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SvennoJ said:
Pemalite said:

Didn't the Netherlands economy lean heavily on hydrocarbons at one point like Norway?

Perhaps some more land reclamation could be done with larger walls, it's only a stopgap, because we all know what happens when you get a storm surge...

Yes and they also (or maybe still) got a lot of gas from the north of the country, which resulted in the land sinking. Same problem with more land reclamation. You lower the ground water level which lowers the rest of the land. Floating houses are getting more popular though and there were ideas for floating roads as well.

The place where my sister lived (north or Amsterdam) is basically floating anyway. It's mostly peat soil. She used to have a farm to board horses with a sand area to exercise the horses and train for championships. Just one horse running around already created a ripple / wave effect in the ground. You could see waves rippling through the ground as the horse ran by and the lamp posts were gently swaying back and forth. Too bad it doesn't rise up when flooded!

The next lunar high tide cycle will be in the 2030s, we're just entering a low tide cycle (18 year cycle moon orbit) It created enough problems this cycle, next one global water levels will be higher again. Add a storm surge...

Also, isn't the problem increasingly going from "keeping the sea out" to "getting the river water out into the sea"? With rising sea level, the water level on the Rhine Delta and halfway inlands also rises, as the river is almost flat at sea level by that point. In other words, on a high tide, the water wouldn't flow off anymore and start accumulating, risking to flow over the levies if too much accumulates that way.