'Embarrassing’: International climate expert at COP30 scorns NZ’s methane target

Ouch! "The government’s methane announcement is the policy equivalent of a steaming cowpat on cross-partisan climate consensus and international efforts to tackle the crisis." Farmers off the hook on climate means rest of us pick up the slack newsroom.co.nz/2025/10/13/f... #nzpol #climatechange

More risk management challenges confronting NZ Government! Do you think they're up to it? 🌀🌪🌩🌊 It's not just the environmental risk but the financial and economic costs foreshadowed in the report! 😱💰💰💰 #NZpol www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

Using earthquake data we image seismic velocity 'anomalies' at 7-12 km depth beneath geothermal systems, north of Taupō, New Zealand. We interpret the anomalies as representing crystal-rich partial melt – the deep heat sources driving the geothermal systems. doi.org/10.1016/j.jv... #seismology

Luxon Govt stopped or blocked four key structural projects which would reduce fossil gas dependence: NZ Battery Project, Gas Transition Plan, Govt Investment in Decarbonising Industry, and Offshore Wind.

Chlöe Swarbrick on the Treaty Principles Bill, but truer words were never spoken about this government.

Shameful www.rnz.co.nz/news/politic...

No change: Almost one in four Canterbury swim spots unsafe, report shows

The decision of the Luxon Govt to cancel the NZ Battery Project, which would have underpinned security of the nz electricity network, sure looks short sited as we watch the wave of industrial closures driven, in part, by security of supply and high prices of electricity.

Comment: A small country that breaks ranks with allies and trading partners is likely to find itself isolated, vulnerable to reprisals and no longer trusted

More cuts to the Marsden Fund of @royalsocietynz.bsky.social. This takes it down to $10/capita in real terms when it was over $16 for most of this century. Australia's equivalent, the ARC, is NZ$42/capita, as is the US NSF (despite ongoing attempts to gut the latter). www.rnz.co.nz/news/politic...

Week in Review: Dame Anne Salmond laments the falling standards of our political leaders, their attack dogs and policy sources while New Zealanders endure such hard times

Fewer Marsden Fund grants after government cuts

Oh wow this is incredibly damning of Luxon, Amazon and the entire situation. Would that every analysis of their "announcements" was as clear-eyed #nzpol

Is this the same people?

My latest for @eos.org, about slickenlines, the scratch marks earthquakes leave behind, and the pulse-like nature of propagation

“Reti said "the government has made it clear on several occasions that we want publicly funded research to focus on solving real world problems that can be commercialised"” WE CANT DO THAT WITH NO MONEY SHANE www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

What happens when a Fossil Fuel CEO calls up WINZ, versus when an everyday NZ'er finally gets through after spending 3 days on hold? This Government has cooked the books. Instead of helping out as the cost of living bites, they're handing cash straight over to billion dollar oil companies.

Holly shit in the final wash-up the National led coalition govt threw away $671m scrapping the InterIslander Ferry project that was due to start operating next year. Economic fucking criminals. Clueless beyond reproach. #GeneralStrike #SnapElection www.rnz.co.nz/news/politic...

This is depressing. The Advanced Technology Institute could be impressive, but not if it is funded by raiding successful programs where proposals compete for attention in favour of a system which could see bureaucrats "picking winners" www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/...

"The most relevant take home for New Zealand is that the amount of extreme rainfall coming out of these storms will increase in the future and this increase will be dependent on future temperature increases" www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

That new usual suspects (Curry, Spencer, Christy, McKitrick, Koonin) Trump EPA climate denier report? (www.energy.gov/sites/defaul...)? I asked chatGPT to evaluate it. It had no trouble producing a succinct and convincing refutation:

If you get an emergency message on your phone but dismiss it without reading it to stop the horrible sound, you can access it from the history: On Android: Settings > Safety and emergency > Wireless emergency alerts > Emergency alert history.

Simulated propagation of tsunami generated by Kamchatka M8.8 earthquake. Generated by NCDR, Taiwan. 🧪⚒️⚛️

Like a merchant banker betting on a return to fax machines, Christopher Luxon is banking on reviving a dying industry that drives climate change and delivers the most expensive energy of all! 🤡 www.greenpeace.org/aotearoa/pre...

BOOM! The writing is on the wall for seabed mining in Taranaki. A select committee unanimously found changes are needed to ensure seabed mining doesn’t prevent the development of offshore wind farms. #ClimateAction #BanSeabedMining #nzpol newsroom.co.nz/2025/07/24/m...

This feels like a good day to share some of my previous reporting on MethaneSAT. Links in the thread below.

Still trying to make sense of Day One for the "PROs" which are still CRIs. How 'public' will these Public Research Organisations be? We have a news page and much wider resources up at NZAS. scientists.org.nz/news/13515621

⚒️ 🧪 Two weeks ago, a video appeared showing slip in the Myanmar earthquake - the first time this has ever been recorded on video. What can we learn from it? We deep-dive the science. earthquakeinsights.substack.com/p/remarkable...

Opinion from Otago University: The legal status of corporations in NZ raises the possibility Act's controversial bill could open the door for companies to sue over lost profits.

Our deeper analysis of Budget 2025's implication for science is out. It's worse than a nothing burger. It's a black hole budget pushing many areas towards the bring where they'll never recover, with funds going to pay for regulation and restructuring. scientists.org.nz/news/13502878

Budget 2025 continues the government's shift of the science sector towards more "growth-promoting investments". www.sciencemediacentre.co.nz/2025/05/22/b...

The Great Carbon Capture Scam www.greenpeace.org/aotearoa/sto...

A huge chunk of the Luxon govt’s climate plan rests on a single project, which even the oil industry now says probably won't happen because it doesn't stack up commercially. Carbon capture was always a scam. #Greenwash

NZ tracks far below the OECD average when it comes to investing in research and science and attempts to catch up just haven't worked.

My cartoon in today's www.thepost.co.nz/nz-news/3606... Simon Watts Minister for climate change is doing very very very little to put anything into action. Downplaying, ignoring, whatabouting rather than doing what is the bare bloody minimum. Usual cosplay from our current overlords. #NzPol

A couple of reasons Auckland's overnight storms weren't forecasted - the one below and also the slashing of weather forecasting funding by this coalition by the "streamlining" merger of NIWA and MetService. #nzpol #nzpolitics #NationalNotFitToGovern newsroom.co.nz/2025/03/20/n...

"will have negative effects" - you can say that again. theconversation.com/terminations...

This is DEVASTATING

'Much, much worse than we thought' - Residents oppose Australian bid to mine in Golden Bay bushland #nzpol

The USGS already released a shakemap for the M7.7 #earthquake in Myanmar a few minutes ago. This will be devastating. ⚒️🧪 earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/...

Happiest publication day to Kate Camp, whose new poetry collection Makeshift Seasons is out in the world today. 🐚 Congratulations, Kate! teherengawakapress.co.nz/makeshift-se...

The extent of sea ice around the world continues to remain the smallest in our satellite observation history for this time of year... More graphs at zacklabe.com/global-sea-i.... Data from @nsidc.bsky.social.

More on the satellite saga. Lack of transparency over $29m MethaneSAT government satellite, astronomers say www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

Our paper on QSeek is out in Seismica now. QSeek detects earthquakes and locates them precisely by backprojecting deep learning phase probability curves in time and space. And that at a blazingly fast speed! Thanks Marius Isken for this great work!

Genuine question: given US isolationism policies right now, can we trust that archived seismology datasets and critical realtime data streams at the EarthScope (IRIS) Data Center (NSF funded) are going to stay accessible to international scientists in the not too distant future?

Monday ice update - #Arctic sea ice extent is currently the *lowest* on record (JAXA data) • about 570,000 km² below the 2010s mean • about 1,140,000 km² below the 2000s mean • about 1,670,000 km² below the 1990s mean • about 2,040,000 km² below the 1980s mean Plots: zacklabe.com/arctic-sea-i... 🧪

📽️ Shaking the future: #SeisSol Code is revolutionising earthquake science SeisSol, seismic simulation code, is revolutionizing how we understand this kind of events. ⬇️Learn with @inseismoland.bsky.social how SeisSol is changing the game! youtu.be/qZXstIn9DcU