/sci/ - Science & Math

>>7579634
>How crazy is this, /sci/?

It's just crazy enough to work. Someone get this guy a grant.

yes, OP, but there is one little problem:
funds

>>7579634
I'm not sure salt water is all that good for agriculture

If the Sahara was full of Dutch people, it might happen.

But it never will be so it won't.

Now, if you could convince Dutch people that sand was an aphrodisiac...

Some crazy Chinese fuckers will probably do it eventually

Google
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahara_Sea

There's also the fact that deserts are biomes. You'd be causing massive extinctions.

>>7579634
Yeah, and who's gonna take care of the salt.

>>7579649
>>7579655
Even though the Caspian Sea is saline, it provides the moisture that maintains the humid jungles/forests in northern Iran and Azerbaijan and that region (pic related). The water cycle (evaporation, precipitation) gets rid of a lot of the salt.

>How crazy is this
On a scale of cat-lady to bat-shit, it's about half-ass.

Sounds like the Salton Sea in California

>>7579634
Very interesting proposal. My only problem is that I see no real way to test this on a small scale and without that funding for the big thing will never happen. Even if we can do it, I am very sceptical over where exactly that evaporated water will fall down.

I am not a geologist, but I wonder what happens if you just pour shittons of salt water into the desert. I am not sure how well water can pass through desert sand, because if it can then maybe it will just chill under the sand.

the Sahara provides a lot of nutrients to the ocean and south American rain forest via dust storms. It's basically seasonal fertilizer that keeps shit working. You flood the Sahara and you kill the south American rain forest and kill all sorts of ocean life due to a lack of algae/plankton.

You'd just make a giant shitpool of salty water and sand. There's not many nutrients or anything in the Sahara, and nowhere near enough to turn it into the kind of ecosystem you're talking about, plus you'd be killing off the vast majority of the animals that live there.
Nature is incredibly complicated and we couldn't possibly take into account all the repercussions of something like this.

>>7579718
Sahara is actually full of nutrients left over from when it was an ocean. They're just not the type of nutrients that are readily accessible to anything but plants.

>>7579652
>some shitty desert animals that noone cares about will die out
boo fucking hoo, why should I care about it again?

A better idea would be to cover the whole desert solar thermal powerplants and use the electricity generated to power arcology cities that we put the africans in and produce hydrogen rocket fuel for space colonization.

>>7579758
Read
>>7579714

>>7579775
>muh rainforests
>implying they're relevant in 2015
bro, if it was 2005 or something, then maybe I'd give a fuck, but it's not 2005 anymore.

>>7579714
Damn ecosystems, you be complex.

>>7579637

>>7579758

Because changing the dynamics of an environment that large will have repercussions everywhere on earth.

It isn't just the local wildlife that will get affected, it's everyone and everything.

Not that it matters really since we have already done a fuckton of damage to most environments. I guess as long as we don't fuck with Anartica we should be okay for now.

>>7579668

That's through evaporation though, leaving the salt in the sea while the precipitation is sediment free. Pumping saltwater into the desert will kill off even the cactus life forms. Speaking of which, are there any cactii in africa or is that species only present in the americas?

This idea could work for California's water problem too. Except they're above sea level. We could set of a nuke on the fault line and that might lower the land enough so it's under the sea level. If it works California more water than it knows what to do with.

It's not as if the whole Sahara is below sea level...compared to the size of it, only a relatively small portion would be flooded into inland seas. The question is whether these seas would be big enough to de-desertify the rest of the region, kind of like the Caspian Sea does to its surroundings.

>>7579718
It's worked before you pussy.

>>7579778
You are clearly retarded. Rainforests help regulate weather and other shit.

>>7579634
>Put some huge dams in there and let the water flow in
The water won't follow your channel. You saw what a little river did to hard rock in grand canyon? Now imagine draining water from entire ocean through channels made of sand/mud.
>b-but we'll dig deep channels into the bedrock/line them with concrete
Your project just entered top 10 most expensive projects in human history.
>generating vast amounts of electricity
No. It would be a one time flow, when the basin's full it would stop.
>the environment will change dramatically.
No. There are already large lakes in sahara and the greenzone around them is tiny or even none. Thing's don't magically start growing in dust. Even with 5000 years of human efforts the green zone around the Nile is just a few kilometers.
>The strong sun of the tropics
The area you're talking about isn't in the tropics
>evaporate up the water and drop it back down [and this whole fucking paragraph]
No. It will evaporate up the water and drop it back down somewhere else. That's why it's a desert...

>but no one is talking about it at all nowadays.
Guess why faggot. Kill yourself

>>7579800
I believe there are some now, but that is a good question considering Cactii originated in the Americas and weren't introduced to anywhere else until after the Americans discovered the rest of the world existed.

>>7579818
>kind of like the Caspian Sea does to its surroundings.
It doesn't.
The north and south greenzones are artificial. The west caucasus isn't a desert to begin with

>>7579714
Basically this

ITT: I don't know jackshit about ecology

>>7579825
>The water won't follow your channel.
I'm not the guy, but... If new rivers won't show up and feed the new lake, then water will flow through the canal. Can't really tell if enough Watts to invest. This would need more work, than just opinions on /sci/

>>7580030
>water will flow through the canal
Do you not know what erosion is? Did you not get the grand canyon example?
Pic related is what a little stream from a melting glacier turns into when running through soft soil. Now multiply the water amount and distance by 100.
>Can't really tell if enough Watts to invest.
Yes you can, read the rest of the post
>This would need more work
No enough work is done to tell that it's retarded. Erosion, saltification and global rain patterns aren't opinions

>>7580069
You aren't being very imaginative. I'm not an erosion engineer, but if you're right and a canal/channel wouldn't work, then try a tunnel. Or a pipeline with sluices. Or something.

>>7579714
This, fuck with Earth at your peril. Everything exists for a reason. Everything.
>"b-but we already make artificial reservoirs
Not on this fucking scale.

Even i it were a good idea who the fuck is going to pay for it? The only Saharan government that would have had a hope of pulling this sort of thing off was Gadaffi's Libya and he's gone now.

People need to look at the Qattara Depression Project. This was a proposal to flood a basin in northwestern Egypt. Basically OP, but on a smaller scale.

>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qattara_Depression_Project

Cliffs from the German feasibility study:
1. Use 200 nuclear charges to excavate the channel
2. Would provide 6 gigawatts for at least 10 years
3. 25,000 people would need to be evacuated
4. Concerns about erosion and tectonic instability

>>7580069
umad.jpg

>>7580086
>b-but we'll dig deep channels into the bedrock/line them with concrete
>Your project just entered top 10 most expensive projects in human history.
HEY GUIZE LET'S DO A TUNNEL INSTEAD OF A CANAL!
So now you're going to fund the most expensive project in human history... And you're still only on point 2 of 7 of why this won't work. It's a stupid idea. Get over it.

It would be cheaper and more feasible to just build a greenhouse the size of a city with nuclear power plants in the middle of Sahara for no fucking reason.

Technically it is well within what is possible. Making the Suez Canal was probably about the same level of technology. The only problem is that the region is full of people who desires to kill you in order to preserve their medieval ways.

>>7579634
The only issue with this is the wind-blown dust of the Sahara is essential in supplying the Atlantic Ocean with nutrients. The amount in tons is ridiculous. The dust is even essential in fertilizing the Amazon (the soil in the jungle is low in nutrient composure to begin with) and the lower part of North America. You'd be possibly severely afflicting two of the largest "lungs" of the planet, since phytoplankton and the rainforest are that large.

It's a nice idea though.

>>7581212
Sorry, didn't read this guy.
>>7579751
But yeah.

>>7579778
Please don't troll such a slow board.

>>7579822

Do you people even understand how the climate works?

>>7579825
>It would be a one time flow, when the basin's full it would stop.
You know we are talking about the Sahara, right? It is a desert. Temperature easily around 50C, wind is strong and reaches storm level. A one sq km patch of water in a desert will evaporate of the order of one ton of water - per second. And we are talking about many square kilometers of desert.

The flow would not be stopping anytime soon.

Depending on the impurities in the salt water flow you could end up as in the Icelandic hot springs like the Blue Lagoon: minerals precipitate and seal the bottom so that you create a tight basin.

You would need to transport out epic amounts of salt, gypsum and more. Trouble is, the concentrated brine would contain significant amounts of uranium and gold.

>>7581251
>reading whole posts is too much for my brain.
Faggot OP thinks the evaporation will rain down in the same place. In that case it IS a one time flow since the basin will refill itself.

Further down I've already said exactly what you just typed, you get a saline lake in the middle of a fucking desert. If anything that's even more hostile than Sahara already is.

It's a retarded idea either way.

>>7581350
Sure it will be hostile but it can still be useful. Also the Dead Sea is hostile. That reminds me that there was a plan to also use the Dead Sea for power generation: first pump water from the Mediterranean up to a top point and then downhill into the Dead Sea where it would flow through a power station that would produce excess power over what would be needed for the pumping station.

What could possibly go wrong?

Anyway the idea that the Sahara is full of fertilizers that power the Amazonian rain forest has been questioned. Sure there is a lot of phosphorous material there but there is serious doubt that the dust could be blown as far as the Amazon and also the Amazon rain forest is older than the Sahara desert. The Sahara used to be a forest with lakes.

>>7581366
>but it can still be useful.
How?
Remember we're talking the most expensive project in human history. You don't spend several nations entire budgets so you can sell tourists sun-screen and boat rides.
>Dead Sea
Thank you. The Dead sea is a perfect example of why your idea is stupid. Nobody lives there, no farms are supported by it, nothing.
>pump water from the Mediterranean up to a top point
Or just put the power station on "top points" which already have water flowing from them without spending billions a year getting it there.
>the idea that the Sahara is full of fertilizers that power the Amazonian rain forest has been questioned.
I'm the one who brought that up. Regardless it's not even the main reason this is retarded.

>>7581396
*Not the one who brought that up.

Adressing the nutrient problem, what if we theoretically start burrying all the dead people and animals around the world in the desert?
With the current appx. rate of 150k deaths per day could we cultivate the area?

>>7579697
The evaporated water will probably cause more rainfall in Saudi Arabia and other desert regions east of the Sahara.

>>7579714
The Sahara desert wasn't always a desert. Some 8,000 years ago there used to be annual rainfall, and civilizations used to live there. Yet, the Amazon rainforest was little affected by receiving less Saharan dust particles.

>>7579718
>Nature is incredibly complicated and we couldn't possibly take into account all the repercussions of something like this.
Nature is very resilient. It will adapt to changing conditions.

>>7579818
Even if the effects are only regional, the impact would still be net positive. The same principle can be applied to other low lying deserts as well.

>>7579801
cant a channel be dug to death valley as a small scale experiment

>>7581430
Look at this retard
>probably cause more rainfall in Saudi Arabia
Source? Nah!
>Amazon rainforest was little affected by receiving less Saharan dust particles.
Source? Nah! My little anecdote disproves the actual research
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mineral_dust#References
>Nature is very resilient. It will adapt to changing conditions.
One way it is currently adapting to changing conditions is through global desertification. Which has forced millions of people to relocate, and indirectly killed millions.
>the impact would still be net positive.
No. Because you could have built 1000 hospitals 1000 schools and 10 nuclear power plants for the money you spent on making another useless Saharan salt lake. Pic related

>>7579800
>>7579826
Cacti are new world but there are lots of other things adapted to dessert life elsewhere. There is an ecosystem to disrupt.

>>7579649
It's very good. It makes killer tomatoes. Not literally, but they get sweet and more tasteful if you water them with salt water.

>>7581506
>t. tomato

>>7581366
>Anyway the idea that the Sahara is full of fertilizers that power the Amazonian rain forest has been questioned. Sure there is a lot of phosphorous material there but there is serious doubt that the dust could be blown as far as the Amazon and also the Amazon rain forest is older than the Sahara desert. The Sahara used to be a forest with lakes.

You are a retard.
https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasa-satellite-reveals-how-much-saharan-dust-feeds-amazon-s-plants
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygulQJoIe2Y

>>7581430
>The Sahara desert wasn't always a desert. Some 8,000 years ago there used to be annual rainfall, and civilizations used to live there. Yet, the Amazon rainforest was little affected by receiving less Saharan dust particles.

You are also retarded.
>Things like the Amazon don't change in 8,000 years.
>The Sahara used to be lush and populated 8,000 years ago but now it is a desert.

Worse than that you're somehow missing that 10,500 years ago and for tens of thousands of years prior to that the Sahara was also a desert. There was only a small time period when it was lush and populated.

>>7581460
>No. Because you could have built 1000 hospitals 1000 schools and 10 nuclear power plants for the money you spent on making another useless Saharan salt lake. Pic related
There are more doctors needed. Then and only then can there be more hospitals. Although, the American medical association doesn't want there to be more doctors.

There are plenty of schools. Building great projects is one of the points of having schools in the first place. You can have all the schools you want, but unless there are great projects that inspire young minds, then they will just choose to play video games instead.

In terms of cost, it's really just labor. People who choose to go to medical school aren't the same people who choose to be engineers for global engineering projects. It is not an either or decision.

>>7581564
Evidence that the Saharan desert provides the Amazon with dust is not evidence that the Amazon rainforest would cease to be a rainforest without that dust.

I doubt anyone really believes that dust from thousands of miles away is a prerequisite for having a rainforest. The amazon rainforest is not the only rainforest in the world.

The Congo and Borneo are rainforests, yet they don't need dust from a massive desert in order to be rainforests.

The same goes for India, which technically isn't tropical, but is just as wet.

>>7581569
Sure, but similarly lack of evidence is not evidence it won't happen. Fortunately there are scientists studying the phenomenon in order to get a better understanding of how the Amazon is affected by hundreds of tons of dust each year. Also, only a retard would make such an easily refutable claim as "there is serious doubt that the dust could be blown as far as the Amazon".

We do on the other hand know that Sahara dust causes enormous algae blooms that have a huge effect on ocean oxygen and as such regulate ocean ecosystems.

Then of course there are the further reaching but less direct possible consequences to worry about such as effects on climate.

What about all the oil?

>>7581577
>All rainforests are the same.
>Just because there exist other things that don't need X it means that all things don't need X.

>>7581578
>We do on the other hand know that Sahara dust causes enormous algae blooms that have a huge effect on ocean oxygen and as such regulate ocean ecosystems.
Only the Atlantic?

Are you suggesting that the Atlantic has more algae than the pacific and Indian oceans?

>>7581587
No, retard. Algae blooms can at times cover one fifth of the planet's oceans. They are very important to sustaining ecosystems across the planet. It just so happens that those algae blooms are provided via different means (eg Ganges Delta gets nutrients from stuff eroding out of the Himalayas), though a portion of dust makes it past South America and contributes to ecosystems elsewhere.

It's worth pointing out that a portion of the Algae (the portion that don't get eaten during the ensuing feeding frenzy) sink to the bottom of the ocean (along with the minerals and shit they ate) and contribute to a several kilometer deep layer of dead algae.

It was a similar process that created all the diatomite in the Sahara that now feeds the Amazon and Ocean (iron, phosphorous, and other shit).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diatomaceous_earth

On a side note, the Amazon Rain Forest is the richest surface habitat on the planet. Other rain forests don't have shit on it. There's also a satellite named Terra that can supposedly not just see the dust reaching the Amazon but it can see the growth in the Canopy as well.

Furthermore, the dust doesn't JUST affect the Amazon, it also affects other forests and vegetation all over South and North America (even as far as California).

>>7581396
>How?
To produce electric power, to cool down the desert (which the global warming people seem to think is good), to provide precipitation elsewhere.
>Remember we're talking the most expensive project in human history. You don't spend several nations entire budgets so you can sell tourists sun-screen and boat rides.
Really? Got any sources to back up this? Or should we just consider it cost effective to let people there die?
>Thank you. The Dead sea is a perfect example of why your idea is stupid. Nobody lives there, no farms are supported by it, nothing.
Please put your brain into gear. I never said people would live in the saline lake.
>Or just put the power station on "top points" which already have water flowing from them without spending billions a year getting it there.
Look up cavitation. The guys in Israel designing this didn't fall down from a tree yesterday.
>I'm the one who brought that up. Regardless it's not even the main reason this is retarded.
I didn't claim you did or did not.

>>7581564
>retarded
Allergic to facts? Sahara was wetter for several thousand years. Proof of dust is no proof of neccessarey fertilization. Try some basic sci.

>>7581677
>It's worth pointing out that a portion of the Algae (the portion that don't get eaten during the ensuing feeding frenzy) sink to the bottom of the ocean (along with the minerals and shit they ate) and contribute to a several kilometer deep layer of dead algae.
Wouldn't this cause sea levels to rise? I thought that was a bad thing.

>Algae blooms can at times cover one fifth of the planet's oceans. They are very important to sustaining ecosystems across the planet. It just so happens that those algae blooms are provided via different means (eg Ganges Delta gets nutrients from stuff eroding out of the Himalayas), though a portion of dust makes it past South America and contributes to ecosystems elsewhere.
So the dust provides a slight boom to life, but it can manage without it, right?

>It was a similar process that created all the diatomite in the Sahara that now feeds the Amazon and Ocean (iron, phosphorous, and other shit).
What about all the potential life that can benefit from those minerals in the Sahara itself?

>>7581719
>Allergic to facts? Sahara was wetter for several thousand years. Proof of dust is no proof of neccessarey fertilization. Try some basic sci.

It was for only 2000 years.It was desert before from the ice age up until 10500. It didn't even start having human populations until much later.

>>7581761
>Sea levels rising, insignificant.

>Manage without it.
Are you illiterate? Algae blooms regulate nitrogen. There are algae blooms all over the planet but the biggest ones are caused by the Saharan dust storms. All of them are important to life.

>Potential life
Sure, but how would you even transport it? Only several hundred tons reach the Amazon daily during these periods but we're still talking about thousands of tons hitting the ocean daily. I guarantee anything you suggest would be much less efficient.

>>7579634
If the polar ice caps melt, this could be the final solution to keep the sea level down.

>>7582066
If polar ice caps melt then we've got bigger problems. The outer edges of the ice caps have a yearly cycle where they melt and refreeze. In the process they separate the salt from the water and form a super cold super salty brine that falls to the ocean floor and encases itself in ice as it falls. Once it reaches the ocean floor it continues making an ice shield and flows down into deep sea trenches where it will stay for millenniums. This process desalinates some water and thus regulates the level of salinity in the ocean. Without that we're fucked.

>>7579714
>and you kill the south American rain forest
What, the small amount that still exists you mean? It will be destroyed in the next decades anyway.

>>7582057
>It was for only 2000 years. It was desert before from the ice age up until 10500. It didn't even start having human populations until much later.
Yet, in that 2000 year period, the rainforest didn't disappear. Was there any negative effect whatsoever?

Making more land habitable outweighs any slight effect on the global climate.

More importantly, if there are millions of skyscrapers 100m below the ocean with algae on them, that can be make up for a loss in algae blooms.

This isn't the time for it. There's too much primitive voodoo environmentalism. Once the hippie nonsense is over and people can think critically again, I expect someone will think about it. It's a project for another day.

Since nobody has pointed out the obvious, allow me to be the bringer of reality; it is way too massive of a project to ever be considered by any one nation or consortium of nations. It would take a worldwide effort to fund this project, and for what? There is no guarantee it will do anything positive for us or the planet. We are better off slowly planting trees around the fringes. Allow the desert to slowly be pushed back over time by plant growth, which supplies organic matter to soils and help retain moisture.

Why?

>>7582507
>Making more land habitable outweighs any slight effect on the global climate.

lol

There's a similar proyect going on already, it's called the Sahara Forest Proyect check it out.

>>7579650
We're the ones that rempty seas, not fill them.

I'm somewhat confused by the basic idea of this though. You're intending to create a sea-lake in the middle of northern africa, with the waterflow coming /from/ the ocean, through [narrow] canals?

And if your idea of creating a whole functioning biome /were/ to work out, the whole hydropower part would lose effectivity since the sea wouldn't be the water input anymore (also I have my doubts regarding using seawater in a hydroplant in the first place, flora and fauna wise) Main point there being that you're spending a metric fuckton worth of money on a terrible investment (the dams).

Assuming the whole idea works out, the only people who'll really profit is the african countries you're proposing to be positioning this project in- so either you'll have to have /them/ fund you (good luck), or you'd have to convince them to pay you back (if/when) the project is finished and actually works.

Also >>7579649

You're creating a sea, not a lake (I think lakes are non-salt by definition?) Point being that you won't directly be profiting from the water anywhere near as much as if it were sweet, at least not argiculture wise. Best you can hope for is a fishing industry or something, and name one of those that's greatly functional and not also massively threatening it's surroundings.

>>7579634
>much of the Sahara desert is below sea level
I can't find any evidence for that claim. There are some relatively-small depressions in eastern Africa, but most of the Sahara appears to be well above sea level.
http://geology.com/below-sea-level/

the biological productivity of the mid-Atlantic is due in large part to iron-rich dust being blown off the Sahara by westward prevailing winds. (iron is a major limiting factor in planktonic systems).
you flood the Sahara, you cut off the supply of iron fertilizer to the ocean. bad shit happens.

>>7579758
food chains, ecosystems, tons of shit will fall apart

also what kind of scientist wants to make animals extinct for no reason? they might make some chemical that cures cancer, you dick.

>>7579634
>Africa
>develop
Niggers couldn't farm a verdant grassland if they tried. There's a reason every African nation is a war-torn shit hole where 95% of the population lives in abject poverty. They don't think like us because they are not like us.

>>7582828
This. Central Africa is basically a fucking Eden. If you so much shit on the ground, crops will sprout. Imagine if that region was inhabited by European peoples?

Oh wait, we had that. It was called Rhodesia and it was the food bowl of Africa.

>>7582832
>>7582828
>Africans weren't farming perfectly fine before the white man turned up
Uh-huh and how do you think they fed themselves all those years? You do know there were actual civilizations in Zimbabwe before the European invasion. Sure they weren't 19th century-tier but saying they couldn't fucking farm is taking the racism a little too far.
> There's a reason every African nation is a war-torn shit hole where 95% of the population lives in abject poverty
Colonialism durr. If someone invaded Europe and lumped France and Germany into one country wtf do you think is going to happen? Same thing is going on in the Middle East where British border drawing fuckups are really starting to show. Botswana was just a protectorate with the same chiefs largely left in charge with no significant border changes it is one of the better countries in Africa now.

>>7582865
>how do you think they fed themselves all those years?
By literally picking fruit from trees? You do realise how many naturally occurring species of edible plants occur in Africa, right? Plus all that game.

>You do know there were actual civilizations in Zimbabwe before the European invasion
Civilisation is stretching it. They were approximately similar to the pagan Germanic tribes bordering the Roman Empire.

>racism
Define this please. It is not "racism" to point out the fact that Central Africa is one of the most fertile regions on the planet and there is absolutely no reason for anybody to be starving there other than ineptitude and a culture of asking for hand-outs (which the West has unfortunately encouraged).

>Colonialism durr.
Hollow argument. Colonialism has happened everywhere at some stage.

>If someone invaded Europe and lumped France and Germany into one country wtf do you think is going to happen?
There were no countries of clear political, national, and religious identities in central Africa as there were in Europe. There were tribes. Similar to what was in Gaul when Caesar invaded and that turned out quite well in fact.

>Same thing is going on in the Middle East where British border drawing fuckups are really starting to show
The Middle-East has been fucked since the Mongols invaded. Pretty much the only stability they had was when the Ottomans invaded and forced all the countries together into a single Empire. Sort of like what you're asserting caused the issues in Africa.

>Botswana was just a protectorate with the same chiefs largely left in charge with no significant border changes it is one of the better countries in Africa now.
Other than having 25% of its population infected with HIV of course.

>>7582885
>There were no countries of clear political, national, and religious identities in central Africa as there were in Europe. There were tribes. Similar to what was in Gaul when Caesar invaded and that turned out quite well in fact.
Rome held Gaul for 500 years. Nevertheless it was always known as a rural backwater during that time. Literally why the Western half of the empire collapsed, Gaul was shit and underdeveloped compared to Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt.
>Other than having 25% of its population infected with HIV of course.
San Fransisco is like 40% HIV. It is largely a cultural thing not really due to poverty. There are many poor counties that have implemented successful HIV programmes. When I say cultural I mean it hits promiscuous societies hard.

>>7579634
That's absolutely retarded, but it's the kind of retarded I can get behind.

>tfw /sci/ thinks a significant part of the sahara is below sea level.

This
>>7582972
The memes on this thread are unreal

>Egypt digs up a small channel
>This somehow stops Saharan dust flow

>>7582828
>Niggers couldn't farm a verdant grassland if they tried.

>>7582832
>Central Africa is basically a fucking Eden. If you so much shit on the ground, crops will sprout.

Not really.

>>7583043

Eh... that map still overpredicts what the agricultural output of Africa "should" be.

>>7581564
Have you actually followed the links you provided?? The fertilizers are from Megalake Chad. That is a different place from what is discussed. Hot news: Africa is a large continent. There is room for more than one town there.

>>7582057
>It was for only 2000 years
Oh?

About 5 seconds search:
>The Neolithic Subpluvial, or the Holocene Wet Phase, was an extended period (from about 7500–7000 BCE to about 3500–3000 BCE) of wet and rainy conditions in the climate history of northern Africa.

So we are talking about 4000 years, in relative recent times.

You'll just get yet another salt lake, really. What's the point, as it's very much lifeless anyway?

It's not a new plan, it was called Atlantropa.

>>7582658
Not quite. The point is
1: to generate power from the waterfall from the Mediterranean into a basin and
2: let water evaporate from the basin and create rainfall elsewhere.
Continuous evaporation allows for continuous operation of the waterfalls. The lake itself is hardly going to be a working biome, rather you can use it to extract minerals.

>>7582668
>you flood the Sahara
Again, noone is proposing that. Parts of the Sahara is also mountains well above the sea level. The proposal is only a part of the eastern Sahara, not the Lake Chad area having the minerals.

And iron dust? Everyone else is talking about phosphorus from long since dead sea creatures like fish.

>>7583043
Soil is one thing. Don't forget the weather in Africa allows for 3 - 4 harvests per year compared to once or so in, say, Europe. I have seen parts of South Africa. There are enormous areas of good enough soil for agriculture but it is just lying there idle. Industrial scale agriculture is a skill different from small scale village farming and the ones with those skills in Africa are farmers in Zimbabwe. They are travelling the continent to teach these skill but just now they have trouble with Mugabe taking their farms.

>>7583086

>let water evaporate from the basin and create rainfall elsewhere.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahara#Climate

>And iron dust? Everyone else is talking about phosphorus from long since dead sea creatures like fish.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaporite

>I have seen parts of South Africa.

Thanks for telling me something that was already apparent from the map I posted.

>>7582901
>>7582865
Uh-huh. Of course it's Whitey's fault that blacks can't ever do things. Because there aren't any proven genetic differences related to intelligence, motivation and aggression. Only one race, the human race, amirite? That makes perfect sense! :^)

>>7583066
It's still a flash in the pan.
http://www.livescience.com/4180-sahara-desert-lush-populated.html

good luck building a canal while getting constantly attacked by jihadists

>>7580099
interesting anon thanks

>>7579800
Cactus man here. There are no native cactus in Africa although there a few species of succulents ( a close relative ) throughout the continent.

Lithops being one of them. Picture related

>>7579781
Is going to need more than $50

>>7580099
>spectacular and peaceful
>200 low yield nuclear bombs
That's a show I'd pay to see.

OP have a search for "flood lake eyre", it's a similar idea in Australia which might be of interest to you.

If the OP's sahara idea was done, I wonder what sort of global drop in sea levels we could expect.

>>7579638
You don't need funds, you need a weekend with a bunch of people that have underground drilling equipment. Preferably vehicle mounted.

>>7579714
>the Sahara provides a lot of nutrients to the ocean and south American rain forest via dust storms.
Very interesting.

>>7580099
>Qattara Depression Project.
Also interesting

>>7582972
And those are the exact places proposed to make a Sahara Sea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahara_Sea

This has to be the stupidest thread on /sci/ right now, and considering there's an EMDrive thread, a creationist thread and two time travel threads, that's really saying something.

>>7583890
so what
the point it that the area is completely insignificant compared to the size of the sahara

besides, what's the evidence that a sea helps to make a desert habitable?

>>7579751
It's actually a specific lakebed that provides iron and phosphorus.

>>7579697
>test on small scale
See >>7579689

>>7583086
As stated, I have my doubts regarding a seawater based hydroplant, but I guess the mediterranean would be one of the better cases for it. I still think you'd be risking significant damage to wildlife, but that aside.

If you only intend to flush water in and have it eveporate right away again, there's no way it'll have a large enough inpact to cause rainfall where you desire it. It'll simply float off too high and bundle up with water elsewhere, aka it'll be right back with it's friends from the ocean. For such an idea to work you really would need to create an actual body of water. Not that you would be able to generate profit from rainfall, anyway.

Extracting minerals would require you close your dam, meaning you're not just generating electricity in africa (honestly man who the fuck do you intnd to be selling it to) , you're not even doing it reliably because you're going about scraping salt out of your basin.

I mean the whole project sounds like a great work opportunity for the africans, but that's right about where it stops, honestly.

>>7579759
or shoot 'em into the sun

>>7579634
Wouldn't the seawater affect the groundwater reserves below Sahara? You'd potentially fuck over tens of millions of people.

>>7584866
this

>>7579847
We ARE in /sci/, after all. Most STEM nerds believe humanity can turn Earth into Coruscant and suffer no consequences because technology is magic and will save us from anything.

Yes, bring prosperity to Africa for a few decades, at the cost of something that will be lost forever.

>>7582658
>(I think lakes are non-salt by definition?)

The Great Salt Lake disagrees.

>>7583063
>Hot news: Africa is a large continent. There is room for more than one town there.

Related:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEb_epsuLqA&feature=youtu.be&t=2m26s

>>7582865
>7582865
>European invasion
ayyy

>>7580099
>Use 200 nuclear charges
Yes.

>>7583890
Did you read the entirety of your linked article?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahara_Sea#20th_century

>>7583165
I like how you did not counter any of my points but went straight to "niggers r dumb". I showed you Botswana bar the HIV really isn't that bad and you've gone silent. There are others. Post-Bongo Gabon is an ok country has a decent oil industry, a stable government and low HIV. Nigeria has a space programme and is also well known for it's oil industry, it's main problem are the fact that their population is split down the middle religiously. Cape Verde has a life expectancy nearly as high as the USA. Moving on to the Caribbean the only real shithole is Haiti, all the others are stable with good economies, the last time I was in Jamaica they had constructed an entire new motorway network. The only widespread problem is crime but South America has the same problem and they aren't majority black. The crime is a result of being halfway between South America and the USA on the narcotics route. So to summarize yes black people are perfectly capable of running a decent country if you take away the sectarian issues

>>7581244
this
the evaporated water will just drop in the tropes

>>7579651
/thread
Chinese are mad scientists man

>>7581244
There is some evidence that the expansion of the Hadley cells is related to climate change

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadley_cell#Major_impacts_on_precipitation_by_latitude

>>7586150
I know, when one of their damn projects creates earthquakes by depressing part of a tectonic plate and changing the earths rotational speed. It starts to really gets scary on the global effects of these types of things. And this sound very similar to it.

"Flood the Sahara with the sea?"
"Where are the funds coming from?"

Probably every nation that's next to the rising seas of the world once they realize they'll lose even more hundreds of billions of dollars if they DON'T do this.