When will the Netherlands disappear?

It won&#x27;t. NL has been preparing quite hard for a rise in sea level and&#x2F;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&#x27;t be able to drain into the North Sea and studies are being made on how to deal with that, the &#x27;room for the river&#x27; (&quot;ruimte voor de rivier&quot;) 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.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ruimtevoorderivier.nl&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ruimtevoorderivier.nl&#x2F;</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gemalen.nl&#x2F;gemaal_detail.asp?gem_id=264" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gemalen.nl&#x2F;gemaal_detail.asp?gem_id=264</a><p>(Photo 4 is particularly interesting, that&#x27;s one of three such pumps, and this is an old one and now relatively small, it is one of many such pumps)<p>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.<p>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.<p>Consider another angle: if the problem had not been dealt with successfully in the past this country would not even exist today.

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 <i>but bearable</i> costs.<p>The cost of retreating to higher parts of the country would easily go into trillions of euro&#x27;s, which compared to the +&#x2F;- 1 billion euro spent on sea defense according to the latest &quot;Deltaplan&quot;.<p>Until now most climate models put catastrophic (say 3m+) sea level rise at hundreds to thousands of years of now so we (I&#x27;m Dutch) should be alright.<p>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&#x2F;stop of ocean currents.<p>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&#x2F;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&#x2F;h winds hits us (highest record gust unitl now is only 173 km&#x2F;h), then we are sure doomed.<p>I can&#x27;t predict the future, but living in the potentially vulnerable west of the country, I&#x27;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

(I&#x27;m Dutch)<p>My original post: <i>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&#x27;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 &#x27;level&#x27; as you might think. By the way: I&#x27;m not saying we should not worry and nothing is going on.</i><p>After looking more into it I must say the above is not true. Our area is just outside the &#x27;dent&#x27; of weight of the ice. So our area is likely to go down a little when the ice melts.<p>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.

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&#x2F;agriculture methane.<p>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&#x27;ll get one or two more generations of farming as they hasten their own demise.<p>Meanwhile, since NL has failed significantly to meet EU (nitrogen) emissions requirements - almost entirely because of mass agriculture - there&#x27;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&#x27;t mind so terribly, but many people do mind).<p>So basically, the commercial farmers are ruining this country (and contributing to ruining the planet), and being jerks while doing so.

Am I the only one who gets angry at stupid &quot;mood setting&quot; 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.<p>Why should I read on after they wasted my time with that imagery?<p>As for Netherlands being flooded, I suppose that threat has existed since the early day of its existence.

3 out of the top 5 dredging firms are from the Netherlands and one is from Belgium, right next door.<p>The Netherlands will be fine. Actually the Netherlands will make bank selling water management knowledge to others.

A couple of months ago, one of the guys running our watermanagement ( <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rijkswaterstaat.nl&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rijkswaterstaat.nl&#x2F;</a> ) claimed The Netherlands would sustain &#x27;multiple meters of sea level rise&#x27;.

&quot;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&quot;<p>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 &quot;Now climate change is threatening to flood it completely&quot;. The example they use (of Noorderwaard being &quot;given back to the water&quot;) is a result of the &quot;Ruimte voor de Rivier&quot; (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&#x27;s not completely true!<p>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&#x27;t that big of a threat. And while it&#x27;s true that rising sea-levels imply a rise in water-levels in the rivers too (esp. the &quot;backwater effect&quot; is dangerous), that&#x27;s mostly a slow and predictable change - dykes can be raised to deal with it.<p>The issue is the annual floodings of the rivers; they&#x27;ve been growing in intensity due to a) more meltwater from the Alps upstream and b) more&#x2F;heavier rain, both a consequence of climate change. Another effect climate change has is subsidence; the country is gradually &quot;sinking&quot;, allowing for more land to be flooded in the case of high river tides.<p>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.<p>So really, I don&#x27;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&#x27;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 &amp; reduce flooding. And hopefully they will!

My feet are currently around 4 meters below sea level in the Netherlands. They are still dry.<p>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.<p>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.

&gt; 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.<p>Wow, never heard about that.

NL earns fortunes pumping hydrocarbons, thereby contributing to climate change, thereby forcing itself to spend fortunes defending against climate change.<p>For some reason I&#x27;m reminded of Alanis Morissette.

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

Ugh. So much text when the headline is a simple question.<p>Did they give an estimated year?

We will just build bigger dykes.

Who would have thought building a country in a flood zone would be a bad idea? &#x2F;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).