When will the Netherlands disappear? | Hacker News Reader

When will the Netherlands disappear?

politico.eu

122 pointsalaaf177 comments

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 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.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.

you 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.

They were built with that in mind, yes. But since then they've been raised several times already and there is continuous maintenance on weak points.

The real problem is the rivers, keeping water out from the seaside is actually a simpler problem than preventing the interior from being flooded once the rivers are substantially below sea level themselves.

Sea dikes and fortifications can be raised (at a cost), but river dikes can't really be raised easily and besides that the water needs to go somewhere. And I did write that on larger time scales there is a real risk, and I believe that anything over several meters rise sustained would be a serious problem and would cause some of the land to revert back to the sea.

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.

the weak points (like the haringvlietdam and maeslantkering) can't (easily) be raised. and yes, the rivers will be a problem when we need to close the maeslantkering for extended periods of time when the sea level rises. it doesn't matter where the water comes from : the sea or the rivers, it will cause severe floods at some point.

I guess we differ on the 'economically viable' part. but in the really long run (say greenland being free of ice) my guess is no amount of money is going to save the netherlands.

What is cheaper: building artificial dams and islands off the North Sea coast (for example), or re-settling 7 million people while simultaneously losing all your economic output?

The cost for resettling will mostly be shouldered by the people of the Netherlands, that's how migration works: you pay up, you walk out on your own, or you stay behind in whatever misery you are tying to escape.

In the really long run everything humans have ever made except for the pyramids is unstable. It would be really strange if the current living generation is somehow the exception. Houses are built for a couple of decades, they sometimes stand for a hundred years or more but that's not the rule and should not be taken as guidance for the future. Companies can move if there is enough time.

What will happen is that at some point - still quite a bit into the future - humanity as a whole will have to adjust to a new coastline and as long as it is economically viable they'll try to milk the structures already built. But in the end, on that timescale it is a non-event.

A bigger question will be how we will house and feed a 10 billion plus number of human beings on a reduced landmass with all the 'good bits' already taken. There will be wars and famine in that future and I don't think we will be able to avoid that forever. Again, history is full of upheaval, we certainly won't have seen the last of it.

But to suggest NL will disappear in the next couple of years/decades is not in line with my expectations based on what I know about this stuff. (More than most, less than what I would like to know but there is only so much time.)

As for the rivers, pumping out the water forcibly would allow the surge barriers to remain in place but would severely disrupt the economy (harbors inaccessible) and would require pumping capacity that we currently do not have (those rivers carry an enormous amount of water).

> 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 pretty sure that anyone that believe that the Netherlands will disappear under water will agree that all theses coasts you mention will disappear too.

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.

We have seen exactly this scenario before, only this time the expected water levels are a few decimeter to a few meter higher (depending on the time scale). It's not like the delta works are the technological limit to what we can do. At the time, they were designed to meet the expected requirements and no further.

If the requirements change, we will rebuild them to the new requirements.

if the requirements say 7 meters (the sea level rise if greenland is ice free) building higher dikes will not work. and although that is a long-term scenario, it is not unlikely. hence the 'not if, but when' in the article.

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.

I may be biased because I live in the NL and I live slightly below sea level. But I would be more worried to live on the coast somewhere else that has no history of dealing with these kinds of problems.

In some sense The Netherlands is the only country on the planet to have the political structures in place to deal with rising sea waters.

What do people think Florida is going to do? They're already losing their drinking water and they're still in denial.

And it really is about having social and political structures in place to deal with problems of this magnitude. The engineering questions are largely understood. Build pumps, dikes and create flood plains. We shouldn't focus on the engineering problems. The problem is one of coordination and mass mobilization of political will, and that already exists here.

> What do people think Florida is going to do? They're already losing their drinking water and they're still in denial.

> Build pumps, dikes and create flood plains.

Just want to point out this approach won't work for Florida (and I'm not implying you said it would). The land in south Florida is porous limestone, and the water will just pass under any dykes you build.

Is there a solution that would work for Florida?

Evacuation...or build more homes on stilts. When does Florida become America's Venice?

> When does Florida become America's Venice?

Quite an amusing comparison considering that Venice is commonly seen as an international beacon of sophisticated culture and history, while Florida is... well. I'm not American so I'll leave the rest up to the reader.

/r/FloridaMan is a pretty accurate depiction of how we view Florida. That and Disney World.

> Venice is commonly seen as an international beacon of sophisticated culture and history, while Florida is

...similar in that it is also a top tourist destination.

> or build more homes on stilts

Indeed there are a number of houses that are built on stilts for flooding purposes.

Nowadays that's very uncommon; housing developments often built up the ground enough to mitigate the equivalent flooding risk.

> Just want to point out this approach won't work for Florida (and I'm not implying you said it would). The land in south Florida is porous limestone, and the water will just pass under any dykes you build.

Not a problem. Just drive a sheet pile curtain along the retaining wall to force the flow net through a long enough path that the resistance alone reduces the flow volume. This sort of stuff is covered in civil engineering degrees at graduate or even undergraduate level. Google for sheet pile flow net to get the idea.

And by the way, while you claim that Florida is limestone, the Netherlands is just a big old alluvial plain comprised of loose sand.

> What do people think Florida is going to do? They're already losing their drinking water and they're still in denial.

That has been going on for decades, and has more to do with the population load on the water supply draining the aquifers than it does climate change. The drinking water table is already below sea level. At worst, climate change is hastening the inevitable.

> They're already losing their drinking water and they're still in denial.

As a former Floridian, that's news to me. Any links?

The groundwater is enough to get that I know a number of people who have their own wells. (That plus a generator is really nice post-hurricane.)

> the only country on the planet to have the political structures in place

New Orleans is largely below sea level.

(Though maybe Katrina proves your point.)

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 land while protecting denser cities. At a certain point I see the Dutch putting soil on barges topped by greenhouses and growing on top of the water if it came to that haha.

Of course all of this might mean a significant shift in how the country feeds itself, but the layout is such that you could shift a small minority to denser "protected" places (where more investment might be focused in a worst case scenario) if significant flooding were a problem.

> At a certain point I see the Dutch putting soil on barges topped by greenhouses and growing on top of the water if it came to that haha.

Stop laughing, that's been done:

https://www.floramedia.com/netherlands/2017/01/11/floating-g...

Interesting! Does this handle storms? I suspect we'll see a lot more storms and much higher waves along with the increase in sea level ...

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.

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 powerplant (we should be closing those by the way) is about 1GW, this is in the order of magnitude of achievable. Biggest pumps I know of are 5MW (and for higher pressure/velocity, not low pressure/high flow) but if we really wanted to this could be solved

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.

Another big river to count with is the Waal, which does about 3/4 of that and then there are the Lek, the Maas and the Schelde, all of which are yet another doubling. So there would be a substantial amount of energy involved here.

I'd say the pump capacity and maintenance would be a bigger hurdle than the energy involved.

The largest pumps we have right now do about 250 cubic meters per second.

https://deafsluitdijk.nl/projecten/vergroten-waterafvoer/hoe...

I'd say that that is manageable.

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

From memory I believe the "Ruimte voor de rivieren" project was designed for peak discharges of around 15k m3/s, but could very well be wrong there. Normal discharge is much much lower. Just wanted to see if the extreme scenario is remotely feasible (which I would say it is, though it's pretty far out).

But if there is enough buffer capacity then of course you only have to dimension the pumps for longer term average high discharge, and not peak discharge.

Edit: Just found this: https://edepot.wur.nl/84989

1/1250 year Rhine discharge at Lobith is found to be and as higher discharges will cause major flooding upstream instead of reaching Lobith directly this should be about the max to expect. Such a peak discharge would be part of a high water period with discharges up to 15 consecutive days of >10.000m3/s, so you would need a pretty big buffer.

Indeed 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

That'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.

Just to be clear, I still enjoy and plan on living in the west for a long time. But there are quite a few theoretically possible regime changes that I am aware of (and probably even more that I am unaware of) to make me concerned about it. Any significant regime change (break with historic trends) will automatically invalidate all models/predictions/assumptions about our safety levels. Current design criterion is we should be safe for 1/10.000 year conditions.

And if all goes wrong, you better be in a low population density rich country that can handle a little warming (thinking of Sweden and Norway in particular) Better move there before everyone else does ;)

Sweden and Norway are attractive for many reasons, but I don't think any of this will happen soon enough to impact my life in a meaningful way. I'm 54, I haven't exactly been too careful with this body and if I live to 80 it would highly surprise me.

But my children likely will see this in full force and I sincerely hope that by then humanity will have come its collective senses.

I hope you're right, I expect the world to be in a very different place in a few decades and not for the better. I'm still under 40 so I'm keeping my options open; even though the chances are probably very low, the effect is also pretty extreme making the risk (probability * effect) approximately 0 * inf. I estimate the probability to be somewhat higher than 0, so therefore I believe the risk is significant.

> I expect the world to be in a very different place in a few decades and not for the better

Given history to date I would say that is a safe assumption when you are living in a time of prosperity, it is the global equivalent of 'this too shall pass'. But even if NL will be hit hard I highly doubt it will be hit hardest or first. We've been vaccinated in a sense in not trusting nature to leave her boundaries where we'd like them to be, the country is more like a machine than a static arrangement.

If we stopped pumping water out you'd be living on the lakeside within a few years, and on the seaside a few years after that.

Indeed we won't be hit hardest or first, but consider this. Just about the entire Randstad is in a single "Dijkring" (Dijkring 14). And because a large part of the Randstad is flooded, if any part of the defense goes, it goes entirely. And as the Randstad is the economic heart of the country, the country will not recover. Also because it can't feasibly be evacuated. So flooding will happen in other places first, but the other places are above sea level and will get dry again. Or a few meters of coastline is lost. Not the Randstad, it will be flooded exactly once and stay flooded completely and forever. Lets just hope it will take a long time before it happens.

I don't think that will happen that quickly. Yes, it is a single dijkring, but also one of the best protected ones. IJsselmeer is right next door giving a very nice way to get rid of a substantial amount of water with a very convenient canal system and the Oranjesluizen to make that happen. That would take care of a surface area the size of the city with 9 meters of so of water standing above it before this would be an issue.

I'm much more skeptical about the delta near Rotterdam/Zeeland and the part where the big rivers enter the country, mostly because of what's on the other side of the border.

https://flamingo.bij12.nl/risicokaart-viewer/app;jsessionid=...

Is a good place to look at, and it more or less confirms exactly what I wrote above.

Yes, there are a few fringe areas that are likely to flood. But as we know that, that is not a problem. These areas are mostly uninhabited, have emergency procedures in place and are somewhat resilient (houses built on artificial mounds). Dealing with the known unknowns is relatively easy. Sometimes these areas flood, but seldom does it cause significant impact (loss of life, significant impact on economy). Taking into account all the known unknowns we have designed and built the greatest sea defense of history designed for 1:10.000 year conditions. And I am very confident this has been done properly (no expense spared).

I believe New Orleans was rebuilt with 1:100 year conditions in mind, and that was after Katrina. Nothing close to 1:10.000.

So are we safe then? A few years ago I would have said yes without a doubt. But now? It's the unknown unknowns I'm afraid of because they are by definition left out of the calculations to get to 1:10.000 year conditions, and we are only just beginning to discover what climate change really means. I'm afraid we "ain't seen nothing yet", and extrapolating from the past just won't cut it.

The only time anything like this came close was a freak storm in 1953 as far as I know - 2000 dead in the Netherlands (also 200 dead in UK). Since then sea defenses have been improved by a huge factor, nothing was left to chance. I just don't see the kind of freak event that can cause this (and why would a freak storm hit the Randstad and not New York / London / San Francisco ?). If you're talking about gradual sea level rise doing this, well the current pace is 3.8 mm rise a year. Even if the rate doubles (is this likely?) we're still under one meter in 100 years. I wouldn't run away to Sweden just yet but hey it's a free country! P.S the sea level rise pace around Netherlands is even lower than the rest of the world currently.

That freak storm did us a huge favor, if not for that the general public would have likely balked at protecting the rest of the country. But 1953 is taught in school here and people in general are quite appreciative of the fact that they have 'dry feet'.

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 climate changes, and the seas warm, you might see the general storm patterns change, and you might get into a different regime where such storms are possible. Take hurricane Lorenzo, the easternmost Category 5 Atlantic hurricane on record. What was previously unthinkable just happened last October. If you extrapolate from this trend (more frequent, more eastern hurricanes happening in the Atlantic), I think it looks a lot less unlikely that one of those monster will someday make it to the North Sea.

Same with sea level rise: the currently observed rate of change is very manageable, and even a factor 5 higher can probably be managed. But what if we reach (or have already reached) a tipping point in the climate system that causes rapid acceleration of sea level rise? The existence of these tipping points cannot be derived from historical (say last 1000 years) observations, and therefore one might conclude that they don't exist. I believe such reasoning is known as the black swan logical fallacy. But from my casual observations, we are entering uncharted territory now (greenhouse gas levels, sea temperature, changing weather patters, changing jet stream patterns), so who knows what will happen.

Last point, look at the temperature 40,7 °C reached just last summer. Until 2018 the highest recorded temperature was 38,4 °C (in 1947). Some say this was a huge outlier, I think this is the new normal. I would love to know the probability of this happening taking the weather observations from start of record until 2018, would be surprised it it in the 1:1.000.000 range.

edit: Of course someone did the math (in Dutch) https://www.knmi.nl/over-het-knmi/nieuws/hoe-bijzonder-zijn-...

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 thing to scare us.

Food shortages and the wars this will fuel will be a problem long before the sea causes the dykes to fail (and my assumption is that said dykes are part of what makes The Netherlands almost impossible to defend).

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.

None of this seems likely. It's like moving out of San Francisco because an earth quake might happen. Even if a freak hurricane arrives (it shouldn't since the waters aren't tropical, but whatever lets say this somehow changed in the next 50 years), even if, you'd have weeks to evacuate people, so casualties shouldn't be too high. Infrastructure would be damaged yes, but doesn't seem to me like something that devastates the country. The water will eventually be pumped out. And btw what do the once in 10000 years storm defense are preparing for if not just that?

(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.

This is the first time I hear about this. Do you have a source for it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-glacial_rebound

There 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-s...

Eustatic 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.

Yeah, but that is one glorious millennia of getting to ignore climate change and keep burning dinosaurs like it's no tomorrow! Wroom!

I 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!

> 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."

I 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.

This is a very one-sided view of the nitrogen problem.

It would be fair to point out the allowed nitrogen levels are orders of a magnitude smaller than in for example Germany, which is the result of a political decision to assign many many Natura2000 areas.

edit: and to add to this, there is plenty of support for the farmers, and their activism in The Netherlands.

So because some people are shitting in their kitchen, it isn't a bad idea to do so as well?

On a more serious note though, much of the agriculture in the Netherlands is the production of meat, especially pork, for export. This is by far the biggest source of pollution. I'd rather live with less animal farmers and more Natura2000 areas than the other way around.

Well, if us Dutch people stop shitting in our kitchen, we import food from other countries shitting in their kitchen, plus we now have extra fuel to burn to get the food here.

Actually, Dutch export most of their food and turn around and import cheaper food from far away (Spain and Brazil being two common sources).

Check it out at the grocery store sometime. It's not so easy to find the nice Dutch produce (the Germans are enjoying it!)

> It's not so easy to find the nice Dutch produce (the Germans are enjoying it!)

Wait, is Dutch produce supposed to be nice? I know that in Germany, Dutch tomatoes are disparaged as "Wasserbomben", and in Romania the Dutch vegetables are the cheap supermarket stuff that you buy if you don’t a chance to pass by the marketplace and buy something locally grown.

Dutch greenhouses are in fact capable of producing "Wasserbomben" as well as quality produce -- at a higher price point. Unfortunately, supermarkets in most parts of the world have decided they prefer the former.

Italian immigrant here: let me tell you something. NL may cultivate and export the most mass of agricultural products, but there’s nothing the lit greenhouses you see taking off from Schiphol can do to best the sun scorching the skin of a tomato growing in Puglia. The metabolism it has to crank up 200% to defend against such constant environmental aggression is something irrepetable you can smell and taste.

This is the reason I've stopped buying red peppers in the summer when the local super market starts importing them from Netherlands. In the winter, they import them from Spain. The quality difference is staggering.

My own country is also great at mass producing poor quality food in the sense of taste - in other terms of look, feel and uniformity it's great.

I'm not convinced they couldn't produce great taste in Netherlands, though, if they put their mind to it. I think it's more of a bug in the market mechanisms. But it's depressing for sure. I root for the day small-scale shipping is automated and solved for good, and then I can be the one deciding who I'm buying peppers from.

We are the biggest exporter of agricultural products after the US, which is insane given the size of our country:

https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/actueel/nieuws/2019/01/18/neder...

There is no need to import food, we could just start exporting less.

Only by value. We specialized in expensive produce.

> There is no need to import food, we could just start exporting less.

Are you going to pay the unemployment salary for the people who currently work in the agricultural sector?

Do you agree that your analogy is very very far fetched?

If the analogy would hold up just a little bit, all this nature already would have perished, right?

This is about the subtle opinion of some green leaning people who think it is not the 'right' nature which is growing in the Natura2000 areas right know.

Nothing catastrophic, just a purely intellectual debate.

Well there are many important differences between plants and animals so... sounds like they have a reasonable basis for concern.

It looks to me like Germany has a significant amount of Natura 2000 sites, rather in proportion to NL in terms of land size. However, Germany has triple the percentage of forest compare to NL. Germany also has a lot of manufacturing that NL doesn't have. Both use about 50% of their land for agriculture.

From what I can gather, Dutch farming is higher output - production wise as well as emissions wise.

How does this explain 2 orders of a magnitude difference in allowed nitrogen disposition compared to Germany?

NL has less biomass to absorb it - less forest and less soil.

There is basically less material for the pollutants to disperse.

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

The problem in the Netherlands is that the Natura2000 areas are too small. So any activity next to such areas immediately affects rare species.

The other problem is that the government, in cooperation with many sectors, has created paper realities. One by one, those realities go down when people start measuring and then a sector is in trouble.

One or two generations of farming? By then they'll be retired (with a pension) or dead, do you think they care?

No, they don't care. They, like many older people in other countries, feel that they have a right to their "way of life". It's a strange failure of thinking when someone believes that they have a right to be how they have previously been (especially when their previous behavior has been demonstrated to be foolish or harmful to themselves or others).

In Europe we believe that everyone should have the right to be exactly how they wish to be (with obvious limits).

A strong part of the protestors are young farmers. Set on taking over their parents farm and continuing the family business. And they probably want the same for their kids as well. It's really puzzling they take this stance, especially since the majority is also anti EU, which is also against their best interest, because most of their revenue is from export, which would suffer havily when a Nexit would ever occur.

Source (Dutch): https://www.trouw.nl/binnenland/vooral-jonge-boeren-worden-s...

Just a guess, but I know some farmers. What I get from them is, that they are all about freedom to do what they think is right on their own land. Anything that brings regulations to their farms is felt as an attack. To be honest, I can understand them. They work insane hours all year long, constant pressure from the markets and society and every year there are more laws demanding their time and resources. That some of these laws might be necessary is lost in their daily struggle.

Most of them are also rich as fuck considering they often own their land outright. I think the support for them is overestimated.

In the end it all comes back to weak politics. Our 'polder model, which is basically appeasement imo, has meant that for decades we have not done anything about the fact we have too many farmers, cows and pigs. (After the USA the Dutch are the largest exporter of food worldwide.)

And now, when push comes to shove, they get pissed because they are not protected from by the government anymore. Measures that should have been slowly introduced over years have to be implemented quick now and that hurts. But ANY other branch would have had to adjust to market conditions and not complain. Yet the farmers got subsidized when they produced to much milk driving the prices below production costs...

Alternative take: people are prioritizing the compromises they need to make in order to minimize emissions. Ignoring the 12 year doomsday clock (which has been stuck on ≈10 years for about 30 years), it will be much easier to convince people to make gradual sacrifices of their quality of life rather than telling them to drop everything and move into a mud hut, and people like meat.

Can 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&rem...

At least I'm seeing a lot of solar being installed. Granted this isn't the best country for solar, but it helps.

Yeah, 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.

Investing 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...

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-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.

> Solar panels ... need to be changed each 20-30 years

How does this maintenance cost compare to the operating cost of a coal plant where coal has to be delivered non-stop?

Regarding the drop of price of solar panel I don't think that it's not that uninteresting to invest in it. I'm all in to invest into renewable energy but I wanted to point out the hidden costs of deploying such technologies.

But overall, if it's about CO² emission we want to reduce, I think it's way more efficient to invest into house/buildings isolation, heat pump and save 20 or more % of energy better than trying to invest massively into renewable energy that will gives non-controlled productivity.

Most of this is incorrect, starting with your first claim.

Here's a chart that shows the yearly CO2 emissions from electricity generation in Denmark

https://energinet.dk/Om-nyheder/Nyheder/2017/05/19/El-produk...

If you know a bit about Danish politics, you can clearly tell at which point there was lackluster political support.

The protests are related to regulations for nitrogen emissions, not greenhouse gases. So it's not related to this "demise" nonsense. And if there should be a demise -- well, the Dutch contribution to global GHG emissions is almost negligible these days. As for nitrogen emissions, these have more than halved since 1990. We could still do better, but if Dutch agricultural production moves abroad it will certainly be replaced by dirtier production methods. Net result globally will be negative, even if we manage to protect Dutch Natura2000 areas.

Can anyone downvoting this explain why? To me it seems a balanced argument, well worded, void of emotion, and I can't see a fault in it.

I didn't downvote it, but regardless of why the farmers are protesting (which indeed is about nitrogen emissions limits), the farm industry does also contribute significantly to air pollution - https://euconf.eu/clean-air/topics-air-pollution-from-agricu... (this and plenty of other studies/measures).

So while I did bring up the farmer protests, which are indeed about nitrogen and not about climate change, it's still one facet of the same problem: commercial interests over regional and global health interests.

I do not know the details, but it is my understanding that the Netherlands exports a large amount of its agricultural production. One could say, let's only produce what we need, and methane production will go down. However, if that was done, all of the countries that rely on the Netherlands for agricultural imports would need to increase production or find somewhere else that would. There is no guarantee that using country level caps will improve anything.

Unless I'm missing something, maybe it would be better to assign the emission penalty of a product to the consumer rather than the producer?

Correct

This pretty much sums it up.

The world has a large surplus of agricultural products which are often produced due to significant subsidies. So, it’s not clear production would increase to compensate rather than existing land being repurposed.

Yes, and the Netherlands is an extremely good place for agriculture, with rich soil and very advanced technology. So if the world is going to produce this much, it's good for emissions to have it in the Netherlands.

But that is the whole world. I live in the Netherlands, and I don't want all of our nature to die, because I enjoy it and I want my children to be able to enjoy it. So I still want less production in the Netherlands.

Also because much of it is meat production, fed on imported soy from the other side of the world. And mostly for exporting. It must be possible to produce the meat elsewhere.

Moving the production to a different country would be a solution, since the Netherlands is currently producing way more nitrogen per area of land than other European countries.

Moreover, our nature areas are generally smaller and closer to agriculture. Therefore, nitrogen output has (had) a lot more impact on nature here than in other countries.

More information can be found in this news article (Dutch): https://nos.nl/artikel/2307260-kan-de-ruime-duitse-stikstofn...

> Moving the production to a different country would be a solution, since the Netherlands is currently producing way more nitrogen per area of land than other European countries.

Isn't this just because it is producing highly efficiently, at least in terms of land use? If you move the production elsewhere, it will consume the same amount if nitrogen on a wider area, so with worse impacts on wildlife and biodiversity.

No, because the concentration is a big part of the problem. If things were more spread out, but with the same total amount of nitrogen, there would be less of an issue (and this is why Germany has less strict rules on nitrogen).

Well, overall the Netherlands only gain 8% if you discount export related emissions, so it doesn't gain you a fantastic amount.

https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2

> 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).

And all of their efforts combined, even if it were 100% successful, will be a drop in the bucket of the emissions coming from China.

The farmers are right to protest pointless austerity measures, especially since they’re growing food to keep people alive.

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 Netherlands is maybe not the smartest way to save energy.

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.

It can be quite difficult to blame the Dutch farmers for something that involves the decisions of people all around the world. At this point they may be better to get as rich as possible so that they can weather the pain of climate change better.

This, but repeated everywhere.

My uncle thinks the atmosphere will explode when the Siberian permafrost releases its methane. Then I started thinking, maybe that is what happened in Tunguska. For a thermobaric event of geological proportions maybe it was small.

ED: Didn't mean to scare anyone. Just following a thread of logic.

> the biggest impact (in that simulator) to climate change was the land/agriculture methane

Hum... You mean that the only control that had an actual effect was the land/agriculture methane. The impact was really small, huge changes lead to only ~0.3°C changes in a century, but it was the only one where you could make large changes.

> So basically, the commercial farmers are ruining this > country (and contributing to ruining the planet), > and being jerks while doing so.

Yet they apparently have huge backing from the public.

When I try debating the problem with people they get extremely angry with me when I mention that the farmers are:

  a) Entirely responsible for the problem.
  b) Largely capable of fixing the problem.
  c) Relatively rich. Agricultural land is VERY valuable here.
  d) They are actively destroying our planet and country.

It's pure insanity.

You have rich business men who have invested in quadrupling their farming capacity (and now have problems with their loans) demanding that the government bail them out, or they'll ghost ride along the motorway (which they did this afternoon on my local motorway). Or they'll block the supermarket distribution centers for Xmas.

If I wasn't alone I'd love to protest at a few hundred of the farms here in the region, see how they like it when we block their commerce. We can import food from Germany, their businesses wouldn't last half a year if they can't ship anything.

> If I wasn't alone I'd love to protest

You are never alone. Find like-minded people and go ahead. (I am not saying whether I find it a good idea or not).

But the non-farmer protesters are getting arrested while the farmers are breaking plenty of laws (road/obstruction) and the government is afraid to touch them.

Now the farmers are hanging nooses everywhere and trying to compare themselves with the Jews in WW2. I'm inclined to think that being forced to reduce your business production by 20-40% is not quite the same as being captured and put into a gas chamber to die.

> But the non-farmer protesters are getting arrested

But you have to be ready to make sacrifices for your ideals. I didn't say it's gonna be easy.

I grew up in England in the 1980s, and if there was one thing which Thatcher did which was absolutely correct it was standing up to the Coal Unions.

The government needs to stand up to these thugs.

Am 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.

It 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.

Then 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.

The 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.

Why 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.

So you want data, but the only datum you offer in support of your assertion that you are being unreasonably manipulated is the effect of a single storm in the 14th. century. Meanwhile, other people have been posting much more pertinent comments on, for example, the non-uniformity of global-warming-induced sea-level rise.

No the manipulation is the story about the abandoned settlement. I don't think you understood my point at all.

The only assertion I made is that land being lost to the sea is not a new or outlandish thing. For that 14th century is sufficient - and even better in context of global warming, as there was no such thing in the 14th century. Also I am not a journalist publishing an article. So I mentioned the first example I remembered. If I was publishing an article, I would do more research.

> ...and even better in context of global warming, as there was no such thing in the 14th century.

On the contrary, that means it has little relevance to the resurgent concerns of the 21st. century. Your position is a form of denial that goes "we don't have to worry about global-warming induced X, because X occurred before there was global warming", which is, of course, bogus if global warming is significantly changing the scale of X.

I get the impression that your feeling of being manipulated is precisely because you do not get this point. Furthermore, your complaint that the author did not write the article you wanted to read is of no interest and is not going to change anything.

It is only one aspect of a 'defense in depth' strategy.

Perhaps because we can't yet take pictures of the future, fitting analogues from the present might be used to depict the possible future conditions described in the article?

It's still a waste of my time as a reader, and appealing to emotions, not to rational thought.

3 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.

Could be, but would it be fair to only keep your feet dry because you/your country can pay for it?

Life's not fair. Sorry to break the bad news to you.

Oh, I know. But poor countries flooding will have the additional problem of creating a lot of refugees looking to keep their feet dry.

> Actually the Netherlands will make bank selling water management knowledge to others.

This is already happening.

A couple of months ago, one of the guys running our watermanagement ( https://www.rijkswaterstaat.nl/ ) claimed The Netherlands would sustain 'multiple meters of sea level rise'.

I'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.

That is pure speculation.

Humans 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.

Do 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.

Uh, 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

> Uh, are you asking for examples of flooding?

No I was asking for plenty of big failures, as claimed

You are just speculating.

There is a chance that such a storm could happen tomorrow. But the chance is a very slim one and since the Delta works the rivers have been a much bigger problem than the see.

The worst possible conditions for Zeeland/Zuid Holland would be springtide, storm, the initial sea level would be relatively unimportant. The problem is that the wind drives that water ahead of it and will cause the water to rise up because it can't flow away fast enough, in part because the channel is constricted to the South, in part because such storms typically come from the South West aiming directly at the weak spot in the shore defenses. Hence the Delta Works and the storm surge protection near Rotterdam (which is an absolutely amazing work of engineering by the way):

https://www.google.com/maps/search/stormvloedkering+google+m...

The scale of that thing might not be readily apparent but think of it as two Eiffel towers on their side that can move to close off the river.

In the Netherlands, no. But it's a small country with a small coast (relative to other countries), and it's in a part of the continent that has thus far not experienced much in the way of severe storms. That is changing as the weather patterns become more volatile.

But here's a simple scenario. Earthquakes in the Groningen region (caused by natural gas drilling and extraction), have become a new and significant problem. Let's say one or a series of earthquakes happens to coincide with an unusual North Sea storm event - one which includes high winds. You'll have a combination of stresses and forces that may exceed the capabilities of some dikes. And small failures could result in other stresses in other places which could lead to other failures.

If you read about some of the great catastrophes in the modern age, they often involve a chain of small events which result in a scenario that was either not predicted or was deemed too low chance to be concerned with.

I was asking for examples of 'plenty of big failures'.

You are just speculating.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saeftinghe

Its not like they've been doing this since the 1600s or anything.

1953 (and to a lesser extent the floods of the 20s) were a massive wake up call. It isn't just one massive wall that protects the netherlands, its a multitude.

And several meters rise won't happen in the next 50 years, probably not next 100 years. I'm not saying this issue isn't real but those panic and fear inducing titles aren't helping at all. These kind of titles either further convince the deniers once those doom prophecies fail to materialise, or cause further panic to those who do believe. We should be much more worried about the poor people in India or Bangladesh or even Florida than we are about the Netherlands.

"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.

I 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!

My 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.

It 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.

When will Florida disappear? As I understand it, no system of dykes and barriers will work due to the porous ground.

> 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

NL 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.

The ironic song about how she doesn't understand the meaning of irony?

Some argue her mistaken take on what's ironic is intentional, and the true irony of the song.

Netherlands has been dealing with flooding even before the US existed. I think they will be fine.

From 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.

> 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.

Every time there is elections for the waterboard ("Waterschap"), there is a very low turnout and talks to just merge them into the provincial governments. But I guess we'll only know what we miss once it's gone.

> No one will ever suggest cutting the budget for this.

This is not completely true, farmers have been protesting the increase of this tax: https://www.rtlnieuws.nl/nieuws/nederland/artikel/4942211/we...

> 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.

Thanks for the confidence, but the fact that we've been dealing with floods does not mean we will be able to deal with excessive sea level rise. We can probably deal with 1-2 meters of sea level rise, but this article talks about 5+ m in 2300, which means adding another 5 meters to some already very high dikes. And the weight of a dike goes up by the square of its height. Many coastal defenses will have to be completely redesigned.

And if we really can't stop global warming, at some point eastern Antarctica is going to start melting (it fortunately isn't yet), and that's going to add another 30 meters to the sea level. I believe if all the glaciers melt, we'll be at about 60 meters.

At some point we're going to have to put up a dome and call ourselves Atlantis.

Ugh. So much text when the headline is a simple question.

Did they give an estimated year?

We will just build bigger dykes.

Finally, a real solution to climate change.

Thus solving the problem once and for all ...

A historically very real and very effective solution to rising sea levels.

Who would have thought building a country in a flood zone would be a bad idea? /s

Clickbait headline. Move on.

I 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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