Change the World

My idea is to change the face of the world. It would be big and it could help a lot of people. But there are many challenges to face.

But I'll just get to the point. The Saraha Desert is about as big as the United States. But it would be kind to say it's sparsely populated. (http://na.unep.net/globalpop/africa/Appendix_6e.html) A glance at a population map makes this quite clear. The highest concentration of people are in, obviously, places with a large concentration of water. Water is life.

So my idea is to change the face of the Sahara. A large canal from Tunisia through Algeria, in between the Atlas Mts. and Ahaggar Mts. I figure that would be the easiest in terms of elevation. (http://www.mapsofworld.com/physical-map/africa.htm) It would bring saltwater from the Mediterranean Sea to the Eastern half of the Sahara.

Now this doesn't in itself bring usable water to the desert. What I'm hoping is it first helps stabilize the temperature swings around it. So you don't bake and freeze in the same day. Second, I think the evaporated water from the canal would allow usuable freshwater. Third, it could become a transportation system through the Sahara.

Now the problems I can think of off the top of my head are as follows. The influx of water in a desert would probably just create floods. I hope this can be solved with modern agriculture techniques. Maybe introduce trees and ferns that could handle the changing enviroment enough to fight floods. Or maybe man made sink h***s to collect the flood waters and use it as a lake? I don't know, but I'm open to suggestions.

Also the location could be a problem. If Tunisia and Algeria wouldn't want to play, then maybe the western sahara would be a better starting location? The reason I picked the two countries I did was for elevation based on an elevation map from Google, and because a water canal into the middle of northern Africa from the Mediterranean Sea seemed like it would be useful. At least as far astransportation was concerned. If there is a better location, let's discuss it.

And then there's construction. Can a canal built in/on the desert even work? Would it just get clogged by the sand? Would it sink? This wouldn't even turn out to be the world's longest canal, as I believe China's grand canal is a little less than 1000 miles. So the size is certainly possible.

I'm sure there are more problems and solutions I haven't even begun to think of. That's why I present this idea to Evoke. We can change the world.