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Cut Florida in half, blow up Alaska with atom bombs or two icebergs to California, and what do you have? Some of the worst scientific schemes ever!

“Incredibly, these plans were designed by some of the top brains in government and science,” declared environmental researcher Marc Mowrey.

Here, Mowrey says, are the 10 worst ideas in modern U.S. environmental history.

1. Bomb Alaska!
Dr. Edward Teller, a key developer of the atomic bomb, wanted to create a new Alaskan harbor by exploding a series of A-bombs along the state’s coastline in 1962. The bombs were supposed to blow holes into the earth so ocean water would rush in and make an instant port.

2. Blow up Texas!
In 1975, the federal government spent $1 million examining a plan to explode two A-bombs a day in a huge cavern beneath Texas. The idea was that the blasts would super-heat steam, which would drive a giant turbine and provide electricity.

3. Tow icebergs to California!
In 1978, the California Senate approved a plan to tow icebergs across the Pacific to help relieve a state drought. Luckily, the plan later died.

4. Build a dam to flood the Grand Canyon!
A federal official came up with this grand plan in the early 1960s to generate hydroelectric power.

5. Drain almost every river in Alaska, British Columbia and the northwestern U.S.!
The water was supposed to be directed into a reservoir, then pumped into the Mojave Desert.

6. Send nuclear waste to the sun on the space shuttle!
James Schlesinger, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, hatched this wacky plan in 1973. Radioactive waste would be loaded onto the shuttle, then shot into the sun from outer space. Cooler heads nixed the project and prevented a disaster that would have taken place a few years later – when the shuttle Challenger exploded.

7. Dump toxic waste in the middle of the Atlantic!
This plan was hatched in the 1980s, but it was never implemented.

8. Flood Borneo with chemicals to kill mosquitoes!
In the 1960s, the World Health Organization tried to solve that country’s mosquito problem with massive amounts of DDT. The cockroaches ate the DDT, but survived. Lizards at the cockroaches and were eaten by cats. The cats died, leading to an explosion in the rat population.

After millions of rats drove people from their homes, the U.S. finally came to the rescue – parachuting hundreds of cats into the country. They killed the rats and brought everything back to normal.

9. Cut Florida in half!
Some Congressman wanted to dig a canal across the state in the mid-1980s to provide a shipping lane between the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico. Unfortunately, it would have cut off most of the fresh water flowing into the Everglades, turning the swamp into a desert.

10. Pump toxic waste into unused oil wells!
Here’s a terrible program that’s still active in some states. In certain cases, the poisonous waste seeps into porous rock at the bottom of the well and makes its way back into our drinking water.