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When will the Netherlands disappear?
- criddell 7y agoWhen will Florida disappear? As I understand it, no system of dykes and barriers will work due to the porous ground.
- growlist 7y agoNL 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.
- charliesharding 7y agoThe ironic song about how she doesn't understand the meaning of irony?
- growlist 7y agoSome argue her mistaken take on what's ironic is intentional, and the true irony of the song.
- thdrdt 7y ago(I'm Dutch) My original post: The strange thing is that all the weight of the ice is pulling our area down. When all that ice melts our area will be lifted up. So we won't notice much difference. Edit: some facts are that the sea level at the west coast of north America has dropped and the sea level above Australia has risen. Sea levels are not as 'level' as you might think. By the way: I'm not saying we should not worry and nothing is going on. After looking more into it I must say the above is not true. Our area is just outside the 'dent' of weight of the ice. So our area is likely to go down a little when the ice melts. It has more to do with the gravitational force of the ice mass. In our area the ice is pulling the sea towards it so the sea levels are higher. When this mass melts the sea levels in our area will go down.
- Grangar 7y agoThis is the first time I hear about this. Do you have a source for it?
- bcraven 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-glacial_rebound https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-glacial_rebound
- rb808 7y agoThere is a big gravity effect with ice sheets attracting water. If/when Greenland melts, water levels nearby will drop a lot, NW Europe might even fall too. https://sealevel.nasa.gov/understanding-sea-level/regional-sea-level/ice-mass-loss https://sealevel.nasa.gov/understanding-sea-level/regional-s...
- bcraven 7y agoEustatic change is much faster than isostatic change though. In a few thousand years you might be alright but you'd have been wet for millennia.
- mnsc 7y agoYeah, but that is one glorious millennia of getting to ignore climate change and keep burning dinosaurs like it's no tomorrow! Wroom!
- tsimionescu 7y agoI think that's the other way around - you get to drown now, but boy oh boy, you'll sure have a happy time come next millennium!
- perfunctory 7y ago> In our area the ice is pulling the sea towards it so the sea levels are higher. When this mass melts the sea levels in our area will go down. Isn't it the other way around? "The Antarctic ice sheet is also so large that it exerts a gravitational pull on the oceans: As it shrinks, sea water will redistribute away from the South Pole, causing an additional rise."
- adventskalender 7y agoAm I the only one who gets angry at stupid "mood setting" in such articles? It leads with the picture of an abandoned settlement that has turned to marshland, only to reveal that it was deliberately given over to the sea. Why should I read on after they wasted my time with that imagery? As for Netherlands being flooded, I suppose that threat has existed since the early day of its existence.
- empath75 7y agoIt wasn’t given back to the sea because they were tired of having all that extra farmland. They are strategically giving up on some parts to preserve others.
- adventskalender 7y agoThen they should say so in the article. All it says is "The Noordwaard polder was one of 39 such areas selected for the Dutch government’s “Room for the River” program, in which land was given back to the water." Shame on the Dutch government for the euphemism, too, I guess. Afaik it is nothing new that the sea claims land that was previously settled on. The destruction of Rungholt in the 14th century is a famous example that comes to mind.
- mannykannot 7y agoThe point is that it is an example of an issue that is going to become much more pressing. Considering a 14th. century event without regard to what has changed since then (technically, economically and environmentally) is not very informative.
- adventskalender 7y agoWhy not? If such things have happened before, it seems dishonest to use such imagery to conjure a scenario of doom. Maybe the risk is now higher, more frequent, different, whatever. Fine, then tell me so, show me the numbers. I don't want to be manipulated with emotional imagery. I want to be informed. I don't read the news for entertainment. I mean yeah I do, but I actually want to read it for information.
- Proven 7y agotldr: it won’t
- raverbashing 7y agoNetherlands has been dealing with flooding even before the US existed. I think they will be fine.
- simplemts 7y agoFrom 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 knows how important it is). Highly recommend everyone watch/read about the dam they built in the North Sea. In short, they will be fine. This is a core part of their culture, investment, and priority.
- century19 7y ago> Highly recommend everyone watch/read about the dam they built in the North Sea. Watch what?
- Aaargh20318 7y ago> 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. No one will ever suggest cutting the budget for this. It's just something we all agree needs to be done so we just do it.
- mnsc 7y agoHej, kollade på din historik och utgår från ditt användarnamn att du är en landsfrände. Du verkar vara arg på saker. Mår du verkligen bra? Ska du verkligen vara ute på internet och skriva om de saker som gör dig arg?
- adventskalender 7y agoSorry I don't speak Swedish. But according to Google translate - don't we all waste too much time on the internet? It's really sad that HN now is more likely to darken my mood than to be an enjoyable experience, though.
- the-dude 7y agoA couple of months ago, one of the guys running our watermanagement ( https://www.rijkswaterstaat.nl/ https://www.rijkswaterstaat.nl/ ) claimed The Netherlands would sustain 'multiple meters of sea level rise'.
- blunte 7y agoI'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.
- the-dude 7y agoThat is pure speculation.
- blunte 7y agoHumans have quite a history of trying to keep the sea out of their land, and that history has plenty of big failures. It all goes well until it doesn't, and then it's a big deal. It doesn't require speculation to recognize this pattern, even if we can't predict the failure events accurately.
- the-dude 7y agoDo you have any specific examples of this ? ( I know of the 1953 flood, a combination of high tide and storm ). But if there is plenty, I really would want to know.
- yread 7y agoUh, are you asking for examples of flooding? Consider this: Delta Works and the rest of ocean polders are built to withstand something like 5m above mean sea level. Katrina caused a storm surge 8.5m above mean sea level. Granted, North Sea isn't quite like Gulf of Mexico (yet) But there is absolutely a chance that a storm comes next year that would breach it
- thesimp 7y ago3 out of the top 5 dredging firms are from the Netherlands and one is from Belgium, right next door. The Netherlands will be fine. Actually the Netherlands will make bank selling water management knowledge to others.
- classicsnoot 7y agoI have to imagine soon, given that we are about to pass the third, impassable deadline for saving the world from climate change (2020).
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- blunte 7y agoI find it a bit ironic given the MIT climate simulator on HN yesterday - the biggest impact (in that simulator) to climate change was the land/agriculture methane. Right now the Dutch farmers are again harassing the country with their tractors on public roads, angry about what they feel is undue pressure to reduce their emissions. Maybe they'll get one or two more generations of farming as they hasten their own demise. Meanwhile, since NL has failed significantly to meet EU (nitrogen) emissions requirements - almost entirely because of mass agriculture - there's a freeze on building housing, roads, etc. Oh and the country-wide max speed limit will be limited down to 100kph starting Jan 1 (which I don't mind so terribly, but many people do mind). So basically, the commercial farmers are ruining this country (and contributing to ruining the planet), and being jerks while doing so.
- edhelas 7y agoCan we also mention that most of the electricity in NL is made with coal and gaz, what a green country. https://www.electricitymap.org/?page=country&solar=false&remote=true&wind=false&countryCode=NL https://www.electricitymap.org/?page=country&solar=false&rem...
- blunte 7y agoAt least I'm seeing a lot of solar being installed. Granted this isn't the best country for solar, but it helps.
- mcv 7y agoYeah, we've really been in the back of the pack on green energy. When you see how much countries like Denmark and Germany have been investing in clean energy, it's embarrassing how little we've done. Fortunately our eternally right-wing government finally seems to realise that something should be done. Let's hope they actually do.
- edhelas 7y agoInvesting in renewable energy doesn't mean that you'll drastically reduce your CO² emissions. You have to take into account the capacity factor of what you install https://jancovici.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/load-factor.jpg https://jancovici.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/load-factor... You need to install 3 to 4 times more windmill and solar panel to approach the same output. You also need to install huge way to store your electricity (mostly using damns, hard to get in places where you don't have mountains such as NL) and you need to invest the double into the electricity infrastructure to transport this electricity (your windmill will produce most of the time at 10-20% of it capacity, but the day it produces 90% you still have to transport it, therefore your grid need to be oversized for the average usage). Solar panels are mostly coming from China and need to be changed each 20-30 years (they are loosing efficiency after a few decades). Windmills need to be changed each 20 years (lots of mechanical stress involved), and are mostly impossible to recycle (https://www.livingcircular.veolia.com/en/industry/how-can-wind-turbine-blades-be-recycled https://www.livingcircular.veolia.com/en/industry/how-can-wi...). Also, to install windmills you need to put a lot of concrete in the fields as a base, concrete that is emitting also a lot of CO² to produce. As a result you'll still have a non-controlled electricity production, where prices will vary a lot and where maintenance costs will stay really high decades after decades. It's not only about investing, it's also about maintaining something that works through the years.
- tiku 7y agoWe will just build bigger dykes.
- macinjosh 7y agoFinally, a real solution to climate change.
- wsc981 7y agoThus solving the problem once and for all ...
- paulddraper 7y agoA historically very real and very effective solution to rising sea levels.
- jacquesm 7y agoIt 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 how to deal with that, the 'room for the river' ("ruimte voor de rivier") plan is one of many ways in which change can be made. Other options are to use the IJsselmeer as buffer storage and to vastly increase pumping capacity. https://www.ruimtevoorderivier.nl/ https://www.ruimtevoorderivier.nl/ https://www.gemalen.nl/gemaal_detail.asp?gem_id=264 https://www.gemalen.nl/gemaal_detail.asp?gem_id=264 (Photo 4 is particularly interesting, that's one of three such pumps, and this is an old one and now relatively small, it is one of many such pumps) The alarmist tone of the article is a bit strange, if there is a place where I feel safe with respect to water it is here, there is an extensive network of canals, pumps, monitoring and reserve capacity on just about everything to deal with water and flooding. Compared to how other countries fare (annual news from France, Germany, Spain and elsewhere shows extensive damage) we do pretty good here. Of course on large time scales there is a real risk and it will cost a small fortune to deal with all that but with dikes as a well understood mechanism to keep the see out and one of the wealthiest nations on a per area basis it would highly surprise me if NL were the worst hit. Consider another angle: if the problem had not been dealt with successfully in the past this country would not even exist today.
- tech-no-logical 7y agoyou 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 the more pessimistic IPCC scenarios in mind, we will come to the point where that decision needs to be made. not in my lifetime, most likely not in yours, but still. as to your last sentence : we have never seen a scenario like the ones now looming over us.
- perfunctory 7y ago"On the other end of the spectrum is controlled abandonment ... And as soon as this gets known, as soon as the shit hits the fan, there won’t be any investments anymore and local economies will collapse" This seems to be an underappreciated idea. We tend to think of climate disaster as something in the distant future, but capital flight might cause havoc much sooner.
- tda 7y agoIndeed the question is not if, but when the Netherlands will flood due too sea level rise. Unlike many other nations the Netherlands is managed in a way that it can potentially handle quite significant (I would say 1-3 meters) in the next couple of decades if necessary at high but bearable costs. The cost of retreating to higher parts of the country would easily go into trillions of euro's, which compared to the +/- 1 billion euro spent on sea defense according to the latest "Deltaplan". Until now most climate models put catastrophic (say 3m+) sea level rise at hundreds to thousands of years of now so we (I'm Dutch) should be alright. However, I personally feel that there is a non negligible possibility that all the current models are wrong because they are more or less extrapolating current changes and conditions. There are several mechanisms that could cause runaway sea level rise in shorter timescales, think melting permafrost with methane, regime change of jet stream, regime change/stop of ocean currents. And more importantly that sea level rise is IMHO the possibility of extreme storms hitting the North Sea. Last year we say a few of those cyclone/hurricanes that usually stay on the other side of the atlantic come our way. That was highly unusual, and even though Ireland and Portugal are still a long way from the Netnerlands, if if all of a sudden a super storm with 300 km/h winds hits us (highest record gust unitl now is only 173 km/h), then we are sure doomed. I can't predict the future, but living in the potentially vulnerable west of the country, I'm glad my parents in law have nice bit of property in the east at 17m+ sea level. I intend to live another 50 years, a lot can happen in my lifetime
- jacquesm 7y agoThat's a lot of ifs! Yes, if the sky falls we'll all wear blue hats. But for now the indications are that change will be gradual rather than sudden and we are actively working on this rather than sitting back and waiting to see how bad things will get (which is the standard in the rest of the developed world). NL is one of the few places where there is substantial funding today to deal with this. Level of upheaval that could happen is of course orders of magnitude worse than what you can reasonably plan for but if such a thing were to come to pass it will have much larger effects than that NL would end up being a part of the ocean again. By that time you're looking at 100's of millions of people that will be displaced and catastrophic events pretty much all over the globe. NL will be a footnote in that story.
- macinjosh 7y agoWho would have thought building a country in a flood zone would be a bad idea? /s
- hellofunk 7y ago> 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.
- dredmorbius 7y agoIt's shaped much Dutch thinking onwater and risk: https://invidio.us/watch?v=gY6eio6Eqcg https://invidio.us/watch?v=gY6eio6Eqcg Also affected Britain: https://invidio.us/watch?v=vARjm3yHKzY https://invidio.us/watch?v=vARjm3yHKzY
- mslot 7y agoMy feet are currently around 4 meters below sea level in the Netherlands. They are still dry. On its own, even worst case sea level rise is unlikely to have meaningful impact on the Netherlands over the next century, unless we stop maintaining our water infrastructure. The real problem is droughts, which could simultaneously pulverize dikes, cause ground to sink, cut off our water supply, and ruin the farming industry. When it comes to climate change in the Netherlands, one bad summer is a lot more dangerous than a century of sea level rise.
- jhoechtl 7y agoClickbait headline. Move on.
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- pocket_titan 7y agoI think the tagline is misleading, especially the part that says "Now climate change is threatening to flood it completely". The example they use (of Noorderwaard being "given back to the water") is a result of the "Ruimte voor de Rivier" (Room for the River, verbatim) programme, and the implication is that these policies are necessary due to sea level rise caused by climate change. But that's not completely true! The Netherlands has a very well-protected coast (after the big flood of 1953 the Delta Works were built to prevent coastal flooding from ever happening again on such a scale), so coastal flooding isn't that big of a threat. And while it's true that rising sea-levels imply a rise in water-levels in the rivers too (esp. the "backwater effect" is dangerous), that's mostly a slow and predictable change - dykes can be raised to deal with it. The issue is the annual floodings of the rivers; they've been growing in intensity due to a) more meltwater from the Alps upstream and b) more/heavier rain, both a consequence of climate change. Another effect climate change has is subsidence; the country is gradually "sinking", allowing for more land to be flooded in the case of high river tides. BUT a big motivation for the programme is also the fact that more and more people have been moving to areas susceptible to flooding. The Netherlands has a very high population density, and about 4 million people are currently living within a river basin, and the programme seeks to protect these people. So really, I don't think the country will disappear - it has the most experience in the world in dealing with these problems. The rivers can be contained, you just won't be able to live right next to them; and reclamation of the entire country is unlikely imo. Especially if the other countries located in the watershed of the Rhine up their game - the Netherlands has essentially been facing these issues alone due to it being downstream, but Germany, France, Switzerland, etc. can all help contain the Rhine & reduce flooding. And hopefully they will!
- patall 7y agoIt may be anectotal but I have seen quite a number of dutch people buying land here in central Germany. May be related how moving between countries has increased over the years but then you would also see danish and belgian poeple but as far as I have seen its surprisingly many dutch. Another expaination would be population density of course.
- joshspankit 7y agoUgh. So much text when the headline is a simple question. Did they give an estimated year?