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There must be myriad unintended consequences that would come with dumping a whole bunch of water into a desert though? It feels like there's an awful lot of hubris in thinking we could accurately predict all the changes that would cause and know it would have a net positive outcome.

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If there are, we should have figured them out by now, since that is the story of California during the 1840s. People redirected a bunch of water to turn the desert into a treasure. Kinda literally, since shortly after they found gold, which destroyed all the positive economic change that was brought.

Or take the Netherlands, that used to be a lot of water and now it is a lot of flat land.

If the Sahara wasn't dry, what would be the knock on effects of losing the dust from it that lands in South America?

The dust, sand, and soil from the Sahara that lands in South American is an enormous source of nutrients and fertilizer for the Amazon rainforest. It would certainly cause vast changes in how that whole ecosystem operates and the impact it makes in other parts of the world.

The knock on effects of those changes to one of the most important and diverse ecosystems on the planet cannot possibly be completely predicted beforehand.

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