Off the coast of Libya, install a series of nuclear reactors. Don't tell anyone. This has to be done at night.

Across the straits of gibralter, install a hydroelectric dam. This may take a bit longer, you will need to distract the population with another game of thrones series.

Initially the tides, then a later drop in water levels, will provided electric power. Drop underwater lines to the nuclear reactors to provide backup power for cooling and regulatory systems.

At each reactor, is a pump and a nozzle that can shoot water throughout the troposphere.The prevailing winds in this area are northeasterly; the winds will distribute the atomized spray and fish-based nutrients across the western sahara.

Once this runs for 25-50 years, turn it off, dismantle the nuclear reactors, and retire to the lush jungles of Tamdjert, letting the refilling of the Mediterranean keep your lights on at night.
-- mylodon, Oct 18 2022

Nuclear Desalination https://world-nucle...r-desalination.aspx
A solution to every problem. [mylodon, Oct 19 2022]

Great Green Wall https://www.greatgr...ut-great-green-wall
"The Great Green Wall is an African-led movement with an epic ambition to grow an 8,000km natural wonder of the world across the entire width of Africa. A decade in and roughly 15% underway [...]" [aniola, Oct 23 2022]

//atomized spray and fish-based nutrients // ... and salt.

Good luck growing lush jungles in salt.
-- pertinax, Oct 18 2022


much easier to tow icebergs. and quite likely to be needed
-- theircompetitor, Oct 18 2022


If you were to dig all the sand out and take it away the water would just flow in naturally under gravity, no need for the spraying thing.
-- pocmloc, Oct 18 2022


But where would you put it all? The sand.
-- whatrock, Oct 18 2022


I don't see why there is a problem where to put the sand. Think about it logically. A grain of sand is very tiny. If you go to the beach and come home with a grain of sand on your shoe and it falls off onto your carpet, it vanishes because it is so small.
-- pocmloc, Oct 19 2022


Ah but that sand grain doesn’t vanish. After a protracted series of unlikely events, it ends up in your stomach where it gradually turns into a type of pearl over many years. Jeff Bezos collects these human stomach pearls and has a long corridor with hundreds of them mounted in brightly lit glass cases.
-- xenzag, Oct 19 2022


Don't tell me that, tell [whatrock], they were the one with the bee in their bonnet about what to do with individual grains of sand.

Anyway it strikes me that if there is such a demand for them from wealthy people the entire process (of digging all the sand out from the Sahara) could be cost-neutral or even turn a profit.
-- pocmloc, Oct 19 2022


You may be interested in Las Gaviotas, Colombia. Read up on it or just check it out on a map. They reforested a patch of desert.
-- aniola, Oct 23 2022


That was very interesting. Maybe terraforming does need a gentler hand then dumping a sea of water on sand.

Certainly the Salton Sea isn't the loveliest place.
-- mylodon, Oct 26 2022



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