The complete unconcern of Netherlands land-creation project engineers
I ask this with complete sincerity: Is this a joke? The Netherlands are indeed concerned with sea levels, and even more with the extreme weather patterns that are the more pressing result of climate change. The recent history of relative complacency is due largely to the Maeslantkering, which went up in 1997 and can in theory protect the country against more than the 30-inch rise in sea levels the Dutch government is planning against (http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/4374), so they feel they're good. Meanwhile Rotterdam, where my mother was born, is planning to climate-proof itself by 2025 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8362147.stm).
In other words, the Netherlanders are "unconcerned" not because they don't think there's a problem, but because they think they can handle it, since they've been doing this kind of thing so long.
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I ask this with complete sincerity: Is this a joke? The Netherlands are indeed concerned with sea levels, and even more with the extreme weather patterns that are the more pressing result of climate change. The recent history of relative complacency is due largely to the Maeslantkering, which went up in 1997 and can in theory protect the country against more than the 30-inch rise in sea levels the Dutch government is planning against (http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/4374), so they feel they're good. Meanwhile Rotterdam, where my mother was born, is planning to climate-proof itself by 2025 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8362147.stm).
In other words, the Netherlanders are "unconcerned" not because they don't think there's a problem, but because they think they can handle it, since they've been doing this kind of thing so long.