Re: When are mountains going to grow in the Netherlands?

Ah yes...once again this Mad Scientist gets into trouble by looking into 
his cloudy crystal ball.  In other words, you should understand that our 
ability to predict future movements of the major plates of the Earth's 
crust is not really very good. Bear that in mind when reading the answer 
below.

Right now, the Atlantic Ocean is still widening and as long as that 
continues, the chance of any mountains in the Netherlands are somewhat 
remote.  Africa is banging into southern Europe, but that is much more 
likely to make mountains further south than the Netherlands.

This Mad Scientist has read that the amount of spread of the Atlantic may
be nearing its maximum extent.  North America is beginning to override
the East Pacific rise (in one interpretation), leading to an anomalously
large heat plume under the western part of the United States (from the
Gulf of California up toward the Yellowstone caldera), and there is 
significant crustal stretching in the Basin and Range Province (i.e. in 
the states of Utah, Nevada, some of Arizona and California, and some of
northern Mexico).  Some opinions take this to mean that N. America may
'soon' ('soon' in a geological sense may mean in the next few millions to 
tens of millions of years...don't hold your breath) start splitting apart. 
This will put two spreading centers (northern extension of the East 
Pacific Rise, and the Mid-Atlantic ridge) both shoving on the same block 
of crust (eastern part of the North American plate).  That's not a tenable 
situation. It will probably lead to either a considerable crumpling of 
that plate or a new subduction zone or zones. Likely places for these new 
subduction zones to start are the edges of the continents bordering the 
North Atlantic.  

(By the way, if you haven't guessed already, we're pretty deep into 
speculation now)

In any case, if a new subduction zone does start at one (or both) of the
sides of the North Atlantic, then that ocean will begin to close. Mountain
ranges/volcanoes should be associated with the new subduction zones. So if
a subduction zone does show up on the eastern side of the Atlantic, then
there's a good chance you may get some in the Netherlands then.  Now,
whether all this will happen at all, or within 100 million years, is 
*extremely* speculative.  It is one possible scenario, but there are 
certainly many others. What this one does have going for it is that it 
more or less repeats what happened in the past (the closing of the ocean
that existed before the Atlantic, which raised, e.g. the Allegheny mtns--
now quite old and eroded--in North America) so we know something like it 
can happen.  Just because something like this has happened, however, is no 
guarantee it will happen again.