A proposal by European researchers to build a huge dam of sorts to protect Northern Europe from rising sea levels is not being embraced in Norway. Norwegian researchers propose tackling the cause of rising seas instead.
The proposed dam, reported in various media including newspaper Aftenposten, would run for around 460 kilometers from Norway and Scotland via Shetland and the Orkney Islands. Another dam would run between Great Britain and France, effectively turning the North Sea into a huge lake and helping to protect portions of France, Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, northern Germany and Denmark from flooding.
Construction of the proposed “North European Enclosure Dam,” presented in the American Journal of Meterology, is said to be technically possible but extremely expensive and potentially destructive to the North Sea’s ecosystems.
“If we’re to solve the challenges posed by rising sea levels that result from a warmer climate, we should rather turn to the reason for the problems,” Sebastian Mernild, director of the Nansen Center and a professor specializing in climate change and glaciers at the University of Bergen, told Aftenposten. Mernild is also a member of the UN’s Climate Panel and maintains that global greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere are the culprit.
“What I’m worried about is that we are not doing enough politically to minimize and stop these emissions,” Mernild said. He views the dam proposal as an expression that efforts to reverse climate change are taking too much time.
newsinenglish.no staff
