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Forums - Politics Discussion - US rivers drying up, massive heat waves, devastating cold snaps

Marth said:

Strap yourselves in because this wild ride has only started.

The ironic thing is this will have devistating consequences for some areas, while others will only be slightly effected.
Russia as a exsample, will hardly be hit by this (not near any coast lines) and large area's of siberia, will be hotter, and suitable for farm lands.

Other places like scandinavia, canada, if we can deal with riseing sea levels, it wont effect us that much.



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These once in a century high water level events seem to be happening closer to every year now. People are getting evacuated in the Netherlands as well despite having raised all the levies after the '93 ' 95 floods. Then peak was 2,750K liters per second, now expected 3,350K to 3,700K liters per second in the Maas.

Predictions weren't pessimistic enough yet in '95, got to raise the levies even more and give the rivers more space.

Last edited by SvennoJ - on 16 July 2021

JRPGfan said:
Marth said:

Strap yourselves in because this wild ride has only started.

The ironic thing is this will have devistating consequences for some areas, while others will only be slightly effected.
Russia as a exsample, will hardly be hit by this (not near any coast lines) and large area's of siberia, will be hotter, and suitable for farm lands.

Other places like scandinavia, canada, if we can deal with riseing sea levels, it wont effect us that much.

Rising sea levels won't effect us, but flooding from the rivers and tornadoes are increasing in risk

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/barrie-tornado-ef-2-clean-up-1.6105258

That's Barrie, Ontario, happened yesterday



Barozi said:

This is exactly 8 km beeline from my place:

Already up to 100 deaths in Germany with over 1000 people still missing.

Ignoring the devastation in that image... I would absolutely jump at the opportunity to do some swift water training in an environment like that.

SvennoJ said:

These once in a century high water level events seem to be happening closer to every year now. People are getting evacuated in the Netherlands as well despite having raised all the levies after the '93 ' 95 floods. Then peak was 2,750K liters per second, now expected 3,350K to 3,700K liters per second in the Maas.

Predictions weren't pessimistic enough yet in '95, got to raise the levies even more and give the rivers more space.

Is there an engineering solution to possibly mitigate those events? Clearly they did so 20 years ago after raising levies... But obviously that needs to be looked into again.
Because lets face it... The current situation in climate is here to stay, things will not improve, so the world-over needs to be proactive and start mitigating these effects.


--::{PC Gaming Master Race}::--

Pemalite said:
Is there an engineering solution to possibly mitigate those events? Clearly they did so 20 years ago after raising levies... But obviously that needs to be looked into again.
Because lets face it... The current situation in climate is here to stay, things will not improve, so the world-over needs to be proactive and start mitigating these effects.

There is a crazy idea to dam the entire North Sea, between the UK and France and UK to Norway. But that's an extreme 'solution' more as a warning of what it will have to come to if things keep going the way they are. That of course only ensures that the sea level remains low enough that the water can get out to 'sea'.

The solutions for the rivers are to sacrifice more land to controlled flooding and further raising the dykes. Perhaps extra flood canals can help but space is at a premium in the Netherlands, not a lot of room for mega projects.

Yet without dykes and 1m sea level rise

Half the country will be under water.

I moved to Canada in 2002, not my problem anymore lol. However houses are not build here with tornadoes in mind and tornado warnings are happening about every few weeks now. It certainly wasn't like that when I first got here. It's either forest fires, rivers flooding or just from extreme rainfall, or getting blown away... Mother nature will go on no matter what, but we sure pissed her off.



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SvennoJ said:
Pemalite said:
Is there an engineering solution to possibly mitigate those events? Clearly they did so 20 years ago after raising levies... But obviously that needs to be looked into again.
Because lets face it... The current situation in climate is here to stay, things will not improve, so the world-over needs to be proactive and start mitigating these effects.

There is a crazy idea to dam the entire North Sea, between the UK and France and UK to Norway. But that's an extreme 'solution' more as a warning of what it will have to come to if things keep going the way they are. That of course only ensures that the sea level remains low enough that the water can get out to 'sea'.

The solutions for the rivers are to sacrifice more land to controlled flooding and further raising the dykes. Perhaps extra flood canals can help but space is at a premium in the Netherlands, not a lot of room for mega projects.

Yet without dykes and 1m sea level rise

Half the country will be under water.

I moved to Canada in 2002, not my problem anymore lol. However houses are not build here with tornadoes in mind and tornado warnings are happening about every few weeks now. It certainly wasn't like that when I first got here. It's either forest fires, rivers flooding or just from extreme rainfall, or getting blown away... Mother nature will go on no matter what, but we sure pissed her off.

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...



--::{PC Gaming Master Race}::--

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...



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.



Bofferbrauer2 said:

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.

Yep, hence that crazy idea to dam the entire North Sea. It's either that or build walls along the rivers all the way to Germany and Belgium.

Perhaps nuclear fusion driven mega pumps to the rescue. The Rhine discharges 13 million liters per second at maximum.

The most powerful pump, Nijhuis-HP1-4000.340 pumps 60K liters per second at 5,364 HP

You would need 217 of them to pump out the Rhine at max flow, it's do-able :)

Dunno what it would cost in energy, a lot probably.



SvennoJ said:
JRPGfan said:

The ironic thing is this will have devistating consequences for some areas, while others will only be slightly effected.
Russia as a exsample, will hardly be hit by this (not near any coast lines) and large area's of siberia, will be hotter, and suitable for farm lands.

Other places like scandinavia, canada, if we can deal with riseing sea levels, it wont effect us that much.

Rising sea levels won't effect us, but flooding from the rivers and tornadoes are increasing in risk

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/barrie-tornado-ef-2-clean-up-1.6105258

That's Barrie, Ontario, happened yesterday

Legit tornadoes here in ON are more rare  yet arent really increasing. Though the ones that do touchdown are causing more destruction when they do. Most of the time big storms get quite narly but the twisters never fully touchdown let alone grow, so they're not counted. Barrie is part of tornado alley here in ON, but it's nothing like tornado alley down in the states, not even close. If that twister had hit a small farm town like is more typical, the news wouldn't have cared if there was something more 'important', like a mean tweet or something. It's because our news has been hyper focused on the heatwave and fires in BC lately and because Barrie is close enough to the Toronto bubble to 'matter' in ON.

We should trade some of that BC drought to the Dutch in exchange for some water though. Get on it Trumpdeau!