Atlantropa – the project as imagined by German Architect Herman Sörgel (1932) would build several gigantic Dams that could generate enough electricity to power half the Continent in the Straits of Gibraltar, connect two continents, create massive land gains and irrigate the Sahara.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantropa
https://www.environmentandsociety.org/arcadia/atlantropa-endless-energy-mediterranean-sea
New innovations in transportation and the expansion of electricity networks throughout the industrialized world required new approaches to solving the energy problem. In the spring of 1928 the Munich architect Hermann Sörgel (1885–1952) presented an idea which promised to solve all these difficulties: Atlantropa offered an “inexhaustible” source of energy, vast quantities of raw materials and new “Lebensraum” for innumerable people.
Atlantropa united a technological utopia with political visions of reform. Sörgel proposed building a giant dam across the Strait of Gibraltar to create the largest hydroelectric facility in the world. It would provide for half of Europe’s electricity needs. At the same time, it would cut off the main water supply to the Mediterranean. Evaporation would lead to a drop in the sea level of up to 200 meters and would create new stretches of land along the coast as well as connecting Europe to Africa by land. The two continents would merge into a single entity. This newly-won mass of land would be used for agriculture, extending infrastructure, and as a site for entire cities.
Sörgel saw his scheme, which was projected to take over a century, as a peaceful Pan-European alternative to the Lebensraum concepts, which later became one of the stated reasons for Nazi Germany’s conquest of new territories. Atlantropa would provide land, food, employment, electric power, and, most of all, a new vision for Europe and neighbouring Africa.
I have like a dozen reasons why this would be a terrible idea.
I bet the Dutch would love evaporating the Mediterranean. Not that the water would end up in other oceans or anything.
A yes the kilometres of desertic and salty wasteland is a plus for every countries.
That will definitely not create sandstroms and expand on the old coastline.
This is a evrrrry bad ida
If anything, the distance between Europe and Africa should be increased not decreased.
This would destroy all current coastal cities.
If you take away all the groundwater from coastal areas, you’re going to take away millions of cubic meters of water and a whole lot of pressure. The gound will sink because of this, it’ll not be even and even if it would, houses would fall.
Venice, the pearl of the Adriatic desert.
To wht end?
What I am asking myself is how it would create energy?
Wouldn’t the water that flows into the Mediterranean need to be pumped out constantly to keep the low level? The surface area would be reduced so less evaporation would take place. So if there isn’t already a large influx of water through Gibraltar it would just fill up again without investing energy.
The Mediterranean Sea already loosing more water with waporize what receiving from the rivers, the missing water is coming from atlantic ocean.
*Cries in Croatian losing the main source of income*
– fuck the mediterranean sea trade
– fuck sensitive fauna
– Stagnated lake full of sewage
– Possibility to have a catrastrophic dam event
– Gains of useless desert land
– Building new ports for the mediterranean only trade
– The new infrastructure to build to access those new ports
Hell If i cared I could go on and on