The Elgin drilling platform in the North Sea, off the east coast of Scotland, has been leaking natural gas since 25 March, 2012. As New Scientist went to press, Total, the company in charge, was still considering ways to stem the flow.

As the sea ice recedes in Hudson Bay, killer whales are moving in for a feast. Are they eating the Inuit people's lunch?

The ice has not recovered from a record low in 2007 – ice-free summers could soon become a regular feature across most of the Arctic Ocean.

An atmosphere with less methane would encourage plants to soak up more carbon dioxide, buying precious time to solve the climate problem.

The widespread use of antibiotics may permanently change our gut flora, increasing our risk of obesity and damaging our immune systems.

The side effects of antibiotics may make the war on hostile bacteria trickier to wage than ever. (Editorial)

Claims that environmental regulations will worsen unemployment are false. When the economy is struggling, the opposite is true, says economist Josh Bivens.

Engineering schemes could lead to one of the world's largest wetlands running dry every four years.

As the seas rise, so will the costs associated with them. The impact of climate change on oceans alone could cost $2 trillion by the end of the century, according to a report by the Stockholm Environment Institute in Sweden.

From the safety of a computer screen in the control room, I can see a robot scoop up a chunk of asbestos from the reactor floor. I am at Sellafield, the nuclear complex on the coast of Cumbria in north-west England, watching remotely controlled machinery crawl through the defunct Windscale Advanced Gas-Cooled Reactor, gradually stripping out the last of its guts. The mammoth task of dismantling the reactor started in the early 1990s but is only now finally nearing completion.