101–110 of 129 posts
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Do you have any source for the historic values of ice thickness? Not questioning it, but I've tried to look around for such a statistic before writing the first comment, but I wasn't able to find anything.
No primary source (although these exist obviously), but the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute has a summary: https://www.knmi.nl/kennis-en-datacentrum/uitleg/ijsdikte-en...
This is kind of the equivalent of the Superbowl for the Dutch, but due to global warming it hasn't been held in 24 years. The previous longest interval was 22 years, so some people are starting to doubt whether it will ever happen again. Imagine if the real Superbowl wasn't held in 24 years due to global warming and may never happen again, perhaps then it would be more of a priority.
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2018/feb/10/sweden-ice-sk...
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And as our prime minister strongly advised his fellow countrymen to avoid travelling abroad unnecessarily last October as the virus spread and our economy took a hit, our king and his royal family sat on their royal arses in a government plane en-route to the private royal holiday home in Greece for a well-deserved royal holiday break. He was already aware of the prime minister's message before he left; he just didn'…
You forgot to mention we pay him a lot of money each year.
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> Imagine if the real Superbowl wasn't held in 24 years due to global warming and may never happen again, perhaps then it would be more of a priority. Given how much of a priority climate change has been in the Netherlands... I don't think so. Though I guess part of it is because it wasn't a guaranteed every-year event in the first place, so it's not that much of a change.
> Given how much of a priority climate change has been in the Netherlands... This is an important point for those who don't live in The Netherlands. NL has done an amazing job of marketing how 'green' they are, but has been really terrible at addressing climate change or even hitting their own climate targets.
There also may be an effect that making Dutch agriculture greener makes it more competitive, increasing output and thus offsetting improvements in efficiency.
But yes, such a rich country that isn’t really dependent on its agricultural output should be able to do more. Stopping fertilizer imports probably would help a lot.
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What sort of heightened security measures? I think nothing of the sort would hamper an Elfstedentocht. The Vierdaagse is also a mass volunteer-driven event and it happens regularly. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Four_Days_Marc...
I mean the sort that tries to make sure that everything possible is done to ensure the safety of the participants. E.g. halos (and many other things) in F1 cars, helmets in baseball, minimizing crosswinds in ski flying, etc.. For Elfstedentocht this could mean making sure the ice is 15cms thick along the entire track, and only starting it if you are 100% sure that this is guaranteed. I would question whether the orga…
I'm unable to find any official decision-making rules, let alone historical ones, but as stated elsewhere it's doubtful that the regulations have got more strict. The event has happened only 6 times in the last 70 years, in any case.
Where it is useful, there is work to control water flow via locks, ice transplantation into weak points, and legal prevention of canal navigation. So, there is also more knowledge and ability to mitigate for safety concerns.
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> no acceptable sources that can prove that Frisia is what most Frisian folk call their province in English That is fascinating, I get why Wikipedia has to be careful with what sources are acceptable, but it produces the weirdest conflicts sometimes. Thanks for correcting me and sharing this!
Don't get me started. There is a town in this province called Grou, which was called Grouw (extra 'w') in Dutch until the Frisian (which was always 'Grou') and Dutch names were made the same thirty years ago. It's only a small town (a village really), so the further you get away from the province, the less known it is. This is fine. In the province of Fryslân many people speak Dutch as the first (or only) language, a…
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It's not worth the risk. The organising committee has ruled out the event happening this year because of Covid and the risk of creating a super-spreader event.
There is no risk. Corona hysteria has gone out of hand. Even here on hacker news. Elfstedentocht is a perfect moment to say goodbye to all Corona measures and get back to normal life and accept that the virus is amongst us.
We can only hope that maybe this year we will have another Elfstedentocht :)
The organisation behind it has already ruled there wont be an event this year no matter how thick the ice gets. But people get the “fever” every time the temperature drops below 0 Celcius. This happens every year, it’s a thing. Also because of next month’s elections some opportunistic/populistic partys are using this event as the hill to die on, hoping to catch some votes and ignoring what people might really be catc…
I cannot imagine anyone catching covid while traveling at 40 km/h over the ice. It’s basically impossible to get outside in the first place (unless you are standing mouth to mouth with someone).
I mean the Netherlands got their first major outbreak thanks to carnaval last year, which is a partially outdoor event. Another one, in the US, the Sturgis motorcycle rally created a big wave in spreading the 'rona (https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6947e1.htm)