Page 223 - James Rodger Fleming - Fixing the sky

7.2 Herman Sörgel’s plan for transforming Africa and the Mediterranean. (rusin and
flit, man versus climate)

engineers dreamed of creating a massive new “Siberian Sea” east of the Ural
Mountains by damming the ob, Yenisei, and Angara rivers, for irrigation of
crops and climate modulation. As recently as 1997, Robert Johnson, a retired geo-
scientist at the University of Minnesota, commandeered the front page of EOS:
Transactions of the American Geophysical Union, to warn that the Mediterranean
Sea was being starved of fresh water because human activities have diverted
the outflow of rivers, mainly the Nile. He called for a dam across the Strait of
Gibraltar to block the outflow of salt water into the Atlantic ocean, paradoxi-
cally making the Mediterranean even saltier than at present. All of this was for
a good cause, however, since his computer models indicated that the mega-dam
would stave off a little ice age in northern Europe while preserving the holy grail
of climate change, preventing the West Antarctic ice sheet from collapsing, and
raising the worldwide sea level by 20 feet. It seems that all current geoengineering
schemes should be able to do this, at least. 44

206 | fearS, fantaSieS, and PoSSibilitieS of Control