TL;DR: Here’s the top 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: * Two new academic studies attempt to pinpoint tipping risks. One modelled tipping risk from four interconnected tipping elements, based on current policy paths that overshoot 1.5˚C, and estimated the tipping risk to be 45% by 2300, even if temperatures are brought back below the target this century. Climate action this decade can have a significant impact on the level of risk, they say. * Another study, yet to be peer-reviewed or published, modelled just one tipping element, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). Shockingly, it found a greater-than-even chance of an AMOC collapse before 2050. The impact of such a collapse would profoundly affect much of the Northern Hemisphere. * Energy Minister Simeon Brown has offers up his grand plan for importing LNG that solves neither the immediate nor the long-term electricity supply crisis, while the country’s largest gas and energy customers, Methanex and Tiwai Point ramp down their operations (and their associated exports), to offset the short-term pain. * Propublica has a great scoop this week, gaining access to training videos for The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 and its secret 180-day Playbook for getting an army of political appointees in place to fight the deep state and rapidly advance a right-wing agenda should Trump win the US election. The videos include plans to “eradicate climate change references from absolutely everywhere”. (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. Some ‘hard to ignore’ research into the looming tipping points In international science news, research attempting to pin down more specific information on tipping points and their timing is emerging. An article published in Nature magazine says that if we were to follow current policies in place this century, which overshoot 1.5˚C, it would commit the world to a 45% tipping risk by 2300, even if the temperature is subsequently brought back below 1.5˚C. The tipping risk increases for every 0.1˚C of temporary overshoot. The study uses an Earth System Model of four interconnected climate tipping elements. The paper emphasises that planetary stability relies on stringent emissions reductions in the current decade. One particular tipping element (one of the four included in the modelling above) that has been receiving a lot of attention in recent years is the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation or (AMOC), a vital system of currents in the Atlantic Ocean that have profound impacts on weather around the world. 2. When might the AMOC tip? News about the AMOC has been increasingly concerning and a new, yet to be peer-reviewed study, is the most dramatic and worrying yet, suggesting that a tipping point may be much, much nearer than 2300. The research uses a state-of-the-art model that focuses specifically on estimating the likely timing of a collapse. The results suggest that the AMOC is more likely than not to collapse by 2050. Like a conveyor belt, the AMOC pulls warm surface water from the southern hemisphere and the tropics and distributes it in the cold North Atlantic. The colder, saltier water then sinks and flows south. The mechanism keeps parts of the Southern Hemisphere from overheating and parts of the Northern Hemisphere from getting unbearably cold, while distributing nutrients that sustain life in marine ecosystems. The impacts of an AM