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When will the Netherlands disappear?

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Re: When will the Netherlands disappear?

#81

Post by mcv »

raverbashing wrote: post #8

Netherlands has been dealing with flooding even before the US existed. I think they will be fine.

Thanks for the confidence, but the fact that we've been dealing with floods does not mean we will be able to deal with excessive sea level rise. We can probably deal with 1-2 meters of sea level rise, but this article talks about 5+ m in 2300, which means adding another 5 meters to some already very high dikes. And the weight of a dike goes up by the square of its height. Many coastal defenses will have to be completely redesigned.

And if we really can't stop global warming, at some point eastern Antarctica is going to start melting (it fortunately isn't yet), and that's going to add another 30 meters to the sea level. I believe if all the glaciers melt, we'll be at about 60 meters.

At some point we're going to have to put up a dome and call ourselves Atlantis.

Re: When will the Netherlands disappear?

#82

Post by tech-no-logical »

WJW wrote: post #73
tech-no-logical wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you do know the deltawerken were only built with a maximum of 40 cm sea level rise in mind, right ? and we're now thinking of about 100 cm by 2100. true, that does not mean the netherlands will disappear right away, but we will see more flooding than before 1953, especially with extreme weather getting more extreme. so the question is more whether it will be economically viable to keep the land dry. personally, with…

We have seen exactly this scenario before, only this time the expected water levels are a few decimeter to a few meter higher (depending on the time scale). It's not like the delta works are the technological limit to what we can do. At the time, they were designed to meet the expected requirements and no further. If the requirements change, we will rebuild them to the new requirements.

if the requirements say 7 meters (the sea level rise if greenland is ice free) building higher dikes will not work. and although that is a long-term scenario, it is not unlikely. hence the 'not if, but when' in the article.

Re: When will the Netherlands disappear?

#83

Post by mcv »

century19 wrote: post #74
simplemts wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the perspective of an American living in the Netherlands for several years now... The Dutch are light years ahead in their Water management from the US, and far ahead of any other developed nation. The Dutch have a separate tax for Water to ensure money is there to prioritize this need, the citizens/children are all educated on the importance of water management (i.e. Indoctrination from young so EVERY citizen k…

> Highly recommend everyone watch/read about the dam they built in the North Sea. Watch what?

About the Afsluitdijk. It's not really in the North Sea, it's separating the Wadden Sea from the former Zuiderzee, now the IJsselmeer.

Re: When will the Netherlands disappear?

#84

Post by KaiserPro »

blunte wrote: post #17
the-dude wrote: post #14

A couple of months ago, one of the guys running our watermanagement ( https://www.rijkswaterstaat.nl/ ) claimed The Netherlands would sustain 'multiple meters of sea level rise'.

I'm sure the "water shapers" are optimistic given their success thus far. They have done quite well overall. But catastrophic failures tend to be combinations of events, events which individually could be handled.

Its not like they've been doing this since the 1600s or anything.

1953 (and to a lesser extent the floods of the 20s) were a massive wake up call. It isn't just one massive wall that protects the netherlands, its a multitude.

Re: When will the Netherlands disappear?

#85

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

blunte wrote: post #51
teekert wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if us Dutch people stop shitting in our kitchen, we import food from other countries shitting in their kitchen, plus we now have extra fuel to burn to get the food here.

Actually, Dutch export most of their food and turn around and import cheaper food from far away (Spain and Brazil being two common sources). Check it out at the grocery store sometime. It's not so easy to find the nice Dutch produce (the Germans are enjoying it!)

> It's not so easy to find the nice Dutch produce (the Germans are enjoying it!)

Wait, is Dutch produce supposed to be nice? I know that in Germany, Dutch tomatoes are disparaged as "Wasserbomben", and in Romania the Dutch vegetables are the cheap supermarket stuff that you buy if you don’t a chance to pass by the marketplace and buy something locally grown.

Re: When will the Netherlands disappear?

#86

Post by tda »

jacquesm wrote: post #76
tda wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to be clear, I still enjoy and plan on living in the west for a long time. But there are quite a few theoretically possible regime changes that I am aware of (and probably even more that I am unaware of) to make me concerned about it. Any significant regime change (break with historic trends) will automatically invalidate all models/predictions/assumptions about our safety levels. Current design criterion is we…

Sweden and Norway are attractive for many reasons, but I don't think any of this will happen soon enough to impact my life in a meaningful way. I'm 54, I haven't exactly been too careful with this body and if I live to 80 it would highly surprise me. But my children likely will see this in full force and I sincerely hope that by then humanity will have come its collective senses.

I hope you're right, I expect the world to be in a very different place in a few decades and not for the better. I'm still under 40 so I'm keeping my options open; even though the chances are probably very low, the effect is also pretty extreme making the risk (probability * effect) approximately 0 * inf. I estimate the probability to be somewhat higher than 0, so therefore I believe the risk is significant.

Re: When will the Netherlands disappear?

#87

Post by eecc »

blunte wrote: post #51
teekert wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if us Dutch people stop shitting in our kitchen, we import food from other countries shitting in their kitchen, plus we now have extra fuel to burn to get the food here.

Actually, Dutch export most of their food and turn around and import cheaper food from far away (Spain and Brazil being two common sources). Check it out at the grocery store sometime. It's not so easy to find the nice Dutch produce (the Germans are enjoying it!)

Italian immigrant here: let me tell you something. NL may cultivate and export the most mass of agricultural products, but there’s nothing the lit greenhouses you see taking off from Schiphol can do to best the sun scorching the skin of a tomato growing in Puglia. The metabolism it has to crank up 200% to defend against such constant environmental aggression is something irrepetable you can smell and taste.

Re: When will the Netherlands disappear?

#88

Post by charliesharding »

growlist wrote: post #70

NL earns fortunes pumping hydrocarbons, thereby contributing to climate change, thereby forcing itself to spend fortunes defending against climate change. For some reason I'm reminded of Alanis Morissette.

The ironic song about how she doesn't understand the meaning of irony?

Re: When will the Netherlands disappear?

#89

Post by ragebol »

macinjosh wrote: post #69
ragebol wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could be, but would it be fair to only keep your feet dry because you/your country can pay for it?

Life's not fair. Sorry to break the bad news to you.

Oh, I know. But poor countries flooding will have the additional problem of creating a lot of refugees looking to keep their feet dry.

Re: When will the Netherlands disappear?

#90

Post by rnentjes »

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #24
simplemts wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the perspective of an American living in the Netherlands for several years now... The Dutch are light years ahead in their Water management from the US, and far ahead of any other developed nation. The Dutch have a separate tax for Water to ensure money is there to prioritize this need, the citizens/children are all educated on the importance of water management (i.e. Indoctrination from young so EVERY citizen k…

> The Dutch have a separate tax for Water to ensure money is there to prioritize this need Also, the local government bodies that runs this (the 'waterschappen') form one of the oldest democratic systems in the world. > In short, they will be fine. This is a core part of their culture, investment, and priority. It's also one of the things there isn't ever any real political discussion about, it just never comes up. N…

> No one will ever suggest cutting the budget for this.

This is not completely true, farmers have been protesting the increase of this tax: https://www.rtlnieuws.nl/nieuws/nederland/artikel/4942211/we...

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