Qattara Depression: Can We Fill It?

Humanity will halt sea level rise in the next century. But how will we lower it back down? This is an introduction to the West Sea, codenamed Project Endor. The West Sea megaproject will be the largest artificial lake in the world. It takes advantage of the Qattara Depression, an area of land that lies below sea level which, when filled, will hold enough water to lower global sea levels 3mm. It will erase an entire year of sea level rise from the record, and then kickstart an ecosystem revival cascade, fundamentally altering the climate of Egypt and the surrounding areas for years to come. Recorded July 27th, 2020 [TIMESTAMPS] 0:00 Introduction 0:34 What is the biggest threat to our civilization? 1:44 What can we do with the extra water? ———— 3:28 Candidates for seawater relocation 4:57 The Danakil depression 6:23 The Qattara depression 7:19 The West Sea proposal ———— 9:15 Impact 1: Direct water storage 10:22 Impact 2: Heat sequestration 12:56 Impact 3: Greening of the Sahara/Sinai 15:07 Impact 4: Seawater mining ———— 19:14 Envisioning the West Sea 22:43 Wrap-up [QUOTES] 1:16 “One percent of humanity lives within one meter of sea level. That’s a lot of people. Those are our cities and our towns and our ports. That’s where all of human infrastructure is — our global connection to trade, to resources, to languages and religions — all of that is near the ocean. It’s on the coast. And so a small rise in sea level will disproportionately affect the human species more than any other species on this planet.” ———— 5:55 “A very long time ago, this was a lake just like the American Great Lakes, just like the Caspian sea, just like those other places I showed you. This was a lake! The difference is, it is dried out. So! We have here a prime candidate — it’s close to the shore, it’s massive, and it might be able to make a difference in helping us fight sea level.” ———— 9:41 “We will actually lower the sea level by about 3 millimeters. We’re going to fit all of that into a little lake in the Egyptian desert. That’s an entire year [of sea level rise] we can erase from the record.” 10:10 “That is the volume of Niagara Falls.” 11:40 “The ground will cool off that water as it flows through. We’re actually going to take the hottest water in the Mediterranean and channel it, and store all of that [heat] in the ground, here beneath this plateau.” 12:20 “So we’re actually going to be cooling the PLANET just by drilling a little tunnel and sending some water through it.” 14:47 “There are actually ancient riverbeds on this entire peninsula [the Sinai Peninsula]. This area used to get regular rainfall. 6,000 years ago this area was green like the savannah.” 15:31 “The ocean has every element on Earth dissolved into that water — it’s just spread out. You need a lot more water to get the same amount of resources. However, if you do the math, there is a LOT of water on this planet.” 17:15 “This is our filtration system for the world’s oceans. We can pull out tons and tons of resources from the ocean, in extremely large volumes … enough to sustain entire economies.” 18:53 “Seawater mining is a revolution in eco-friendly resource acquisition, because there’s no destroyed environments. We don’t have to chop up a rainforest to mine this metal in this part of the world. We don’t have to use toxic acids to draw veins of resources out of the rock.” ———— 20:25 “It won’t take long, because this is the desert and it’s very hot, that it will start to evaporate, and when it evaporates we will get rain — the first rain some of the Sahara desert has seen in thousands of years.” 21:07 “It’s not going to be that hard to change the face of the Sahara desert. It’s ‘Just add water’.” 21:28 “This, and I want to stress this to you, is bigger than you can imagine. This goes on TO THE HORIZON. When you are standing on the shores of this lake it will feel like you are standing on the shore of the ocean.” 22m48s “We are going to build the sixth largest lake in the world. It’s going to store water, it’s going to store heat, and it’s going to store carbon. It’s going to restore a six thousand year old ecosystem. It’s going to be a breakthrough in environmentally friendly resource acquisition. And on top of all of that, it’s going to be beautiful.”