Timothy Birdnow

The other day I was watching a rerun of Rick Steve's Europe, and he was visiting the Netherlands. Now Mr. Steves seems like a great guy, but I suspect he's a liberal, and he mentioned the "dangers" of global warming to the Dutch, even while discussing the fact that Holland has gained considerable territory. I was struck by the contradiction; if global warming is leading to catastrophic sea-level rise, why is Holland actually stealing land from the sea? Wouldn't the low countries be losing land as the sea rises?

Currently, 27% of the Netherlands is below sea level, and sixty percent of the population lives there. Some 6,800 square miles nearly half of the country, is land reclaimed from the sea.

And the Dutch keep adding land. In 1986 they opened a new Polder (land from sea) called the Flevoland. That was well into the "global warming" era. Wikipedia gives us a list of projects in the last few decades as the Netherlands moves ahead with land reclamation, despite the panic of sea level rise. Would they do this if they didn't think the projects would last? In fact, despite being a "progressive" nation of the first order the Netherlands appears to worry nary a wit about global warming raising sea levels.

I couldn't find any information, but I could find no evidence the Dutch were raising the height of their dikes, either. Wouldn't that be necessary if global warming was causing massive sea-level rise? I rather suspect they would work more on shoring up the ones they currently have taken from Neptune.

It's interesting; nobody is selling off sea-side property anywhere and in fact people are building more and more on coastal flood plains. Why is that, if climate change is going to flood all of this property? Strange.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:21 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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