MIL-OSI Export

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Timothy Welch, Senior Lecturer in Urban Planning, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau

While the government works to reassure New Zealanders that fuel stocks are stable, the numbers tell an uncomfortable story: the country has about 27 days of onshore cover for petrol and 17 days of diesel.

Meanwhile, the Middle East crisis remains volatile, even after today’s announcement of a two-week ceasefire.

In a country that imports all of its refined petrol, diesel and jet fuel, petrol is above NZ$3 a litre and diesel has overtaken it for the first time in history.

Roughly 80% of New Zealand’s fuel supply originates from refineries in South Korea and Singapore, which rely heavily on the Strait of Hormuz for their crude oil.

It is one of the most serious energy disruptions the world has faced. And governments everywhere are responding accordingly, some capping fuel purchases and pulling the available levers to reduce how much fuel citizens burn each day.

The Australian states of Victoria and Tasmania have made public transport free, as has Pakistan. The International Energy Agency has urged governments to pursue rapid demand reduction through public transport, teleworking and promoting walking and cycling.

In contrast, New Zealand has offered a NZ$50-per-week tax credit for an estimated 143,000 working families to ease petrol costs. A phased fuel response plan remains at its lowest setting, encouraging the public to check their tyre pressure and consider public transport.

Reducing transport demand

As a country with one of the highest car ownership rates in the world and a transport system in which 82% of personal trips are made by private vehicle, New Zealand is more exposed to global oil disruption than virtually any developed nation.

And yet the government’s demand-side response is essentially non-existent. This is despite what we know works in an oil shock. In particular, public transport fare reductions can cut the number of car trips. In congested urban networks, the effect compounds.

New Zealand’s own transport cost modelling shows fuel consumption per car rises roughly 35% in stop-start traffic, so every vehicle removed from the road saves fuel for everyone still on it.

Lower speed limits reduce fuel consumption per kilometre. Fleet electrification displaces oil from the highest-mileage vehicles first.

This is all standard demand-side response to supply disruption, according to the International Energy Agency. But these strategies underpin climate change mitigation, too.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s transport recommendations identify the same “avoid, shift, improve” framework as being essential for both decarbonisation and energy resilience.

Read more: Iran oil crisis: why NZ’s car dependence is now a strategic liability

The wrong policy lane

The problem for the current government is that nearly every one of those levers is a policy it has spent two years dismantling, defunding or disavowing.

It has pushed public transport agencies toward higher fare recovery targets and halved walking and cycling investment to $460 million (with no new funding for the 2024–27 period). It cancelled Auckland light rail.

Better urban walking and cycling infrastructure is known to shift people away from short trips by vehicle. But former Transport Minister Simeon Brown has claimed New Zealanders were “sick and tired of the amount of money going into cycleways”.

The Clean Car Discount – framed by the government as a handout for wealthy Tesla buyers – was repealed under urgency in 2023. Electric vehicle fleet growth, which had exceeded 50% per year while the scheme operated, collapsed to under 10%.

The previous Labour government’s speed limit reductions were reversed and labelled “nanny state” policy. Councils were allowed to opt out of medium-density residential standards, despite this being a way to reduce private vehicle use.

Every effective oil-shock response sits in the policy lane the current government has disowned as wasteful, anti-motorist or ideologically driven. Deploying any of them now risks conceding the political point.

The timing deepens the bind. After the second phase of the Royal Commission into COVID-19 reported recently, the government seized on criticisms of Labour’s crisis interventions.

Having built a political brand around the idea that the previous government overreacted and overspent during an emergency, the coalition now faces its own crisis. But it has encouraged voters to distrust the kind of rapid, interventionist measures that might be most effective.

Promoting energy security

The process has been termed “reputational constraint”, meaning political parties avoid policy options that stray into territory already “owned” by the competition – even if it might be effective.

But there is a way out of this that doesn’t require ideological surrender. The government could frame temporary fare reductions not as subsidies but as what they actually are: energy security measures.

It could fund connected cycling networks as cheap emergency capacity to reduce cars on the road and keep them clearer for freight. And it could target funding for fleet electrification at high-kilometre commercial vehicles as strategic oil displacement policy.

The International Energy Agency endorses all of these as energy security instruments. The government’s own fuel plan already acknowledges demand management should be part of the response to extreme disruptions.

The government has boxed itself in, but the problem is political, not technical. By treating transport demand reduction as energy security, rather than a partisan issue, an evidence-led response is still available.

– ref. The government has boxed itself in over fuel saving strategies – but there is a way out – https://theconversation.com/the-government-has-boxed-itself-in-over-fuel-saving-strategies-but-there-is-a-way-out-280131

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/08/the-government-has-boxed-itself-in-over-fuel-saving-strategies-but-there-is-a-way-out-280131/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nick Dunstone, Climate Science Fellow, Met Office Hadley Centre

A new Earthset image has been captured by the crew of Artemis II, 58 years since the iconic Earthrise photograph taken by the crew of Apollo 8. Over these past six decades, the climate has changed dramatically.

“Oh my God, look at that picture over there! There’s the Earth comin’ up. Wow, is that pretty.” That was Nasa astronaut Bill Anders’ reaction to seeing the Earth appearing to rise above the lunar horizon as their Apollo 8 spacecraft came around the Moon on Christmas Eve 1968.

Theirs were the first human eyes to see our planet at such a distance and from another celestial body. As fellow astronaut Jim Lovell said a few hours later: “The Earth from here is a grand oasis in the big vastness of space.”

That original Earthrise image is widely credited with helping to set the mainstream environmental movement in motion. Although I wasn’t born when the Apollo 8 photo was taken, a framed print of it hangs above my desk as a reminder of the beauty and fragility of our planet.

For me as a climate scientist, these photos, taken 58 years apart, inspire me to reflect on how the Earth’s climate has changed in the interim.

The concentration of carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gases) in our atmosphere has rapidly increased as a result of over half a century of continued and spreading industrial development, driven primarily by burning fossil fuels.

This is clearly illustrated by the Keeling curve – a graph that plots the continuous record of atmospheric CO₂ from Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii (started by Charles Keeling in 1958).

Read more: Mauna Loa Observatory captured the reality of climate change. The US plans to shut it down

This curve shows a steep and steady increase from approximately 320 parts per million (ppm) in 1968 to about 430ppm in 2026. This increase of over one-third in the total carbon dioxide in our atmosphere shows little sign of slowing down.

That additional blanket of greenhouse gases has increased the surface temperature of our planet. Data from the World Meteorological Organization shows how the global mean temperature record (the average temperature of the Earth’s surface) has risen by approximately 1.2°C since the Apollo 8 Earthrise photo was taken. This represents most of the warming that has happened since the early industrial period in the mid-19th century.

While an average global temperature increase of 1.2°C may not sound large, it means that regional hot extremes and new records are now much more likely. For example, my team’s recent research has shown that a 40°C day in the UK (first recorded on July 19 2022) is now over 20 times more likely than it was in the 1960s.

The global average temperature has surged in the past three years – most probably driven by a combination of internal climate variability and human-made emissions (including strong reductions in industrial aerosol particle emissions that largely act to cool the planet). In 2023, temperatures jumped from the previous record of 1.29°C (set in 2016) to 1.45°C above the early-industrial 1850-1900 baseline.

This record was then immediately broken in 2024 – the first year to temporarily exceed 1.5°C. Going beyond that boundary in a single year doesn’t mean we have breached the 1.5°C target set by the 2015 Paris climate agreement, which is generally accepted to refer to a 20-year average. However, it does highlight how rapidly we are now approaching that level of warming.

Read more: Record January heat suggests La Niña may be losing its ability to keep global warming in check

Temperatures in both years were partly boosted by warmer conditions in the tropical Pacific due to El Niño, a climate phenomenon that affects weather patterns globally. Last year, after El Niño had subsided, was slightly cooler at 1.43°C. However, current forecasts give a high probability for another El Niño developing during the second half of 2026. If this materialises, we could easily exceed 1.5°C again.

A key question is whether global warming is accelerating. This is difficult to detect directly from the surface temperature record. However, a recent study found a significant acceleration after accounting for the “noise” of year-to-year variability.

The view from above

Climate science isn’t just about measuring changes in temperature.

One of the legacies of the 1960s space race was the subsequent launch of many satellite observation platforms that have transformed our ability to monitor, understand and predict changes to the global climate.

We now have continuous monitoring of many key components of Earth’s climate system, including sea surface temperature, sea level, and the extent of polar sea ice, glaciers and land surface changes. Unfortunately, many of these reveal worrying trends, such as more frequent heatwaves on land and sea, loss of Arctic sea-ice, melting glaciers and sea-level rise.

One of the most concerning recent trends comes from a set of satellite instruments called the Nasa Ceres, which have measured changes in the Earth’s energy imbalance (EEI) since 2000. EEI is the difference between the amount of solar energy absorbed by the planet and the thermal energy radiated back into space.

The Ceres data shows a strong upward trend, indicating a growing rate of accumulation of energy, consistent with an acceleration in global heating.

Looking ahead, I hope that by the time astronauts take the first Earthrise photo from Mars (perhaps in the late 2030s), we are heading towards net-zero carbon emissions and more stable global temperatures.

Achieving net zero is this century’s Moonshot. The prize is minimising the severity of the worst climate consequences of global heating – leaving our children and future generations a sustainable “grand oasis” here on Earth.

– ref. Earthrise to Earthset: how the planet’s climate has changed since the photo that inspired the environmental movement – https://theconversation.com/earthrise-to-earthset-how-the-planets-climate-has-changed-since-the-photo-that-inspired-the-environmental-movement-279818

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/08/earthrise-to-earthset-how-the-planets-climate-has-changed-since-the-photo-that-inspired-the-environmental-movement-279818/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lisa-ann Gershwin, Research Scientist in Marine Biology, University of Tasmania

On a calm summer morning in southern Australia, the water can look deceptively clear, until you see thousands of gelatinous shapes washing ashore.

In January, thousands of pink lion’s mane jellyfish washed into Port Phillip Bay, prompting beach warnings and startling swimmers more accustomed to cold water than the shock of stinging tentacles.

The same month, unusually high numbers of moon jellyfish were reported across southern Tasmanian coastal waters.

If you’re swimming in southern seas and have an encounter with a jellyfish swarm, you may well wonder what led to it. Could a cold spike, a marine heatwave or other changes in the ocean have triggered the bloom?

Are these blooms normal?

Many Australians associate jellyfish with the dangerous stings of northern species such as box jellyfish and Irukandji. But jellyfish aren’t just confined to tropical waters. In southern Australia, species such as lions mane and moon jellyfish are more common, particularly this summer.

In fact, hundreds of species of jellyfish are found in Australian waters, ranging in size from a mere speck to nearly two metres wide. And it’s natural for jellyfish numbers to boom and bust. When conditions are favourable, they can bloom into superabundance. Their millions of mouths can strip every particle of food out of the water, from fish fry to fish eggs and plankton.

That said, there is a clear pattern visible globally. More disturbed marine ecosystems tend to experience larger and more persistent jellyfish blooms.

Jellyfish blooms can act as a visible indicator that something is out of balance in the ocean. For example, when oceans are overfished, polluted or suffer from other environmental degradation, this can trigger highly visible jellyfish blooms. Overfishing can remove predators and competitors, leaving jellyfish to thrive unchecked.

Coastal impacts from urbanisation add further pressure. When rivers dump huge amounts of nitrogen and other nutrients from farms and cities into the seas, this and other forms of pollution can favour jellyfish growth. For oceans affected by several of these issues, jellyfish blooms often grow larger and last longer.

Researchers have found jellyfish are becoming more abundant in many areas. Warmer waters favour jellyfish. But it is too simplistic to say that all jellyfish are are taking over everywhere. Different species respond to different conditions in their ecosystems.

Warmer water is good for jellyfish

As climate change heats up the oceans, many species are struggling to cope. Warmer water holds less dissolved oxygen than cooler water, making life harder for species with higher oxygen demands, like crustaceans and fish.

Jellyfish are highly responsive to their environment. Warmer water gives their metabolism a boost, so longer warm periods or sudden marine heatwaves can create conditions highly favourable for rapid population growth. They grow faster, eat more, reproduce faster and live longer.

Surprisingly, cold matters too. Researchers have found moon jellyfish can also get a boost from cold water. In their polyp stage, young moon jellies attach themselves to rocks or coral. When a cold period is followed by a return to normal temperatures, the polyps get a cue to begin budding off larval jellyfish (a process known as strobilation).

Interestingly, the size of the temperature change – not just whether it is warm or cool – can make jellyfish blooms more intense.

For example, in the eastern Bering Sea off Alaska and in the waters off Peru, long-term monitoring has shown jellyfish numbers closely tracked warming and cooling periods associated with the El Niño climate driver.

Ocean warming can be a threat multiplier, amplifying pressures on marine ecosystems, creating conditions in which jellyfish populations can expand dramatically.

Less oxygen is bad for fish but jellies don’t care

Heavy breathing marine species such as fish struggle to survive in warmer, less oxygenated water. Here, too, jellyfish do well. They can even survive periods in oxygen-free habitats, as they can store oxygen in their jelly.

As I put it in my TEDx Talk, when marine ecosystems face pressures on several fronts, jellyfish are often advantaged – while the predators normally keeping them in check suffer.

What to do if stung

While life-threatening box jellyfish and Irukandji stings have occurred in subtropical and even temperate Australian waters, both types are commoner in the tropics. For this reason, the Australian Resuscitation Council recommends different treatments for stung swimmers in southern and northern waters.

In the tropics, the priority is saving a life. Douse the sting liberally with vinegar to inactivate stinging cells, seek medical care if appropriate and be prepared to commence CPR if necessary.

Outside the tropics, the priority is pain relief. Rinse the sting well with seawater to wash away undischarged stinging cells, then use hot water or ice for the pain. In either case, seek immediate medical care if breathing difficulties or other systemic symptoms develop.

Blooms are beautiful

Many people who marvel at the beauty of jellyfish in an aquarium might shy away from them in the sea. But while it can feel daunting to think about being stung, jellyfish blooms in southern waters more often present a splendid opportunity to see an unusual natural phenomenon.

– ref. Swum into a jellyfish bloom recently? Here’s what may have triggered it – https://theconversation.com/swum-into-a-jellyfish-bloom-recently-heres-what-may-have-triggered-it-276866

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/08/swum-into-a-jellyfish-bloom-recently-heres-what-may-have-triggered-it-276866/