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Elfstedentocht

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Re: Elfstedentocht

#121

Post by tverbeure »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #58
armada651 wrote: post #4

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.

Isn't 24 years well past the point of anyone caring? That's a whole generation of people becoming adults without ever experiencing the event. I think after 24 years without Superbowl, Americans would just consider it a historical curiosity, and holding it again wouldn't be a national priority.

I remember the excitement and hype growing as a teenager, back in 1985 when it was about to happen again. Epic stories about 1963, predictions about favorites who spent hours in freezers to prepare, talk about how the winner would become immortal (Evert van Bentem, still remember his name, he won again 2 years later.) It was obviously broadcast live on local TV too.

And that was all just in Belgium.

It’s a huge thing.

Re: Elfstedentocht

#123

Post by trhway »

in the Dutch movie "Kenau" about the 1572 siege of Haarlem and the city women who fought there, there is a scene where the women attack Spanish supply convoy in the fog and they do it riding on skates which naturally afforded them high speed of movement.

Re: Elfstedentocht

#124

Post by ed25519FUUU »

Udik wrote: post #55
armada651 wrote: post #4

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.

It's not the equivalent of the superbowl for the Dutch. It was never a yearly competition to begin with. It was always a very rare and unpredictable event- the 4th edition took place 12 years after the third, and the gap had nothing to do with climate change: it was 1929.

And it sounds like there was the potential to hold it this year but they preemptively canceled it because of covid.

Re: Elfstedentocht

#125

Post by Someone »

berkes wrote: post #115
Someone wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s partly the effect of being an outlier in terms of population density (makes it harder to build wind or solar farms), natural resources (few possibilities for hydro-electricity, for example), and quality of farmland (moving production to poorer grounds often isn’t a net win, globally) There also may be an effect that making Dutch agriculture greener makes it more competitive, increasing output and thus of…

> population density (makes it harder to build wind or solar farms) This is more an excuse than an actual reason. Because the Dutch have large patches of shallow sea: which is ideal for building huge scale windparks that are, relatively cheap. The "ground" can still be used for fishing, so you hardly loose anything. Yet even building parks in sea is met with strong opposition. From wildlife preservation orgs to peopl…

You need height to get ‘serious’ hydro power. In the Netherlands, the Rhine water drops by less than 20 meters across the entire country (ballpark 100km), so I think a 1 m drop already would be optimistic.

So let’s take that 7000m³ and drop it by a meter. That’s dropping 7 million kg of water by one meter, or (if my math is right) about 70 MW of potential energy. You might get somewhat more out by decreasing the speed at which the water flows, but I doubt that would be much (the more you slow the water down, the larger the river downstream has to be)

Also, that’s if you dam the entire river. The Waal is a major river for shipping, so you can’t do that.

Finally, I think 7000m³/s is an outlier. Google gives me 1500m³/s flow rate for the Waal (and, consistent with that, 2000m³/s for the Rhine). So, on average, a system damming of the whole river, requiring all ships to go through locks, would produce about 15MW.

And I think my math is at least in the right ballpark. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beauharnois_generating_station generates “up to 1,903 MW of electrical power”, but it has a water drop of 24 meters, and runs in a river that has an average discharge about equal to that peak of that of the Waal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Lawrence_River: “The average discharge at the river's source, the outflow of Lake Ontario, is 7,410 m³/s”), and, I would guess, is designed for somewhere around that average discharge, dropping surplus water over an overflow system. So, that would account for a factor of 24 (times the height) × 5 (flow rate)

Re: Elfstedentocht

#126

Post by contravariant »

the-dude wrote: post #122
contravariant wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean there's something slightly silly about taxing someone who's income is 100% taxes.

There is more than income tax.

Most of which they're not exempted from, but either way as long as their main source of income is tax money then you could achieve much the same by just giving them less money.

Re: Elfstedentocht

#127

Post by Aeolun »

Denvercoder9 wrote: post #80
Aeolun wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cannot imagine anyone catching covid while traveling at 40 km/h over the ice. The big issue isn't the skating itself, but the logistics at start/finish and the stempelposten with its congestion, as well as the 1 to 1.5 million spectators over a course of 200 km with their parties and alcohol consumption, and the logistics to get everyone there and back (full trains and busses). > It’s basically impossible to get…

I’m extrapolating from my experiences, though I don’t think research disagrees with me here.

Here is the first one I could find: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.04.20053058v...

> We identified only a single outbreak in an outdoor environment, which involved two cases. The first salient feature of the 318 identified outbreaks that involved three or more cases is that they all occurred in indoor environments.

And another: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/medrxiv/early/2020/09/10/202...

> A database of more than 20,000 cases (including the 7,324 Chinese cases) found 461 that were associated with transmission in completely outdoor environments — predominantly crowded events like markets and rallies. (emphasis mine)

Your points about attendant risks are probably true though. People will definitely congregate to drink beer and eat soup, and we’ll have another carnival on our hands :/

Re: Elfstedentocht

#128

Post by berkes »

Someone wrote: post #125
berkes wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> population density (makes it harder to build wind or solar farms) This is more an excuse than an actual reason. Because the Dutch have large patches of shallow sea: which is ideal for building huge scale windparks that are, relatively cheap. The "ground" can still be used for fishing, so you hardly loose anything. Yet even building parks in sea is met with strong opposition. From wildlife preservation orgs to peopl…

You need height to get ‘serious’ hydro power. In the Netherlands, the Rhine water drops by less than 20 meters across the entire country (ballpark 100km), so I think a 1 m drop already would be optimistic. So let’s take that 7000m³ and drop it by a meter. That’s dropping 7 million kg of water by one meter, or (if my math is right) about 70 MW of potential energy. You might get somewhat more out by decreasing the spee…

I deliberately did not talk about damming the river. Doing that would cause a lot of problems for shipping. And my house would flood for sure.

The math is simpler though: potential energy is massXheight. So any one of those can be high. Small hydropower (I built this in Switzerland for fun) using a long pipe and a reversed pump can deliver significant power from a tiny brook, if the height is enough.

If you increase the height of the entire IJsselmeer with 10cm, that is an enormous mass, a gigantic potential energy.

Whether one can economically extract that power is a different issue.

The temp diff is another potential energy. As is the kinetic energy (the water is going really fast!).

We can spend hours debating why things cannot be done, but that has never brought innovation.

Re: Elfstedentocht

#129

Post by Someone »

berkes wrote: post #128
Someone wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need height to get ‘serious’ hydro power. In the Netherlands, the Rhine water drops by less than 20 meters across the entire country (ballpark 100km), so I think a 1 m drop already would be optimistic. So let’s take that 7000m³ and drop it by a meter. That’s dropping 7 million kg of water by one meter, or (if my math is right) about 70 MW of potential energy. You might get somewhat more out by decreasing the spee…

I deliberately did not talk about damming the river. Doing that would cause a lot of problems for shipping. And my house would flood for sure. The math is simpler though: potential energy is massXheight. So any one of those can be high. Small hydropower (I built this in Switzerland for fun) using a long pipe and a reversed pump can deliver significant power from a tiny brook, if the height is enough. If you increase…

IJsselmeer would be storage, not extracting power.

Also, building stuff “for fun” is different from doing things at scale and come out ahead. As you say “Whether one can economically extract that power is a different issue”, but, in this context, IMO of utmost importance.

I don’t think there are easy gains at scale to be had there.

There’s a reason only a few small plants exist (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectricity_in_the_Nether...)

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