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It's a good read but... I don't see the whole point about "From a Dutch mind-set, climate change is not a hypothetical or a drag on the economy, " is a bit wei

• yread 9y ago
  And about half of the country is less than 1m above sea level. The 1953 storm created a surge of 5.6m above mean sea level, about 3.6 above highest tide. Delta Works protects only to about 4m above highest tide. Katrina created a storm surge of up to 8.5m. Luckily tropical hurricanes don't get to the North Sea. Yet.
  • ocschwar 9y ago
    Well, you do have a barrier island named Great Britain to protect against cyclone surges.
    • jacquesm 9y ago
      Yes, but the channel being funnel shaped actually causes the water to be substantially higher at times than it would have been otherwise.
• tda 9y ago
  Current investments in the river and coastline protection ("Ruimte voor de Rivier" and "Zwakke Schakels") are done not only to protect for the current conditions, but also for the anticipated climate change. As an example, the second large expansion for the port of Rotterdam, Maasvlakte2, is at 6m above sea level. The previous one is at 5m. That added one meter has cost a few hundred million euro's extra, but money well spent in my opinion. The foundation of the Maasland Barrier is designed for a storm surge of 6m above mean sea level, even though the gate is currently at 5m above. Thats why it can easily be upgraded. So even though not much is changing in the general publics perspective, for large infrastructure that takes 10 years to prepare and design, and is built to work for 50-100 years, taking into account (expected) climate change has been a necessity for many decades now. On another note, here is a nice point cloud visualization of the entire country: http://ahn2.pointclouds.nl/ http://ahn2.pointclouds.nl/
  • davedx 9y ago
    Interesting visualization, but I don't understand it. I went to Ede, Gelderland (where I live), and while the city itself is mostly blue, the Hoge Veluwe just NE of the city is suddenly yellow (or is it green? I'm color blind), indicating that it's ~45m above sea level. That can't be right, the Hoge Veluwe is on the same level as Ede. What am I misreading? Edit: I think I understand what's happening: the land immediately east and north of Ede is forest, so I guess the increased elevation in the point cloud is trees.
    • jacquesm 9y ago
      No, the Hoge Veluwe actually is that far above sea level. http://elevationmap.net/hoge-veluwe-national-park-netherlands?latlngs=(52.0786694,5.832455799999934) http://elevationmap.net/hoge-veluwe-national-park-netherland... Definitely not the tree tops. That's also why it is called 'Hoge Veluwe' to begin with. (Hoge being Dutch for 'high'). The highest point is 110 m above sea level.
    • tda 9y ago
      you can zoom in to individual tree level. I just did, and can confirm this data includes trees. Also make sure to adjust the colormap min and max to your area of interest. This dataset is the official height measurement of the Netherlands (of a few years ago), made with LIDAR. So it should be accurate to within a few cm.
    • owenversteeg 9y ago
      That's funny, I also went to Ede on the map (I have family that lives there.) The Hoge Veluwe is actually a mix of yellow and green, but the actual trees are yellow. If you put the quality on Ultra the trees are suddenly visible as trees. Also, looking at the scale: Ede is around 20-25m above sea level, the ground of the trees is around 30m above sea level, and the trees are around 45m above sea level. So the trees are around 10-15 meters tall, fairly consistently.
• mcv 9y ago
  How does climate change not matter? It matters more. The country is already vulnerable to floods, which are more likely when weather gets more extreme, and the higher the sea rises, the higher and stronger the dikes and other defenses need to be. And costs of dikes go up with the square of their height, so our costs to protect against further sea level rise are going to be higher than those of other countries. There's already a lot of effort being put in improving dikes and other coastal defenses. Of course this was already happening before rising sea levels were a serious concern, but now it seems that instead of being nearly done, we've barely started. There's no end in sight for the next couple of centuries. Yes, it's a fight that we're used to, but that doesn't mean it doesn't matter. The point of the article simply seems to be that because this is a fight we have experience in, we can make money by exporting our expertise.
• pasta 9y ago
  Climate does matter here! We are expecting a lot more heavy rain fall and rising rivers. That's also why we spend billions on inland water management. In our area they are even discussing "garden pavement taxes". So I don't agree with you that there is no relation to our believes about climate change.
  • Danieru 9y ago
    Sorry could you explain what a "garden pavement tax" is? It sounds interesting but googling gave nothing.
    • raugustinus 9y ago
      Because of urbanization, the paving of gardens, the water does not sink into the ground over large areas. The sewage systems are having difficulty coping with this. Because of this they're thinking about taxing the paving of gardens. There's a municipality planning to do this starting January 2018. https://www.gemeente.nu/ruimte-milieu/minder-groen-tuin-betekent-meer-belasting/ https://www.gemeente.nu/ruimte-milieu/minder-groen-tuin-bete...
      • cr1895 9y ago
        Tangential, but: I'm wondering what the ratio of tiled-over private gardens is to tiled-over public spaces (sidewalks, streets, etc.) which are omnipresent in the NL. I'd guess that the poor drainage relating to the public spaces is much greater than the poor drainage due to private tiled gardens.
        • pchristensen 9y ago
          I don't know about the Netherlands specifically, but in general the amount of land area devoted to public spaces is very small, albeit intensely developed, compared to residential land, which is vast and less intensely developed.
          • 9y ago
• jacquesm 9y ago
  If you visit a place like IJmuiden you'll see that over the last couple of years the various waterworks have been heightened by several meters to account for higher seas. This is a direct response to climate change, the fact that a good part of the country is below sea level definitely adds to the sense of urgency felt to do something about this but we still have 1953 well present in our collective memory to warn us against being complacent. I always explain NL to visitors as a machine rather than a country. The moment you stop the machine or stop maintaining it the sea will begin to reclaim it.
• deleted 9y ago
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• coldtea 9y ago
  >It's a good read but... I don't see the whole point about "From a Dutch mind-set, climate change is not a hypothetical or a drag on the economy, " is a bit weird. Climate doesn't matter here. 1/3rd of the country is already under sea level TODAY. The billions we spend on engineering and developing water defense structures have no relation to our believes about climate change. We are ALREADY beneath sea level! It's quite simple. The argument is not that the Dutch believe more on climate change because they have already dealt with it in the past. Rather it is that for the Dutch the climate change is not a hypothetical, but a very real danger, being as they are already under sea level, that they are more inclined to believe in it and see precautions taken against it as necessary and not as a "drag on the economy".
  • askmike 9y ago
    I think he means the Dutch mindset is more: We don't care whether climate change is happening or not* . We are already below sea level and have been building solutions for our situation for decades. We are not "living" climate change already, we are living in a country below sea level. *We (I am also Dutch) might care about climate change, but that is independent of this infrastructure we already need anyway. Why is this article talking about what we think about climate change only to go into the infrastructure we need regardless of climate change. Article is great but the title is way too clickbait, the content of this article are unrelated of what the Dutch think about climate change..
    • coldtea 9y ago
      >Why is this article talking about what we think about climate change only to go into the infrastructure we need regardless of climate change. Because the infrastructure you "need regardless of climate change" is needed because of reasons that make your country much more sensitive to ocean levels rising from climate change. As thus, the (not related to climate change) need for such infrastructure that you had, makes climate change all the more real and dangerous for you than for someone in Montana. It's like a driver with unstable breaking mechanism in their car (due to it having sustained some previous damage) is much more sensitive to the alert of a snow storm coming. Not because it was some prior snow storm that caused their issue, but because their issue makes it much more dangerous to drive on a snowy road.
• anon1253 9y ago
  Yep, thing that's often overlooked is that the Waddenzee is pretty much a lost cause though, with all the one-of-a-kind flora and fauna that lives there. If the sea rises a couple more centimeters the area will no longer be dry during ebb tide. Go "Wadlopen" while you still can!
  • speleding 9y ago
    On the one hand it's a shame to lose the interesting fauna, on the other hand, the area has been in constant flux over the ages. On December 14th, 1287 the entire area changed in a single day, for example [0]. So there is no reason to expect the current layout to be permanent. Perhaps what we will get next is pretty too. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Lucia%27s_flood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Lucia%27s_flood