Instead, flood Death Valley with ocean water:
1. Massive evaporative potential. 2. Moisture trapped by tall mountains replenishing the aquifer and making lush surroundings. 3. Massive hydro potential 4. Displaced species not seriously harmed since the moisture gradient would be large (are P. 2) 5. You could harvest the salt prolonging the suitability of the project (anyway measured in centuries if not millennia)
Basically you’d have the lushness of the surroundings of Salt Lake City (compared to the desert anyway). Except there would be a lot more moisture (lower salinity wrt it Salt Lake, moisture better trapped)
You could do the same thing in Egypt at the Qatara depression, except with potentially global benefits. Here the half of the Sahara could be turned into productive farm land.
I don't know if I would say I'm 'hoping' for this, but I'm certainly interested to see what kind of incredible projects will come out of the increased necessity brought on by climate change.
It seems like for a long time there's been resistance to really try to do 'big' things in NA. We hardly even build subways since the 60's -- too complicated, too expensive, too disruptive, too big! Maybe we'll increase our ambitions as a society when we're less comfortable.
1. You can drain the mediterranean.
It’s simple, really. Plug the straight of Gibraltar up, put a lock system for continued shipping, and, slowly, the sea will evaporate away.
That’s insane!
2. You can drain/flood the attic sea by damning the Bearing strait.
While the sea wouldn’t be sealed up, the Giuk gap isn’t big enough to stop significant changes in water levels!
It’s actually kinda fun to look at a map and find what massive bodies of water are within our ability to drain
The mountains would trap the moisture locally. So even three, four mountains over the desert would be untouched.
As to Egypt, it would be restoring the Sahara to the lush green area much of it used to be before humans came in.
Look, the Three Gorges damn is much larger than this and much much more destructive. Entire cities disappeared.
But it also generates 22 GW of power.That’s an insane amount of coal that wasn’t burned.
So choose: burn coal. Burn U235. Flood valleys. Sashimi the birds. Carpet the desert with glass. Or massively decrease your standard of living.
For the record, I’m actually in favor of the last option.
Nor would it be shallow.
But you could have picked anyone of hundreds of other artificial lakes already in California. Ones that are deeper, with clean water instead of runoff.
You could also compare it to the Dead Sea, another body of water with no outlet.
One of the plans is to use local geothermal power for desalination. Importing saltwater to freshwater lakes would disrupt ecosystems. Depth wouldn't necessarily be an advantage if we are are looking for evaporation.
There are ethical and geo/political consequences though, since doing it is effectively stealing rain from another area.