing or decreasing flow from their respective water sources
The Sahara used to be full of lakes and seas, some 10k years ago, so making it wet again is feasible. The trick is to replicate the previous conditions: higher surface temperatures which cause massive updrafts and thermal cycles drawing moist air from the ocean to the interior. By suspending vast mirrors in orbit (using an orbital ring) and directing sunlight to small regions of the interior the thermocycles can be restarted.
That was back in the last ice age when things were a bit different, like the area of Chicago being under a kilometer thick sheet of ice. The temperate zone and the winds, etc., sort of shifted since then.
@@mikeynth7919there's also another factor at that time - the Earth had a different tilt back then, and for whatever reason the planet suddenly shifted it's tilt and forever changed the climate
@@timothyharshaw2347 exactly, but shifting the earth's tilt is difficult. Shifting the angle of incidence for sunlight is doable, thereby replicating the effect
@@DG-mk7kd I believe it is physically possible to alter the earth's tilt and climate if you were to nuke repeatedly one specific side of the planet vs the other. Given the sheer power of modern nuclear weapons, it may not take too much. The same science applies to terraforming Mars
1-You lose species that live in the desert and who knows what impact that will have on other animals 2- The desert provides nutrients to the amazon and before anyone uses the "the amazon is older than the sahara" argument, what life needed millions of years ago to survive is different than what it needs today so the amazon would get screwed. Someone said hurricanes could get worse because the nutrients arent available but I dont know how that works 3- albedo affect. Deserts reflect sun. Water and trees absorb sun causing areas to be warmer (thats why snowball earth was so successful) 4- The evaporated water would affect weather currents and it could green the sahara which would cause even more changes 5- People have talked about the salt water affecting existing aquifers Wouldnt it be easier if people just lived on cruise ships if they were concerned about rising sea levels (not that its going to be a problem since if all the ice melted only 4% of land would be lost and only 1/2 of all land is inhabited and thats with a pop. density of at most 200 people/sq mi. NYC has a density of 25k+/sq mi). And flooding the sahara is only moving water around its not stopping ice from melting.
One thing...the Caspian "Sea" is a huge body of water in the middle of a giant desert...doesn't seemed to have really done much for that part of the world.
The Caspian does not connect with an ocean. The inhabitants around the Caspian can easily trade with each other, which isn’t nothing, but they can’t float anything out onto tidewater and thus the rest of the world.
Qattara depression in Egypt is an actually a good spot for an artificial inland (desalinated) fresh water in Egypt. Make a serious film about this idea.
The African Wet Period started around 15,000 years ago, around Lake Chad there is an epicentre of R1b haplogroup, I was confused for a while until I learned that around 17,000 years ago people migrated all the way from Eurasia on the steppe back into Africa. So from 27,000 years ago our ancestors lived north of Mongolia and over that period of time a group migrated all the way back to Africa, crazy huh...
We are only at the beginning of reconstructing people's migration history. Europe's population, for example, got replaced at least 3 times almost entirely. (Neanderthals got replaced by first modern humans, who got replaced by farmers from the near east) Also there are several "minor" migrations that shaped europe's languages (The near eastern farmers got completely swallowed by a steppe people that we call "Yamnaya" who brought the european languages to europe, the only remaining language of the old inhabitants is, possibly, basque. Then there were several steppe people migrations, mostly of turcic origin, but also the magyars). We also have no idea when the suomi and the finns came to europe, we only know that they share an uralic ancestor with the magyars, who came much later.
@@valentinmitterbauer4196there is some evidence that the dene people in north America have links to the yamnaya . They came in a lot more recently than most north American natives , and still don't get along with the rest very well
I understand it's April First but is it really any more ridiculous than the proposed turning of the Saharan desert into a giant solar farm? ...Since sand isn't abrasive to solar panels or anything.
It doesn't need to be the entire desert Only something like 5% would have been enough By the way the sand damaging the panels wouldn't be the worst problem
@@Pavlos_Charalambous Correct. Beside its moving boundaries and what little usable terrain already used for habitation/agriculture, most regions outside the dunes would still experience abrasive conditions due to proximity.
How hard could it be to just dig a few meter wide path snowblower style thats maybe a single meter under sea level to the desert areas under sea level? Once the water starts moving it would expand and dig itself deeper as it just moved all the soft sand in its path
It might just backfill with sand, you might want to make tunnel. Still its not far, it should not be that expensive. We made a tunnel 4 times as long in sweden in the 70s just to have fresh water in the south
Water erosion works in strange ways. As if it has a mind of its own. Without proper guidance it could go wrong. However, I get what you're saying. We could use very minimal techniques to get big results. Let gravity do all the work.
But Simon, how could you miss the even more insane plan of building a railway tunnel under the Atlantic between the U. S. and Europe. I would recommend making another video about it today, not tomorrow.
Question: Could sea rise be ameliorated by pumping sea water into depressions like Death Valley or the Caspian Sea? And, given how many of these below sea level depressions are in hot places, wouldn't we get greater cloud cover?
No. The ocean is so vast that the volume of water associated with even a small increase in sea level would be too much for all the depressions of the world to hold. They look big to us, but they are thimbles compared to the Olympic sized swimming pool that is the ocean.
@David Halliwell damn! That sucks cause I always thought about that. Well wouldn't flooding the sahara cause it to turn green and have greater cloud coverage, hence storing more carbon via vegetation?
@@Adam.Reader14 Arithmetic I can do and if a few big canals could avoid the need to move ports and fortify seaside cities then that would be the cheap option to deal with sea level rise. Sadly not realistic. But the secondary effects of greening the deserts could be huge - I have no way to calculate that though!
@David Halliwell I figured the arithmetic wasn't such a huge mess to make. I actually tried something similar years ago, although I don't know if I did it correctly. I got close to a foot I think (I think zi calculated it for the deep zones to be made artificially deeper). As far as the green zone part, I don't think that anyone can properly calculate that. Then there is the favt that sand from the sahara blows over the atlantic ocean and into the amazon rain forest, creating a positive cycle.
Just because a man with all his hair on his face instead of his head thinks something is insane does not make it insane. Nothing is impossible just improbable. Man has been changing the planet since the beginning of human history and just takes commitment and determination.
I would make some aquaducts from the Egyptian lakes to the Qattara depression, with flood control from the Nile river as well, which would eventually make it a freshwater lake instead of a saltwater sea.
looks like you could build canals and create a dozen small seas. Cut the ocean off and within years it would be fresh water and destalinization could pump in freshwater from the oceans while vegetating the sea floors and planting around the sea regions would allow mother nature to continue the process by itself and the whole Sahara could become green. Being Africa is going to gain 3 billion beings in the next 80 years this project should be a project seriously thought about.
The water wouldn't just "become fresh", and there's not enough local rainfall to dilute out the salt - it would keep getting saltier, much like the dead sea has.
They could use the advances in tunnel construction. Using a massive tunnel boring machine. They could make a tunnel running the lenghth of the course of the channel. Connect it to the ocean and fill with water. Then purposely collapse the roof of the tunnel. The water rushing through from the sea will carry the sand falling from the surface and will widen the channel with time.
Unless the tunnel is just below the surface you can’t collapse its roof (deep tunnels are actually pretty safe places to be in earthquakes). But if you dig the tunnel close to the surface the risk is high that the roof will collapse before you’re done.
good luck tunnel boring through sand lol. Snowy River Scheme mark 2 in Australia has hit sand with it's project & they tried to hide it for ages, but eventually it was uncovered & discovered the tunnel's only gone about 50 metres, despite millions, it not billions of dollars going into it. Sand & tunnel borers do not mix. It's also cheaper to "cut and cover" with shallow tunnels, than to tunnel bore, so obviously if the plan is ultimately to open it, it would be cheaper & easier to cut & cover (but leave out the cover) from the begining
The only way this would be a april fools is that the project wouldn´t actually be that large. There would only need 2 tunnels, and the longest would only need to be 20km. That is not very long for a water tunnel. There is a dozen of them that is longer
A list of water tunnels in service of today. Delaware Aqueduct (US) - 137 km (85 miles) Päijänne Water Tunnel (Finland) - 120 km (75 miles) New York City Water Tunnel No. 1 (US) - 110 km (68 miles) Thirlmere Aqueduct (UK) - 96 km (60 miles) Orange-Fish Tunnel (South Africa) - 82 km (51 miles) Gotvand Tunnel (Iran) - 75 km (47 miles) Banks Tunnel (Australia) - 75 km (47 miles) Huitong Tunnel (China) - 67 km (42 miles) São Francisco River Integration Project (Brazil) - 63 km (39 miles) Eselsgrabenbach Tunnel (Austria) - 60 km (37 miles) Tahtali Tunnel (Turkey) - 58 km (36 miles) Bengaluru Water Supply and Sewerage Project (India) - 49 km (30 miles) Kempervennendreef Tunnel (Netherlands) - 42 km (26 miles) Tansa Pipeline (India) - 42 km (26 miles) Mount Elbert Forebay Tunnel (US) - 40 km (25 miles) Bengal Nagpur Railway Tunnel (India) - 37 km (23 miles) Serra da Mesa Dam Tunnel (Brazil) - 36 km (22 miles) Kárahnjúkar Hydropower Plant Tunnel (Iceland) - 39 km (24 miles) Dahuofang Water Tunnel (China) - 34 km (21 miles) Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District Dam (US) - 32 km (20 miles)
It's theorized that the Mediterranean sea was open lowland and a hotter desert than the Sahara until the Atlantic broke through the Pillars of Hercules at Gibraltar. Then, that area flooded and became the Mediterranean. A similar thing happened with the Black Sea. It's thought the Black Sea flood was the origin of the Gilgamesh Saga and the Noah story from the Bible. the flooding of the Med was around 250,000 years ago.
Any geoengineering of the Sahara needs to be REALLY well thought out. The sand literally seeds the Amazon forest and its absence would kill the rainforest. That rainforest sequesters massive amounts of CO2 a year (1.5 million tons a year), not to mention the amazing biodiversity the forest holds.
See I was thinking (back when the Suez was blocked ) a channel along Israel Egypt border would be great. Firstly not only could it offer a faster way to euro- middle East/ Asia due to cutting the wait time in the Suez but also when one gets blocked there's still a pathway
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Isn't the main obstacle to creating an inland sea in the Sahara, the long term salination of the water body?
The one way flow of sea water into the inland sea would result in increasing concentration of salt, until you end up with a body of water so saline that it is good for nothing. Like the Dead Sea.
However, if they could build a sea which has a steady flow of water in and out, thereby ensuring proper oxygenation and no more than normal sea levels of salt.
That would be a project worth pursuing.
Probably not, depending on how wide the canal is. The Mediterranean itself is a closed body of water with a relatively narrow inlet, but there's enough exchange between it and the Atlantic that it's only slightly more saline, more so in the east than the west and more in the summer than at other times. And depending on how the sea influenced the climate in the area, there might be increased inflow of fresh water from new rivers.
The Dead Sea, by contrast, is fed ONLY by the Jordan and cannot possibly send any water upstream.
Yes, it would eventually become so salty that fish couldn't survive in it, like the Dead Sea. It might still be useful as a waterway, though.
The other side problem is the discussion about the Sand from the Sahara effectly act as fertilizer for the Amazon Rainforest. Wouldn't that be a problem as well...
Just melt the polar ice caps, all ice is freshwater and when it melts into the ocean it'll alter the salinity ratio, in turn increasing evaporation. If you do it correctly, you should be able to get things back to around 10k years ago when we had the Sahara grasslands.
@RK Not to mention all the potential knowledge and other benefits the desert species could give us if we don't absolutely annihilate their environment.
1:10 - Chapter 1 - Opening up a continent
3:30 - Chapter 2 - In come the french
8:50 - Chapter 3 - An explosive Idea
12:10 - Chapter 4 - The dream that never dies
Thank you
Would love to see a Megaprojects or side projects video about some of the largest communication towers around the world. These things push 2,000 feet, and poor schmucks like me go up and work on them 😂
I'd watch a video about those they seem insane to work on yet alone build.
Wouldn't catch me on one of those 😂 I'm not scared of heights but absolutely fuck that hahahaha
bro. i would absolutely go up on one. dont know how id feel about working in the elements that high up. Seems like super cold super windy or super hot
They should interview you about the experience, I'm sure there's a lot of work that we don't realize goes into those and their maintenance.
Wear a go pro and record yourself at work, guarantee you'll very quickly have thousands of views
4:23 You forgot to square your conversion factor. While 5000 km is indeed roughly 3000 miles, 5000 square km is about 1930 square miles. The Great Salt Lake has a widely varying surface area. Its recent peak area, in the late 1980s, was roughly 3300 sq mi, which is much greater than 5000 sq km (1930 sq mi). Its current area is listed as between 800 and 950 sq mi, which is indeed about half of 5000 sq km (1930 sq mi). So this statement was correct in part, depending on your intended meaning.
would it not just be easier for him to stop talking about imperial measurements, and get the punters from the good old US of A a reality check and become more educated.......
Never once mentioned the aquifers that lie beneath the Sahara and the fact that they are some of the oldest and largest on earth. There is literally a giant freshwater sea below the Sahara.
Yeah I was expecting that
They are a non-renewable resource, not a great plan to significantly rely on them.
quite awhile ago I also read about increasing the size of lake Chad using the underground aquifers, so I was expecting at least a mention.
@@greywolf7422 There is enough freshwater in the Saharan aquifers to last the next 10,000 years + at current consumption rates.
Wonder what the effect of billions of gallons of salt water seeping into the aquifer would have on it.
100 years ago, a similar plan was to flood Lake Eyre (South Australia ) with seawater, creating more clouds and rain. Same problem - terrain too high and too far from the ocean
Lake Eyre is actually 9m - 15m below sea level.
I'm pretty sure the problem was too much evaporation. The plan called for water in North Queensland to be redirected south and actually looked kind of plausible, but had made its' calculations using European temperatures rather than Australian ones.
@@twrampage l think if it was done, the rainfall patterns to the east of the lake would benifit from the evaporation, and we could have salt prodution similar to the one on the Dead Sea.
There are weather experts who doubt that man made inland seas would create extra rainfall in adjacent desert regions, and point to many other regions where there are deserts right next to large bodies of water.
But then again, these weather _experts_ are often wrong about certain factors around _climate change, global warming/cooling._ So maybe the only way to find out is to build it.
Apparently it was in the plans of the Japanese if they were to successfully invade and conquer Australia.
That area in southwestern Tunisia/eastern Algeria has one of largest sweetest water reserves in the world (remnants of the African humid periode) and the salt lakes used to be freshwater mega lakes connected by complex river systems running through the desert all the way to Atlantic Mauritania flooding it with sea water dooms the water quality and some of the oldest and biggest oases nearby and the last surviving savannah in north Africa...
Exactly what i was going to write. If you know anything about the Sahara, you would know this. Lots of fresh water still there, and is being used by the people.
The only way to build any kind of inland body of water in the Sahara or any kind of desert for that matter and not have it turn into a repeat of the Salton Sea or Lake Arial would be to use de salination plants to process sea water into distilled water.
And that requires StarWars technology, cause water and salt Love each other there is next to nothing more energy intensive than separating the two and pumping it upland.
@@jonathanburmeister1946solar and wind power. Probably also a good alternative for the shit ton of money being poored into the continent for food if you would focus on getting water to places.
plus evaporation doesn't even cause additional rain near the evaporation site, that's been shown over & over again. Beyond me why people don't call these project dreamers out on that one everytime they start talking about this ridiculous environmental vandalism
A handful of people living in the desert... It's worth the small sacrifice. Plus with increased rainfall probably build your own reservoirs or build desalinization plants along the inland sea using the abundant solar to power it.
With rising sea levels, this will become ever more of an interesting idea. And increased cloud cover will lower temperatures which could create a feedback loop where the land becomes ever more populated with vegetation, increasing cloud cover, increasing vegetation.
"rain follows the plow" is a discredited hypothesis that caused the dustbowls in the US. Will people never learn?
@@mehere8038 Not on youtube, where everyone is an expert and knows to green the Sahara.
@@mehere8038 this hypothesis is in regards to agriculture and not "vegetation". The UN green belt initiative also focuses on shrubs and later trees for water retention. I encourage you to educate yourself before posting and not being mean spirited like the other dude
@@vonunterberg4313 Look at the climate data on Lake Eyre in Australia. It's a HUGE inland lake that intermittently fills with water in the middle of the desert. There is no change to rainfall when it is full vs empty, despite 10mms of evaporation a day for months over a 10,000km square area (far bigger than the Sahara proposals).
There is some low level evidence that Lake Eyre may have a slight impact on rainfall levels in New Zealand when it hits their mountains, 3,600kms away but it certainly doesn't impact local weather.
If the Sahara plan was viable, Lake Eyre would show it & Lake Eyre would have received the infrastructure to permanently fill it LONG ago! It is MUCH more viable to do that than do the Sahara, both in practical terms & also because of the economic situation of the country in which each are located, but Lake Eyre has not been done, due to the evidence clearly showing it does not impact the local climate! High mountains are needed to do that!
& lets also be clear, planting trees in arid & semi-arid areas ALWAYS fails! If the climate rating is for semi-arid or above, ONLY grasses are possible to grow. C4 grasses use 30 times less water per molecule of carbon sequestered compared to any C3 plant. ALL trees are C3 plants. Semi-arid grasslands can NEVER be converted into forests! Only previously forested areas that have suffered deforestation can be reforested successfully
@@vonunterberg4313 what on earth happened to my reply to you? No idea why that one went bye byes! Look at Lake Eyre to see the reality
“Worlds largest hot desert” consciousness raiser - didn’t even think about the arctics being deserts. Love your videos, fun facts for days!
Aye. Any place that receives below a certain amount of precipitation (whether that's rain, snow, ice, etc), qualifies as a desert. So we have hot and frozen deserts all over the world.
Isn't nature fascinating?
I wonder if any other deserts will grow larger. Gobi is growing like over 3,600km a year or around 1,400 square miles. Which is just mind boggling. Sahara mean while growing at 30 miles.
Give it a century if it doesn't stop! I remember hearing the Sahara might start shrinking in some theories, but who knows.
@@angelitabecerra is the bottom of the ocean a desert?
@@angelitabecerra less than 25mm, with some excerptions
Yes the desert is the hottest desert but not the biggest, so what's the problem!?
A Sahara Dessert sounds delicious!
With sandy sprinkles and a pebble on top? 🤣
I'm Tunisian, and this is the first time to hear about the project. Tunisia's economic and political situation is far from being able to execute any mega projects, so the wait will continue.
The good news is, these projects were stupid and couldn't work anyway. So you get to save that money, and use it on fixing your economic and political situation.
@@zimriel Even if government somehow decides to go forward and make the project public, the country would go into chaos since it will literally require drowning densily populated cities, their heritage and agricultre. The sad news is, even if the project is far from taking place, the money is not fixing our economic and political situation.
@@zimriel but megaprojects might unite a country. It might create the mindset of setting aside our problems for a bigger cause
It might seems great at first indeed, but it could effect palm trees in the south due the new humid weather and our dates industry, besides there are risks regarding the increase of the sea level in close areas
You’re Tunisian? Which exit?
Your voice makes everything better
The idea of a flooded Sahara Desert also occurs in The Secret People by John Wyndham. In the 2017 film Aquaman, the Sahara desert was once a sea inhabited by an Atlantean tribe.
right, coz the Atlantic is in the sahara... makes no sense? :P
@@TheBarretNL nah he's right, before we had the Sahara, Mediterranean, Black Sea and Caspian sea there was once a ancient sea there called the Tethys Sea, which has since turned into the seas we know today and the Sahara.
Can't remember if it was specifically about the Sahara or not. But according to NatGeo there is a portion of the desert that occasionally receives enough rainfall to create a temporary inland sea among the dunes. Does anyone else remember that article, the year and/or the issue?
I do - it's in the western edges of the Sahara and it's incredibly short-lived. Likely not even long enough for life to take hold.
I think I've seen a few of the articles your thinking. If you have the digital archive, you might want to search for articles on the Bonneville salt flats, the dead sea (actually the salt flats around the dead sea), and other salt flats.
i just replied talking about something like that. it rains and can put your car underwater in an hour then when it stops the water disappears like nothing happened. a normal tuesday.
Maybe you're thinking of the Okavango Delta in Botswana? It's a weird place, where a seasonal river flows from highlands into a basin where it turns into a huge inland delta that creates marshland for part of the year. I happened to notice it recently on Google Earth, and it's very peculiar: clearly a river flowing down from a mountainous area, but then it just spreads out and disappears.
@@allanmason3201 botswana desert isnt like sahara
It's interesting to note that the word Sahara in Arabic means: Desert. Its' complete name is al-Sahra al-Kubra (the Great Desert)
QI did a sketch on the Sahara Desert being the Desert-Desert.
The Rio Grand River is the same way, Rio is Spanish for river, so it's the river great river.
Real world, final boss of generic names!
chai tea
And gobi means waterless place, so there's another desert desert too
This is just a cursory overlook of some of the plans. No mention of if it would work or why it would absolutely fail.
1. The air is bone dry over the entire region. A large inland sea would certainty make it less dry, but not wet enough to rain I'd wager.
2. The sea would quickly fill with salt and no more water would flow.
Even if we find a way to do this, we would still need to overcome the issue of super salinity. The Mediterranean Sea is already having difficulties with increasing salinity due to less freshwater entering it, and a highly restricted flow through the Gibraltar Strait limiting exchange between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. A second inland sea so far from the coast with only the Mediterranean as a feed source is going to have greater problems with salinity that will need to be managed somehow.
It could be possible, if you find a suitable "pool(s)" to fill, and desalinate water through vaporization, and direct re-condensated water to the "pool(s)" using gravity. No electricity needed, but would propably need much of infra and maintenance (+securing sabotage of infra), thus costing a lots of money.
Guess that is why many would rather make those "pools" new salt lake(s) with a simple canal from the sea.
The salt could be extracted, processed, and sold as table salt, ice melt, and even for large-scale sodium-ion batteries, which could be used to build up a sustainable energy grid. This would help further drive Egypt's economy, making it a win-win all around.
Either Nile + irrigation runoff and treated wastewater water (perhaps already from desalination units) can be used, but that perhaps would not be sufficient, or as saltier water is heavier, there could be set of tunnels at the bottom of the lake that would alow saltier water to return back into the sea while upper set of tunnels or canal would feed it with new water. If properly designed, the water would perhaps circulate in the lake.
The solution is a two lake setup- water flows from the Mediterranean to the first lake, a dam is in the first lake dividing between a second lake where salt water evaporates. The first lake is only slightly saltier than the Mediterranean because water is always flowing through and out of it. The second, lower lake is for salt, lithium and magnesium production
Well, the idea to fertilize the Sahara and in general, Northen Africa was also part of the Grand Atlantropa-Afrika Plan by Herrmann Sörgel. By damming the Congo River in a part of it's valley pretty narrow, just before it's final journey to the sea, it would have risen (according to my calculations, being an hydro engeneer) it's water for an height esitmated between 450/500 and 550/600 meters. Using a lower point in the Northen Congo mountains chain containing the basin, the enormous and * 'till this day would be still BY FAR * greatest artifical lake in the world with the highest dam in the world * Rogun dam, Tajikistan, will reach 350 meters, when completed quite soon * the water would had found a natural spillway, from which the great majority of the Congo River inflow would run down in a great waterfall (in some variants it's used by a power plant, seems legit) towards the Lake Chad. Using again the morphology and orography of the area, the quite little natural lake's big sorrounding depression could have been filled with the Congo River's inflows, and BE TURNED IN A FREKING RESERVOIR BIGGER THEN LAKE VICTORIA IN EXTENSION AND VOLUME. And from there, finally, a series of canals could theorically feed all Northern Africa. Side effect, and good one indeed, in Congo, downstream the majestically giant dam, several channels would also would have provided bonifications, preventing malaria, and also to be used for agricoltural use. Same thing, according to Sörgel, would have happened to the desertic areas with his great Lake Chad canals, creating in a span of about 20 to 50 years, basically the greatest grain, fruit and veggies cultivation in the World. Sadly after some promises by Amercan Governament (we are talking about the Early Cold War post-WWII Period), with the fall of European Colonies, the governaments that saw Africa as the a potental great "Grain and Fruit Basket" for internal welth and growth (and ofc profits by the exports), abandoned Sörgel's dreams and the Afrika Project ended just like the well... fascinating but absourd Mediterranean Drying Project. And most of us know how Herrmann life full of majestic dreams ended like. And that's why I see him like the 20th Century's First Half's Nikola Tesla, if you may.
Pipeline to establish the lake then build the canal afterwards. Establish a rail line next to the pipeline, solar desalination and Establish a string of oasis along the way, use permaculture (and similar) techniques to help slow evaporation + fog nets.
That area already has the largest and oldest oases and the biggest fresh water reserve in the world flooding it with seawater spells disaster
@@lethal_tempo could be mitigated by solar desalination plants and pumped into a series of Wadis and ponds upstream with shade and fog nets to reduce evap while using permaculture to establish the pioneer trees for shade and soil fixing/building. It's a commitment and needs timeline upwards of 1-2 generations. But the desert can be reclaimed.
There was an inland sea in the middle of it, once upon a time. And there are loads of water underneath it, strange, isn't it? Underground aquifers in the geology.
There is a cycle that moves the monsoon rains north. There are cave paintings in the Sahara that show animals we associate with areas to the south. The current Lake Chad is a remnant of a much larger lake. When the last cycle ended (I don't know, maybe 10k years ago?), desertification began quickly. Some of the inhabitants likely migrated to the Nile valley. This would have been pre-dynastic Egypt, so just tantalizingly on the edge of history, and more the province of archaeologists and paleontologists. "History became legend. Legend became myth" ... so to speak. The cycle has been repeated any number of times.
You might search for "green sahara".
Atlantis was real...
Isn’t that where they think Atlantis was
@@fjkelley4774 well said
@@jackryan4313 Well, the quote is actually Tolkien's. I had to stop myself from adding "this has all happened before and it shall all happen again". But it will; it's related to a slight "wobble" in the earth's rotation. A full cycle is about 20K years. Or so they say.
I’m very curious about the idea of using inland seas as in effect giant hydraulic batteries to store energy. Pump water up during sun and wind, spin turbines as needed by draining water back down.
This! That and geothermal where possible seem like a great path forward.
Such a better idea than building dams in lush areas which upsets delicate ecosystems
9:13 - "Iniciative" - a sure sign of quality and academic rigour.
Laughing at “Sahara Dessert” in the title before they realize the mistake and rename it! : )
Very common mistake!
Still there
2wks in, Simon still enjoying his sweet desert
6 months here, still dessert
Watching this in 2025, still says Dessert.
There's another issue with flooding any significant parts of the Sahara: the Amazon basin depends heavily on the nutrient rich dust clouds that blow across the Atlantic from the Sahara and are deposited in rainwater there. Disrupt this flow, and while you might get an increase in arability in Africa, it would likely come at a corresponding decrease in South America.
A good reminder for those who want to put huge wind farms in the Sahara as well. There are consequences to messing with Earth's natural patterns that we can only pretend to truly understand.
and solar farms
Sahara was green until a few thousand years ago. I didn't realise the Amazon was such a young forest!
Yeah, and environmental scientists predicted that Lake Mead and Lake Powell would have taken years to get back to the level they are at now. The reality is *you can't predict climate change.* So you therefore cannot say that bringing water to an arid region would do more harm than good, because you don't actually know that to be the case.
@milesedgeworth1297
FYI, when the Boulder Dam was originally built there was only one-one dam upstream from it.
Guess the number there are today?
It's more than one.
I forgot the latest number, but it's greater than 20.
those are small areas in comparison to the size of Sahara. I doubt they won't too much.
Don't the countries along the north African coast all rely on the fresh water aquifers beneath the Sahara, so isn't there serious risk of polluting the fresh water reserve with salt water perculating down through the surface strata.
Not really. Confined aquifers are non-renewable specifically because there is an impermeable layer of rock above them that prevents percolation. The bigger issue is being reliant on a confined aquifer for fresh water.
Filling the Qattara depression is something I have been big into for over a decade now. I have no idea why we haven't. It lowers sea levels, it lowers global temperatures, it acts as a carbon sink, it will bring rain to the Tibesti mountains, it will even improve trade in the region. There is literally soooooo much benefit and soooooo little drawback. Both the Egyptian and Libyan governments have agreed in principal to the plans, very very very few people live there, the cost of the project is relatively tiny. They could even deal with the salinity problem by drawing the water from the end of the Nile instead of the Mediterranean. This would cost substantially more (probably 4 times as much, but still relatively little on the grand scheme of things) and would result in fertilizers polluting it instead of salt but the water could be far more easily processed and used for farming in the region.
Oh and for the record when I say it costs little let me put it this way - The Netherlands spends about $7 billion a year on flooding. This would pay for the project and than some.
DZIĘKUJĘ BARDZO I POZDRAWIAM SERDECZNIE.
In light of this video, I wonder if you could also analyze the Trans Aqua project, the one that would connect a flow (like 3%) of the headwaters of the Congo River to Lake Chad. While not proposed as an inland fresh water sea and would only act as like an irrigation canal, is it more reasonable and doable?
There is a plan on place to do this it's ip
Thank you for this video.
I’ve said it on a couple videos but I’d love to see a megaprojects video on the “Soviet Battle Mole”. Dark vids did a small video on it but it wasn’t super in depth.
Soviet engineering projects exemplify the words "huge" "insane" and "dangerous" like an adolescent's power fantasy. Best viewed from a distance and not as a direct neighbor.
It would be possible to pump sea water into the Richat structure for evaporation and sea salt harvesting by digging a tunnel to the Atlantic and then use solar and wind powered pumps to bring the water up. That might work on a large commercial scale and may be attained without saltwater intrusion into ground water.
Salt water can be used to create electricity through osmosis.
@@placeholdername0000 After you reverse the flow of Entropy. That would be the tricky part.
But why?
@@jamesdough6406 The reverse of reverse osmosis.
Lots of things become possible if you assume electricity is free. We're a long way from free electricity, however.
Did anyone ever ask the Africans about their own land???
Yes
I believe Emanuel Macron asked
I've always wanted to see a similar project happen in the deserts of Patagonia.
Australia definitely needs to do this with Lake Eyre.
The only potential downfall I see is the last time it filled via natural means it was followed by the worst cyclone in our history.
The easier way to refill the lake is to raise the amount of rainfall. How? More plants. How watering them - solar desalination. At Port Augusta Sundrop farm has ONE plant usiung seawater from the Spencer Gulf and Sunlight to farm Tomatos. Now make hundred or a thousand of those plants - the make enough water to grow coastal forests which will evoporate water.
salt water not good for growing stuff....
last time it filled was with rain water which is good for plants to grow
The last time Lake Eyre filled was 1899???? Cause that's when Australia's worst cyclone in history occurred isn't it!
I have no idea wtf you're on about, or how water in the south of Australia would cause cyclones over a thousand kms to the north! Not how weather systems work! Lake Eyre does frequently fill/part fill as a result of the extra water from cyclones though, but not the other way around
Sit back and wait. Melting ice caps and rising sea levels will do 99% of the work for us.
We'll still need to make sure the Eyre Sea doesn't turn hypersaline. A pipeline from somewhere in the north to pump the most saline water back out to the ocean will probably be required.
This would be a spectacular idea. And it would be great to see what effects it had on the weather patterns in Africa & Europe.
So that first one wasn't a Mega-project so much as a pipedream.
The Sahara desert is needed. This would change the weather globally causing unintended consequences
manmade saltwater inland sea is about as stupid square wheel. The limited inflow of new water through manmade channel would barely offset the evaporation which mean higher salinity and less fish. Salt would eventually seep into underground freshwater reservoirs below basically poisoning them forever. Much better idea is a freshwater sea in Australian desert created by diverting several rivers on the outskirts of the area.
Wouldn't it be a better idea to create a large, passive solar still at the coast? You could have it evaporate to a valley near the coast, and once that's filled, find another valley nearby further inland, until you have a series of freshwater canals projecting further and further inland and resupplying aquifers in it's vicinity and creating a series of oasis
Yes, dessert - oh dear. With custard? Apple pie?
The Atlantic Ocean is west of the Sahara and yet the Sahara is bone dry. This is because the atmospheric Hadley Cell desicates it, as it does the other mid latitude deserts in both the northern and southern hemispheres. Pumping in sea water will not change this. This is the same reason that the barmy idea to dig a canal to fill Lake Eyre in central Australia is pointless.
What kind of dessert will it become? A cake? An ice cream?
Oh, I get it : it will become an _île flottante!_
It would have to be an extremely wide and deep canal because of the amount of water that would need to pass along it and the amount of evaporation from both the new lake and the canal itself. Hard to see how it’s possible to establish a sound business case even if the engineering is available to do it. Even the Chinese North South Water Diversion project is uneconomic and causing lots of adverse side effects.
Great episode! Thanks
The Quattara depression is about 50 miles from the coast. Get some tunnel digging boring machines, dig a tunnel to the depression (and avoid all the overland difficulties) and then allow the Med to flood the tunnel. Recoup the tunnelling cost with the profits from creating vast new agricultural lands and tourism.
The Egyptians have made some studies on just this concept. It is doable with today's technology but who knows if it will ever happen. The Dead Sea in Israel and Jordan is another good prospect.
Or use the Qattaran depression for a desalination lake with solar covering the path for the energy for desalination. Also instead of dumping the brine sea water back into the ocean create basins long the path for sea salt harvesting.
Of all these plans the Qattara always struck me as the best of them.
Problem is, what if Israel or Ethiopia or any other enemy of Egypt bombs the canal. Now there's a big salt flat blowing salt into the Nile's farmland.
Switzerland had built 57km tunnel, costs around 10 billion dollars. With the dimensions of the tunnel and assuming the tunnel is half full with the water speed of 1m/s. Gathering the data of Lake Mead evaporation of 3.6km cubed per year evaporation, which equals to around 1.7 m cubed per second.
Qattara Depression is 30.6 times larger, so let's assume it has the same rate of evaporation, the depression will evaporate 51.8m cubed per second.
My conclusion, using a 9m diameter tunnel to the depression is just enough to fill it with water. The flow rate doesn't feel right in my brain, the water speed can be just 0.1m/s. Then it will be just enough to fill 1/5 of the depression with discharge of 6.3 m3/s
you need 25.441 Khufu's Pyramid blocks to seal 1m length of the tunnel, the tunnel is 57090 meters long, you need 1,452,489. That number is remarkably less than Pyramids of Khufu's 2,300,000 limestone blocks.
This project, with our current technology, is less ambitious than the extremely ambitious great pyramids.
4:23 5,000 km2 is not 3,000 mi2. 5/3 is approximately the conversion factor between linear km and linear miles. If you square them, the factor is closer to 25/9
Problem: with all that evaporation those 'seas' would become quite quickly salt flats.
I love this and spend way! Too much time thinking about it
I've never heard of the Sahara Dessert. I wonder if it's a tasty treat?
Spell checking has never been their forte. "Iniciative" is a new word they invented for this video.
It's a bit dry and has an earthy taste but there's lots of it
Excellent stuff bro
the sahara used to be lush and green
Wow! A delicious dessert! I love to have dessert! Cakes, ice cream, etc.
Gaf about the sahara,its 1:49 am right now.. im here to go to sleep and Simon is the man to help with that
Could this help fight sea level rise. Help create evaporation and rainfall, sounds possible especially for the areas below sea level, easy to pump downhill. That would be a Megaproject!
No. If all the ice melted only 4% of land would be lost and thats assuming people dont build sea walls and other stuff. Only 1/2 of all land is currently inhabited and thats with a pop density of less than 200 people/sq mi. NYC has a pop density of 25k+/sq mi. If youre worried about rising seas then live on a boat. Flooding the sahara will do nothing but destroy all the 500+ species that live there. Why cant we just bulldoze your house and put a pond there instead.
How about using Tactical Nukes or Pocket Nukes to dig the canal?
They don't highly irradiate like the big ones so could be a more controlled and safe alternative to the mega ton devices!
I mean the canal dont' need to be too wide or deep, water erosion will widen it overtime.
Love how the "facts" get continuously more absurd as the video goes on. Nicely done, folks. 😂
You won't believe this - Actually it was recently discovered, Africa will split in 2 in 5-10 million years, so a naturally occurring ocean will emerge
It's a cover up so no one trys to find atlantis
I think there has been various proposals to dig a channel to link Lake Eyre in South Australia to connect it to Spencer's Gulf to create an inland sea, to change the climate of the desert too.
Even thought Lake Eyre regularly fills on it's own, so it's easy to see that extra water in it has no impact on the rainfall & climate of the desert when it's full vs empty
The Sahara was a tropical forrest and had rivers, lakes and ponds 12000 years ago. This undertaking is daunting but possible.
Right. We simply need a new Ice Age to pull it off. lol
If you want the ocean and climate messed up and the destruction of the Amazon Forrest then yeah, wonderful
The price would be a big issue.
How much?
Dust from the Sahara blowing over the Atlantic keeps the soil in the Amazon fertile. You can’t just massively change the climate of one part of the world without messing up another pet of it
@@jacob4920 Not an Ice Age, just a change in the Earth's tilt. The Sahara has a cycle where every 20,000 years(based on when the Earth's tilt changes) it goes "green" for the next 20,000 years before drying out again(with the last green period ending somewhere between 6,000 to 5,000 years ago). Funny enough, increased precipitation creating very large inland lakes is what usually starts the runaway effect that turns the Sahara green(and by green I don't mean tropical rainforest. The climate was "merely" lush savannah with grasslands, rivers and lakes). And it wouldn't destroy the Amazon rainforest either because the Amazon rainforest still existed during the last green Sahara period. The Saharan dust is helpful for the Amazon but it's not essential.
As a Tunisian I am baffled... I can't believe you mentioned every single western person related to this topic without bothering to mention a single Tunisian name even once...
Bechir Laajmi Al Turki, was a renown Tunisian engineer and had a Phd in nuclear physics he was even the president of IAEA (that's the UN international atomic energy agency).
He proposed the finalized plans of what came to be called bhar el Jrid (or sea of Jrid) and his plan still has traction among Tunisian youth today. He helped build the first(and only) nuclear power plant in Africa and gave lectures in the Atomic University of Carthage.
His project was going to be funded by the USSR so our president Bourgiba who was friendly to the west refused..
In the 80s, our weak government was pressured by France to abandon our nuclear research, and Dr Turki dodged multiple assassination attempts from the Mosad.
The story is even longer than this, but I hope next time you can treat us like sovereign human beings, not livestock on a western owned farm.
Tunisian and Algerian governments conducted two separate studies and concluded this project was too expensive and benefits not clear, the recent attempt you mentioned is mainly led by a local business man from Douz, not "SciEntists frOm eVery CoutRy exCePt Tunisia" type of deal..
Last but not least, you said France didn't face any resistance when Tunisia was put under protectorate?
I can't figure out if this is a honest mistake or deliberate misinformation on your part.
Treaty of Bardo? Marsa convention? Trabilsi wars? Opposition from Italian minority Tunisians (Schiaffo de Tunsi)?
Next time do your research or abstain from mentioning my country in your sub-standard videos.
Sahara dessert? Sounds sweet.
There is a bit too much sand in it for my taste.
We need to hone our terraforming skills somehow, if they can make the desert bloom, it’s a start
salt water not going to make the desert bloom
@@basillah7650
What about evaporation, No effect?
What about the Qattara Depression (133 m below sea level; 60m average) southwest of Cairo. It is 19,605 sq km in surface area with a potential 1,213 cubic km of water.
Yes, this is missing. Had assumed it would be the main focus of a video on this topic, as it is currently being studied (again) by Egypt. (Bad idea for many reasons mentioned in other comments)
1:05 opening up a continent
3:24 in come the French
8:45 an explosive idea
12:06 the dream that never dies
The biggest problem is with the continuing flow of salt water and evaporation from the lake the water would become too salty for life. Someone else mentioned creating a massive dam halfway through the lake connecting the two peninsulas on either shore. The first lake would have constant flow of water from the Mediterranean, the second, lower lake would be for salt production, lithium extraction. The first lake would maintain a steady salinity, the second lake would provide jobs for thousands of people. Water flowing from the Mediterranean to the first lake and into the second lower salt lake could also be used to generate electricity. Salinity in both lakes could be adjusted by increasing or decreasing flow from their respective water sources
Keeping the second lake at a lower elevation may also protect the desert aquifers but I don’t know enough about the area’s geology
Dessert? 😂
😂😂😂
The middle of Australia is below sea level and been talked about for many years digging huge ;one canal to the centre
The Sahara used to be full of lakes and seas, some 10k years ago, so making it wet again is feasible.
The trick is to replicate the previous conditions: higher surface temperatures which cause massive updrafts and thermal cycles drawing moist air from the ocean to the interior. By suspending vast mirrors in orbit (using an orbital ring) and directing sunlight to small regions of the interior the thermocycles can be restarted.
That was back in the last ice age when things were a bit different, like the area of Chicago being under a kilometer thick sheet of ice. The temperate zone and the winds, etc., sort of shifted since then.
@@mikeynth7919there's also another factor at that time - the Earth had a different tilt back then, and for whatever reason the planet suddenly shifted it's tilt and forever changed the climate
@@timothyharshaw2347 exactly, but shifting the earth's tilt is difficult. Shifting the angle of incidence for sunlight is doable, thereby replicating the effect
@@DG-mk7kd I believe it is physically possible to alter the earth's tilt and climate if you were to nuke repeatedly one specific side of the planet vs the other. Given the sheer power of modern nuclear weapons, it may not take too much. The same science applies to terraforming Mars
An inland sea would help to mitigate rising global sea levels.
Wouldn't this dramatically effect the existing climate cycle and weather patterns?
Yes.
We'll worry about that after, like we usually do.
A little maybe. But not necessarily. The Sahara was still pretty wet c.3000BC and still hosted a vast variety of animals and humans.
Not much. Would give Africa a bit more forest which would suck up a tiny bit more co2. But this isn't gonna change much of anything beyond a % or 2
1-You lose species that live in the desert and who knows what impact that will have on other animals
2- The desert provides nutrients to the amazon and before anyone uses the "the amazon is older than the sahara" argument, what life needed millions of years ago to survive is different than what it needs today so the amazon would get screwed. Someone said hurricanes could get worse because the nutrients arent available but I dont know how that works
3- albedo affect. Deserts reflect sun. Water and trees absorb sun causing areas to be warmer (thats why snowball earth was so successful)
4- The evaporated water would affect weather currents and it could green the sahara which would cause even more changes
5- People have talked about the salt water affecting existing aquifers
Wouldnt it be easier if people just lived on cruise ships if they were concerned about rising sea levels (not that its going to be a problem since if all the ice melted only 4% of land would be lost and only 1/2 of all land is inhabited and thats with a pop. density of at most 200 people/sq mi. NYC has a density of 25k+/sq mi). And flooding the sahara is only moving water around its not stopping ice from melting.
Hell yeah 30 seconds in and Phoenix gets a Shout out from Simon. 602 BABY
One thing...the Caspian "Sea" is a huge body of water in the middle of a giant desert...doesn't seemed to have really done much for that part of the world.
The Caspian does not connect with an ocean. The inhabitants around the Caspian can easily trade with each other, which isn’t nothing, but they can’t float anything out onto tidewater and thus the rest of the world.
It's not the sea, it's the oil.
I was thinking a similar thought - the vast coastline of the Mediterranean hasn't done much for the Sahara either.
Nobody gonna mention the delicious typo in the video title?
Great project, I’d love to see it come to fruition! 😎
Wait, @ 3:00 - Vanity Fair used to print articles about Mega Engineering projects?
Qattara depression in Egypt is an actually a good spot for an artificial inland (desalinated) fresh water in Egypt.
Make a serious film about this idea.
Good point.
The African Wet Period started around 15,000 years ago, around Lake Chad there is an epicentre of R1b haplogroup, I was confused for a while until I learned that around 17,000 years ago people migrated all the way from Eurasia on the steppe back into Africa. So from 27,000 years ago our ancestors lived north of Mongolia and over that period of time a group migrated all the way back to Africa, crazy huh...
We are only at the beginning of reconstructing people's migration history. Europe's population, for example, got replaced at least 3 times almost entirely. (Neanderthals got replaced by first modern humans, who got replaced by farmers from the near east) Also there are several "minor" migrations that shaped europe's languages (The near eastern farmers got completely swallowed by a steppe people that we call "Yamnaya" who brought the european languages to europe, the only remaining language of the old inhabitants is, possibly, basque. Then there were several steppe people migrations, mostly of turcic origin, but also the magyars). We also have no idea when the suomi and the finns came to europe, we only know that they share an uralic ancestor with the magyars, who came much later.
@@valentinmitterbauer4196there is some evidence that the dene people in north America have links to the yamnaya . They came in a lot more recently than most north American natives , and still don't get along with the rest very well
Hurl a large meteor into the desert
A one hundred megaton russian nuke will do...
*hurl*
Yeah, the resulting dust cloud will improve the weather in Europe. 😂
I think Africa has enough on its plate already…
ah yes
not throw, but HURL a meteor AT AFRICA...thats one way to scare your enemies
There were similar plans/propositions for some parts of central Australia.
It was actually a sea, thousands of years ago.
About 12. It was covered in grass and trees then too.
Would it not have been easier to use a massive bucket dredger to create canals through the desert?
I understand it's April First but is it really any more ridiculous than the proposed turning of the Saharan desert into a giant solar farm? ...Since sand isn't abrasive to solar panels or anything.
It doesn't need to be the entire desert
Only something like 5% would have been enough
By the way the sand damaging the panels wouldn't be the worst problem
The Sahara isn't all sand too
@@ilajoie3 - Yep. Plenty of the Sahara is rocky rather than sandy.
@@ilajoie3 You assume much. The projected size would require it extends into the sandy desert.
@@Pavlos_Charalambous Correct. Beside its moving boundaries and what little usable terrain already used for habitation/agriculture, most regions outside the dunes would still experience abrasive conditions due to proximity.
this is great. subbed!
How hard could it be to just dig a few meter wide path snowblower style thats maybe a single meter under sea level to the desert areas under sea level? Once the water starts moving it would expand and dig itself deeper as it just moved all the soft sand in its path
It might just backfill with sand, you might want to make tunnel.
Still its not far, it should not be that expensive.
We made a tunnel 4 times as long in sweden in the 70s just to have fresh water in the south
Water erosion works in strange ways. As if it has a mind of its own. Without proper guidance it could go wrong. However, I get what you're saying. We could use very minimal techniques to get big results. Let gravity do all the work.
Would love a megaprojects vid on Simons most Simon channels project!
Not having the sand blow into the Amazon across the Atlantic could severely impact the health of rainforests in South America
it would severly change the climate all around the world
The Sahara was a savannah 7000 years ago. The Amazon, I assume thrived then?
Bo hoo
Yep, we'll get right onto that as soon as we finish the Nicaragua Canal.
But Simon, how could you miss the even more insane plan of building a railway tunnel under the Atlantic between the U. S. and Europe. I would recommend making another video about it today, not tomorrow.
What’s your rush?
@@kissthesky40 It's April Fool's day, so foolish ideas are extra appropriate today.
Question: Could sea rise be ameliorated by pumping sea water into depressions like Death Valley or the Caspian Sea? And, given how many of these below sea level depressions are in hot places, wouldn't we get greater cloud cover?
No. The ocean is so vast that the volume of water associated with even a small increase in sea level would be too much for all the depressions of the world to hold. They look big to us, but they are thimbles compared to the Olympic sized swimming pool that is the ocean.
I did a few sums on that last year. If all the world's depressions (below sea level) were flooded, that would lower global sea level by about an inch.
@David Halliwell damn! That sucks cause I always thought about that. Well wouldn't flooding the sahara cause it to turn green and have greater cloud coverage, hence storing more carbon via vegetation?
@@Adam.Reader14 Arithmetic I can do and if a few big canals could avoid the need to move ports and fortify seaside cities then that would be the cheap option to deal with sea level rise. Sadly not realistic. But the secondary effects of greening the deserts could be huge - I have no way to calculate that though!
@David Halliwell I figured the arithmetic wasn't such a huge mess to make. I actually tried something similar years ago, although I don't know if I did it correctly. I got close to a foot I think (I think zi calculated it for the deep zones to be made artificially deeper).
As far as the green zone part, I don't think that anyone can properly calculate that. Then there is the favt that sand from the sahara blows over the atlantic ocean and into the amazon rain forest, creating a positive cycle.
Just because a man with all his hair on his face instead of his head thinks something is insane does not make it insane. Nothing is impossible just improbable. Man has been changing the planet since the beginning of human history and just takes commitment and determination.
Wouldn't the environmental toll of this be huge?
and then some!
I would make some aquaducts from the Egyptian lakes to the Qattara depression, with flood control from the Nile river as well, which would eventually make it a freshwater lake instead of a saltwater sea.
Interesting!!
I never knew that Sahara could produce dessert entrees 🤔... Do they have salted brown sugar desserts?
Sounds like a great plan 👍
looks like you could build canals and create a dozen small seas. Cut the ocean off and within years it would be fresh water and destalinization could pump in freshwater from the oceans while vegetating the sea floors and planting around the sea regions would allow mother nature to continue the process by itself and the whole Sahara could become green. Being Africa is going to gain 3 billion beings in the next 80 years this project should be a project seriously thought about.
So how exactly is sea water, with no fresh water input, once cut off from ocean sources, going to turn into fresh water?
They won’t stay there. They will be in Europe.
The water wouldn't just "become fresh", and there's not enough local rainfall to dilute out the salt - it would keep getting saltier, much like the dead sea has.
They could use the advances in tunnel construction. Using a massive tunnel boring machine. They could make a tunnel running the lenghth of the course of the channel. Connect it to the ocean and fill with water. Then purposely collapse the roof of the tunnel. The water rushing through from the sea will carry the sand falling from the surface and will widen the channel with time.
Unless the tunnel is just below the surface you can’t collapse its roof (deep tunnels are actually pretty safe places to be in earthquakes). But if you dig the tunnel close to the surface the risk is high that the roof will collapse before you’re done.
good luck tunnel boring through sand lol. Snowy River Scheme mark 2 in Australia has hit sand with it's project & they tried to hide it for ages, but eventually it was uncovered & discovered the tunnel's only gone about 50 metres, despite millions, it not billions of dollars going into it. Sand & tunnel borers do not mix. It's also cheaper to "cut and cover" with shallow tunnels, than to tunnel bore, so obviously if the plan is ultimately to open it, it would be cheaper & easier to cut & cover (but leave out the cover) from the begining
How is this NOT an April fools joke video?
The only way this would be a april fools is that the project wouldn´t actually be that large. There would only need 2 tunnels, and the longest would only need to be 20km. That is not very long for a water tunnel. There is a dozen of them that is longer
A list of water tunnels in service of today.
Delaware Aqueduct (US) - 137 km (85 miles)
Päijänne Water Tunnel (Finland) - 120 km (75 miles)
New York City Water Tunnel No. 1 (US) - 110 km (68 miles)
Thirlmere Aqueduct (UK) - 96 km (60 miles)
Orange-Fish Tunnel (South Africa) - 82 km (51 miles)
Gotvand Tunnel (Iran) - 75 km (47 miles)
Banks Tunnel (Australia) - 75 km (47 miles)
Huitong Tunnel (China) - 67 km (42 miles)
São Francisco River Integration Project (Brazil) - 63 km (39 miles)
Eselsgrabenbach Tunnel (Austria) - 60 km (37 miles)
Tahtali Tunnel (Turkey) - 58 km (36 miles)
Bengaluru Water Supply and Sewerage Project (India) - 49 km (30 miles)
Kempervennendreef Tunnel (Netherlands) - 42 km (26 miles)
Tansa Pipeline (India) - 42 km (26 miles)
Mount Elbert Forebay Tunnel (US) - 40 km (25 miles)
Bengal Nagpur Railway Tunnel (India) - 37 km (23 miles)
Serra da Mesa Dam Tunnel (Brazil) - 36 km (22 miles)
Kárahnjúkar Hydropower Plant Tunnel (Iceland) - 39 km (24 miles)
Dahuofang Water Tunnel (China) - 34 km (21 miles)
Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District Dam (US) - 32 km (20 miles)
It's theorized that the Mediterranean sea was open lowland and a hotter desert than the Sahara until the Atlantic broke through the Pillars of Hercules at Gibraltar. Then, that area flooded and became the Mediterranean. A similar thing happened with the Black Sea. It's thought the Black Sea flood was the origin of the Gilgamesh Saga and the Noah story from the Bible. the flooding of the Med was around 250,000 years ago.
Any geoengineering of the Sahara needs to be REALLY well thought out. The sand literally seeds the Amazon forest and its absence would kill the rainforest. That rainforest sequesters massive amounts of CO2 a year (1.5 million tons a year), not to mention the amazing biodiversity the forest holds.
The Amazon is being cut down - most of it won't make it to the 22nd century.
See I was thinking (back when the Suez was blocked ) a channel along Israel Egypt border would be great. Firstly not only could it offer a faster way to euro- middle East/ Asia due to cutting the wait time in the Suez but also when one gets blocked there's still a pathway