There are some useful things that we can learn from the Egyptians, both from their history and also from what they have done relatively recently.
(1) We should flood Death Valley.
Next time you are out doing some heavy drinking, be sure to make some hearty toasts to gravity. There are a great many good things that come from gravity, not the least of which being the electricity that can be generated from the gravity-driven force of water built up behind dams. You well know how hydroelectric dams work for us: They stop up a river and build up a reservoir, and the weight of the water behind the dam (weight of things being an effect of gravity) exerts a massive push on the water at the lower levels that is shunted through turbines, which then turn to produce electricity. Using water dams for electricity can be a good idea in some locations because it involves natural forces that don’t produce a whole lot of pollution.
Now the familiar massive dam isn’t the only way to make use of water and gravity for electrical generation; there is a similar set-up applied on a smaller scale called low-head hydroelectric. This is just another way of getting things done with the same materials and forces. One method for this form of hydroelectric generation is putting a turbine in the middle of a river and just letting the normal river flow run it. Its gravity doing the work here because its gravity that makes water flow in a river down to the sea, going from a higher elevation down to sea-level. Another method for low-head hydroelectric involves building a mini-dam, one much smaller than normal, and diverting water into a pipe with a steep downward slope quite a ways away from that mini-dam, which pipe gets smaller and smaller to build up a huge pressure over the drop and the distance, and this pressure drives turbines. With this method you can get a large amount of force out of water without a huge, dominating dam structure. Using this method for generating electricity could be a good idea in a lot of locations too, as it uses a relatively clean natural source without large construction disturbances.
Now when considering new and different ideas or plans, before going through the stages to test them out and see whether they may be worthwhile or not, it’s a good idea to take a cue from the Egyptians and what they have done. For anything that anyone is considering doing, the Egyptians probably thought of it first and tried it out first, since they’ve been around for a long time, and have been writing things down as they learned them. Besides being the first or at least one of the first to have a written and alphabetic language, they were at or near the first with other highly valuable innovations like agriculture, wind-powered ships, the brewing of beer, the distilling of high-proof alcohol, and polytheism. (As far as religion goes, you will recall from ancient history that the Greek gods were pretty much copied directly from the Egyptian ones, which means that Western religions pretty much originated from the original Egyptian religion. By the way, of course also remember that the major religions Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are all Eastern religions.)
Another obvious body of knowledge that the Egyptians have built up over time concerns the value of rivers and how to make use of river water flows, due to their experience with the Nile. Over the course of centuries, they have built up extensive knowledge of diverting water from the Nile River into irrigation and transportation uses, using canals and small dams. They also had the idea of building large dams in the upper reaches of the Nile to attempt to even out the flow of the river somewhat, as it has a habit of flooding a bit too much. And of course, they have been able to do this on a large scale with the dam at Aswan, but that’s only recently.
Another plan that the Egyptians have mulled over, but that they haven’t gotten around to executing yet, is taking advantage of a low patch of land that they happen to have which could be really useful to them. Specifically, this is the famously low-lying area called the Qattara Depression, the lowest point of which is about 436 feet below sea level. One way to take some advantage of this piece of land is to use it for generating electricity by means of the low-head hydroelectric method. This could be accomplished by digging canals and/or boring tunnels between the Qattara and the Mediterranean Sea, which canals and tunnels could be built in such as way as to gradually constrict water flow and build up a high pressure force over distance. And its this water force over distance, driven by gravity, that could be useful. The result of digging these canals and tunnels would be a flow of water from the Mediterranean to the Qattara due to the fact that the depression is well below sea level. The Qattara would fill up, and the result would be a new lake with a maximum depth of 436 feet. But of course things wouldn’t stop there just like that, just with a new lake. The environs of the Qattara Depression are fairly harsh in the sense that its really hot there, and entire area (not to mention the Sahara Desert as a whole) is subject to dry wind currents. The heat of the area and the dryness of the air would cause a significant amount of evaporation from this new lake. This evaporation would create a gravity gradient between the Mediterranean and the Qattara so that the surface of the new lake would almost always be below sea level. But this means that there would be a continuous flow of water into the lake from the sea; it wouldn’t just fill up and stop there.
Its that continuous flow of water from the sea to the new lake that could be really useful for electrical generation using the low-head method. In this particular case, the coast of the Mediterranean at sea level acts as a dam, just like a massively constructed dam but without the construction. Pipes and/or canals from the sea would serve to hold electrical turbines and keep them supplied with a flow of water, and the evaporation of water from the new lake would create the gravity gradient that would maintain that flow from the sea to the lake. The net result would be continuous electrical generation, and a large new lake as a bonus.
The particular case of the Qattara Depression isn’t the only location where there is land below sea level that could be used in this way. Another place would be the area of the Dead Sea of Israel and Jordan, being about 1,290 feet below sea level. Another obvious place would be one in the US, the area of Death Valley, the lowest point of that area being about 282 feet below sea level. The one major point in favor of flooding Death Valley for hydroelectric purposes is that the rate of evaporation of the new lake would be very high, it being common to find very high surface air temperatures there. That high temperature and resultant high rate of evaporation would mean a high gradient between the Pacific Ocean (or Gulf of California, or both) and any lake there, which would compensate for it being quite a ways away from the sea water sources. The other advantage of this location on just electrical generation considerations would be that it is close to some areas of large electrical demand, namely Southern California, and would help to satisfy some of that region’s demand for electrical power from non-polluting, renewable sources.
Additional advantages to flooding Death Valley in this way would be these:
(a) Because of the high rate of evaporation from the resulting new lake, there could be an increase in rainfall over an extensive area, which would help with agricultural irrigation without using groundwater, which is hard to find in that region. Now its possible that the water vapor from evaporation from the new lake would not travel very far away from the new lake area, as that area is hemmed in by some mountains. If that were to happen, the rainwater from this local evaporation could always be captured and piped somewhere where it could be useful. The net result of this would be a massively large, natural desalination plant as a result of this new lake, which would be useful for the region.
(b) All surface water and especially sea water contains all kinds of useful dissolved minerals, not just the obvious salt, and the evaporation of it has long been used as a technique for the mining of those minerals. The obvious example of that process is the use of the Dead Sea, a place that has been mined for minerals for a long time, so we know that works. This could easily be accomplished in the Death Valley case by separation of seawater inflows into evaporation areas, allowing the build-up of minerals, and then allowing those separate areas to dry completely and make the mining easy. So an added bonus to this flooding would be some valuable mining resources.
(2) Lessons from an incident at the Suez Canal.
People living in Europe over the centuries have seen a lot through the years, and some of these things have involved some dire crises. A long time ago, the people of the European side of the Mediterranean had been happy to go about whatever they did, and stayed in peace with those around them, for the most part. But then along came some trouble in the person of a Greek then living in Asia Minor, who got it into his head that it would actually be a good idea to go out and “destroy a great empire,” not realizing that this meant his very own empire rather than that of his rival to the East. Once this guy started this trouble and got hurt bad from it, this rival to his East decided to exact some payback on the Greeks as a whole, maybe with the idea that, sooner or later, those Greeks were going to do more of the same kind of trouble. And so resulted what we call the Persian Wars, invasions of Greece by the Persian Empire; the first being stopped at Marathon in 490 BC and the second with battles at Salamis in 480 and Plataea in 479.
One thing about invasions and the crises that result from them is that they are both tiring and annoying, and have a tendency to make people think that something ought to be done that may stop them from happening further. And these also give people the idea that, if they were able to call the shots, set the rules, make the calls as to what is done in the world, threats can be shut down before they get any momentum behind them, and so invasions can be avoided.
And so many Greeks of this time got this idea: Now that we have put a stop to this invasion of our land business, maybe its time to start some invasions of our own, not only as payback for what has been done to us, but to show them out there that we should be respected, and maybe even get us to the point where we will be calling the shots out there in the world as a whole; and that this point would be nice place to be. The basic plan to do just this was put together by the Macedonian king Philip II (“The One-Eyed”) and carried out by his son Alexander III (“The Great”). Once that plan was carried out, the Greeks were able to call the shots and make the rules and were able to have security, prosperity, and respect as a result.
Now this condition wasn’t necessarily upset by the fact that, soon afterward, the Greek world was swallowed up by the Roman one. Roman control actually just extended Greek society by essentially adopting it as a big part of its own society. From there on for long hundreds of years the Greco-Roman society had the idea that they called most of the shots in the world, and that Greater Rome and being a Roman citizen were things that inherently demanded respect from everyone, and that security and prosperity resulted from this.
This desirable state of affairs ended up being a little unsettled from invasions by the upstart German tribes throughout the 300-400 AD’s. But in a sense that proved to be a temporary setback at worst, as most of these Germans were actually more than willing to jump on board with the whole Team Europe concept. When the Roman Empire was conquered by the German tribes, all things Roman didn’t just disappear just like that; all things Roman just become part of the start of a whole new thing, an alliance between what was left of Greater Rome and the Germans. Eventually this alliance became formalized in the person of Charlemagne of the Franks (who, ironically, were Germans). So as far as the pre-existing Greco-Roman society was concerned, it didn’t take long to get back to calling the shots in the world again; and this time they had even more Europeans on their side to help them do that.
But then came some more serious crises in the form of other invasions that strung out over a long time. These were from groups like the Huns, the Mongols (at least in European Russia), the Magyars, and the Moors (who controlled a big part of Spain all the way up to 1492). And then the worst of them all, the Ottoman Turks, who got their start in direct control of some parts of Europe in 1453 and then just kept on going, and had to be stopped hard at Vienna in 1529 and then again in 1683.
However serious these problems were, the European attitude was that these invasions were temporary hiccups that disrupted the normal for just a little while. After a wave of trouble it was just a matter of time for them to again think that its time to put an end to this invasion business and get back to normality. So the history of a great many of the European actions all the way up through the 1800’s was one of reaction to this invasion-induced crisis business, not only pushing back against them but also getting some payback, and then also to achieve the re-establishing of long-run normal conditions, where they call the shots in the world, and as a result be stable and prosperous and respected. And this is something that, for the most part, they were able to do.
This would have been good for Europe if it had lasted, but they ended up doing a lot of internal squabbling that fundamentally weakened their position. Starting with the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 (that’s when the French attacked the newly-formed German Empire), which led to the big World War I and then World War II, they just repeatedly shot themselves in the foot. By badly hurting themselves, they left the door open for others to step into the role of calling the shots in the world. One of the main triggers for different people to be calling the shots occurred through an incident with the Suez Canal.
The isthmus of Suez is that narrow strip of land that connects Africa and Asia, with the Mediterranean Sea on the north and the Red Sea on the south, and has been known for a long time as a valuable location. Long before anyone thought of digging a canal on it to connect the waters, people in the area were making a good business out of portaging stuff across it. Numerous canal projects were tried or planned, at least from the Red Sea to the Nile River, until finally, in 1869, a French and Egyptian joint venture managed to complete a full canal project straight across the isthmus. The canal had a high value to the wide world, making many shipping trips shorter, and to the Europeans especially, as it makes the Mediterranean even more valuable than it already was. Later on, the British bought into the deal and even later ended up getting political control of the region, but this didn’t change anything of the value of the canal.
However, some problems cropped up in 1956 when the president of Egypt, Nasser, looking to play two rival sides against each other and gain advantages from both, seized control of the canal. Once done, Nasser then started dictating who was to use it and who was to be banned from it. That really got people worried, as this banned list could soon include anyone Nasser decided not to like. So the British and French together decided to shut that whole problem down by a military action, invading the canal zone and re-taking total control.
The big problem with this military action is that it took place against a background that involved much bigger factors, which included the fact that Nasser was aligning himself with a big new friend in the form of the Soviet Union. The Soviets were not expected to stand by and let their new friend get pushed around like this, so unless something was done to defuse the situation, this incident could bring to pass a great many bad things. Essentially, two groups of rivals were lining up on sharp sides, with a hair-trigger situation in between them, and it started to look like 1914 all over again, and the new situation could escalate just like the old one did. The one person who saw that clearer than anyone was the US president Eisenhower, who took some dramatic steps that forced the Europeans to detach and withdraw completely from the canal. This action by Eisenhower, however, could not possibly be done without stepping on European toes in a big way; the Europeans were going to look at this as a betrayal by an ally. At the very least, they felt like they were pushed into the background because of a new state of affairs in the world, where it looked like the US was calling the shots now.
And that only got worse. With this Suez Canal incident and then the Soviet invasion of Hungary later the same year (1956), the Europeans were definitely pushed into the background, when the real standoff between the US and the USSR began. And this big problem situation dominated the political status of the Europeans from there onwards, and they definitely were not calling many of the shots then.
But just like any other situation whether good or bad, this one eventually changed. With the fall of the Berlin Wall and then the USSR entire soon afterward, the background conditions changed, and no longer was there a big looming standoff that overshadowed all other concerns. This changed background opened the door for the Europeans to re-claim what they will consider a long-run, normal state of affairs, with them having a big role in calling the shots in the world. Overall, the expectation should be that the Europeans will look at the last 60 years or so as a temporary aberration in world affairs, and will try to get themselves back into the normal swing of things. Now the fact that the Europeans have bungled a few world events they have recently tried to get involved with, like for example the civil wars in Syria and Libya, isn’t going to change this as a general attitude; they can be expected to keep trying in other places.
Another significant end result of this adjustment is that the US, whether it wants to or not, whether it plans to do so or not, cannot avoid experiencing a decline in geopolitical influence. And as a result of that, the experience that the US has had in its role over the last 60 years, as the leader of the Western alliances and things like that, will have to be recognized as just a temporary one.
(published 9/29/20)
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