28 Jun 2022
A new paper – entitled Offshore wind farms contribute to epibenthic biodiversity in the North Sea – has been published in the Journal of Sea Research and has received media coverage. According to the lead author, marine ecologist Dr Remment ter Hofstede, and his colleagues, “the North Sea was once abundantly covered with hard substrates […]
15 Mar 2022
As reported in ENDS [paywall] and the Independent, a new report by the Plastic Soup Foundation states that millions of waste plastic “nurdles” from UK sewage plants on the east coast are polluting the North Sea and reaching the Dutch coast. Sewage plants in Britain use black “bio beads”, also known as nurdles, to filter water, but spillages […]
01 Mar 2022
As reported in the Guardian, advisers say refusing new licences would signal green ambition, but final decision must be for ministers. The prospects for an expansion of oil and gas drilling in the North Sea have cleared a major hurdle, as the Committee on Climate Change said “stringent tests” must be applied to any new exploration licences […]
01 Sep 2020
During expeditions to oil and gas reservoirs in the central North Sea in 2012 and 2013, scientists of the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel (Germany) discovered that methane bubbles emerged from the seabed around abandoned wells. The gas originates from shallow gas pockets, which lie less than 1000 meters deep below the seafloor […]
18 Feb 2020
Giant dams enclosing North Sea could protect millions from rising waters Guardian ‘A Dutch government scientist has proposed building two mammoth dams to completely enclose the North Sea and protect an estimated 25 million Europeans from the consequences of rising sea levels as a result of global heating. Sjoerd Groeskamp, an oceanographer at the Royal Netherlands […]
02 Jul 2019
Oceana ‘The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) has announced today the collapse of the North Sea cod population, and has recommended reducing its catch limits by 70% for 2020. In order to revert its critical situation, Oceana strongly encourages EU decision-makers to follow this advice, which is the result of an updated scientific […]
24 Feb 2019
Greenpeace ‘The British government has endorsed plans by oil giant Shell to leave some decommissioned North Sea oil infrastructure in place, despite the German government expressing serious concerns about shortcomings in the oil giant’s proposals, according to leaked documents seen by Unearthed. Hundreds of ageing North Sea oil and gas rigs will be decommissioned in the […]
17 Jul 2018
Norway has given a cautious approval to Europe’s largest carbon-capture project Among all European countries, Norway is the only one making any serious progress on a technology crucial to helping the world reach its climate goals: carbon capture and storage. The concept is simple. Ideally we stop burning fossil fuels and otherwise emitting carbon dioxide […]
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