The Insane Dutch Plan to Dam the North Sea

this video is made possible by skillshare the first 1000 people to use the link in my description will get a free trial of skillshare premium the ocean is getting higher you might be someone who wants to debate the cause but there's no denying that the world's sea levels are getting higher since 1900 the global sea level has risen by as much as 21 centimeters and since just 1993 it's risen by seven and a half centimeters and many scientists expect that that rate of rise is going to accelerate across the course of the 21st century to the point where at the end in 2100 we might see a rise by as much as 2.7 meters from what we see today that might not seem like very much but the results of that would be catastrophic for countries across the world and perhaps nowhere would end up getting slammed as hard by poseidon's wrath as the netherlands which is uniquely vulnerable to rising sea levels and always has been in 325 bce the ancient greek geographer pythius said of the netherlands as he was passing through it that more people here died in the struggle against water than in the struggle against men roughly one-third of the land in the netherlands is located beneath sea level and two-thirds of her land is considered to be extremely vulnerable to flooding and as a result the dutch have been fighting a war against the ocean that threatens them for centuries and in the past they've come up with some pretty ingenious solutions to fight against their water problem they've constructed dykes dams floodgates canals pumping stations and more all in their effort to push the sea back in 1933 the netherlands completed construction of the offslight dike dam which separated this historical body of water known as the zoider z from the north sea over time the zoider z became a freshwater lake and the dutch even managed to drain some of it out to reveal new lands for settlement this new land that the dutch managed to dig up from beneath the waves is roughly twice the size of singapore and is today home to over 400 000 people who now call it home without this complicated system that the dutch have built over the centuries the netherlands would naturally look like this today and millions of people in buildings would all be underwater but the ocean has not entered into its final form yet and the biggest challenge that the netherlands may face from it is still ahead the current system that the dutch have built is up to the standard that a single flood can be expected in the west of the country about once every ten thousand years and in the rest of the country that's less inhabited about once every four thousand years but the current system is not built according to the worst case projections for sea level rise by the end of the 21st century if sea levels do in fact end up rising up to 2.7 meters higher than what they are today this is what the area around the netherlands will end up looking like nearly half of the country is going to be underwater including her most major and important cities like amsterdam rotterdam the hague and utrecht belgium germany denmark france and england will all suffer significant parts of their coastlines going beneath the waves as well so in the event that this ends up happening only a very radical solution could push the ocean back and what better people to come up with that radical solution than the dutch who have been fighting this very war for centuries enter the proposal made by a dutch scientist and his german colleague dubbed the northern european enclosure dam or need for short the proposal calls for the construction of a series of colossal dams around the perimeter of the north sea and the english channel in order to block the rising sea levels from getting inside and threatening northern europe the shorter of these sections would be built across the channel from cornwall in england over to brittany in france a distance of 161 kilometers across an average depth of roughly 85 meters of course to simplify the engineering challenges and resources required the dam could be constructed further back in the channel across the significantly more narrow strait of dover but then it'd be leaving all of the land in southern england and northern france vulnerable to the wrathful ocean's waves the northern part of the structure would be a collection of island hopping dams that originates in mainland scotland and stretches from there out to the orkney islands and then from there over to the shetland islands and then finally from there it would stretch out 331 kilometers across the open ocean to western norway this final section would of course be the most challenging to accomplish from an engineering perspective particularly because the depth across most of it is well over 100 meters and once the dam approaches norway the depth dramatically increases to well beyond 300 meters in some places to make matters even worse the finishing point for the dam here in western norway isn't really connected to the norwegian mainland it's on an island called satra so another small series of dams would have to be constructed from here over to the norwegian mainland somewhere in order to completely enclose northern europe from the rising ocean outside the paper's authors claimed that the total cost for this entire project would be somewhere between the range of 200 billion and 500 billion euros but they also note that that would be less than 0.1 percent of all the countries gdps within the dam who would have their coastlines devastated if they chose to do nothing instead if the need ever does hypothetically get built in the future it will give the countries around the north sea the ability to do something very interesting they could begin to artificially control the sea level inside of the dam which means that if they lowered it they could begin to reveal lands that have been lost to humanity for thousands of years as recently as just 8 000 years ago the british islands were actually the british peninsula because a huge piece of land existed where there's now only water between it and europe this land is known today as doggerland and roughly 8 000 years ago rising sea levels flooded this low elevated land and submerged it which separated the higher hills of britain from the european mainland if the need was constructed though the countries around the north sea could begin to drain water out and reveal as much of this ancient land as they want for modern settlement and colonization which might actually be vitally important good land to resettle the millions of expected climate refugees from other less fortunate parts of the world on the netherlands could expand to become a super netherlands who doubles triples or even quadruples her current land size but the geopolitical consequences of constructing the need and draining the water inside should bear some dire mention first of all the absolute shock of connecting britain with europe via land would almost certainly deal a huge psychological blow to a lot of people britain's whole identity is so wrapped up into being an island and being separated from the rest of europe so actually being connected by a piece of land to the european union and the european continent that people and vehicles could just move freely across back and forth that couldn't be protected or defended by the royal navy would certainly be a problem to a lot of people i'm sure i also cannot possibly imagine a scenario in which russia would be happy that their baltic sea fleet and ports would be trapped within what's essentially a big bathtub as i've said many times in many videos in the past russia's entire identity has been based around overcoming being effectively landlocked and their ports on the baltic sea are one of their only paths to trade and naval expansion out towards the larger global ocean if the need was constructed it would effectively check russian naval ambitions and block them inside of the baltic leaving only the black sea as russia's sole year-round access into the world's oceans so they wouldn't be happy and neither would international trade either if the dams were constructed without any entrances or exits then global trade would take a massive hit out of the top 10 busiest cargo ports in europe seven of them would all be located within the confines of the need rotterdam antwerp hamburg amsterdam bremerhaven promorsk all of these ports combined make the english channel the single busiest shipping route anywhere in the world and the closure of it would almost certainly crash the entire european economy so there's gonna need to be a way to get these ships out and back in so that the spice continues to flow finally there's also the minor problem of the north sea channel and baltic gradually turning into the world's biggest freshwater sea water circulation from the outside ocean would be obviously restricted from entering whereas freshwater discharge from rivers like the rhine the muse the thames and dozens of others would just keep flowing in so over time the body of water inside of the need would gradually turn into fresh water and who knows what kind of catastrophic environmental problems that might end up having in short the authors of the need paper do not intend that the construction of the dam should be the solution to global climate change rather they published it as a warning to us all of the radical solutions the world might one day require if we don't fix the problem right now in the present perhaps one day in the future we might end up needing to use the plan and we'll have to learn the proper engineering abilities and skills required to build it by then normally acquiring new skills requires a lot of commitment both in time and money but skillshare breaks those barriers down you might not need the skills to build a dam that'll save the world but you might want to learn more about skills that'll help you with something you're passionate about want to learn digital illustration i'd recommend the class digital illustration learn to use procreate by jerome vogel want to learn how to animate your own youtube videos just like mine i'd suggest my friend paulie matters class simply titled make animated youtube videos when you become a member of skillshare you can take these classes as well as thousands of others on nearly any subject you can imagine ranging from productivity to cinematography to fine arts and more it's the absolute perfect activity for whenever you're stuck at home have a lot of free time or if you'd like to sharpen up your school or work skills best of all though you can get a completely free trial of skillshare premium by being one of the first 1000 people who use the link down in my description by doing this you can achieve all of your own personal learning goals and help support my channel at the same time so go ahead and check them out and as always thank you for watching

Channel: RealLifeLore

Views: 2,011,307

Keywords: real life lore, real life lore maps, real life lore geography, real life maps, world map, world map is wrong, world map with countries, world map real size, map of the world, world geography, geography, geography (field of study), facts you didn’t know, insane plan, insane plans, north sea, north sea dam, NEED, northern european enclosure dam, dam, Dutch, Netherlands, doggerland

Id: IY-HDrhaLZk

Length: 10min 37sec (637 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 13 2020