Bomb the Arctic, dam the Mediterranean and build a second moon: five outlandish plans to remodel our climate

Automatisch samengesteld met AI uit de vermelde bronnen

In a piece published 5 July 2026, Tim Flannery catalogues five 20th-century geoengineering proposals: Herman Sörgel’s 1930s Atlantropa plan to dam Gibraltar and lower the Mediterranean by 200 metres; a Soviet scheme to melt the Arctic by damming the Bering Strait or excavating 3,000 sq km of the Thompson-Wyville Ridge; Harry Wexler’s idea to use 10 hydrogen bombs on the ice cap; Russia’s 1990s Project Znamya, which deployed reflective satellites to cast a 5km patch of light before abandonment; and Laurie Hogan’s 1979 proposal for a 2,000km-long, 4km-high artificial mountain range in Western Australia. The article notes the Soviet nuclear river-diversion test cleared only 700 metres of canal and halted due to radiation.