SP w2 Climate changes in the Netherlands
- HildeMaassen
- Oct 12, 2019
- 7 min read
Updated: Aug 15, 2020
One of the feedback points for this module was that I had to dig deeper in the problems around climate change in the Netherlands.
What is climate change, how does it effect the netherlands now and in the future.
I started reading an article stating the facts.
In the Netherland a lot of people don't take it very serious and if others have to do something about it, they themselves not.I don't thing this problem to be typically dutch.
Is the climate changing?
On average the whole earth has become 1.0 degree warmer since 1900. In the Netherlands, the average temperature has since risen 1.9 degrees. So it is not the same everywhere in the world. The more to the north it is worse in Siberia even 3 degrees. Around the tropics and above the oceans it is not that extreme.
Another fact that has been established conclusively: as a result of this warming, the ice is melting around the poles, especially in Greenland. The surface of the Arctic Ocean, which is covered with ice in the summer, has almost halved since 1979. Since 1880 the sea level has risen more than 20 centimeters. This is partly due to the melting water from glaciers and the ice caps in the polar regions, partly because seawater expands at a higher temperature.
The real problem Is, I think, that we don’t really feel it. Everybody is talking about climate change and the temperatures are higher but the problem with CO2 is that what we do at this moment will effect in 100 years. People can only look forward or backward one lifetime I am told in a series of lectures that I am currently following at the online university of the Netherlands. Changing in weather have always been there and will always be. And of course they seem to be (are!!) more extreme but isn’t that due to nostalgia since in the past everything was better? So we need to change our daily life, behaviour, ideas, patterns, transport in order to save a world in the future that we will not be part of. But we, as a society, turn a blind eye to economic growth.
This results in strange, contradiction, government decisions. In the Netherlands, for example, a second port is being built. Where indeed more environmentally friendly work should be done, but the companies that do not do so in the "old" port are not closed. The Schiphol airport may expand again and a new football stadium will be built in Rotterdam while we are short of houses but those cannot be built because we will then no longer be able to comply with the CO2 agreement.
In addition to CO2, there is also a problem with nitrogen. That also causes climate changes. In the Netherlands, politics has now begun to tackle this by reporting that half of all farmers must stop. That has already been weakened slightly but has already led to protest actions and a new action has been announced for next Wednesday.
The farmers blocked all the roads to The hague in actions two weeks ago and will be doing the same the coming week. The tractors on the highway during the protest. "No farmers no food".
Public transport that should be cheaper than the car has since become more expensive, making people more inclined to use the car. There are more traffic jams on the roads, but the numbers of delays in public transport are equally going up.
These kinds of political decisions do not help to convince ordinary citizens that it is really necessary to take steps for the future. And what is one or two degrees warmer? During the lecture I learned that on average it was only 4 degrees colder during the ice age. I didn’t realise that before. Was shocking to learn how sensitive the earth is for temperature.
My question: how do you show something that the eye can’t detect? And how can we make it visual?
What is wether and what is climate? Climate is the wether over a period of 30 years. Changes on a certain type of wether are decreasing due to the climate change.
In 2015 the KNMI (institute for the wether in the Netherlands) gives a climate change alarm. This gave a juge(grote) reaction; “climate is always changing”.
Anthropogenic climate change is the part of the climate change that is due to human behaviour. This is a slow process that can’t be measured in a human lifetime. That is why it is hard to believe. And how to differ the human influence from the change coursed by the natural process?
Sunlight easily passes through the atmosphere and as a result, the earth starts to shine. Heat is less easily let through, but part of the greenhouse gases that are present in the atmosphere reflects the sunlight back, causing the earth to heat up more. The northern part of the earth, with the largest surface area and the most inhabitants, has much more CO2. The winter, summer, spring and autumn also makes differences; with the leaves of the trees absorbing more CO 2.
Since the start of the industrial revolution the amount of CO2 has doubled. And that gives 1 degree increase heat. As a result, the earth will react, resulting in more water vapor = greenhouse gas that enhances the effect of CO2 and oceans evaporate. More warming is melting of the ice; ice is white and white reflective sunlight that cools the earth; as the surface white becomes smaller, less sunlight is reflected and the earth cools less. So everything is related.
One always need CO2 to be able to explain measured warming Greenhouse gases: most of them are global warming
Every molecule CO2 that we are now pumping will remain for hundreds of years
Who is responsible for climate change caused by CO2?
The only option is to work together on the problem; it has brought us prosperity but action needs to be taken
Measurements are about the past, responsibility is about the future.
How can we predict how hot it will be on earth; Agreements made in Paris the warmer it can get on earth. Max 3 degrees to 2050.
Understanding what happened in the past helps to make predictions for the future. There have always been changes but what we now have 1 degree in 200 years and increasing CO2 have never been observed before.
A bit of history;
Research into climate change has already begun at the start of the 18th century Fourier already knew that the atmosphere worked like a greenhouse. Tyndal discovered CO2 in the 19th century. Arrhenius found a relationship between CO2 temperature and warming (to explain ice ages). https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/Arrhenius/arrhenius_2.php
In the 1950s, they discovered that the oceans did not absorb all of the CO2. CO2 is the most important greenhouse gas but not the only one.
Another way to measure CO2, for example, by analyzing old wood or drilling in the ground. Satellites and travel logs are helping a lot. Drilling in the ground varies by a degree or 4 Ice ages were not as much cooler as the weather, so earth is very sensitive.
Satellite instrument Tropomi measures nitrogen dioxide (NO2) all over the world. NO2 can be used to trace the CO2 hotspots by burning fossil fuels. Thanks to Tropomi we therefore gain spatial insight where a lot of CO2 is emitted. In this way, the most important changes in CO2 hotspots worldwide can be tracked in the coming years. It is shocking to see that the Netherlands is a hotspot.
Measure Temperture
The Italian Galilei Galileo invented his thermoscope in 1593, the precursor of the thermometer. (Florentine thermometer). This consisted of a long, upright vertical tube that was closed off at the top by a glass sphere. The other (open) end was in a bowl of water. At higher temperatures the air in the sphere expanded and the water was pressed down.
It is really just a thermometer without scale. A precursor was already there in classical antiquity. In the second century BC, the doctor Galen used a similar instrument as a fever thermometer.
In 1612, physicist Cornelis Drebbel made the same instrument in the Netherlands. Thanks to Drebbel, it became known in our country as a Drebellian instrument. This led to the misunderstanding that not the Galilei but Drebbel would invent the thermometer.
Grand Duke Ferdinand II of Tuscany founded the Academia del Cimento here in Italy in 1653. After the invention of the barometer in 1644 by the Italian Evangelistica Torricelli. Thanks to this organization, temperature, air pressure and humidity measurements were taken several times a day in Florence, Pisa, Bologna and Parma, in accordance with prescribed guidelines. In 1667 the Academia was dissolved under pressure from the church. It maintained the view that the weather was related to the cosmos. The measurements of the Italian prince Cosimo de Medici that were carried out in Amsterdam between December 19, 1667 and January 7, 1668 have been preserved. Diaries show that there must have been a kind of thermometer on the town hall in Delft as early as 1621. The stand is said to have been kept by councilors. However, the data has disappeared
At the end of 1705, Cruquius began to scrutinize the weather, first in a nutshell and from 1706 in Delft. He systematically reported temperature, air pressure and wind. 300 years later his findings were published in a book was. (bought the book, have to wait a week for it)
Example Feb/ March 1927
In the Netherlands, the average temperature has been rising since 1900. There are, however, differences per year. This increase in temperature cannot be explained by purely natural causes. You need natural and human causes to explain the temperature trend of the last 100 years.
Satellites do not measure radiation at the temperature of the ground warming, but rather at the top of the temperature.
The future cannot be measured, but you put it in a model in the hope that you can generate information on the basis of which we can make agreements worldwide. This model shows global warming.
The Blue line is what happens is we stop now.
The Red line is doing nothing
Why does so little happen? This is because of the human time horizon. We no longer have a feeling and responsibility for the future as the generation of our children and perhaps grandchildren.
Vicki Arroyo says in her ted talk that we cannot longer predikt what will happen in the future because that is based on the past: stationary. Because we are operating outside of the boundary of CO2 concentraties. Therefore we cannot predict the future. Yet we will have to do something; together.
Sources:
http://www.changemagazine.nl/klimaatkennis/onderzoek/stikstofprobleem_vraagt_wereldwijde_aanpak
https://klimaatverandering.wordpress.com/wat-weten-we/
https://milieudefensie.nl/actueel/dit-zijn-de-gevolgen-van-klimaatverandering-voor-nederland
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