"The Sahara desert isn't large enough, let's expand it some more" is quite the take.

people today '' no you can't build this building 15m higher, it disrupts sun and local arhitecture'' people 100 years ago *LET'S DAM THE MEDITERANEAN SEA*

The enviromental impact alone would be crazy. Could you imagine how it would change weather patterns?

That new land would be ridiculously low in elevation, and absurdly, blazingly hot. It would also disrupt pretty much every coastal community in the Mediterranean.

Mr. Sorgel was clearly smoking some seriously good stuff.

In XX century Soviet agricultural megaprojects drained Aral sea, almost killing it. Hundreds of km2 turned into nastiest kind of desert, bringing fierce winds and deadly salty sandstorms to everything around. It was a gigantic disaster. Now it's slowly recovering thanks to doing aftermath on complex hydrology in the region.

You didn't mention the most obvious criticism of such a plan: Creating two shrunken hyper-saline seas at the bottom of the world's newest and biggest death valley which will by proximity cause heating and drying of adjacent former coastal lands lowering precipitation causing desertification would be a disaster rather than of any benefit.

The bottom of a drained Mediterranean would be an uninhabitable deadly desert of death with temperatures over 160°F/71°C due to adiabatic heating, and the changes in weather and precipitation patterns would have horrific consequences both regionally and globally we can't even calculate.

"Sir, I have a cunning plan." "What is it, Baldrick?" "What if we sawed the Rock of Gibraltar in half and dropped it across the Strait? Then we could drain the Mediterranean Sea so any European could walk to Africa." "Or any African could walk to Europe." "I didn't think of that." "Naturally you didn't. Next you'll be suggesting we excavate an underground passage between England and France and call it the Chunnel." "No sir, I'm not that crazy."

The problem with big and ambitious projects is that the bigger they are, the more problems they cause, and more problems there are, the more likely they are not to be solved.

Do you think humanity could build a dam of this size? 🤔

this would drastically affect my fishing season

I'll mention that in 1940, Germany's population was around 70 million, compared to 83 million today. One can imagine that the prospects of 'overpopulation' might have *seemed* very real to people back then - there were fewer high rise buildings/apartment blocks, and food production wasn't as effective as it is today. Anyway, this plan, if realized, would've been a disaster for the planet, flooding other parts of the world, destroying cities and submerging islands, the list goes on.

Death Valley in California comes to mind seeing this video. The place is hot, dry, nice to visit and nice to leave. The world does not need more deserts.

In 1900 there were 140 million people in Africa. The population of Europe at that time was 300 million. Basically he was talking about the unpopulated unused areas of Africa not the overpopulated 1.3 Billion people in Africa today so it wasn't the same issue.

I'd love to see more videos about other unrealized mega-projects from the past, such as the plan to flood the Qatara Depression in Egypt or the plan to build a second Atlantic/Pacific canal in Nicaragua using nukes to dig it.

Imagine all the archeological treasures

It would have turned into a huge desert.

I wonder how long it would have taken to desalinize the now-exposed bottom of the sea to a level suitable for any kind of agriculture.

I am German and have not heard of this project until today. Thanks for the video