Live data from Hacker News

The worst dam idea: evaporating the Mediterranean to power Europe

everythingisamazing.substack.com

21–30 of 64 posts

Re: The worst dam idea: evaporating the Mediterranean to power Europe

#21
post #10

Not mentioned in this article: In Philip K. Dick's alternative history The Man in the High Castle, in which the Nazis and Imperial Japan won World War II, the Nazis execute this plan and drain the Mediterranean. As the author mentions, there wasn't much care for what happened to the people living in Africa. In Dick's book, the Nazis visited some unspeakable holocaust on them.

No post body was provided.

Re: The worst dam idea: evaporating the Mediterranean to power Europe

#22
post #14

Something like this kind of drew me into geology. The inside jacket of my intro textbook explained the Mediterranean used to be damned naturally at Gibraltar or whatever the inlet is called and that so much salt water evaporated there where miles deep salt land features. Was instantly hooked

Epic XKCD comic on this topic.

https://blog.xkcd.com/2013/07/29/1190-time/

Re: The worst dam idea: evaporating the Mediterranean to power Europe

#23
post #17

Someone with more engineering sense than I can debunk this: The Baltic is dramatically less saline than the Atlantic. That's why the Vasa [1] was so well-preserved after 300 years at the bottom. So could we not take advantage of that salinity difference, somehow? [1] https://www.vasamuseet.se/en Edit: Every engineering student sees the movie of the Tacoma Narrows bridge collapsing. To me, the Vasa is a much better ca…

It is not the salinity as such that protected Vasa, but the absence of the ship worm, which does not like the Baltic brack water.

TIL. I did go to that museum and I thought that was what they said.

What do you mean by "brack water"?

Re: The worst dam idea: evaporating the Mediterranean to power Europe

#25
While not directly related, it reminded me of another plan (from 1963), sponsored by the US to create an alternate to the Suez Canal, through the Israeli Negev Desert using... 520 nuclear bombs:

https://www.businessinsider.com/us-planned-suez-canal-altern...

Re: The worst dam idea: evaporating the Mediterranean to power Europe

#26
post #10

Not mentioned in this article: In Philip K. Dick's alternative history The Man in the High Castle, in which the Nazis and Imperial Japan won World War II, the Nazis execute this plan and drain the Mediterranean. As the author mentions, there wasn't much care for what happened to the people living in Africa. In Dick's book, the Nazis visited some unspeakable holocaust on them.

Quoted post unavailable.

Why are multiple throwaways posting almost identical comments?

Re: The worst dam idea: evaporating the Mediterranean to power Europe

#27
post #10

Not mentioned in this article: In Philip K. Dick's alternative history The Man in the High Castle, in which the Nazis and Imperial Japan won World War II, the Nazis execute this plan and drain the Mediterranean. As the author mentions, there wasn't much care for what happened to the people living in Africa. In Dick's book, the Nazis visited some unspeakable holocaust on them.

Quoted post unavailable.

Why are multiple throwaways posting almost identical comments?

Re: The worst dam idea: evaporating the Mediterranean to power Europe

#28

Someone with more engineering sense than I can debunk this: The Baltic is dramatically less saline than the Atlantic. That's why the Vasa [1] was so well-preserved after 300 years at the bottom. So could we not take advantage of that salinity difference, somehow? [1] https://www.vasamuseet.se/en Edit: Every engineering student sees the movie of the Tacoma Narrows bridge collapsing. To me, the Vasa is a much better ca…

I visited the Vasa museum in late 2019 and it was stunning. Not just how well it had been preserved but how few people died in it.

They noted that one of the biggest contributors to its preservation was simply the location: since it had barely left the harbor, it was shielded from most storms and buried in mud in relatively shallow water.

Even better, when it sank, the Vasa was still just a few hundred feet from shore so only a few dozen people died instead of the hundreds onboard.

Re: The worst dam idea: evaporating the Mediterranean to power Europe

#29
The Mediterranean sea is, to me, the most beautiful place on earth. Be it mainland Spain (with, sadly, way too many concrete all along the coast), France, Italy, Croatia, Greece, ... It's just beautiful. Then the islands: Corsica, Sicily, Ibiza, Formentera, ... It's heaven on earth.

I drive my kid to school on the french riviera, along the coast and among the vineyards every day.

Famous poets and painters would go and settle there.

It requires a very special kind of a sad fuck to want to destroy that.

Re: The worst dam idea: evaporating the Mediterranean to power Europe

#30
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not the salinity as such that protected Vasa, but the absence of the ship worm, which does not like the Baltic brack water.

TIL. I did go to that museum and I thought that was what they said. What do you mean by "brack water"?

> Brackish water, sometimes termed brack water, is water occurring in a natural environment that has more salinity than freshwater, but not as much as seawater.

> Some seas and lakes are brackish. The Baltic Sea is a brackish sea adjoining the North Sea.

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

Post reply on HN