The Netherlands in 2100, when all the ice has melted:
(I'm sorry, my friends. You're welcome to come to Germany, if you promise to bring your superior bike infrastructure.)
Knowing the Dutch, it's more likely that we'd see a Netherlands-shaped island in the ocean, next to where Germany used to be 😋
Weed is legal now, bring your greenhouses too
Nah, there will be a enormous glass dome with a few super terps where Friesland used to be.
“God made the world but the Dutch made Holland”
Normal people: the sea is nice.
Dutch people: it's free real estate!
Hardly free, these were very expensive projects both in financial terms as well as human cost.
It's a meme, don't take it literally
How safe is it?
Like, if war were suddenly to break out could 10% of the country be flooded with a few torpedoes?
Maybe... I'm sure it wouldn't be great if the big dykes got blown up, but barring any insane events like this one I feel very safe, they measure all this stuff very precisely, there is actually a separate government that only deals with water management.
In 1573 the Spanish navy besieged the lakes and rivers around Haarlem, eventually routing the Dutch independence movement in a prolonged sea battle.
Today it's the location of Schilpol airport.
A much more effective war against Neptune
Did they conquer those areas from other kingdoms or were those previously flooded and they dammed them?
They defeated Poseidon and took what was once his.
Built dikes and pumped out the water.
The second. The Netherlands is like the worlds capital for land reclamation.
The sea level was higher in 1300, so it's a combination of a retreating sea and reclaiming land.
See, that would be contrary to my expectation, because hotter Earth = higher sea level, at least until all ice is melted.
So, I looked it up and that also seems to be the case for the Netherlands. In fact, their land levels are even falling, too, because they lost a lot of peat over the centuries:
Source: https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2023/04/23/land-subsidence-in-the-netherlands/
(Not the greatest source, but seems to match up with everything else I found.)
Your expectation is correct, but perhaps your knowledge is lacking. Around the 13th century the earth was the hottest it has been until recently. It's called the Medieval Warm Age. Sea levels were higher and started retreating around 1300.
Edit: To add, this cites some sources. It's not a massive change in sea level obviously, something between 1 and 2 m.
Hmm, interesting. The graph I posted would be a bit too linear, wouldn't it.
But it's actually not the entire Earth that was affected by the MWP, but rather just the North Atlantic region (the Wikipedia article specifically says so).
I guess, some of the Northern polar caps melted, so maybe it did affect global sea levels anyways. Or it might have been something like the land heating up, causing stronger winds from sea to land and that just pushed more water towards the Netherlands. Honestly, I'm just spitballing at this point...
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