Bofferbrauer2 said:
Qwark said:
The Netherlands already lives a long time below sea level. But with enough sabd suppletions we will be fine for a long time. Although we should remake the delta works eventually. We use controlled flooding and create river bypasses to deal with the meting Gletsjers. As for coastal erodion due to sea level rising The Dutch build the zandmotor/sandengine. So The Netherlands will be afloat for a long time, other delta's without Dutch Watermanagement (its kind a Dutch specialty) will face big challenges though. The bigger problem the Netherlands is facing is soil subsidence.
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Afaik the biggest problem with rising sea levels in the Netherlands are not dams and dikes towards the ocean, but that they have to somehow raise the levees around the rivers, otherwise they'll flow right through half the country in a couple years at high tide, especially the Rhine.
Hence why the plan is to open the Deltaworks during low tides to let the rivers unload their water content into the ocean and then close down just before the high tide rolls in and hope it rises slower than the tide.
SvennoJ said:
Hoogmoed komt voor de val...
It's a long slow race which nature will eventually win. Rising sea levels will slow down the discharge of the rivers while rising temperatures will increase precipitation causing more water to come down the rivers. Controlled flooding is a last defense measure which only goes so far in one of the most densely populated countries in the world. At some point it will simply get too expensive to keep the Netherlands dry. Although some of the land seems to be floating anyway. My sister used to have a farm near Uitdam, when she was riding her horse around you could see and feel the ground bounce in a slow wave effect as if you were standing on water. Bizarre.
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That effect is due to the ground water being almost just below the surface, so if it rises any higher, it will become very swampy and probably unsuitable for any major human activity anymore.
@bolded: Not so sure about that. Scientists are still debating what the effects will be exactly for western Europe. But one thing is sure, the glaciers will be providing less and less water to the rivers simply because there are less and less glaciers, and what remains is much smaller than what they were before.
Here in Luxembourg, the result from the Alsace region getting much less snow during winter to feed the Moselle river is that it starts getting hazardous sometimes for ships and boats to sail on the river, as the low discharge means it's not deep enough outside of it's center anymore. And the same could happen to the other mountains that feed the Rhine (the Moselle flows into the Rhine), like the Black Forrest, the Eiffel, the Mittelgebirge and of course the Alps - if it's not already happening right now.
While more heat can mean more rain, it can also just mean more moisture in the air without added precipitation. Keep in mind also that the hotter the air is, the more water it can contain in form of moisture. Also, regions like southern to mid Spain are starting to show early sings of desertification, so it's quite possible that the Sahara will creep closer and closer to our regions further to the north.
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