Pittwater Online News

For a quarter century, Australia’s environment laws were widely regarded as not fit for purpose. In 2020, a scathing review by Professor Graeme Samuel found the Environment Protection and Biodiversity (EPBC) Act was ineffective and unfit for future environmental challenges.

On the last Parliamentary sitting day of 2025, Labor passed its long-awaited reforms to Australia’s nature laws following a deal with the Greens. According to Environment Minister Murray Watt, these reforms would deliver tangible benefits for the environment and “protect what is precious”.

Now the dust has settled on getting the legislation passed, conservationists want to know if they will work.

The big questions is whether two proposed “environmental standards”, a centrepiece in the new laws, are up to the task.

What are environmental standards?

Previously, the EPBC Act required the decision-maker to tick procedural boxes, but this did not necessarily result in an outcome that protected the environment.

For example, while the Department of Environment could access information about the impacts of development on the black-throated finch, it merely needs to “have regard” to this. There was no obligation to reject a project, or impose conditions, even if the projected impacts on the finch would be severe.

To address this, Professor Samuel called for new national environmental standards. These universal requirements would guide the outcomes of environmental decision-making across the country.

For example, his suggested standard for threatened species included the outcome that they would be “protected, managed and recovered over time”. Decisions would have to be consistent with these standards with rare exception, only justifiable in the public interest. Rather than box-ticking, this would require decisions to promote good outcomes for nature.

Although Labor committed to environmental standards in 2022, passing the reforms proved challenging. It took three years, an election, a new Environment Minister, and a slew of compromises, to secure the deal.

What is the government proposing?

Two draft standards have released, and are open for consultation. One is for Matters of National Environmental Significance (MNES), a term in the EPBC Act that includes World Heritage areas, migratory species and the Great Barrier Reef National Park.

The other is for environmental offsets – actions taken to counterbalance the unavoidable negative impacts of a project on the environment.

At first blush, the draft standards contain the components urged by Professor Samuel, including objectives and outcomes. For example, the MNES Standard has an objective that habitat be protected, conserved, and restored.

However, clauses buried in both of the standards render these outcomes and objectives effectively useless. These clauses state that as long as the minister makes a decision consistent with another part of the standard (called the “principles”), the outcomes and objectives are deemed to be met.

These legal technicalities can be confusing. But the reality is that if the standards are signed off in their current form, we will be back to box-ticking as the key focus of environmental decision-making.

These new standards also include a narrow focus on “irreplaceable” habitat. For species that are recognised as threatened, habitat that is “irreplaceable” and necessary for them to remain “viable in the wild” should be protected.

While this framing sounds like what Professor Samuel envisaged, the narrow definition of “irreplaceable” means only the rarest and most fragile habitats will be covered.

This is at odds with the federal government’s previous commitment to “no new extinctions”. Avoiding a species becoming extinct requires habitat to be protected before things get to breaking point.

Weak constraints on state power

The weak standards are especially concerning given the federal government is steaming ahead with plans to pass approval powers to the states and territories. The Commonwealth has an important oversight role in environmental regulation and, although rare, it has stepped in on occasion to stop the most destructive projects, like the proposed Toondah Harbour development.

Under the reformed laws, the standards are supposed to act as a crucial guardrail on state power. The minister cannot devolve powers to a state unless satisfied that its environmental approval frameworks are consistent with federal standards. Unless robust environmental standards are developed, this constraint on state power will be fairly weak.

Environment Minister Murray Watt promised the EPBC reforms would deliver tangible benefits for the environment. Unfortunately, the draft standards offer little guarantee.

Justine Bell-James, Professor, TC Beirne School of Law, The University of Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

When major new climate change scenarios are released, there’s always strong interest. These scenarios lay out what our future climate will look like, depending on how fast we act to cut emissions.

But what was surprising about the seven new scenarios announced last week was that United States President Donald Trump took an interest.

Why? Because a high-emissions scenario – known as RCP8.5 and its successor SSP5-8.5 – had been removed. Under these worst-case scenarios, nations would make no effort to cut emissions and expand fossil fuel use. By 2100, carbon dioxide levels would almost triple, to 1,135 parts per million and the world would be around 4.5°C hotter than the pre-industrial period.

The climate scientists responsible for laying out the range of possible futures removed the RCP8.5 scenarios for a very good reason. Although often slow and incomplete, our efforts to tackle climate change have made a tangible difference. We have averted the worst climate future once thought possible.

The job is far from done. Emissions are at record highs and global warming is speeding up.

But the removal of this high-emissions scenario isn’t, as Trump and other climate sceptics have claimed, a sign of failed modelling, or that climate change was a hoax. It’s a sign the expansion of solar, wind, electric vehicles and batteries have slowed emissions growth.

How are these scenarios made?

Many climate impacts are becoming evident after about 1.4°C of warming – the level we’re roughly at now.

Because this period of extremely rapid climate change is due to human activities, it means we also have the opportunity to shape the future.

What will this look like? Will the world keep heating up, or will rapid action cut emissions and bring warming to a halt? The answer will make a big difference to the future humanity faces.

Predicting anything is difficult. But a group of scientists has created scenarios representing a range of possible climate futures.

Because the future is not set, scientists lay out a range of possible pathways for our future greenhouse gas emissions. They base them on what’s happened so far and what might happen in politics and technology over coming decades.

Then they select the emissions pathways deemed most plausible and then sample a range of different futures which are more or less optimistic about our fossil fuel use.

Scientific groups around the world then model these scenarios in depth using different climate models to ensure there’s a large amount of data available at global, regional and local levels.

These scenarios aren’t ranked by how likely they are. All are considered to be plausible futures. The huge range of temperature outcomes – approaching 2°C between the most and least optimistic scenarios by 2100 – points to how much of the future is in our hands.

Why the fuss about RCP8.5?

The two previous releases included two closely related scenarios – RCP8.5 and SSP5-8.5 respectively.

Here, “8.5” refers to radiative forcing – the level of extra heat (in watts) trapped per square metre by 2100.

In these worst-case scenarios, the world sharply boosts fossil fuel use. Unsurprisingly, this leads to very high amounts of global warming. Scientists have long argued over whether this was plausible in the first place.

None of the new scenarios are as pessimistic as RCP8.5/SSP5-8.5. The worst possible scenario now envisions high emissions leading to warming of around 3.5°C by 2100. That would still be very, very bad.

Sceptics acting in bad faith

Climate sceptics leapt on the removal of RCP8.5 as a sign the projections were wrong. These attacks were not made in good faith, but to cast doubt on climate science.

A clear eyed assessment is that RCP8.5 was removed because climate action is starting to work.

But while the worst outcome has been averted, we have also missed the window for the best future climate.

The new scenarios have no pathway as optimistic as the lowest emissions scenario from the last round of major climate projections. That scenario – SSP1-1.9 – envisaged strong climate action and rapid cuts to emissions, leading to global warming peaking at around 1.5°C.

Because global emissions haven’t yet begun to fall, the most optimistic new pathway would lead to warming peaking at about 1.9°C.

While we will definitely now pass 1.5°C, the hope is to only temporarily overshoot that level of warming while working to draw carbon dioxide back out of the atmosphere to get back to 1.5°C.

Our current emissions trajectory is somewhere in the middle – below the high emissions path but well above the most optimistic scenario. Based on current policies and countries’ actions, we’re looking at around 2.6°C warming by 2100.

You might wonder why we need to keep redoing these climate scenarios.

One reason: facts change on the ground. Solar keeps rolling out far faster than expected, but fracking has opened up large new fossil fuel deposits. Political shifts make climate action more or less likely.

Another is because our climate models are continually improving. The better the models get, the more accurate and detailed our projections of sea level rise and other climate impacts can be.

Yes, this is progress

Taking RCP8.5 off the table is a sign of progress – we’ve avoided the worst-case scenario. But we have also missed the best case future.

The next five years could play out in many different ways, leading to better or worse future climates. We must understand and prepare for what we’re facing – and double down on our efforts to create the best future possible.

Andrew King, ARC Future Fellow and Associate Professor in Climate Science, ARC Centre of Excellence for 21st Century Weather, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Mining giant BHP has come under fire for spending hundreds of millions of dollars on new diesel trucks in the Pilbara, despite promising a transition to electric trucks in its climate strategy.

Like other mining companies, BHP’s diesel-driven fleet is eligible for fuel tax credits on diesel. The company’s controversial decision to shelve its plans raises the pressing issue of the diesel fuel rebate.

This rebate began as targeted support for a struggling agricultural sector in the 1980s, but has morphed into an almost $5 billion subsidy for some of the nation’s most profitable corporations.

So, what is the diesel fuel rebate? And is this fossil fuel subsidy still fit for purpose?

Why do we have a diesel rebate?

Since federation in 1901, diesel and petroleum products imported into Australia have been subject to import taxes. Since 1929, tax collected from the petrol pump has been earmarked to build and maintain the nation’s road network.

Australia’s diesel fuel rebate scheme was introduced in 1982. The Fuel Tax Credits Scheme, as it’s officially known, was designed to cushion farmers from rising fuel costs.

Farm and mine businesses buying diesel for off-road uses like tractors, harvesters and irrigation pumps could claim a rebate. At the time, Australia’s mining sector was far smaller.

Now, 44 years later, the rebate scheme still allows businesses like agriculture and mining to claim back the federal fuel tax paid on diesel used in eligible machinery, equipment and heavy vehicles.

Today, the mining industry receives about half of the diesel rebate.

Diesel up, petrol down

Since 2010, Australia’s consumption of liquid fuel has changed dramatically, with official statistics showing falling petrol demand and rising diesel use over the past decade. Petrol use has gradually declined as vehicle efficiency has improved. In contrast, diesel consumption has nearly doubled.

This surge in diesel consumption reflects Australia’s growth in freight, heavy vehicles and, particularly, mining. The diesel rebate scheme is now one of Australia’s largest fossil fuel subsidies, alongside tax concessions for aviation fuel and a range of support measures for coal and gas production, with recent analysis putting its annual cost at around $11.2 billion by 2026–27.

Mining is by far the largest beneficiary, claiming about $5 billion a year in diesel rebates according to one analysis. This includes roughly $1.5 billion for coal mining alone. Agriculture receives only a fraction of the total.

What began as support for farmers using off-road fuel has become a standing subsidy for Australia’s most profitable miners.

Meanwhile, aviation fuel pays little excise – about 3 cents per litre – to fund the Civil Aviation Safety Authority. This compares to a fuel excise rate of 52c per litre on petrol and diesel, which the Australian government halved on April 1 this year in response to fuel price spikes from the US-Israeli war in Iran.

Since 1992, the formal link between petrol and diesel excise and road funding has ended, with fuel tax now flowing into general revenue rather than a dedicated roads fund. The rebate was originally justified on fairness grounds – off‑road users were not meant to subsidise public roads – but once fuel tax stopped being a dedicated roads charge, that logic largely evaporated.

Fuel tax cuts in response to war

The May 2026 federal budget fuel package was worth more than $10 billion, centred on a permanent government-owned fuel reserve.

These are reminders Australia’s fuel security problem is immediate, not theoretical. The government’s response has been to buy and store more fuel, rather than reduce our structural dependence on imported oil and support a shift to electrification and renewable energy.

Australia’s fuel rebate entrenches higher diesel use. But the “we need more fuel” argument ignores the fact Australia’s economy is decisively decoupling from fossil energy consumption.

Uncoupling from oil is not a theoretical future possibility – it is slowly happening. Oil consumption in particular has plateaued since the early 2000s, even as GDP has roughly doubled. If Australia wants to meet its emissions-reduction commitments, it should hasten the shift away from fossil oil, not maintain a subsidy for it.

A fair share of resources

Australia has long failed to gain a fair share of revenue from our finite mineral wealth. Our petroleum resource rent tax is notoriously weak.

Mining companies argue tougher taxes will drive investment offshore. But Australia has some of the world’s highest-grade iron ore, coal and critical minerals. A tax regime would have to be extraordinarily high to make extraction unprofitable.

We are now in the fourth major oil crisis.

Unlike the others, this one arrives with cheaper renewable alternatives readily available. Wind, solar, batteries and electric vehicles are now cheaper than fossil alternatives and faster to deploy.

During a fuel crisis, we should scrutinise where our finite tax revenues are directed. The fuel rebate was designed mostly for farmers, when the mining industry was a fraction of its current size.

Does the policy need to return to its original aim? Or is a new form of road user tax required?

Whatever the mechanism, it makes sense to direct revenue towards electrification, not lock in another decade of diesel dependence.

Response from BHP:

In a statement, a spokesperson for BHP said it has net zero goal for reducing its scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050.

Despite this progress, many of the technologies the resources industry will need to achieve net zero are not yet ready to be deployed, BHP said.

“For example, no Australian mining operation is currently utilising critical 240-ton battery-electric haul trucks as the technology is not advanced enough to scale to an operational fleet,” the spokesperson said.

BHP is partnering with equipment producers to run trials of battery-electric equipment, including two 240-ton battery electric haul trucks, on a BHP site in the Pilbara, and four battery-electric locomotives which we plan to commence trialling in coming months.

Ray Wills, Adjunct Professor, The University of Western Australia and Peter Newman, Professor of Sustainability, Curtin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The red pipefish (Notiocampus ruber) is a rare relative of seahorses and seadragons found only in Australia.

While the species occurs across southern Australia from Western Australia to New South Wales, its incredible camouflage means until now only one person had ever photographed it in the wild.

In Gamay (Botany Bay) it has been observed hiding among feathery red algae, but elsewhere the red pipefish has been recorded on rocky reefs. Its colour and slender body allow it to disappear almost completely against its surroundings.

For decades, scientists have wondered how these elusive creatures carry their eggs. Our new photographs and research, published in the Journal of Fish Biology, finally provide an answer.

A lucky sighting

One of us (Andrew) regularly dives the popular Sydney sites The Leap and The Steps at Kurnell, Gamay (Botany Bay), where he documents seahorses, pygmy pipehorses, seadragons and other related sealife.

Andrew had briefly seen a red pipefish twice before. However, he struck gold when he spotted one at Kurnell in April 2021. He kept tabs on this individual, spotting it almost weekly until January 2022.

During that time it was joined by two more red pipefish. When all three were sighted in November 2021, one was a brooding male carrying eggs on his trunk.

Tails or trunks?

While pipefishes and seahorses are famous for male pregnancy, the family is split by how the males carry their young. Many pipefish – and all seahorses – are “tail brooders”, carrying eggs on the tail in pouches.

Another group of pipefish, the “trunk brooders”, carry eggs exposed directly on the belly. However, scientists have suspected the red pipefish was a tail brooder since 1979 based on the structure of its body. However, without a living male to study the theory remained unproven.

Andrew’s photographs from his November 2021 dives at Kurnell finally provided the proof. They clearly show a male carrying large eggs attached directly to the belly – confirming the species as a trunk-brooder and placing it in an ancient group of pipefishes that lack pouches entirely.

Interestingly, the data suggest this Australian fish may be a long-lost relative of species found as far away as the North Atlantic, despite the vast geographical separation.

Finding such a rare fish in the well-dived waters of Gamay is a reminder that major biological secrets are still hiding in plain sight.

Andrew Trevor-Jones, Technical Officer, Australian Museum and Graham Short, Research Associate, Australian Museum

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Mosquito repellents are key to protect ourselves from mosquito bites and the pathogens they might carry. The most widely used active ingredient in insect repellents is N,N-diethyl-meta-toluamide, commonly known as DEET.

Highly effective, long-lasting (approximately five hours) and cheap to make, DEET is a gold-standard insect repellent. But even though it was developed more than 80 years ago, there are important gaps in our understanding of how DEET actually works.

A new paper in the Journal of Experimental Biology led by Claudio Lazzari from the University of Tours, France, now shows mosquitoes can be conditioned to be attracted to DEET.

This provides an important piece of the puzzle in our understanding of how DEET works, and hints that this important mozzie repellent could have a vulnerability.

A vital tool that’s not fully understood

Insect repellents are a major method of protection against mosquito-borne diseases including malaria, dengue, chikungunya, Ross River virus, Japanese encephalitis virus and more. Many of these diseases are expanding on a global scale due to travel, urbanisation and climate change.

Female mosquitoes transmit parasites and viruses when they feed on vertebrate blood, which they need to provide proteins for egg development. To find their next blood meal, mosquitoes are strongly attracted to odours and physical cues emitted by warm-blooded “hosts”, including humans.

These include carbon dioxide we exhale, lactic acid in our sweat, and a complex combination of other chemicals that varies between people. Mosquitoes detect all these with sensory organs located in their antennae, proboscis (the pointy mouth part they use to suck blood) and the maxillary palps that flank it.

DEET has been in widespread commercial use since the 1950s, but there’s a lot of scientific debate over how exactly it works as a mozzie repellent. Is it blocking the odour of the host, is it toxic to the mosquito, or something else?

In 2008, groundbreaking research showed DEET blocks the response of sensory neurons to host odours in mosquitoes and vinegar flies. This means DEET is likely “confusing” the mosquito rather than repelling it. A couple of years later, scientists found a small portion of mosquitoes exposed to DEET are insensitive to it, and it’s a heritable trait.

This means mosquitoes do have a physiological response to DEET. But there are also signs some of the mozzie reactions are behavioural. In one study, mosquitoes exposed to DEET were less sensitive to it if exposed again within three hours. This hints they can temporarily get used to the chemical.

What did the new study find?

The new study shows it’s possible to condition mosquitoes to bite more if they’re repeatedly exposed to DEET during a blood meal. Not only does this tell us more about how it repels mosquitoes, but it raises the prospect mosquitoes may actually be attracted towards DEET in some cases.

First, the researchers developed a behavioural test. They kept mosquitoes in tiny cages and moved a food target (a warm bag of blood) towards them, recording proboscis movements when they sensed the target. This was the “biting attempt response”.

To test things further, the team ran a classical conditioning experiment. Mosquitoes were run through one of five “training programs” exposing them to various combinations of an unconditioned stimulus (heat), a conditioned stimulus (short exposure to DEET in a plume of air) and a reward (a short opportunity to feed on blood).

Here’s where it gets surprising. The mosquitoes whose training program included a squirt of DEET while they were already feeding on blood, afterwards had a significantly higher biting response when exposed to DEET again.

If the mosquitoes were exposed to DEET before being offered the blood bag, none of them tried to bite it.

Then, one of the researchers boldly offered her hands up for testing. One of the hands was treated with DEET. About 50% of the mosquitoes who went through the DEET-blood meal training program tried to bite the hand coated in DEET. By contrast, 100% of untrained mozzies avoided the hand covered in DEET and went for the clean one instead.

What does all this mean?

It’s well established mosquitoes can learn and retain information. What they learn about hosts and their environment can in turn have an impact on disease transmission.

This study indicates DEET doesn’t just affect mosquitoes physiologically. There’s a cognitive response as well, which could be an important part of how it works.

The authors raise the possibility – if the concentration of DEET is not high enough to repel mosquitoes but they still sense it during a blood meal, would these mosquitoes then be more likely to bite people who smell of DEET?

It’s important to note the study happened in highly controlled lab conditions, and the training program the mozzies underwent may not reflect everyday scenarios. Future studies should try and come up with test conditions that better represent real-world situations to see if these results hold up.

At a time when mosquito-borne diseases are on the rise, DEET still provides highly effective protection. What this study contributes is an improved understanding of how DEET works – and how we might improve insect repellents in the future.

Leon Hugo, Adjunct Associate Professor, Mosquito Control Laboratory, QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Renewables and energy storage were pitched as a way to drive down power prices. But the hidden costs of the clean energy transition mean lower prices haven’t fully eventuated.

That’s why this week’s news power prices will fall by up to 10% have been gratefully received by the government – and consumers. The falls are real, though they do not apply everywhere.

There are important caveats. The cheaper power will directly apply to customers on the default market offer, the safety net power plan overseen by the Australian Energy Regulator. Fewer than 10% of consumers are on this offer.

Despite this, the decision by the Australian Energy Regulator will be influential. Just as banks tend to follow a Reserve Bank decision on interest rates, energy retailers tend to be guided by the prices set under the default market offer.

Why are prices falling? Solar, wind and batteries can provide power more cheaply than fossil fuels, and renewables have reached as high as 50% in Australia’s main grid. They could have driven retail prices down further if not offset by the rising costs of new transmission lines.

What drives power prices?

The power savings are uneven. In South East Queensland, retail power prices will fall by 10.7% and in New South Wales by up to 7.7%. In South Australia, some customers will have a small price rise of 1.4%. Small businesses will see larger falls – as much as 20.9% in NSW.

In Victoria, which has its own separate default offer, retail prices will fall 5%.

The average power bill for an Australian household is around A$2,000 a year. The actual cost of wholesale power accounts for 30–40% of the bill. Network costs – the cost of getting the power to the consumer – make up another 40%. The remaining amount is due to environmental and retailer costs.

In recent years, the cost of producing wholesale power has dropped. This is because more wind and solar farms have come online, while grid-scale batteries are pushing gas power out of the grid at times.

This means there’s less reliance on coal and gas. The role of gas is key, as this fossil fuel has become more expensive. It tends to be used only when demand is very high. At these times, gas acts as a price-setter for the energy market and the price it sets is high. So, other things being equal, less reliance on gas means lower prices.

Network costs have mostly increased, in a range of 5–10%. The key contributor has been the cost of building new transmission lines, and damage from extreme weather has also added costs in Queensland. Inflation adds extra cost to big projects.

What’s next?

This dynamic is likely to continue for some time. We can expect wholesale prices to keep falling, or at least not rise. We may also see network prices rising more sharply, given community pushback against some new transmission projects and slow progress. Without new transmission lines, many renewable projects won’t be viable.

In the next few years, more Australian households will have smart meters installed. In NSW, SA, the Australian Capital Territory and Queensland, rollout is meant to be complete by 2030. Western Australia and Tasmania have their own programs and Victoria’s rollout was completed more than a decade ago.

Smart meters make it possible for power retailers to charge customers different rates at different times. This encourages people to use more power when it’s cheap to produce, and less during peak times such as evenings.

These time-of-use tariffs will become increasingly important. For the first time, the energy regulator included both flat tariffs and time-of-use tariffs in its default market offer. Over time, and with further market reforms, we can expect to see more people take up time-of-use tariffs.

We can also expect big batteries to flex their muscle in the grid, outcompeting gas peaking plants and keeping wholesale prices lower. The influence of these batteries is beginning to show, and it is accelerating.

Household batteries, too, may play a role. The government’s hugely popular household battery incentive scheme will let people with solar store power at home, and use it during peak times instead of relying on expensive grid power.

In the messy middle

We are in the middle of reshaping the electricity grid.

The 20th-century model was built around peak demand – the handful of times a year when huge demand required standby plants to fire up and produce power at high cost. That’s now changing. Gas will go from providing perhaps 20% of Australia’s electricity to as low as 5%. It will be needed as a backup during low wind or sun days for some time.

But the big unknown is new transmission – the missing piece of the clean energy transition. Until this is done, we will keep seeing lower wholesale costs offset by higher network costs. But when it is complete, network costs, too, should fall.

Tony Wood, Senior Fellow in Energy and Climate Change, Grattan Institute

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

“Biodegradable” has become one of the most reassuring words in modern packaging. It appears on coffee cups, shopping bags and food containers, implying a promise: this product is better for the environment because nature will eventually take care of it.

However, biodegradability is not a simple yes-or-no property. It exists in shades, which we can measure.

Biodegradation is a complex process. Microbes and molecules present in an environment such as soil attack a material and digest it, much like what happens to food in our gut.

A material is typically defined as biodegradable if it is digested “well” by the environment in which it is placed. The more mass the material loses during digestion, and the more carbon dioxide it produces, the more biodegradable it is.

Different environments digest materials in different ways. Temperature, sunlight, oxygen, moisture and microbial diversity all influence how quickly materials degrade.

Even the most rigorous testing cannot fully capture the complexity of the real world – but it can help guide our choices.

Biodegradability is relative

In the lab we can simulate environments such as landfill, home compost bins and industrial compost facilities. If we understand in which settings a material breaks down better, we can tell the consumer how to best dispose of it and prevent pollution and other issues.

A material that decomposes quickly in an industrial composting facility may persist for years in the ocean or landfill.

Industrial composting systems maintain elevated temperatures, controlled aeration and consistent moisture. Hot, moist and oxygen-rich conditions generally aid biodegradation but they are not easy to come by in a backyard compost bin.

Home compost systems are typically cooler and more variable. The result: a material certified for industrial composting may not break down effectively at home.

Take polylactic acid (PLA), a biodegradable material generally considered to be a greener alternative to common plastics (like PET). PLA can biodegrade effectively in an industrial composting system. With temperatures above 60°C and controlled moisture, oxygen and microbial activity, microbes can convert PLA into carbon dioxide, water and biomass in just a few days.

Outside these conditions, the story changes. If PLA ends up in landfill, decomposition can be slow because oxygen is limited. In rivers or marine environments, it may persist for years and act as a raft for “alien” species. In your compost bin or worm farm it might disappear in a few months.

Time for standards

There are many ways to measure biodegradability. One common series of tests, OECD 301 assesses “ready biodegradability” in different environments as a material’s ability to biodegrade around 60% within 28 days under controlled conditions.

Industrially compostable materials are tested under very specific conditions. Standards such as EN 13432, used in Europe, assess whether packaging can successfully break down in industrial composting facilities.

To meet the standard, at least 90% of the material must biodegrade into carbon dioxide, water and biomass within six months. These tests typically involve elevated temperatures, controlled aeration, and moisture.

Most biodegradable plastic materials do not disappear cleanly. Instead, they fragment into progressively smaller particles before fully breaking down. During this period, the fragments will continue interacting with organisms and ecosystems.

Compost bins too can get indigestion

Biodegradability standards are helpful for consumers and waste regulators. Nevertheless, they are limited. They often do not test how much of any given material a specific disposal system can sustain at any one time.

This is an important parameter to take into account. Take food waste. When large quantities of food lie in landfill without oxygen, they generate methane, a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide over short timescales.

Other biodegradable materials are no different and can throw out the balance of an ecosystem such as your compost bin, if added in excessive quantities.

Introducing certain materials to a compost bin might also cause certain microbes to thrive and others to suffer, sometimes with unintended consequences, such as making your compost bin smell bad.

In the future, biodegradability tests will likely be paired with ecotoxicity assessments, to help us understand whether a material breaks down safely and without generating harmful byproducts or microbial imbalances.

What can we do?

Few of us have an industrial composting facility nearby to take care of biodegradable materials. Industrially compostable products such as coffee cups often end up sent to landfill alongside conventional waste.

This does not mean individuals are powerless or that biodegradable materials are inherently bad.

You can start by checking local council guidance and choosing products certified for the systems available in your area, or your compost bin.

Ask yourself:

• is this product home compostable or only industrially compostable?

• is there infrastructure locally that can process it?

• has it been independently certified?

As for industrially compostable coffee cups, check that you can return cups to participating cafes. They should not be placed in standard recycling bins or food and organics bins as they are considered contaminants. If unsure, place them in a bin destined for landfill.

Ultimately, the most sustainable option remains a reusable washable cup.

These may seem like small actions but they help push packaging design and waste systems toward greater transparency and accountability.

Moving beyond simple labels

As consumers, we want to make educated choices about their purchases and how they can be disposed of.

For now, we have simple labels. In the future, we will hopefully have more complete information about how materials degrade in industrial composting facilities, home compost bins, soil, freshwater, sea water and landfill sites.

Biodegradable materials offer clear advantages over highly persistent materials, but the term “biodegradable” should not be mistaken for environmentally harmless.

Let’s just remember that a biodegradable material released in the wrong place, at the wrong scale, or under the wrong conditions may behave not very differently from a non-biodegradable material.

Understanding the shades of biodegradability moves the conversation beyond simplistic labels. Nature can break many things down, eventually. The more important question is whether it can do so without getting indigestion.

Martin Zaki, Associate Research Fellow in Biomaterials, Deakin University and Alessandra Sutti, Associate Professor, Institute for Frontier Materials, Deakin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Imagine walking into a double-brick house on a scorching 40°C summer day – it feels cool almost straight away. Now imagine stepping into a corrugated tin shed – it feels like an oven. The difference is simple: some materials slow heat down, while others let it rush through.

Soil works in a similar way. Soil in fully functioning condition can act as a thermal buffer: a giant shock absorber for temperature. It holds water and organic matter such as leaf litter, and slows sharp changes in temperature.

But when soil becomes dry, bare or damaged, that protection weakens. During heatwaves, the roots of crop plants may be sitting in rapidly heating soil.

Our new research shows Australia has “thermal gaps” in large areas. A thermal gap is the difference between a soil’s natural ability to absorb heat and keep temperatures steady, and what it is actually doing now after years of farming, land use change and a warming climate. In some areas, especially across southeastern and central Australia, soils are no longer protecting plants from heat as well as they could.

This matters because soil is not just dirt under our feet. It is a buffer against climate change. Soil controls how heat and moisture move between the land and the atmosphere. When soil loses its buffering power, ground temperatures can rise more quickly.

This can reduce plant growth, lower crop and pasture production, and even affect local weather and climate over large areas.

What we did and what we found

To understand where this is happening, we created the first continent-wide map of Australia’s soil thermal buffering capacity.

In other words, we mapped how well different soils can slow heat and keep ground temperatures stable.

We compared each soil’s natural potential with its current condition. This helps show where soil buffering is strong, where it has weakened, and where it may have changed for better or worse.

The results show a clear contrast between soil types.

Clay-rich soils can hold more water and behave more like the double-brick house. They warm and cool slowly, which helps keep roots in a steadier environment.

Iron-rich red and yellow soils in parts of northern Australia, known as Kandosols, also showed good natural capacity and good current condition in our study. These landscapes are still working well as soil heat buffers.

But this does not mean every Kandosol is the same. Soil condition, ground cover, moisture and management still matter.

Sandy soils tell a different story. They naturally hold far less water. When ground cover is low, they lose water faster. Under a hot sun, they behave more like the tin shed. They heat quickly and offer plants much less protection.

That’s why the difference between “just dry” and “hot and dry” is so important. Once dry or degraded soils lose moisture, the sun’s energy heats the ground directly. Roots can become stressed, soil life slows down and crops may decline before the problem is obvious above ground.

This is one reason flash droughts are so dangerous. A flash drought can develop in days or weeks when high temperatures, dry winds and low soil moisture arrive together.

One 2025 global study found flash droughts linked with extreme heat are more severe and take longer to recover from than flash droughts without extreme heat.

For farmers, trouble may already be building below the surface before normal weather warnings capture the full risk.

The good news

The good news is that soil can regain some of its lost heat protection. We can help “re-insulate” the ground with practical farming methods.

One is called “stubble retention”, which means leaving old crop stalks and leaves on the field after harvest rather than burning or removing them.

This layer shades the soil and slows water loss.

Another method, called “cover cropping”, involved growing plants mainly to protect and feed the soil (not necessarily to harvest them). Cover crops keep living roots in the ground, reduce bare soil and add organic matter.

Studies overseas show why this matters. In the US state of Missouri, fields kept covered with plants held more moisture than bare fields. In North Dakota, bare soil was much hotter near the surface than soil protected by barley residue or cover crops.

These methods do not make heatwaves disappear, but they can reduce the stress heat places on soils and crops. Cooler, moister soils may also help surrounding vegetation dry out more slowly, although this is only one part of reducing bushfire risk.

The next step

Our national map is a starting point. It shows where soils may be losing their ability to buffer heat. The next step is to test that risk on real farms.

That means pairing the map with local sensors, such as soil-temperature and soil-moisture probes buried near plant roots. These sensors can show when the soil is drying and how quickly it is heating, and when roots may be coming under stress.

Farm trials can then test which actions work best in different soil types, such as keeping stubble, planting cover crops, adjusting irrigation or reducing grazing pressure.

The results could be turned into simple tools for farmers, such as paddock maps, heat-risk alerts or irrigation guides.

Asking “how dry is the soil?” is no longer enough. We must go further by asking “how fast will this soil heat up once it dries?”

That question matters for irrigation, grazing, crop planning and drought warnings.

If farmers can see heat stress building below the surface, they may be able to act earlier. They can protect ground cover, adjust irrigation, reduce grazing pressure or harvest sooner before the damage becomes obvious above ground.

Soil is one of Australia’s hidden climate defences. Healthy soil stores water, slows heat and protects roots. Damaged soil loses that shield.

By understanding and closing the thermal gap, we can give farms, landscapes and rural communities a better chance in a hotter, drier future.

Amin Sharififar, Postdoctoral researcher in soil security, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

When we think of marine life, we usually picture colourful coral reefs or dense seaweed forests filled with fish and other critters. The ocean that comes to mind is the one touched by sunlight.

However, most of the ocean is not like that. By volume, roughly 95% of the ocean consists of the permanently dark, cold deep sea. Despite such hostile conditions though, there is life in the ocean’s abyss.

Deep-sea marine sponges are among the organisms that live in these mysterious dark waters. They form “gardens” that are among the largest ecosystems on the planet, some spanning thousands of square kilometres on the ocean floor. They act as ecosystem engineers, providing habitats to many other organisms living on the seafloor.

Individual sponges can also pump and filter thousands of litres of water every day through their bodies. The nutrients they release support other organisms. Yet we know remarkably little about how sponges survive, let alone thrive, in the inhospitable environment of the deep-sea.

Symbiosis with microbes is an important part of how marine sponges live. We’ve been studying deep-sea sponges to better understand life in the ocean’s depths. So far, we’ve found some sponges are packed with microorganisms that use energy from chemical reactions.

This is called chemosynthesis and is commonly found in other deep-sea organisms, such as mussels and tubeworms living in hydrothermal vents – deep-sea “hot springs”.

Our new study, published today in the journal Microbiome, shows sponges and their microbial partners also use a second strategy to make a living in the deep sea.

Two strategies, one sponge

All living organisms produce waste. Just like humans produce urine, many sponges produce ammonia as one of their waste products.

In this study, we analysed the Calyx species of deep-sea sponges from a depth of 830 metres.

About 16% of their microbial partners use the familiar chemosynthesis process. With ammonia as the energy source, they use carbon dioxide dissolved in the water to build biomass – it’s a bit like plants growing through photosynthesis from sunlight, but in the dark.

In well-lit shallow waters, many sponges and corals have photosynthetic microbes that help them build biomass from carbon dioxide. Our findings show that in the dark depths of the ocean, sponges have microbial partners that use ammonia instead of light for the same process.

The remaining 84% of microbial partners are where it gets really interesting. Instead of chemosynthesis these microbes use heterotrophy, which means consuming organic matter to generate energy and biomass (like the vast majority of animals, humans are also heterotrophs).

The problem here is that there’s little organic matter in the deep sea. Whatever falls down from the surface waters, such as dead plankton and algae, gets stripped by bacteria and small crustaceans of anything easily digestible as it sinks through the water column.

So, the little amount of organic matter that reaches the seafloor is generally poor food for the sponge itself. But, as we discovered, not necessarily for its microbial partners.

It turns out the heterotrophic microbes in Calyx sponges have lots of enzymes specialised in breaking down complex compounds, such as xylan and pectin, which make up the hard-to-digest cell walls of algae.

Feeding on these algal skeletons would allow the microbes to thrive and to transform organic molecules into nutrients their sponge host can use.

Protecting what we don’t yet understand

Our study shows that sponges and their microbial partners are complex, biogeochemical reactors. They use and recycle ammonia “urine”, carbon dioxide and hard-to-digest organics to generate biomass.

The biomass can then support the growth of other organisms, such as brittle stars and fish, in turn supporting the broader community of animals living on the dark seafloor.

Unfortunately, these ecosystems are under pressure from human activities. Deep-sea trawling physically destroys sponge gardens. Deep-sea mining, now being actively pursued for rare metals used in batteries and electronics, threatens to disrupt the deep-sea habitat in ways that might take centuries to recover.

The United Nations has recognised deep-sea sponge gardens as vulnerable marine ecosystems, a formal acknowledgement of both their ecological importance and their fragility. But recognition alone is not enough.

If we destroy these habitats before we fully understand their role in carbon transformation, then we may lose a critical piece of Earth’s carbon cycle before fully realising it was there.

Alessandro N. Garritano, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Faculty of Science, University of Sydney; UNSW Sydney and Torsten Thomas, Professor in Microbiology, UNSW Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Diesel is critical to Australia. Any supply disruption has immediate and widespread consequences, given Australia imports almost 80% of its liquid fuels. As the energy shocks of the Iran war ripple out, Australia’s leaders have scrambled to shore up supplies of fuel – especially diesel and aviation fuel.

Disruptions to fuel supplies have happened before, such as in 2008 and 2022. This disruption won’t be the last.

What should policymakers do? One option is to ramp up local production of biofuels made not from crude oil but from natural oils such as canola, animal fats – or algae.

As algae researchers, we believe these humble organisms are worth exploring. Making biodiesel and sustainable aviation fuel from these fast growing organisms can be done with much less land than other crops. Technological advances mean the fuel could scale up.

Many biofuels come with trade-offs

Biofuels have gained traction worldwide as efforts to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and meet climate targets accelerate.

The Australian biofuel sector is relatively small. Farmers exported about 6 million tonnes of canola in 2023–24 to be turned into biofuels overseas.

The Australian government last year announced A$1.1 billion in incentives to boost low-carbon fuels such as biofuels.

Biofuels from corn, soybean, canola and palm oil have boosted fuel security in some nations. Brazil produces 22% of its own transport fuel from biofuels, while biofuels account for 6% of the fuel used in the United States.

The problem is, biofuels often come at an environmental cost. A third of all US corn is used to make ethanol for fuel.

What’s so good about algae?

The type we’re interested in are microalgae, single-celled organisms, not macroalgae such as kelp and other types of seaweed.

These small organisms can grow exceptionally rapidly and hold high concentrations of oils. Many microalgae species can double their weight every day. Nannochloropsis and Chlorella are the two main types used to make oil.

Traditionally, algae was grown in large, shallow outdoor pools called “raceways”. They’re now increasingly grown in high-efficiency algae bioreactors.

Algae can be processed using proven technologies such as hydrothermal liquefaction to produce biodiesel able to be used in existing trucks and machinery. It can also produce sustainable aviation fuel.

Compared to crop-based biofuels, algae has several advantages. It doesn’t compete with food production and it can be grown on non-arable land or in industrial facilities. Some species can grow in saltwater or even treat wastewater while using it for growth. If algal facilities are located near heavy industry, carbon emissions can be captured and used for algal growth in a form of carbon storage.

Algal fuels needs much less land than conventional biofuels. A hectare of algae can yield more than 58,000 litres of oil per year. By contrast, a hectare of corn produces just 172 litres.

What are the barriers?

Interest in algal fuel dates back many decades. Oil shocks in the 1970s and 1990s drove significant research into algae-based fuels. But when oil prices fell, algal biofuels were no longer cost-competitive.

Since the 1990s, technologies have matured and policy settings become more favourable. Efforts to reduce fossil fuel use have put an implicit or explicit price on carbon. Mandates to increase output of sustainable aviation fuel are emerging in the European Union.

Fossil fuel price shocks in 2022 and 2026 have nudged authorities to seriously explore alternatives. Sovereign fuel security has become a strategic priority. Both the United Arab Emirates and the US are exploring algal fuels as a long-term strategic asset.

Algae for Australia?

Australia would be well placed to explore the potential of algal fuels. It has plenty of non-arable land, abundant sunlight and some of the world’s best algae research capabilities. Plus, it depends very heavily on imported diesel and aviation fuel.

Our research group and many others have been systematically working to overcome previous limitations of algal biofuels. We now know how to produce high-quality algal fuels and scale up production at costs low enough to challenge fuels derived from crude oil.

The first step would be to invest in pilot projects to prove the technology can work at scale under real-world conditions. Overseas, similar pilots have been set up next to industry to test the use of carbon capture, or alongside research partners.

If this is successful, the next step would be to build facilities in regional locations where fossil diesel is in demand and expensive to transport – and where algae can offer a dual benefit by treating wastewater or capturing carbon.

Over time, the versatile technology could be expanded, as algae can produce not only biodiesel but also other useful products such as edible protein for animal feed and biochar, highly porous charcoal able to soak up pollutants such as heavy metals.

Algae deserves our attention

Many previous efforts to scale up biofuels have run into problems over environmental impact or cost.

It’s important to be sceptical of claims of the next big thing. But it’s also important not to overlook the potential of humble technologies such as making fuel from algae.

As leaders look for ways to bolster fuel security, algae deserves a closer look.

Peter Ralph, Distinguished Professor of Marine Biology and Executive Director of the Climate Change Cluster, University of Technology Sydney; Alexandra Thomson, Industry Engagement Manager, Climate Change Cluster, University of Technology Sydney, and Martin Lloyd, Strategic Lead, Research Translation, University of Technology Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Rice feeds more than half the world. From terraced paddies in Southeast Asia to irrigated fields in China and India, it underpins daily meals for billions of people.

But the same flooded soils that help rice thrive also create ideal conditions for microbes that release climate-warming gases.

In a new study, our team of environment and agriculture scientists found that greenhouse gas emissions from rice paddies have nearly doubled globally since the 1960s, averaging about 1.1 billion tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions per year in the 2010s. That’s roughly equal to the annual emissions of 239 million cars.

This makes rice-growing the largest emissions source in agriculture outside of livestock, and rice demand is expected to keep rising.

Farmers have ways to reduce their rice crops’ emissions without lowering their yields. If every grower used the best currently available “climate-smart” options, we found that global rice emissions could be reduced by about 10% by midcentury. However, greater reductions are needed to slow climate change, which would require developing additional, more effective strategies.

Why rice emissions have increased

Rice emissions have risen for two reasons: the expansion of rice cultivation area and the intensification of management practices.

Just over half of the global increase is from the expansion of rice-growing areas. In Africa, for example, the rice-growing area has roughly doubled since the 1960s, helping drive a twofold rise in methane emissions in the region.

At the same time, rice farmers are using more fertilizers and organic amendments, such as straw and manure, planting more productive rice varieties and growing the plants closer together. The result is more rice but also more greenhouse gas emissions.

We found that one practice in particular – leaving rice stalks in the field after harvest and then plowing them into the soil to improve soil fertility – was responsible for about 18% of rice’s increase in overall net emissions since the 1960s. The reason: It increases the organic matter in the soil, which microbes then decompose, creating more methane emissions.

Rising global temperatures further accelerate microbial activity in the soils, meaning even more emissions.

Fertilizer is another major contributor to emissions. Use of synthetic nitrogen increased by about 76% after 2000, boosting nitrous oxide – another powerful greenhouse gas. It contributed about 9% of the increase in total global net emissions from human activities.

Irrigation practices also affect emissions. In the past, irrigated rice paddies were kept flooded throughout the growing season, resulting in constant greenhouse gas emissions produced by microbes that thrive in the wet environment. Over the past two decades, however, more farmers have used intermittent flooding – draining their fields periodically.

This change has lowered methane emissions compared with keeping the paddies continuously flooded. However, we found a slight increase in nitrogen oxide emissions as soils cycled between wet and dry, which induces microbes to transform nitrogen in organic matter into nitrogen oxide gases, particularly nitrous oxide.

Climate impact of rice production

Putting a full climate price tag on rice production is harder than measuring one greenhouse gas at a time.

Rice paddies emit methane and nitrous oxide from wet or flooded soils. They also remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as rice grows, and they lose carbon from their soils between crop seasons.

A credible global estimate requires consistently accounting for different gases and soil carbon changes, as well as the uncertainty involved in tracking data across space and time.

To do that, we combined three approaches:

• An ecosystem computer model allowed us to simulate crop growth, water conditions and soil processes to estimate changes in methane, nitrous oxide and soil carbon together.

• An artificial intelligence-powered machine learning model improved estimates where measurements were sparse to cover all rice regions in the world.

• And a meta-analysis of more than 1,200 field experiment sites provided direct evidence of how practices such as irrigation, fertilizer use and management of crop residue affect emissions.

Together, they allowed us to quantify emissions from 1961 to 2020, determine what drove those emissions, and test the potential of mitigation techniques under future climate conditions.

What works and doesn’t for climate mitigation

There are ways to reduce emissions from rice production without sacrificing yield.

Our study found that reducing fertilizer use and residue applications, managing irrigation to allow dry periods in between flooded ones and reducing tillage could, together, reduce global greenhouse gas emissions from rice by about 10% by midcentury.

We were surprised to find that replacing chemical fertilizers with more organic choices is not always better from a greenhouse gas perspective, although it is valued in organic farming.

Maintaining moderate amounts of straw and other crop residue in the field can help boost soil fertility, but too much can increase methane emissions and accelerate the loss of carbon from the soil. Another option is to convert part of the residue into biochar – burning it under low-oxygen conditions before mixing it into flooded soils. Biochar can help stabilize soil carbon and reduce methane emissions.

Improving water management can be a powerful tool for reducing emissions. Periodically draining fields reduces methane production, though it may slightly raise nitrous oxide emissions. This strategy is particularly effective in regions with reliable irrigation infrastructure, including large parts of Asia.

Managing fertilizer use is also an effective mitigation strategy, particularly in highly fertilized systems, including parts of China and South Asia. Excess nitrogen increases nitrous oxide without a clear increase in crop yields and increases water pollution. Reducing overapplication of nitrogen reduces emissions and water pollution, and it saves farmers money in the process.

The effects of tilling, the practice of plowing the soil between crop seasons, have large regional differences. Reducing tilling is often promoted as climate-friendly, but we found that it does not always minimize net emissions in flooded systems. In rice fields in temperate zones, including much of the U.S. and China, cooler conditions can limit methane production, allowing the soil carbon benefits of reduced tilling to outweigh the methane risk. In warmer, persistently flooded systems, however, low-oxygen conditions can boost microbial activity, increasing methane production and accelerating soil carbon loss.

Overall, we found that no single practice works everywhere. Each region will need to assess the most effective practices for reducing emissions.

A climate ceiling for rice production

The bottom line is both hopeful and sobering: Targeted sets of optimized practices can deliver meaningful emission reductions without losing rice yields, but the total global possible reduction is modest.

To reduce emissions further will require better guidance to help farmers determine the best levels of organic amendments, such as straw or biochar, and new approaches that can reduce emissions without undermining rice production.

Hanqin Tian, Director and Institute Professor, Center for Earth System Science and Global Sustainability, Boston College; Jingting Zhang, Research Scientist at the Center for Earth System Science and Global Sustainability, Boston College; Pep Canadell, Chief Research Scientist, CSIRO Environment; Executive Director, Global Carbon Project, CSIRO, and Shufen (Susan) Pan, Associate Professor of Environmental Science, Boston College

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Electric vehicles (EVs) are no longer a niche technology. Australians are buying them in growing numbers as petrol prices bite and the federal government continues its tax exemption until 2029.

The challenge now is to build the supporting charging infrastructure.

Fast and ultrafast chargers, which recharge a typical EV in 10–15 minutes, have proven to be commercially attractive, with the number of these chargers growing by 22% in 2025. This is because drivers will pay a premium to recharge quickly while travelling.

But they aren’t appropriate for everyday use. They’re too expensive, and place stress on EV batteries and the grid. They also risk aggravating metro-regional divisions, with regional communities hosting infrastructure that serves the needs of city travellers and not locals.

So, what’s the answer? Our new research crunched the data from 27,000 kerbside charging sessions and made it public in an effort to find out.

A kerbside revolution

For EVs to truly go mainstream, Australia needs more public “kerbside” chargers. These can be microwave-sized boxes mounted to power poles or slightly larger boxes fixed to the kerb. These offer affordable, reliable and convenient recharging in 2–8 hours (depending on the charger and EV).

They are needed for apartment residents and renters without access to private off-street charging, as well as EV drivers who need to charge between trips.

While the need for more kerbside chargers is widely agreed, there is fierce debate about who should deploy them. Electricity distribution companies are lobbying to do so – they would add the cost to all consumer electricity bills. Private operators oppose this because they want to protect their market share.

The federal government is proposing this way forward: $40 million in taxpayer funding, electricity distributor funding through consumer bills, and private investment.

This proposal would allow private investors to cherrypick sites that are expected to be profitable, such as where EV uptake is already high and many residents live in apartments. Other kerbside charging sites would be developed by electricity distribution companies.

In the scramble for position, one question risks being overlooked: what serves the public interest best?

What we need to do

Our new research addresses this question with three guiding principles, and open access data and analysis.

It finds kerbside charging must be delivered in a way that is fast, fair and adaptable in the future.

Rapid EV adoption brings associated advantages in terms of pollution, health, fuel security and economic benefits.

A fair uptake of kerbside charging would see all members of society share in its benefits, not just the predominantly wealthy recipients of the federal government’s current Fringe Benefits Tax subsidies.

Australia’s 20 million domestic cars – and almost all heavier vehicles – will eventually be electric, so we need to prepare for this. And we need to avoid the kind of hiccups Australia experienced when the grid wasn’t ready for millions of rooftop solar systems.

Kerbside charging is profitable

Our research team at UNSW, in partnership with Waverley, Woollahra and Randwick Councils in New South Wales, has processed and made public data from 27,000 kerbside charging sessions.

Our most significant finding is that some kerbside charging sites are quite profitable, but there are not enough of them. And they are not profitable enough to make kerbside networks commercially profitable overall.

This level of profitability is consistent with kerbside charging being public infrastructure – providing an essential service at affordable rates.

What about current proposals?

We analysed the federal proposal, which would to let private investors choose the most attractive sites while the rest were developed through electricity distribution companies. We found there was a risk this would increase long-term costs for electricity customers.

This is because profitable sites would not cross-subsidise unprofitable – but still important – sites. And this might outweigh the benefits of having private investment cover some of the costs otherwise carried by taxpayers and electricity customers.

On the other hand, a proposal that distribution companies should recover the cost of charging hardware from electricity customers and not charge EV drivers for access is, we believe, too generous. It places an unfair burden on all electricity customers.

A better way

There are other approaches that might be more fair.

For example, distributors could use a combination of taxpayer subsidies and charging EV drivers a modest fee for use. This would only be feasible if their charger networks included profitable sites.

In general, it is fairer to get funding from the broad and progressive tax system than from all customers’ electricity bills – especially because electricity distribution companies are split between city and country areas.

One way to deliver fast and fair deployments is involve local councils. Their role has been largely overlooked in federal and distributor proposals. But their insights are invaluable for selecting sites that will be well used. And their planning expertise is fundamental to creating high-quality charging sites.

How to balance the costs and benefits of the much-needed kerbside charging expansion across EV drivers, taxpayers and electricity customers is a challenge for governments and regulators. They must focus on delivering public benefit that makes the EV transition fast, fair and adaptable.

Bjorn Sturmberg, Senior Research Fellow, Collaboration on Energy and Environmental Markets, UNSW Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Roughly 500 million years ago, a strange event in the evolution of life on Earth seems to have taken place.

The known fossil record from this time, which falls within the Cambrian period, contains a missing chapter. Palaeontologists refer to it as the “Furongian gap”. And it’s striking because there is an explosion of biodiversity within the fossil record both immediately before and after it.

This decline has been considered evidence for a real biological crisis – one driven by environmental instability, changing ocean chemistry, cooling climates, a lack of oxygen in ancient seas, or a combination of these factors.

Our new study, published in the journal BMC Biology, provides new evidence for an alternative idea. The Furongian may not represent a true collapse in biodiversity, but rather a gap in where scientists have looked and what kinds of rocks have been studied.

It’s a reminder of how incomplete our understanding of Earth’s history remains.

A rare group of fossils

We describe a new 500-million-year-old arthropod from Québec, Canada. Arthropods are animals with exoskeletons – that is, skeletons on the exterior of their bodies.

The fossil belongs to a rare group of early arthropods related to the lineage leading to spiders and scorpions. Importantly, it comes from a geological setting that scientists have not previously recognised as being notable for preserving fossils at this time in Earth’s history.

The fossil itself is named Magnicornaspis garwoodi. The animal belongs to the corcoraniids – an enigmatic group of early arthropods that have broad head shields, segmented bodies, and defensive spines.

Corcoraniids remain exceptionally rare globally. Only a handful of species are known from the Cambrian and Ordovician periods.

Our specimen is unique for its two large forward-projecting spines extending from the head. These exaggerated spines distinguish the species from previously known relatives. They suggest defensive adaptations within the group evolved earlier than previously recognised.

Sitting in a museum drawer for decades

The specimen was originally collected in 1962 during geological mapping near Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pocatière in Québec. It came from mudstones within the Rivière-du-Loup Formation. This formation was deposited in relatively deep marine slope environments during the late Cambrian.

This represents quieter offshore conditions where fine mud settled through the water column. These rocks have received relatively little palaeontological attention, making them ideal for reassessment.

The specimen sat largely overlooked within the collections of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC for decades. This highlights one of the most important aspects of palaeontology: major discoveries do not always emerge directly from fieldwork.

Museum collections contain enormous quantities of under-studied material collected during geological surveys and expeditions over the past century. Revisiting these collections with modern techniques can fundamentally reshape understanding of ancient ecosystems.

More treasures awaiting discovery

Our discovery adds to a growing body of evidence that challenges the notion of a barren late Cambrian world.

Studies from China and Sweden have documented other well-preserved fossils from about 497–485 million years ago.

Together, these discoveries suggest ecosystems may have remained diverse and ecologically complex during this time.

The new Québec fossil expands this picture geographically. Our specimen demonstrates the ancient Appalachian margin of eastern Laurentia, the ancient continent that included much of present-day North America and Greenland, was a site of excellent fossil preservation.

This broadens the known distribution of soft-bodied fossil preservation during the interval. It also hints that comparable deposits may await discovery elsewhere.

The Furongian gap therefore may not represent a biological collapse at all. Instead, it may partly reflect an “anthropogenic bias” in the fossil record – a distortion introduced by where humans have searched, collected, and studied fossils.

Each newly discovered Furongian exceptional fossil site narrows this supposed gap. They reveal increasingly sophisticated ecosystems thriving during the late Cambrian.

Entire groups of organisms – and possibly even ecosystems – may still await discovery within museum drawers or poorly studied rock formations. The late Cambrian lasted millions of years across vast ancient oceans. Yet only a tiny fraction of its environments have been systematically explored for soft-bodied preservation.

The next major fossil discovery may not come from a newly discovered outcrop in a remote desert. It may already exist, inside a museum cabinet, collected decades ago and waiting for someone to recognise its significance.

Russell Dean Christopher Bicknell, Post-doctoral researcher in Palaeobiology, Flinders University and Julien Kimmig, Head of Palaeontology Division at the Natural History Museum Karlsruhe

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Along the California coast, from Bodega Bay to Morro Bay, commercial fishing boats have started pulling in salmon for the first time in three years, and local salmon are once again appearing on restaurant menus and in seafood markets across the state.

California’s commercial ocean salmon fishery began reopening in May 2026 for the first time since a population crash led to a three-year closure.

But while the reopening, happening in phases and with limits, is welcome news, it does not mean the underlying problems have been solved.

The Pacific Fisheries Management Council, established by Congress to oversee West Coast fisheries, closed the salmon fishery in 2023 after populations of fall-run Chinook salmon collapsed to critically low levels, down 85% from the average population before 2005.

The immediate cause of the latest closure was the extreme drought from 2020-2022 that devastated salmon survival as river levels fell and the water heated up. But more than drought pushed the fishery to the brink. The underlying system of water management, hatchery practices and habitat loss have also eroded the salmon population’s ability to quickly recover from difficult years.

We study changing fish ecology in California. The state has the knowledge to create a more resilient system that can help salmon better withstand California’s increasing climate whiplash. But without significant changes in three key areas, we believe today’s good news for salmon could be short-lived once again.

California’s changing salmon population

The Sacramento-San Joaquin Basin once hosted one of the most productive salmon habitats in the U.S. Salmon depend on cold water for reproduction and a productive ocean for adult growth. California provided both in abundance, with spawning streams fed by snowmelt and ocean productivity boosted by seasonal upwelling of nutrients along the coast.

California’s rich mosaic of spawning streams, floodplains and tidal wetlands supported different age classes and migrational timings, making the fish population diverse enough to survive the state’s droughts and other environmental fluctuations.

Much of that stabilizing diversity has been lost over the decades. Massive dams now block access to historic spawning habitat. Rivers have become disconnected from floodplains. Water diversions for farmland alter the timing and temperature of river flows.

The loss of ecological complexity, along with a salmon population that is increasingly raised in hatcheries, resulting in less diversity in both genetics and behavior, has allowed a pattern of boom-bust cycles that can leave the fishery struggling during droughts and marine heat waves.

These population fluctuations have worsened over time. Population crashes caused fishery closures in 2008-2009 and again in 2023-2025. Avoiding a repeating pattern of closures requires restoring the ability of salmon populations and their interconnected network of habitats to withstand droughts, heat waves and other environmental shocks without collapsing.

Managing water

One of the biggest opportunities for salmon recovery lies in smarter management of California’s water resources.

Salmon evolved in rivers with seasonal pulses of cold water from snowmelt and winter storms. Today, dams and reservoirs tightly control those flows to deliver water to cities and agriculture. But scientists now understand much more about how the timing and temperature of water releases affect salmon survival.

Juvenile salmon survive best when rivers receive periodic “pulse flows,” or temporary increases in water that help young fish migrate downstream. Cold-water releases can also help prevent rivers from heating up to lethal temperatures during critical spawning, rearing and migration periods.

The infrastructure to create these pulse flows already exists in many watersheds where dams control the water flow. The challenge is managing water flows to meet the needs of both salmon and people.

Researchers have developed forecasting models that combine snowpack, temperature and river-flow data to help water and fisheries managers identify when targeted water releases could provide the greatest ecological benefit.

Rethinking hatcheries

California hatcheries release millions of young salmon every year. Without them, the reopening would not be possible.

But hatcheries can also unintentionally reduce the diversity that helps make salmon populations resilient to environmental changes.

Hatcheries have historically focused on maximizing the number of fish produced. But they tend to release fish of a similar size over a narrow time range, making the success of each group more vulnerable if they face poor river and ocean conditions.

In some cases, hatcheries have bypassed overheated rivers and trucked fish to the ocean, releasing them directly into San Francisco Bay. This approach can mean more fish survive to breeding age, but those fish are less able to find their way back to traditional spawning grounds.

Hatcheries can also cause harm to natural populations through competition, disease and by reducing genetic variation in the population. However, if they employ careful genetic management, they can preserve more of the natural diversity found in wild salmon populations. This includes changing hatchery practices to avoid unintentionally favoring fish that thrive under hatchery conditions but struggle in the wild.

Restoring habitat

Loss of spawning and rearing habitat is one of the biggest long-term challenges for California salmon.

Dams have blocked access to vast areas of historical spawning habitat. The recent removal of dams on the Klamath River represents one of the largest river restoration projects for salmon habitat in U.S. history.

While dam removal is effective, it can also be costly, time consuming and politically contentious. Other approaches to getting salmon above dams, such as creating fish passages and trucking operations, can also help restore access to historical spawning habitat.

Reconnecting rivers, many of which have been restricted by levees, to seasonal floodplains can dramatically improve growth and survival for juvenile salmon and increase their resilience to climate change.

Floodplains act like productive nurseries, providing a food-rich habitat where young fish can grow rapidly before migrating to the sea. Modifying flood-control structures to allow rivers to spread out during parts of the year can help the salmon population. Winter-flooded rice fields can also serve as seasonal habitat for juvenile salmon. Young salmon raised on these flooded fields grow faster than fish confined to river channels, suggesting that agricultural landscapes could be large-scale opportunities for floodplain restoration.

Coordinating solutions

The reopening of California’s commercial salmon fishery is good news for coastal communities, but coordinated management is needed to strengthen California’s salmon system long term.

These solutions do not recreate the California of 200 years ago, but combined they can rebuild some of the ecological complexity that salmon need to survive in a rapidly changing climate. Importantly, all these solutions, from water to hatcheries to habitat, need to be applied together in order for salmon to complete their complex life cycle. Any single action in isolation, benefiting just one life stage, is unlikely to work.

The benefit is a thriving salmon fishery into the future.

Eric Palkovacs, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Santa Cruz and Steven T. Lindley, Researcher in Fish Ecology, University of California, Santa Cruz

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

There is not yet much research on the effects of heatwaves on bees. What little there is focuses on super extremes of weather that would kill an adult bee.

However, my new research with colleagues shows that UK populations of solitary bees may be much more sensitive than previously thought to the kinds of extreme weather we are now seeing regularly.

To find out what happens to bees during hot weather, my team recreated the three-day UK heatwave of July 2022. We subjected a group of developing larvae of red mason bees to three days where temperatures peaked daily at 40°C.

Red mason bees are common solitary bees found in UK gardens, and are important pollinators of apples and other fruits. At the same time, a control group experienced normal July temperatures for Hull, where the study was conducted, peaking daily at about 25°C.

After that, we treated both groups identically and allowed them to spin their cocoons and hibernate as normal. Nine months later, all the bees emerged fine, so it appeared initially that the heatwave had had no effect.

But this was before we dissected the bees to look at their reproductive health.

Staggeringly, in males from the heatwave group, sperm activity had dropped by half compared with the control group, and sperm counts by one third. In females, there was a 15% reduction in both the size and the number of developing eggs.

The heatwave had wrecked their fertility, especially in males.

Reduction of sperm motility in bees during heatwave

These numbers are shocking because they suggest solitary bee populations are much more sensitive to weather extremes than we thought, and that this should be factored into calculations of the broader effects of climate change. While bees did not die outright, their fertility was severely affected.

This means that a heatwave one year could lead to a drastic drop in the number of bees the following year, and therefore less efficient pollination for key crops like apples, cherries and oilseed rape.

This would leave commercial fruit growers even more reliant on temporarily renting honeybee hives, commonly called “hire-a-hive” schemes, to combat pollination deficits. This is at a time when research increasingly shows that wild bees, whose services come for free, are better pollinators than honeybees.

What else happens in heatwaves?

In honeybees and bumblebees, living together as a group is the key to withstanding weather extremes. With their social hives, honeybees can flexibly respond to periods of heavy rainfall and strong winds by rapidly reallocating the tasks that worker bees perform – switching from nest maintenance to foraging, for example.

Honeybees and bumblebees are also able to respond to temperature changes. They maintain their nests within strict temperature limits, with some workers switching to becoming living radiators when temperatures drop, buzzing their wing muscles to produce heat that keeps the brood at the ideal growing temperature.

Bumblebee nests begin with a single queen hibernating over winter and then working alone to build up her brood. New research is revealing secrets of their resilience: for example, hibernating bumblebee queens can survive underwater for up to a week when their nest is flooded.

However, honeybees and bumblebees are not most bees.

Unlike honeybees and bumblebees, most bees are solitary, which means they don’t have social nestmates to help them when times get tough – they work entirely on their own. Nests of these solitary bees are at the mercy of the elements, so solitary bees are much more vulnerable to climate change than social bees.

Of course, heatwaves are not the only threats to bees. They have an array of other nightmares to cope with, including pesticides, diseases, nutritional stress and loss of habitat.

The priority now is to investigate how bees affected by heatwaves also cope with these other problems. Our lab heads up a government-funded study looking at how climate change affects the nutritional needs of growing wild bees, and how parent bees respond to these needs.

Excitingly, we are beginning to see patterns indicating that growing bees require different balances of nutrients when they are reared at different temperatures. We are now testing whether bee mothers are sensitive to these requirements, and can adjust the pollen they gather to compensate.

Extreme hot weather is becoming more prevalent, even in cooler countries. These studies show that severe weather, while not necessarily killing bees outright, has the ability to seriously damage the bee population – with long-term consequences for pollination as well as the human food chain.

James Gilbert, Senior Lecturer in Zoology, University of Hull

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

America’s bees and beekeepers are losing a valuable ally just when they need its help most.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture plans to soon close the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center, a 6,500-acre agricultural research station in Maryland that is home to the nation’s premier bee research and disease diagnosis hub, the Beltsville Bee Research Lab.

The closure comes at a critical moment for bees. In winter 2025, many beekeepers lost over half their operations as pesticide-resistant varroa mites spread, bringing deadly viruses. The losses have led to low honey production, and soaring fuel costs have made shipping bees cross-country for agricultural pollination increasingly expensive, further stressing the industry.

During my 14 years researching bees and beekeepers, and in writing my new book, “Bitter Honey: Big Ag’s Threat to Bees and the Fight to Save Them,” I’ve seen beekeepers frequently turn to the USDA bee labs for support during crises like this. Because honey bees contribute roughly US$15 billion to U.S. crop production – native and managed bees pollinate more than 130 crops – these labs help stabilize the nation’s food system.

Today, that scientific support system is at risk, just as beekeepers face their greatest challenges and native bee populations continue to decline.

Why the Beltsville Bee Lab matters

USDA’s bee researchers have served beekeepers for over 130 years, including nearly 90 years at the Beltsville station. One of the Beltsville Bee Lab’s standout services is its bee disease diagnostic service, where beekeepers can send samples for analysis free of charge.

Since the early 2000s, Beltsville researchers have helped beekeepers respond to varroa mites – a primary driver of high colony losses each year. Now, the lab is helping them prepare for a deadlier mite that is infesting honey bees in Asia, Tropilaelaps mercedesae, or “tropi” mites – by developing detection and response protocols that beekeepers can use to protect their colonies.

While the Beltsville Bee Lab supports beekeepers nationwide, it’s located in a prime farming and beekeeping region. Its closure would leave a critical research gap in the Northeast, where beekeepers help pollinate cranberries, squash, blueberries and other crops.

Its location has also allowed researchers to conduct extensive studies on winter colony losses, research that would be difficult to replicate at the remaining USDA bee labs, which are primarily located in more temperate climates.

Hidden costs of bee lab closures

The USDA states that it will decommission the entire Beltsville Agricultural Research Center because building maintenance and renovations would cost an estimated $500 million. But closing the lab could cost beekeepers, farmers and consumers far more.

For example, in winter 2025, beekeepers experienced their highest losses in U.S. history. Many opened their colonies in January that year and found that more than 60% of their colonies had died – nearly 1.7 million colonies nationwide. Beekeepers contacted Beltsville, and researchers quickly flew out to test affected colonies for pesticide residues, diseases and varroa mites, data that could help guide beekeepers’ treatment response.

A few weeks later, as the lab’s scientists were working on the crisis, the Trump administration fired probationary researchers and staff at the bee labs, along with thousands of other employees across the USDA. The Beltsville team was hobbled, and the remaining staff restricted from communicating with beekeepers.

Because of the communication lockdown, it took nearly six months for researchers to deliver their findings. By then, the season was over and beekeepers had been forced to navigate the crisis on their own.

The loss of bee colonies ultimately cost beekeepers an estimated $600 million in lost honey production, pollination income and colony replacement costs – far more than the one-time projected costs to modernize the entire Beltsville Agricultural Research Center.

These losses can hit consumer pocketbooks too.

When beekeepers lose nearly half their operations, they often need to charge farmers more for pollination services to stay afloat. Those added costs can ripple through the food system and affect what everyone pays for the fruits, vegetables and nuts that depend on pollinators.

More cuts planned to US pollinator research

The Beltsville Bee Lab closure is not an isolated case. The administration has proposed eliminating the U.S. Geological Survey’s Ecosystems Mission Area, a move that could defund the USGS Bee Lab, an essential resource for research on native bees.

It also plans to decommission 16 USGS research centers nationwide, including the Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center in North Dakota, the highest honey-producing state in the nation. For decades, beekeepers have brought colonies to forage on grasslands in the region. Researchers have been tracking how the shift from grasslands to crops has affected honey bee health and beekeeper revenue.

The U.S. Forest Service also faces widespread cuts, including the planned closure of 57 of its 77 research stations throughout the United States. Since the Forest Service manages over 193 million acres of federal lands that support native plants and pollinators, those closures could affect crucial pollinator habitat as well.

These closures risk a severe brain drain.

When the first Trump administration moved the USDA Economic Research Service from Washington to Kansas City, Missouri, in 2019, the agency lost over 75% of its experienced research staff. A recent survey suggests that history may repeat itself. If the reorganization goes through, farmers and beekeepers will lose experts with decades of institutional and technical knowledge.

The Beltsville Bee Lab is a key part of the often-unappreciated federal research infrastructure that supports the health of pollinators and the nation’s food supply.

If the USDA and the USGS move forward with their plans to close bee labs and research sites, the result could be slower responses to bee threats, weaker tracking of native bee populations and diminished pollinator habitat for bees – all of which raise costs and risks for beekeepers, farmers and everyone who depends on the food system.

Jennie L. Durant, Research Affiliate in Human Ecology, University of California, Davis

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

When rivers degrade, pests spread or drought hits crops, nature sends a bill.

Yet it’s one rarely itemised on any balance sheet, because nature’s contribution to business remains genuinely hard to quantify.

One major obstacle is data. Businesses rarely disclose their precise operating locations, while detailed ecological information that can be linked to specific firms is scarce in most countries.

This is despite healthy ecosystems underpinning large parts of the economy, from agriculture and forestry to tourism and food production. As the US economist Herman Daly famously put it, the economy is “a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, not the reverse”.

As part of a growing body of global research now trying to put hard numbers on what nature actually contributes to the economy, we looked at New Zealand’s case.

Our newly completed research turned up a compelling finding: firms operating in areas with richer biodiversity are measurably more productive.

Measuring nature’s value

We chose New Zealand because it publishes detailed sets of business and environmental data. That allowed us to compare company performance with local ecological conditions across different regions.

We combined measures of sales and employment with biodiversity indicators – including river health, drought risk, land use and invasive species – used as part of international reporting obligations.

We also drew on the Cobb-Douglas economic model – commonly used to estimate how labour and investment drive economic output – to help get a clearer picture of nature’s economic contribution as a factor of production.

We found businesses operating in areas with healthier ecosystems tended to generate higher sales and profits.

Across more than 117,000 observations spanning 2009 to 2022, a 1% increase in natural capital was associated with sales about 0.13% higher and profits about 0.15% higher on average. The relationship remained consistent across multiple measures of biodiversity and ecosystem health.

We also found a trade-off. Areas with more roads, buildings and commercial activity tended to have lower biodiversity scores but higher sales. In other words, businesses can still grow while degrading nature – but may lose some of the productivity benefits healthy ecosystems provide.

When green policy boosts productivity

We also tested whether major environmental policies changed this relationship.

One was New Zealand’s Predator Free 2050 programme. The other was a broader package of reforms introduced from 2017, including freshwater rules, tree-planting incentives, restrictions on offshore oil and gas exploration, limits on single-use plastics and the Zero Carbon Act.

Because these policies targeted ecosystems rather than directly subsidising firms, they helped us test whether improvements in nature were linked to changes in business performance.

We found the relationship between healthy ecosystems and business performance became even stronger following both interventions, with the productivity effect associated with 1% more natural capital increasing business performance by a further 0.05%. The effect was strongest in the year immediately afterwards.

This suggests investment in ecological restoration and protection can generate economic benefits beyond the environmental sector itself.

The strongest effects appeared in agriculture and forestry, where business outcomes are closely tied to the health of surrounding ecosystems.

Farms and forestry operations in less intensively developed areas – with lower population density and less infrastructure – showed markedly stronger productivity gains linked to natural capital.

In these primary industry regions, a 1% increase in natural capital was associated with sales that were additionally higher by 0.71% to 0.81% above the economy-wide average.

This is unsurprising. Healthy soils, clean water, fewer pests and intact native vegetation can support food and fibre production while lowering costs.

The benefits were also evident in service industries, construction and retail, although spread more evenly across a broader range of ecological factors.

An unseen benefit

These New Zealand insights are important for the growing global effort to better understand the economic value of nature. Globally, the services ecosystems provide to business are estimated to be worth trillions of dollars annually.

While new frameworks such as the international Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures are beginning to emerge, hard evidence linking ecological conditions to firm-level productivity has remained limited.

Our study suggests biodiversity is not simply an environmental concern. Differences in ecosystem health across regions and industries are associated with measurable differences in business performance.

Businesses should view the natural environment as a productive asset every bit as real as machinery or labour, not just background scenery.

And for policymakers – particularly in countries reliant on primary industries, such as New Zealand and Australia – ecological investment and economic productivity shouldn’t be taken as opposing goals.

Nature, it turns out, has been doing more economic work than some have given it credit for.

Paul Griffin, Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Management, University of California, Davis and Martien Lubberink, Associate Professor of Accounting and Capital, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Increasingly, the world’s oceans are telling us our climate system may be changing faster and more dramatically than expected.

These new insights are made using a vast global network of instruments – from drifting floats and moored buoys to research vessels and underwater gliders – that quietly and continuously feed data to scientists.

Known as the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS), it provides the fine-grained data that scientists need to detect changes, test climate models and refine projections of future risk.

But now there is rising concern this system itself is at risk – just when the world needs it most.

The hidden system behind modern forecasting

The GOOS is often described as a form of climate monitoring – but it is much more than that. It can best be understood as a network of complementary observing systems, each designed to capture different parts of the ocean in different ways.

Some 4000 autonomous Argo robotic floats sink every ten days down to 2000m depth, before rising to the surface to transmit temperature and salinity profiles to ground stations via satellite.

Underwater gliders target eddies, coastal currents and continental margins where floats cannot go. Elephant seals fitted with sensors collect data beneath polar sea ice in regions no other instrument can easily reach.

Each of these platforms answer questions the others cannot. And ocean observations collected by them now underpin many of the forecasting systems that modern societies rely on every day.

That includes the numerical weather models used to generate daily forecasts, which continuously ingest ocean data to predict evolving weather conditions, as well as newer artificial intelligence-based forecasting systems.

The same is true for hurricane and cyclone forecasts, as well as seasonal forecasting used to anticipate drought, harvests and energy demand. Marine heatwave warnings, sea-level projections and efforts to understand major current systems also rely on sustained long-term observations beneath the ocean surface.

These observations are key for monitoring El Niño climate patterns – including a major event already underway and likely to peak late this year – and major current systems such as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation.

While satellites can measure surface conditions, they still cannot directly observe the deeper waters where heat accumulates, currents reorganise and the precursors of future weather are already forming.

In short, the GOOS underpins everything from tomorrow’s storm warnings to next century’s climate adaptation plans.

Yet our newly published analysis suggests the system delivering those observations is far more fragile than most people realise.

We found that if observations from a single major contributor, the United States, were withdrawn from GOOS, errors in estimates of how fast the ocean is warming would jump by 163% – worse than randomly losing 80% of all global ocean data.

The reason is largely geographical: US instruments cover every ocean basin and fill critical gaps no other nation currently monitors.

And this is no theoretical concern. Proposed cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Science Foundation in the United States now threaten exactly this contribution.

Elsewhere, observing systems are also under growing strain, with European programmes facing mounting funding pressure.

In China, scientists and policymakers are trying to build a more resilient national observing effort – but without the resources currently required to fully support it.

A resource the world can’t afford to lose

The total annual cost of operating the GOOS – across all platforms and personnel worldwide – is on the order of US$1.1 billion (about NZ$1.8 billion).

If that sounds expensive, consider that a single major hurricane season can cost the United States hundreds of billions of dollars, while marine heatwaves have already collapsed fisheries and triggered mass coral bleaching around the world.

Compared with the economic damage linked to ocean-driven extreme weather and climate disruption, ocean observation is one of the highest-return public investments available.

The international scientific conference OceanObs'29, to be held in China in three years’ time, will be an opportunity to negotiate a more balanced global observing system – one better aligned with today’s economic realities and maritime interests.

It should also encourage greater scientific cooperation among countries, helping ensure complementary observing networks collectively cover as much of the global ocean as possible.

Maintaining that coverage requires constant renewal.

Argo floats typically last four to five years before their batteries fail. This means they must continually be deployed to prevent gaps emerging across the oceans.

New Zealand plays a surprisingly important role here. Since 2004, the research vessel Kaharoa has helped deploy more than 1,100 Argo floats for international partners across the Pacific and Southern Ocean.

This demonstrates that even smaller countries can use their institutions, expertise and maritime interest to make important contributions.

At the same time, if any one component of the GOOS is removed because of political decisions made in the US or elsewhere, the whole system’s ability to deliver reliable information would degrade.

That would require a rebuild of the system which would prove much more difficult and expensive than the cost of sustaining it today.

More importantly, it could leave the world flying blind into the most consequential transformation of the planet’s climate in human history.

The author acknowledges the contributions of Sabrina Speich, John P. Abraham and Lijing Cheng to this article. 

Kevin Trenberth, Distinguished Scholar, NCAR; Affiliate Faculty, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Natural geological processes have been regulating Earth’s climate for millions of years.

Accelerated versions of these processes are now being promoted as technologies to draw down carbon from the atmosphere – and some are rapidly moving from concept to real-world deployments.

Two such technologies are known as enhanced weathering, which speeds up the chemical breakdown of certain rocks, and ocean alkalinity enhancement, which increases the ocean’s natural ability to remove carbon dioxide from the air.

Startups backed by tech companies including Google and Microsoft are already applying these technologies in field trials. Investment in the sector is rising rapidly, with large-scale trials underway and carbon credits beginning to appear on voluntary markets.

But as our new assessment published in Science highlights, some estimates of carbon removal through these technologies may be too optimistic.

Current models assume carbon captured on land or in coastal waters will reliably make its way into long-term storage in the ocean. However, these models don’t replicate all Earth processes.

In reality, part of the engineered capture of carbon can be reversed as water moves through soils, rivers, estuaries and coastal environments. Dissolved elements can become trapped again in new minerals such as clays, reducing how much carbon ultimately remains stored over long timescales.

The true additional carbon removed from the atmosphere may be smaller than headline estimates suggest.

How enhanced weathering is supposed to work

Enhanced weathering works by accelerating chemical reactions that already occur naturally between rocks, water and carbon dioxide.

When rainwater mixes with carbon dioxide held in the atmosphere and soil, it forms an acid that slowly dissolves rocks that contain the minerals calcium and magnesium. This includes volcanic rocks such as basalt and ultramafic rocks such as dunite.

In nature, the dissolved minerals increase the capactiy of water to store carbon dioxide and these chemical products can then be transported by rivers to the ocean, where the carbon may remain stored for thousands of years.

Enhanced weathering attempts to speed up this natural process. Finely crushed rocks and minerals are spread across landscapes such as agricultural soils, increasing the surface area available for reactions.

Ocean alkalinity enhancement uses similar principles, but aims to increase the ocean’s ability to absorb and store atmospheric carbon dioxide directly.

Carbon losses along the way

Many enhanced weathering assessments assume that once minerals dissolve, the resulting alkalinity and carbon will eventually make their way into the ocean for long-term storage.

However, different materials dissolve at different rates. Climate, rainfall, soil chemistry and biological activity also influence how quickly reactions occur. This means carbon removal can vary enormously between environments.

Earth systems also contain many opportunities for the flow of carbon to weaken before it ever reaches the open ocean.

As alkalinity moves through the environment, dissolved elements released during weathering can become trapped again in new minerals. These reactions can consume alkalinity and reduce the amount of carbon ultimately stored long term.

These challenges are not limited to enhanced weathering on land. Ocean alkalinity enhancement may also experience losses as dissolved elements interact with sediments and seawater chemistry, recycling alkalinity back into solid minerals before it contributes to long-term storage.

The challenge of durable carbon removal

In natural systems, weathering, transport and mineral formation are tightly linked parts of a much larger Earth-system cycle.

While naturally occurring warm and wet environments may accelerate weathering, using a rapid-dissolution model to replicate this does not necessarily guarantee durable carbon storage.

There is also another problem: some enhanced weathering and alkalinity approaches may interfere with natural carbon removal pathways that would have occurred anyway.

For example, increasing alkalinity in one part of the Earth system may reduce natural dissolution or weathering processes elsewhere. This means the amount of truly additional carbon removed from the atmosphere may be smaller.

Many field trials focus on changes occurring at the application site itself, but much of the long-term carbon storage depends on what happens downstream – across entire catchments, rivers and coastal oceans.

As enhanced weathering and ocean alkalinity enhancement move toward larger-scale deployment, the central question is how much carbon remains removed from the atmosphere over decades to centuries – and whether that removal is truly additional.

None of this means these technologies don’t contribute to climate mitigation.

The challenge is whether Earth systems can keep the captured carbon stored or whether we are simply moving carbon across time and space instead of durably removing it from the atmosphere.

New Zealand may offer an opportunity to better understand these questions because volcanic rocks, high rainfall and strong land-to-sea connectivity create ideal conditions for tracking how alkalinity and carbon move through the Earth system.

If these approaches are going to play a major role in future carbon removal strategies – and generate carbon credits at global scale – we need to understand not only how quickly minerals dissolve, but whether carbon is stored durably without weakening natural carbon removal pathways at the same time.

Terry Isson, Senior Lecturer in Marine Science, University of Waikato

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.