TL;DR: Here’s the top six news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, and a discussion above between Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer: * A new study published this week in the journal Frontiers in Science shows methane emissions are growing much faster than projected and that rapid reductions are necessary if the world is to stay on track to limit warming to 1.5˚C or 2˚C. * The research emerges at a critical time for Aotearoa as two reviews of methane targets are currently underway, one by the Climate Change Commission and another by a panel newly formed by the Coalition Government. * The researchers argue that the alternative climate metric GWP* has been misused to support inequitable claims that current levels of methane emissions cause ‘no additional warming’. The coalition Government’s newly formed panel, tasked with reviewing the country’s methane target has the principle of ‘no additional warming’ embedded in its terms of reference, suggesting that the Government, and an agricultural industry that is eagerly anticipating a downward revision to its targets as a result of the panel’s work, are unlikely to welcome the latest research. * Air New Zealand announced that it was abandoning its 2030 targets and withdrawing from the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) this week. It is the first global airline to join the headlong rush out of the SBTi as 2030 gets uncomfortably close. * The SBTi itself released a set of reports as a first step toward reviewing its standards, after indicating earlier this year that it was considering reversing its advice against the corporate use of voluntary carbon offsets to achieve Scope 3 emissions targets, causing uproar and a staff revolt. Far from clarifying the organisation’s position, the reports find ‘mixed evidence’ for the effectiveness of carbon offsets. * Pressure is growing to provide more ways for organisations and states to obscure the confronting reality that they are failing to take sufficient action to remain on track to achieve Paris Agreement targets. (See more detail and analysis below, and in the video and podcast above. Cathrine Dyer’s journalism on climate and the environment is available free to all paying and non-paying subscribers to The Kākā and the public. It is made possible by subscribers signing up to the paid tier to ensure this sort of public interest journalism is fully available in public to read, listen to and share. Cathrine wrote the wrap. Bernard edited it. Lynn copy-edited and illustrated it.) 1. Methane emissions under increasing scrutiny New research out this week shows anthropogenic methane emissions have been growing much faster than projected, particularly since 2006. They have been responsible for about half of planetary warming between the pre-industrial period and the 2010s but have received far less attention compared to carbon dioxide. It is now becoming increasingly clear that reducing methane emissions is a critical component, alongside decarbonisation, of achieving global climate goals. The article by lead author Professor Drew Shindell of Duke University and a group of 14 other international climate scientists says that methane emissions need to drop rapidly, if we are to limit global warming to 1.5˚C or 2˚C. 2. Research comes at critical time for NZ The study has emerged at a critical time for policymakers in Aotearoa. Two reviews of our methane emissions targets are currently under way – one by the Climate Change Commission and another by a separate panel newly formed by the Government as part of their coalition agreement. The terms of reference for that panel are to provide advice on what the target should be that ‘is consistent with the principle of no additional warming’. That framing has been called into question by the latest research. The researchers argue that the alternative climate metric GWP* has used to support the claim that curr