(Source: DW)
At first glance, the NEED plan may be unrealistic, but if you break it up and analyze it, you will find that it is actually a more practical choice under the premise of eschatology, especially considering the serious damage caused by sea level rise and population migration.
In terms of budget, the NEED plan estimates that the whole project will cost about 250-550 billion euros. You may have no idea about the amount of money. For comparison, Germany’s GDP in 2019 is about 3,531.5 billion euros, about 10 times this budget. The US military expenditure in 2020 is about 660 billion euros, twice that of this project.
(Photo: Berlin, source: CNN)
Assuming that the project takes 20 years and all 14 countries contribute together, the annual investment in the project will decrease by about 0.1% of GDP. Considering the difficulty and potential function of this project, this budget is acceptable. After all, at the last minute, if the dam is not built, all coastal cities will be destroyed and tens of millions of people will become refugees.
(Photo: British floods, source: telegraph)
From the engineering point of view, among the existing cross-sea dams, Afsluitdijk in the Netherlands can be compared with it. If Holland is the most dam-building country in the world, Afrudek is their greatest work. The dam is 32 kilometers long, separating the huge bay in the east of Amsterdam, with the lake inside and the sea outside.
(Photo: Avrudek Embankment)
Another project is the new Markham seawall in South Korea, with a total length of 33.9 kilometers, which is slightly longer than Afrudek.
(source: wikiwand)
The seawalls of these two projects are more than 30 kilometers long, which is about one twentieth of the size of NEED. And because both the Netherlands and South Korea are building levees along the coast, the depth is shallow, which is about 10 to 40 meters. NEED is really building a dam in the ocean, and the average depth of NEED in Britain and France reaches 85 meters. The average depth of the dam in the Scottish-Norwegian section needs to reach 127 meters, and the Norwegian trench area even reaches 321 meters. No dam so deep has been built in human history.
The highest dam in the world is Jinping I Hydropower Station in Sichuan, China, with a height of 305 meters, which is equivalent to the deepest part of the Scottish-Norwegian section. Of course, this is a river construction, which is much easier than the ocean.
(Photo: Jinping I Hydropower Station)
But the technology of deep-sea construction exists. You know, the Afrudek Dam in the Netherlands was completed in 1933, which is almost 90 years ago. These decades of development have made us make great progress in deep-sea construction. In particular, the experience we have gained in the construction of offshore oil exploration platforms shows that the depth of fixed oil platforms can reach more than 500 meters.
(Source: oil&gas iq)
According to the existing technology, the NEED construction ship can directly drill holes on the sea floor by using the drainage pipeline, and then install steel bars and irrigate concrete inside.
(Photo: Drilling and Irrigation Technology)
Such a complex technology was developed because oil was profitable. It is ironic to think that oil, the chief culprit of sea level rise, has now become a source of technology to protect mankind.
In addition, because there are still a large number of European rivers transporting fresh water outside the dam, the water level inside the dam will naturally increase. In order to keep the sea level inside the dam from rising, NEED will also install 100 pumps with the highest power in the world on the dam to discharge the water inside.
(Source: empowering pumps)
The impact of building such a dam on Europe is self-evident. From all aspects, this is a project that is extremely destructive to the environment.
After the completion of the dam, the inside of the dam will gradually become a huge freshwater lake because it has received fresh water from rivers on the European continent for many years.
(Photo of Avrudek levee: Benthem Architects)
This is undoubtedly devastating to the marine life in it. Most marine animals and plants adapted to salt water environment may die, leaving an extremely fragile ecological environment.
In addition, the dam blocked the internal and external paths, which led to the obstruction of fish migration. The fishing industry in the North Sea will be hit hard, and Norwegian salmon and French oysters will all say goodbye to you.
(Photo: Beihai)
The more horrific effects are unknown. Because the ocean current can’t continue to circulate in the waters inside the dam, we don’t know how the ocean current will change after the dam is completed, and whether it will lead to extreme climate.
(Figure: the influence of NEED on ocean currents)
Dams will also greatly change the geopolitical landscape of Europe.
The English Channel is the busiest waterway in the world and the main artery of maritime transportation. The completion of the dam directly blocked the English Channel channel, and almost all the ports in the Nordic countries (except Norway) will not be able to continue shipping.
(Photo: European Waterway)
The Netherlands, Belgium and Germany have directly changed from maritime countries to inland countries, and the loss of sea ports will have a heavy impact on the domestic economy.
In this regard, NEED plans to build a number of water gates similar to the Panama Canal on the dam to help the freighter leave, but in any case this will greatly affect the shipping efficiency.
Of course, in the world after the sea level rises, these seaports themselves cannot be separated from the fate of being buried.
(Photo: Sea level rise in the Netherlands)
In fact, no matter how it is deduced, the NEED plan has thousands of problems, which affect all aspects from society to ecology. However, in the future when sea level rise has become a reality, this is the best one among all the options before us.
The consequence of not building a dam is large-scale climate migration, and human beings directly abandon coastal areas. Even if the immigration plan goes smoothly, cities like London, Amsterdam and Copenhagen, which have a long history and rich cultural and material heritage, will be completely abandoned and thousands of people will lose their homes.
Therefore, the author of the NEED plan believes that it is better to protect as much as possible than to retreat in the face of disaster.
(Source: reddit)
At present, all European countries have rough plans to deal with sea level rise. In particular, the Netherlands, a country with a large amount of land below sea level, happens to be the country that put forward the NEED plan. However, one of the problems that countries defend separately is that the coastline is too long, and ultimately it is necessary to build a coastal protective wall much longer than NEED.
(Source: wikimedia)
NEED’s idea is to integrate the resources of the whole northern Europe, establish a defense line in the shortest area, and achieve the most economical effect.
Of course, if that day really comes, we will certainly not be limited to this.
The Gibraltar Strait Dam protects the Mediterranean coast.
The Red Sea Dam protects Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
Holmes Strait Dam protects Persian Gulf countries.
China, Japan and South Korea can also cooperate to protect the East Asian coast.
(source: istock)
In the world after the sea level rises, human beings may have to rely on such a cross-sea dam to survive.
We often talk about climate change and global warming. We know that the sea level will rise and the weather will become extreme, but we have never thought about what the world will be like after the end of the world.
This may be the value of this plan today: it tells us that in the future of climate warming, we still need to continue to survive and adapt to the new environment. After all, life will continue and civilization will continue to exist.
(source: BAMPPP)
It will be a very sad society. We tried our best to build a wall hundreds of meters high to protect our city, sacrificing the marine ecology and the original way of life.
Who knows how long we can survive in such an environment. As the sea level continues to rise, can our fence be built higher and higher? Repairing the wall itself is only a temporary solution, not a permanent cure.
(source: phys)
The best way, of course, is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions now and reduce the impact of human activities on nature. I think everyone understands this truth.
However, as a group, human beings are too divided. With the collective action of more than 200 countries, there will always be people who want to choose policies that are beneficial to them and sacrifice the collective interests.
It is certainly easier to organize 14 countries to build a dam than more than 200 countries to reduce emissions together.
The threat of direct submergence is always more real than the change of illusory environment.
The author of the NEED plan said that his original intention was to warn the world of the consequences of global warming, and he did not want his plan to be really adopted.
I hope this is not a flag.