[HN Gopher] Seaflooding
___________________________________________________________________
Seaflooding
Author : deegles
Score : 294 points
Date : 2023-05-16 04:40 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com)
| Neil44 wrote:
| I feel like the general mood is too risk averse for big projects
| like this at the moment. I hope I'm proved wrong though. I miss
| an age of optimism.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| The Age of Optimism declined due to observed results.
| Neil44 wrote:
| I don't think long term pessimism has amazing results either.
| svnt wrote:
| It isn't binary. Naive optimism and over-agency in a
| natural system seems to primarily function to bring
| information to the agent at the cost of system performance.
|
| If what is here called pessimism results in the down-
| regulation of human impact and us largely getting out of
| the way of self-equilibrium-finding complex systems until
| we better understand them, then prudence very well might
| have amazing results.
| Neil44 wrote:
| That the systems are equilibrium finding and that said
| equilibrium will be 'amazing' are both quite bold
| assumptions.
| thomasfromcdnjs wrote:
| I'd wager that "Seaflooding" will just happen somewhere anyway,
| likely some where we ain't really looking.
|
| And it will be fine. Mankind has seemingly surpassed weather
| patterns, and it now the 21st century.
| ecology wrote:
| at glance, if i divide the area of those deserts to the
| surrounding larger seas ... the ratio looks very small, maybe <
| .1% or much less (don't have numbers)
|
| a drop in the ocean
| x-complexity wrote:
| Any talks of flooding anywhere with water/sea just remind me of
| the "Flood Ohio" meme, both in terms of practicality & humour:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4BPxKhRJRo
| petesergeant wrote:
| The article seems to presuppose that being near a big amount of
| salt water will cause frequent rain, but the coastline of most of
| North Africa and the Arabian peninsula suggests otherwise.
| rtpg wrote:
| I do not know much but a guess: air currents over oceans mean
| evaporated water doesn't stick around as much as with rivers or
| lakes? Though I share your skepticism with the hand-wavy "mo
| water mo rain"
| petesergeant wrote:
| There are several factors, as I understand it, including
| which way the wind normally blows, the Hadley cell, and the
| location of mountains. All of these are applicable to the
| Qattara basin project.
| lproven wrote:
| Ocean currents are often cold. Cold water doesn't evaporate so
| readily.
|
| Small, relatively shallow inland seas will be relatively warm;
| as such, they will evaporate readily.
| petesergeant wrote:
| Persian Gulf gets up to 32-34C in summer. How hot exactly are
| your proposed inland seas?
| lproven wrote:
| It is also quite small, though... hardly open ocean, and
| almost isolated by the Straits of Hormuz (?) from the
| ocean, so probably not much affected by deep sea currents,
| no?
| jjk166 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salton_Sea
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| > So why not play a Zanclean and flood it with water from the
| sea?
|
| Why not? Because we're _really bad_ at modelling all possible
| outcomes, especially when it comes to large scale engineering
| projects.
| brutusborn wrote:
| There's always a chance it has downsides, but worst case you
| block the canal and it turns back into a dead sea.
|
| I would say we are excellent at modelling outcomes, just bad at
| listening to models that tell us what we don't want to hear.
| For example, we knew about global warming before computers
| existed. The model and the tech wasn't the problem, human
| avoidance of bad news was (and is).
|
| We can't just avoid doing everything because our models might
| be wrong. I find that reasoning repulsive. If humanity took
| that approach we would have died long ago.
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| I figure we've had enough examples of well-meant
| interventions that lead to worse outcomes to be really
| conservative about "just change the ecosystem and
| heat/salinity circulation patterns of two large bodies of
| water, what's the worst that could happen?"
| brutusborn wrote:
| We _are_ being conservative. As the article mentions, these
| kind of projects have been proposed and studied for half a
| century now, and despite all the predicted benefits we
| haven't event built a single one!
| joshuanapoli wrote:
| We should be able to extrapolate from the large-scale
| reservoirs that have already been built. The proposed
| reservoirs would be 10x larger, so there would undoubtedly
| be learnings. But we would probably build such projects in
| stages, so that the project could be stopped or altered if
| the effect is negative.
| throwaway173738 wrote:
| You're assuming linearity and arguing that all things are
| equal. I would be surprised if either of those things are
| true.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| The pervasive "Let's never do anything, just to be safe" mood
| is what I dislike the most about this era. It is suffocating so
| many possible paths to progress.
|
| "You never know" is always true, Don't use it as a crutch.
|
| Note: I'm an old man complaining about this era, not OP.
| xpe wrote:
| > The pervasive "Let's never do anything, just to be safe"
| mood is what I dislike the most about this era. It is
| suffocating so many possible paths to progress.
|
| To evaluate such a claim with anything approaching
| objectivity we would need a lot more detail.
|
| What era are you speaking of? Why do you call it a 'mood'? A
| mood of who exactly?
|
| The way you phrase it is not an accurate characterization of
| what people mean when it comes to concern about unintended
| consequences. Your phrasing is a narrow, uncharitable
| criticism.
|
| You might be attempting to reference to a concept called the
| precautionary principle?
|
| > The precautionary principle (or precautionary approach) is
| a broad epistemological, philosophical and legal approach to
| innovations with potential for causing harm when extensive
| scientific knowledge on the matter is lacking. It emphasizes
| caution, pausing and review before leaping into new
| innovations that may prove disastrous. - Wikipedia
|
| Criticisms are well articulated on the Wikipedia page. They
| are worth reading and discussing. They are fair and don't
| rely on mischaracterizing what they criticize.
|
| To be clear, I'm not taking a position here on the
| precautionary principle. I am suggesting: don't be vague and
| don't mischaracterize others' positions. Sorry if this sounds
| harsh; it seems to me that people on Hacker News have the
| intellectual horsepower and time to think and write well.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| The idea of the Qattara sea is fascinating. On paper, it sounds
| so easy: dig a long trench and let nature run its course.
|
| There's so little life in the Sahara and there's so much Sahara
| around the theoretical sea that the ecological impact would be
| quite small for such a huge undertaking. With global temperatures
| continuing to rise and humanity preferring short-term profit over
| long-time survival, cooling even just a little bit of the Sahara
| could significantly extend the time people can live in northern
| Africa. I doubt we'll see the resurgence of the Green Sahara any
| time soon (the last period that kickstarted humanity in northern
| Africa was during an ice age, we're in the exact opposite
| situation of that) but even just a little bit of green and cool
| land in the desert could help a lot of people.
|
| Salinity would need to be kept in check, of course, but with a
| corridor big enough for tides to flow between the Mediterranean
| and the new sea there should be a quite manageable maximum
| salinity. Until that happens, we could harvest osmotic power
| ("blue energy") from the water stream, as fresher water will rush
| into the salt water reservoirs if we do not allow the minerals to
| flow back.
|
| Furthermore, with the new agricultural opportunities there need
| to be strict (and well-enforced) laws regarding pesticides and
| other types of contaminants to prevent another Lake Salton. With
| the current lack of agricultural possibilities in the area, this
| may actually be achievable if the government can see the long
| term benefits.
|
| It all sounds so incredibly doable. I don't think it'll ever
| happen because of politics and economics, and even if the project
| does get started I doubt it'll be long until the various
| terrorist groups active in northern Africa will find a new
| location to make the world a worse place, but I'm still very
| curious about what kind of world such projects could create.
| pbmonster wrote:
| > Salinity would need to be kept in check, of course, but with
| a corridor big enough for tides to flow between the
| Mediterranean and the new sea there should be a quite
| manageable maximum salinity.
|
| First of all, this is not what the OP is suggesting. OP is
| using pipelines and wants to generate electricity from the
| potential energy. And for good reasons: between the suggested
| Qattara sea and the Med, there sits El Diffa square in the way.
| Which is 200m above sea level. You could tunnel that with a
| pipeline. Trenching that for a channel would be quite the
| project.
|
| Secondly, the Med only has a tidal range of 50cm. Using that to
| move a significant amount of water along a 100+km canal needs a
| truly humongous channel cross section.
|
| OP suggests using electricity to desalinate his sea. This would
| take insane amounts of energy, creating freshwater from
| desalination at the rate its evaporating across thousands of
| square kilometers in the Sahara takes orders of magnitude more
| power than the power station is going to generate.
|
| He also suggests using salt extraction pools. This only work,
| if rainfall creates fresh water rivers feeding his sea.
| Otherwise the water evaporating from this pool is lost to the
| sea, meaning you can only ever (at best) keep the salinity
| constant, but never decrease it.
|
| I think it's best to face it from the beginning: we're creating
| another Dead Sea. Salinity will prohibit life in the water and
| directly at the shore. Rainfall might make it possible away
| from the shoreline.
|
| But there will be absolutely no algae, shrimp or flamingos.
| OsmMapper wrote:
| The salt extraction pools can reduce the salinity to the
| salinity level of the input water. The amount of effort
| needed increases as you approach the salinity level of the
| input so it isn't practical to achieve the exact same
| salinity level as the input water. In this case the proposed
| input water is from the Mediterranean which is not too salty
| for life.
|
| I'm not sure how much more salty the sea can be while still
| having a reasonable ecosystem and an also not sure what ratio
| of extraction pools to sea surface area would be needed to
| achieve that so I don't know if it is actually practical.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > OP suggests using electricity to desalinate his sea. This
| would take insane amounts of energy
|
| Well, making water fall 200m and desalinating sea water have
| around the same change in entropy. If you have a very
| efficient process, it will be close to break-even.
| rob74 wrote:
| > _Salinity will prohibit life in the water and directly at
| the shore._
|
| Maybe these guys might survive:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brine_shrimp Also these:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephydra_hians - not really
| impressive, but birds think they're yummy...
| h4kor wrote:
| One major consequence of flooding Saharan basins could be the
| death of the Amazonas rain forest, as it depends on Saharan dust.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygulQJoIe2Y
| brutusborn wrote:
| I doubt it, the Qattara Depression is a fraction of the size of
| the Sahara. Marginally less fertile? Probably. Dead? No chance.
| h4kor wrote:
| As I understood it, the Sahara is not a stable system and can
| relatively easily be greened again.
| mkj wrote:
| If the climate-change induced sea level rise needs 1-2 metres of
| mitigation, and you have 100-200 metre deep depressions, you need
| to cover 1% of the Earth's surface (total, not just land) with
| these seafloods. Doesn't seem like a plausible mitigation, I'm
| puzzled why the article proposed it.
|
| The other benefits might be interesting locally some places.
| jacobr1 wrote:
| A few considerations: 1) you don't need to fully mitigate the
| sea-level rise for this to be of value. Even a few cm might
| make a difference on the margin for certain areas. 2) The
| projects themselves might be a value if we really could
| increase the productive value of currently arid parts of the
| land with net-positive environmental impact, so the sea-level
| rise doesn't matter or let's us do the project without worrying
| about sea-level drop.
|
| If we really had too-cheap-to-meter power for desalinization,
| then these projects might start to make sense, but it seems too
| soon to me.
| nickdothutton wrote:
| I've often wondered why we havent attempted something similar
| before. After all we have successfully drained the fens (in the
| 1600s, took only 7 years), constructed the hoover dam (1931, took
| 5 years), plus a dozen other significant geoengineering projects.
| There seems now to be a prevailing sentiment that
| geoengineering=bad among the general population.
| culebron21 wrote:
| The story seems so nice, but maths and observations on Quattara
| basin don't add up.
|
| First of all, climate around seas in deserted areas isn't much
| better than further in land. See the shores in Saudi Arabia,
| Dubai and Iran.
|
| But let's suppose someone decides to build the pipe and extract
| energy. It means one has to build a 58 km pipe under the ground
| (which is doable, like Gothard base tunner in Switzerland).
|
| Then, 4 issues remain:
|
| 1) you must treat the water coming in the pipes, because it's
| possible to clog the pipe, the turbine, etc.
|
| 2) what inclination do you need to get a reasonable discharge of
| water?
|
| 3) how much power one can extract from the flow? Rough estimates
| give me several megawatts per 10 m of elevation per 1 pipe of 10
| m in diameter (this is the kind of size in new large-diameter
| tunnels). Seems like a lot of piping for not much power.
|
| 4) Erosion of the shores that may fill the basin up. This is what
| happens to natural lakes on plains.
|
| And key issue here: the more you discharge through the pipe, the
| higher the level of water in the lake, the less energy you can
| extract.
| enedil wrote:
| Well, the air in Dubai is much more humid than in Riyadh (this
| is based on personal observation).
| mnw21cam wrote:
| 2) The Romans used an inclination of 1:1000. The Quattara basin
| is 80km from the Mediterranean and 60m lower. So it's not
| looking good straight away. As the water level rises, the drop
| will be even less.
|
| Also, the amount of water that can evaporate from such a large
| area is immense, so you'd have to have a rather huge channel
| for the water coming in just to keep up.
| zymhan wrote:
| The romans were using gravity to move the water "for free".
| Using gravity to generate electricity is a different concept.
| euroderf wrote:
| Dress up the Dead Sea project to attract tourism, and
| Israeli/Jordanian co-operation will find a way.
| rtpg wrote:
| For a more nuanced view on the Egypt project in particular check
| the wiki page [0]
|
| Short version is it sounds uneconomical for power generation.
| Hard to believe but reading between the lines it feels like
| despite all the "free" hydroelectric you're looking at immense
| construction difficulties
|
| You know your projects heading for the drawer when you propose
| using 100 atomic bombs to dig the tunnel
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qattara_Depression_Project
|
| PS I'd love for this project to work. The main thing I could not
| really find supporting evidence for is "water will fill with
| life". Just like... you could be constantly desalinating (and now
| have a brine problem) and still not really have a great ecosystem
| form I feel like? But I don't understand this.
| sampo wrote:
| That Wikipedia page talks about digging a 60 meters deep canal,
| not boring a tunnel.
| aaron695 wrote:
| [dead]
| gmuslera wrote:
| People usually mentions sea rise as the worst outcome of global
| warming, but extreme weather may be more pervasive, and that may
| be experienced far earlier than the sea level rise.
|
| In any case, this is at best a mitigation, not a solution. It
| sounds like a simple enough idea, and may not have as a
| disruptive impact as other geoengineering proposals that may end
| having unexpected consequences. Some of the proposed flooded
| areas could have unique ecosystems that may be negatively
| impacted, but anyway all ecosystems are being negatively impacted
| right now, so a delay in the very bad trends we might be in could
| be positive overall.
| ggm wrote:
| Not a fan of geo-engeering when it's the "sulfur dioxide
| sunscreen" trick, or iron fertiliser in the sea. This one I'm
| sure has side effects, but seems marginally more plausible.
| NKosmatos wrote:
| Very interesting article and the whole idea of controlled sea
| flooding is well founded, but international geopolitics for sure
| is a major obstacle.
| lproven wrote:
| Some north African countries are very large, because they are
| mostly desert, which is a little inherent value, except perhaps
| for buried mineral resources. Therefore, some of these projects
| could be entirely within the boundaries of one nation.
| senkora wrote:
| Out of curiosity, I checked what the air pressure would be in a
| drained Mediterranean, since the article claimed it would be
| oppressively high. The average depth of the Mediterranean is
| 1.5km [1] which is less than 2.0km which would be a pressure of
| 130.069kPa vs 101.312kPa at sea level [2]. This seems fine?
|
| [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_Sea [2]:
| https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/air-pressure-below-sea...
| topaz0 wrote:
| It wouldn't crush you or anything, but it would be notable.
| Just like the difference between sea level and 2km above sea
| level is quite notable.
| dvh wrote:
| Or make Czech reservoir: https://prehrada.hrach.eu/en.html
| FlyingSnake wrote:
| I am sure the people living in Czechia will not like to live
| underwater.
| rhubinak wrote:
| It will solve the housing crisis...
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I don't think inland seas will affect ocean levels?
| FlyingSnake wrote:
| What are the 2nd and 3rd order effects that we're missing?
|
| Qattara depression lies in the Horse Latitudes that is full of
| arid deserts. So there's a high chance that flooding it might not
| make it turn into a lush wonderland. It could even end up being
| another dead sea.
|
| 1: https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/horse-latitudes.html
| spuz wrote:
| This reminds me of the Salton Sea, a man-made lake in California
| which used to be promoted as a tourist destination and now
| continues to be an ecological disaster.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salton_Sea
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| There is a similar "seaflooding" plan for that sea, and it is
| mentioned in passing at the end of the list of possible global
| sites in the article.
|
| https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-10-05/panel-re...
| CommieBobDole wrote:
| An issue with flooding the Salton Sea to sea level is you'd
| submerge a lot of agricultural land that already exists to
| the north and south of the Sea. Plus a number of towns (like
| Coachella) that already exist in the area.
|
| Though, if you could use this to maintain the water level and
| salinity at historical levels, you could avert the ecological
| disaster that's going to happen when the Salton Sea dries up.
| And it would likely become a popular area for recreation
| again, like it was in the 1950s and 60s.
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| To be fair, it was accidentally created and so its water was
| intentionally cut off, causing the current ecological mess -
| which by the way also applies to other dried salt lakes too.
| mnw21cam wrote:
| Also to be fair, it was created with water from a river that
| had all sorts of horrible run-off from farms in it, which is
| why it is so particularly toxic.
|
| I'd expect projects like the ones mentioned in the article to
| be slightly cleaner than that, but still pretty awful.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| I thought the run-off was just from surrounding farms and
| continues till now. Is that not correct?
| [deleted]
| deepsun wrote:
| > This would reduce global warming
|
| No, water albedo is lower than Sahara desert, so it would capture
| more of the Sun's energy, and warm the planet.
| ajuc wrote:
| The article complains that places under the sea level have higher
| pressure and are "hell on Earth" because of that. Dead sea
| coast(currently lowest on-land point on Earth) has a higher
| pressure because of that, and it's beneficial for human health,
| it's a health resort.
|
| The article seems to contradict itself (like the proposal to add
| water to salt so that we can evaporate the water and sell the
| salt :) ), and seems to be highly subjective and dishonest.
| aww_dang wrote:
| Ideally a sea level canal situation would allow for tidal forces
| to regulate salinity. The added bonus would be in shipping.
|
| I'm not a civil engineer, but the idea that you can constantly
| generate hydroelectric power while desalinating with the derived
| electricity seems problematic.
|
| https://energycentral.com/c/pip/great-mexicali-energy-and-sh...
| desas wrote:
| Shipping to where exactly? How lucrative is the middle of the
| Sahara desert market?
| Gys wrote:
| Very interesting article. I like the idea of re-filling old dried
| out seas. Not much can go wrong (on first look), its doable and
| the benefits can be huge.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > not much can go wrong
|
| The article says " And with such a big new sea in a hot desert,
| a lot of its water would evaporate. This is good, because it
| would increase the amount of water being pumped in--generating
| more electricity--and it would increase the local moisture,
| which could increase local rainfall."
|
| Adding a ton of water to the atmosphere is going to cause rain.
| This may be mostly good but in a hot environment it could week
| be absolutely incredible downpours.
| brutusborn wrote:
| Downpours would have to be monsoon level before this caused
| problems. A new lake causing monsoon level rain? I doubt it
| but I've been surprised before.
| sambeau wrote:
| Adding a ton of water to the atmosphere is going to cause
| more warming. Water vapour is Earth's most abundant
| greenhouse gas. It's responsible for about half of Earth's
| greenhouse effect.
| keyle wrote:
| Unlikely to be important, compared to the creation of
| irrigation and additional plants and greenery that
| generates O2 and absorbs CO2?
| jonstewart wrote:
| It all depends on clouds, though.
| patall wrote:
| It's always astonishing to me how pretty much every
| climatologist will tell you "clounds are the joker". It
| totally makes sense, but that doesn't make it in any way
| less fascinating and is kind of funny.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Before someone reading this thinks that drying up the
| planet would cool it down: water in the air acts as a
| greenhouse gas, but also cools the surface when it
| evaporates and helps reflect solar radiation when it forms
| clouds (major factor of our planet's albedo).
|
| Also we are not comparing more water area vs less water
| area. Water will take more area in any case as sea levels
| rise. This way it just happens in a bit more controlled
| way.
| luxcem wrote:
| Adding water to the atmosphere does not cause more warming
| due to greenhouse effect at least not on this scale. Water
| vapor concentration is regulated by condensation, adding
| more water simply means more rain.
|
| What is actually causing more warming is the increase of
| temperature, that changes the equilibrium vapor pressure
| point.
| lproven wrote:
| It is vital to consider proportion: 2/3 of the Earth is
| ocean. These new seas would be absolutely tiny by
| comparison. The extra water vapour added to the atmosphere
| would be a rounding error. Unfortunately the same applies
| to the amount of sea level rise they offset: it too would
| be a rounding error, a fraction of a percent.
| julienchastang wrote:
| Did anyone else notice the beautiful photography contained in
| this post? Unfortunately, after a quick scan, I could not find
| any attributions to the photos.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Some of them are stock photos from Getty. The map at the top is
| from one of sorgel's exhibitions for atlantropa, though I'm not
| sure if it his own design or something put together by another
| artist for the exhibition
| alex_duf wrote:
| This feels like an over-simplification of the benefits. I have
| yet to be convinced that filling an area with salted water, which
| by evaporating will only increase the salt concentration, can
| host a thriving ecosystem.
|
| I'm also having trouble buying the argument that to lower the
| salt concentration we can extract it and sell the salt. Sure we
| can, but are talking about the same scale here?
|
| Moreover, it may look like a hostile place, but I'm sure that in
| all the examples given there are populations there, maybe
| nomadic, and there are organisms that live there.
|
| Finally, I find it interesting than when illustrating the
| Quattara seat, the author has added green around it, but I see no
| reason for that greening to be there at all when a few hundred
| kilometres north on the border of the current Mediterranean sea
| there's nothing. After all, same region, roughly same altitude,
| same water, but even higher salt concentration.
|
| So yeah, I love the futurism aspect of the article, it makes me
| dream of a techno-solution, but I remain unconvinced though I'd
| love to be wrong.
| Kortaggio wrote:
| XKCD talked about why flooding Death Valley in this manner
| would be a bad idea, because unless you remove all the salt and
| sediments left behind from evaporation it would create a toxic
| waste pool https://what-if.xkcd.com/152/
| singularity2001 wrote:
| I always find it disappointing to see how little evaporation
| adds to the local greening (also see the boarders of Red Sea)
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Well the Red Sea Coast has plenty of small plants, just no
| forests, large grasslands, etc... due to local climate.
|
| It's probably unlikely for a verdant grassland to pop up next
| to the Qatta depression, but a lot of small plants I can
| believe.
| mike-the-mikado wrote:
| It is claimed that a lack of trees leads to a lack of rain
| (leading to a lack of trees)
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/mar/20/our-
| bigg...
| lasfter wrote:
| [1] argues a crucial component of greening is trees "pumping"
| water from the oceans inland and creating nutritious soil.
| Otherwise evaporated water is simply blown away by the wind.
| I'm sure other local terrain (e.g., mountains) play a part in
| locally retaining evaporated water and creating conditions
| for rain.
|
| [1] The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They
| Communicate--Discoveries from A Secret World by Peter
| Wohlleben.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| 70% of the planet is filled with salted water, which are
| thriving ecosystems.
|
| Is there any reason I'm missing why expanding the ocean won't
| just give us more ocean?
| bradleyjg wrote:
| I think most of the oceans are a barren wasteland.
|
| That said, as a shallow and, at least at first, nutrient rich
| part of the ocean it could be a flourishing part of it. But
| if it's filled via underground pipe, it'll be isolated from
| sources of ocean life.
| zaphar wrote:
| I think most of the oceans are a barren wasteland.
|
| This is as far as I know, incorrect. I'm not sure why you
| think it would be true. Oceans, aside from areas like the
| Dead Sea are some of the most vibrant and life filled
| ecosystems we have. Even at the most crushing depths far
| from the sun there are entire ecosystems on the ocean
| floor.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| But as you say: except for the dead sea.
|
| In my mind, these new seas would have a steady influx of
| salt water, but only sweet water would evaporate out of
| them. And since I don't see the mechanism by which salt
| would get sequestered or removed from these bassins, I'd
| also guest their salt concentration would rise quite
| quickly.
|
| Of course, it might still be interesting to have a huge
| water surface in the area that effectively serves as a
| rain generator, but it might not be the same thriving
| ecosystem we imagine when we say "ocean".
| akiselev wrote:
| The GP is technically correct. By volume much of the
| ocean is practically a wasteland because of the oxygen
| minimum zone [1]. A few animals like vampire squid are
| adapted to this zone but for the most part, the vast
| majority of ocean life is found in the top and bottom
| most layers.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_minimum_zone
| bradleyjg wrote:
| From articles like this one:
| https://edu.rsc.org/feature/iron-ocean-
| seeding/2020176.artic...
|
| Could be wrong.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| The Dead Sea is a lake, which is why it's dead.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Filling basins with ocean water will not increase the volume
| of sea water. It will probably increase the area of sea water
| (thus increasing evaporation, causing more precipitation, and
| speeding up the water cycle, which has a net cooling effect
| on the planet), and it will lower sea levels. Win win win
| win!
| mecsred wrote:
| You're underestimating just how big the oceans are.
| coryfklein wrote:
| Depends on whether the rate of salt extraction is precisely
| equal to the inflow over the long term. The Great Salt Lake
| is extremely salty and basically only two species can live in
| it: brine shrimp and brine flies. With about the
| corresponding level of "tourism" you'd expect.
|
| And that is with industrial levels of salt harvesting. Would
| we expect the salt harvesting of these inland seas to be
| equal to or greater than the daily inflow of salt via the sea
| water? Seems dubious to me.
|
| On the other hand, there are still many other benefits.
| Migratory birds love the Great Salt Lake. The Great Salt Lake
| Effect[0] on precipitation in this desert seems unambiguously
| positive.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Salt_Lake_effect
| ignite wrote:
| > there are still many other benefits.
|
| Too bad it's going away.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/10/utah-
| gre...
| BurningFrog wrote:
| If you make it a bay of the Mediterranean, it should behave
| no differently than the rest of that ocean.
|
| With the various pipeline/tunnel/channel options that are
| admittedly more realistic, at least at first, there might
| very well be the kind of problems you mention.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| > Migratory birds love the Great Salt Lake
|
| some birds, flying:
|
| "hey you want to come and eat some shrimp?"
|
| "yeah I could go for some shrimp, know anywhere good?"
|
| "well yes actually, but it's a bit of a trek"
|
| "okay cool, sky trip!"
| alex_duf wrote:
| That's a fair point, I only had a land ecosystem in mind when
| writing it, sure there would probably be plenty of sea life
| in there.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Well given that a fair bit of the Netherlands was made this
| way, I would think it's not impossible to make it usable land.
| a2800276 wrote:
| Pretty sure that none of the Netherlands were created by
| flooding large depressions in a desert. Quiet the opposite,
| in fact.
| lambdasquirrel wrote:
| The Netherlands does not sit in a dry arid area though. When
| they reclaimed / drained it, it became like the areas near
| it.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| > I see no reason for that greening to be there at all when a
| few hundred kilometres north on the border of the current
| Mediterranean sea there's nothing.
|
| Northern Africa is dry now, but as the north warms up this may
| actually change (https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2017/1
| 1/09/northern-...).
|
| > I'm sure that in all the examples given there are populations
| there
|
| Which should benefit from this the most.
|
| > there are organisms that live there.
|
| I just don't get the argument. Are you worried about some
| organisms in one of the least hospitable places? Some organisms
| that may live there and thrive in dry salt, but not if it was
| wet? What makes you specifically worried about those organisms
| that you dislike the potential for more and more diverse
| organisms if it was a sea instead of salty sand?
| alex_duf wrote:
| >Which should benefit from this the most.
|
| But that's making an assumption about their desire, maybe
| they don't love the idea of being displaced and having to
| have another activity (tourism or whatever) in order to live.
|
| Regarding the organisms living there, my point is we don't
| know what effect getting rid of such an ecosystem could have
| in the global scale. Maybe whatever bacteria / insect / small
| mammal that manages to survive there is useful for a species
| of bird that stops there on their way to another reproduction
| site. We can look at it and think by filling it with water it
| will be "better", whatever better means, but there are
| serious unknown unknowns that we can't take into account.
| DrScientist wrote:
| Exactly - history is littered with unintended consequences.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| The ship for "maybe we should not do something lest we
| disrupt the ecosystem with unintended consequences" has
| sailed.
| Peritract wrote:
| The solution to negative unintended consequences is not
| to trigger more and hope that the next lot are positive.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Maybe a solution to unintended negative consequences from
| destructive activities that never cared about
| environmental impact until too late is more so a
| constructive project with intended positive consequences
| and specific environmental goals and less so the default
| alternative of "keep doing those destructive projects as
| before and stall anything else"
| throwaway290 wrote:
| > there are serious unknown unknowns that we can't take
| into account.
|
| We can model stuff. Also we don't find out if we don't try.
|
| I just don't get how we are fine with causing constant
| large-scale intentional harm to environment for industrial
| purposes even as there were so many unintended
| consequences, but when considering a major project
| _specifically_ aimed to benefit our environment and long-
| term humanity it 's instantly the apathetic "oh but what
| if?".
|
| Plus consider the amount of free clean water energy and
| positive uses of that as a result of this project.
| akiselev wrote:
| Because even industrial pollution at a modern scale is
| small potatoes compared to the possible consequences of
| honest-to-god intentional _geoengineering._ The risks
| here are in a completely different league.
|
| We recently found out that the Amazon rain forest depends
| on winds that carry nutrients from the Bodele depression
| [1]. The Amazon rainforest is nutrient limited by the
| phosphorus it gets _from the other side of the planet_.
| Obviously the depression is way above sea level and isn't
| at risk from artificial flooding in the northern sahara,
| but that should illustrate the scale of the consequences
| we're dealing with: if we fuck up even a little bit, it
| could mean ecosystem collapse in the Mediterranean or
| beyond.
|
| [1] https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/7279/bodele-
| depress...
| throwaway173738 wrote:
| People constantly overestimate the benefits and
| underestimate the harms on projects like this. Where I
| live we made it a point to dam up a lot of rivers to get
| hydroelectric power, but the dams prevented fish in the
| area from returning home to spawn, weakening our
| fisheries. And in the end the dams don't produce that
| much power.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| All projects like that are done for money or energy first
| though. We know they all come with possible environmental
| damage and all they do is try to mitigate it. These
| projects keep being done and we don't bat an eye.
|
| This is different in that it has environmental
| improvements as goals. Lower sea levels a bit, enrich
| local ecosystem, etc. So it's a bit sad that when it
| comes to projects like there is always paralysis but not
| when we just want more stuff.
| burnished wrote:
| Part of it is just the audience. Your average HN comment
| section would likely fiercely debate the creation of
| crosswalks, curb cuts and other common sense improvements
| (though that may be true of the population at large).
|
| If the things you felt like dont receive enough attention
| were available for this level of public scrutiny well, I
| think you can rest assured it would receive it.
| konschubert wrote:
| > I'm also having trouble buying the argument that to lower the
| salt concentration we can extract it and sell the salt. Sure we
| can, but are talking about the same scale here?
|
| Besides, this is not economical.
| coryfklein wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| The biggest point that seemed missing to me: the author talked
| so much about increased evaporation, but isn't water vapor one
| of the worst greenhouse gases? Sure you mitigate sea level
| rise, but at the cost of increasing temperatures? That doesn't
| seem like a great tradeoff.
| bonzini wrote:
| The water just moves, doesn't it? He's saying to build a
| canal.
| coryfklein wrote:
| I guess it depends on whether such canals increase the net
| surface area. If you raise the ocean by 3mm across the
| globe, does it result in the same net increase in surface
| area as flooding a large swath of the Sahara?
| snewman wrote:
| You are correct that water vapor is the primary greenhouse
| gas. Despite that, water vapor emissions are not generally
| considered to impact warming. I think that is because the
| water content of the atmosphere is already in balance due to
| the massive amount of evaporation and condensation (e.g.
| rain) that is constantly going on. If we dump some extra
| water vapor into the atmosphere, that will balance out as a
| bit of extra rain and/or a bit less evaporation somewhere
| else; atmospheric water vapor levels won't change.
|
| I don't know whether a large scale, ongoing intervention,
| such as permanently flooding a large area, could nudge this
| balance sufficiently to result in a sustained (if small)
| increase in atmospheric water vapor content, and thus an
| increase in warming. An interesting question!
|
| I wrote about the role of water vapor in global temperatures
| a while back at
| https://climateer.substack.com/i/60052576/you-thought-the-
| ma.... My primary source was an IPCC report, specifically the
| sidebar on pages 8 and 9 of this PDF: https://www.ipcc.ch/sit
| e/assets/uploads/2018/02/WG1AR5_Chapt....
| goda90 wrote:
| I think tidal canals would be the better option than pipelines.
| Dig channels deep and wide enough that the water of the seas
| actually mingle, letting dissolved salts spread out into the
| wider ocean.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| With quite a bit of extra digging this could get us an
| alternative to the Suez Canal which I believe many countries
| would be interested in and would strengthen global trade.
| vasco wrote:
| They already added lanes to the suez canal and I imagine
| it'd be way more cost effective to keep expanding those as
| needed.
| bell-cot wrote:
| For that "deep and wide enough" to work out, just how deep
| and wide would the canal need to be?
|
| Such mingling happens at the Dardanelles - but it's half a
| mile or so wide, and ~180 feet deep.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dardanelles
| cryptonector wrote:
| Presumably all these could be allowed to get saltier than the
| seas they fill from. That would allow more water to evaporate,
| which would speed up the water cycle, which has a net cooling
| effect on the planet, and which would cause more precipitation
| that would then help green the planet. It would also tend to
| lower sea levels. Win win win win!
| detritus wrote:
| I used to dream of large scale solar and nuclear-powered
| desalination plants lining the mediterranean, solely for the
| purpose of pumping inland to create fresh water lakes to cool the
| local environment and perhaps stymie the increasing
| desertification of thre Iberian peninsula further north.
|
| Then I grew up a bit and realised how mind-bogglingly massive
| such a scheme would have to be :)
|
| These seems like a far more likely possibility, given the scale.
|
| Given we might be in part historically responsible for a lot of
| the desertification around the periphery of the Med, I don't
| personally have major qualms about geo-engineering 'mostly
| useless' spaces back into something a little more fertile and a
| little cooler.
| pif wrote:
| > and perhaps stymie the increasing desertification of thre
| Iberian peninsula
|
| I think I get your point. I'm ready to take huge risks in order
| to support anything that may weaken the permanent African
| anticyclone.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Sounds a bit like the Desertec project.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > a little cooler
|
| Hum... About this little bit, increasing low altitude humidity
| is almost guaranteed to make the place hotter, not cooler. Even
| if it adds vegetation.
| villgax wrote:
| Just reading this title made me suddenly think of wanting to live
| under the ocean/sea(closer to land albeit) like Sandy from
| SpongeBob. Affordable housing for all I guess.
| hok wrote:
| Drying the Mediterranean Sea is surely a bad idea, but I wonder
| why nobody ever built hydroelectric generators into the Strait of
| Gibraltar. There is a huge steady flow of surface water from the
| Atlantic into the Mediterranean (1 million cubic meters per
| second), and almost as much flows back into the Atlantic in
| deeper layers. Why not tap into these streams to generate
| electricity?
| desas wrote:
| Tidal energy is expensive - sea water is very corrosive and
| under water maintenance access isn't cheaply solved. Also you
| need to retain access for ships and subs.
|
| The UK has the second highest tidal ranges in the world and is
| probably a world leader, we still generate nearly no energy
| from tidal.
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