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When will the Netherlands disappear?

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Re: When will the Netherlands disappear?

#171

Post by jacquesm »

radicalbyte wrote: post #166
tda wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thing is cat 5 hurricanes happen every year (and are thus not freak storms), just not here. In the parts of the world where these happen, people tend not to live below sea level so even poor islands eventually recover after being hit. Extrapolating form the current climate the probability for cat5 hurricane winds in NL is about zero, cause the mechanisms that cause these kinds of storms don't apply here. But as the c…

The British Isles form a big protection block for the country from the worst weather coming form the ocean. Also, if the sea level rise is caused by ice melting on the North Pole the rises will be countered considerably by the earth's crust rising due to the mass being removed from it. Sea level rises are scary - and are part of the reason I don't live in Amsterdam / Utrecht / Rotterdam - but that shouldn't be the th…

It's a mixed blessing. They also allow water to pool in the channel because it can't really flow out fast enough. And contrary to what you say the dikes are part of the defenses of the country. The Spanish had an interesting experience to that effect.

Re: When will the Netherlands disappear?

#172

Post by jacquesm »

WJW wrote: post #170
jacquesm wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why won't dikes not work?

I wonder about this too. We have several dikes already that are much higher than seven metres. From everything I hear, we're not anywhere near the limits of feasible dike height, not in terms of engineerable strength nor in economic feasability (they're mostly just earth walls, after all).

That, and dikes need not be made of earth, they can have concrete as well.

The biggest risks with dikes are seepage and shifting, especially a problem with old river dikes before we properly understood how to make them.

Re: When will the Netherlands disappear?

#173

Post by dwild »

jacquesm wrote: post #154
dwild wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But long before then you'll see the same in other countries, Italy, the UK, the USA, France, Germany and Spain all have areas that would be much harder and earlier hit than NL because they have no fortifications whatsoever as a starting point and it would take decades to plan and construct them. No one here is arguing whether they can do anything about it. We are arguing about whether the Netherlands can do it. I'm…

The point is that they will disappear long before NL and yet here we are discussing the one country that has spent decades preparing for rising sea levels disappearing.

> that has spent decades preparing

And that's a major part to argue about, whether it's a fight that's worth it or not.

Re: When will the Netherlands disappear?

#174

Post by dredmorbius »

hellofunk wrote: post #94

> disasters such as the 1953 storm that breached the dikes and flooded almost a tenth of Dutch farmland. The disaster killed 1,836 people, destroyed homes and drowned tens of thousands of animals. Wow, never heard about that.

It's shaped much Dutch thinking onwater and risk:

https://invidio.us/watch?v=gY6eio6Eqcg

Also affected Britain:

https://invidio.us/watch?v=vARjm3yHKzY

Re: When will the Netherlands disappear?

#175

Post by edhelas »

3fe9a03ccd14ca5 wrote: post #155
edhelas wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowing that 1/3 of the food produced is wasted ( http://www.fao.org/food-loss-and-food-waste/en/ ) that we consume way more meat than a few decades ago and that we import a lot of cereals, vegetables and fruits from aboard I don't think that blaming the Chinese or Indian people is the way to go. 30% of China production is exported. Growing tomatoes in December in huge greenhouses like you can see in many places in N…

There’s no blame. China is 29% of global CO2 emissions and the Netherlands is 0.47%. There is literally nothing the Netherlands can do to materially affect global CO2 output at this point. The measures put forth are unserious in the face of real data. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_...

It's known that Netherlands only host companies that are in the interest of the environment. One example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Dutch_Shell.

It's super easy to say "look I'm not to blame" when most of what you're doing is not at home.

Except for the intensive agriculture, most of the Dutch activity is in the 3rd sector, services. And in those services you have banks, oil companies, lobbying… (and also tax evaded ones, but that's another topic) that can be considered as the most impacting companies, even CO² wise, in the world.

So please, counting on the fact that Dutchies are not a lot of people and are putting solar panel on their roof is really missing 95% of the topic.

Re: When will the Netherlands disappear?

#176

Post by simplemts »

mcv wrote: post #83
century19 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

^ This. Thank you for the correction and more accurate description.

Re: When will the Netherlands disappear?

#177

Post by rocqua »

sailfast wrote: post #113
jacquesm wrote: post #37

It won't. NL has been preparing quite hard for a rise in sea level and/or worse storms. The port of IJmuiden is being overhauled, the shoreline defenses have all been raised, in some places only about 3 ft, in others much more depending on the likelihood of flooding. A bigger problem is that during an extended period of high water that the rivers won't be able to drain into the North Sea and studies are being made on…

Agreed - I'd say most of the world will be in deeper trouble than the Netherlands since they've been completely ignoring these issues. Most of the coast of Florida comes to mind. The number of homes on small canals that connect directly to the ocean is mind-boggling. Further, in a worst case scenario where you need to lose a lot of arable land, the Netherlands has zoned itself so that you could "afford" to lose that…

The Dutch are somewhere high on the top 10 net international food exporters. In absolute terms

We could lose a lot of farms and still feed ourselves.

Re: When will the Netherlands disappear?

#178

Post by rocqua »

tda wrote: post #165
jacquesm wrote: post #37

It won't. NL has been preparing quite hard for a rise in sea level and/or worse storms. The port of IJmuiden is being overhauled, the shoreline defenses have all been raised, in some places only about 3 ft, in others much more depending on the likelihood of flooding. A bigger problem is that during an extended period of high water that the rivers won't be able to drain into the North Sea and studies are being made on…

Just did a little bit of a napkin calculation, how much energy would it cost to pump the entire flow of the Rhine 2m higher? 2m head difference, 20_000m3/s flow Due to head difference: 1000kg/m3 * 20_000m3/s * 9.8kgm/s2 * 2m = 392MW Accelerating to 5m/s: 0.5 * 1000kg/m3 * 20_000m3/s * (5m/s)^2 = 250MW That is at 100% efficiency. But knowing a modern container vessel has 60MW installed power, and a large coal powerpla…

You'd need to be able to deal with peak-flow to some extent.

Re: When will the Netherlands disappear?

#179

Post by jacquesm »

tda wrote: post #165
jacquesm wrote: post #37

It won't. NL has been preparing quite hard for a rise in sea level and/or worse storms. The port of IJmuiden is being overhauled, the shoreline defenses have all been raised, in some places only about 3 ft, in others much more depending on the likelihood of flooding. A bigger problem is that during an extended period of high water that the rivers won't be able to drain into the North Sea and studies are being made on…

Just did a little bit of a napkin calculation, how much energy would it cost to pump the entire flow of the Rhine 2m higher? 2m head difference, 20_000m3/s flow Due to head difference: 1000kg/m3 * 20_000m3/s * 9.8kgm/s2 * 2m = 392MW Accelerating to 5m/s: 0.5 * 1000kg/m3 * 20_000m3/s * (5m/s)^2 = 250MW That is at 100% efficiency. But knowing a modern container vessel has 60MW installed power, and a large coal powerpla…

The Rhine is 2,000 cubic meters per second, not 20,000.

Re: When will the Netherlands disappear?

#180

Post by jacquesm »

rocqua wrote: post #178
tda wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just did a little bit of a napkin calculation, how much energy would it cost to pump the entire flow of the Rhine 2m higher? 2m head difference, 20_000m3/s flow Due to head difference: 1000kg/m3 * 20_000m3/s * 9.8kgm/s2 * 2m = 392MW Accelerating to 5m/s: 0.5 * 1000kg/m3 * 20_000m3/s * (5m/s)^2 = 250MW That is at 100% efficiency. But knowing a modern container vessel has 60MW installed power, and a large coal powerpla…

You'd need to be able to deal with peak-flow to some extent.

Either he's already worked that in (20K cubic meters per second) or we can correct for it, the normal 'debiet' is about 600 cubic meters per second, the annual average is 2200, the peaks observed are about 12K.
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