Wellington NZ hospital carpark flooding picture as IAG warns that weather events are increasingly erratic, frequent & intense - just like the climate scientists warned

Image shows Sam Neil in Jurassic Park dealing with three velociraptors.

He's also got significant experience in dealing with dinosaurs.

Will the guy who called a vote of confidence on his own leadership to 'put the matter to rest' following grumbling in party ranks and speculation in media, now call a snap election to 'put the matter to rest' following grumbling in coalition ranks and speculation in media? #nzpol

Proud to have chaired the original hearings panel on this project & stoked with the decision. But the decision was made on this years ago & today's vote was after a small group pushed to revisit it. This has meant delays while staff assessed other (already discounted) options and probably more $ 🤷🏻‍♀️

AMAZING!!! @christchurchlib.bsky.social councillors voted 12 to 1 to end discharging wastewater into Akaroa Harbour, to right a cultural wrong and to protect the blue tourism environment & economy by discharging very highly treated water to trees/land & not an ‘out of sight out of mind’ ocean option

Cars and vans bobbing in flood water in an Edwardian suburban street.

"Climate change will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you're the one filming it"

Or till the background is the street you grew up in. Hits home.

Science-folks: And many of the others will give us vital information on climate change that will enable us to plan, thereby saving much money and community suffering.

NZ Govt: 🦗 🦗

Menu Hotspot Screenshot from The New Zealand Herald 21 Apr 2026 Weather-related claims skyrock­eted in the past 12 months, high­light­ing the volat­ile nature of New Zea­l­and’s weather, an expert says. New Zea­l­and’s largest insurer, IAG, says weather-related claims rose 256% after the coun­try was battered by 46 storms. New data from IAG New Zea­l­and’s Wild Weather Tracker revealed its insur­ance brands received 33,174 claims from 46 storms between March 2025 and Feb­ru­ary 2026, up from 9324 claims over 29 storms in the pre­vi­ous 12-month period. Storm-related claims covered home, con­tents, motor, com­mer­cial and boat policies across IAG New Zea­l­and’s insur­ance com­pan­ies, which include AMI, State and NZI. Phil Gib­son, chief exec­ut­ive of AMI, State and NZI, said storms were arriv­ing more often and with greater intens­ity. “Over a 15-year timeline, a storm typ­ic­ally affected parts of the coun­try once every 19 days. In the last 12 months, that fre­quency has more than doubled to once every eight days, mak­ing storms a near-weekly occur­rence.”

An AMI, State and NZI Climate Change Poll last year found 90% of New Zealanders surveyed expect more frequent and extreme storms. More than 75% said they wanted investment in risk reduction, mitigation and resilience. “If we want to keep people protected, councils, government and insurers must work together to address the underlying risks,” Gibson said. “It simply requires making risk reduction a priority and collective, timely and co-ordinated action from all of us. “Reducing natural hazard risk is the fairest and most durable way to keep insurance affordable and available to as many New Zealanders as possible.”

In just 15 years we've gone from one storm every 19 days to one every 8 days. And the deniers are in the minority, no matter how loudly they troll.

Ooo that sounds exciting tho!

'A storm every eight days' - country's biggest insurer calls for systemic response IAG's Wild Weather Tracker recorded 46 storms in the last 12 months - and the company says the level of concern among ordinary people is also rising.

A storm every eight days needs a systemic response- I could not agree more - and hope people are ok here in NZ in the Wellington region after last night - www.rnz.co.nz/news/environ...

That Luxon chose him for that position speaks volumes.

Classic

NB Stuart Smith National whip at the centre of NZ PM future debate has denied climate change for years & was lead whip who blocked the NZ climate minister from attending the world adaptation conference NZ was hosting last October - you couldn’t make this stuff up www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/science-o...

Screenshot of a Te So News post. It gas an image of Paul Goldsmith and the headline 'Analysis: Government set to reduce Treaty in legislation to lowest possible standard'.

Looks like we'll get to test it soon...

Not going to share it, but wow, ACT going full attack mode on Chlöe following the poll result. Nasty stuff that I hope backfires.

Windfall tax anyone? #nzpol

So the PM is Chris and he succeeded Chris. Now Chris is Opposition Leader and he wants to have another crack at Chris in November. The only problem is that Chris wants to replace Chris before then if he can get the numbers, so he can face Chris at the election.

Electricity Everywhere is a no-brainer.

And I mean that for both sides of any policy argument.

I'll add Mama Hooch to the list.

The culture is there and it needs dealing with and not being swept under the carpet.

A HUGE, narrative-breaking moment for the UK car market

New EVs are now cheaper than petrol cars on average, says Autotrader

Last yr CCC said price parity was due by 2028 – and it's already here

And EVs are already MUCH cheaper to run than petrol

OMG! How cute are these!! 😍😍

"Timaru's bus service is soon to be fully electric. Six of the new EVs, known as "very small buses" or VSBs, are the first of their kind in NZ and can seat up to 13 people, with another 13 standing." THEY ARE LITERALLY CALLED "VERY SMALL BUSES"💗Source: shorturl.at/yBQy1

#Bloomscrolling

And in the meantime, the state of the pipes continues to deteriorate. 10% of pipes were at grade 5 (need replacing) two years ago; now its at 12.7%. They're cutting the 3W budget by over $100m for next year and not even delivering the planned programme of work. 🤷🏻‍♀️

I'm enjoying it all so much.

Congrats to @sarah4ilam.bsky.social for her Masters of Disaster Risk and Resilience with Distinction! Was here for my eldest's BSc and stoked to hear Sarah's name read out.
A lot of science degrees awarded this morning! So good 👏👏👏

Wellington folk: Tiaki Wai are consulting on their setup, priorities, and policies.

You can have your say here: ://haveyoursay.tiakiwai.co.nz - takes 2 mins to register and the short survey takes 3-5mins to complete.

Don't let the grey brigade or the cookers set water policy for the next 40 years

And yes, you can do toms from seed or small multipacks, but that's when time and capability come in too.

Its actually not easy to grow enough to feed yourself without space and time, but herbs and leafy greens are easy and shorter time to harvest. Buying a tomato plant at $5 that produces a kilo or two doesn't make much sense when they're ripe just as toms are $2.49 a kg at the market.

It depends what you want to grow. You could put old buckets, planters or recycling bins (with drainage holes) on an old table as a start and grow leafy greens, herbs etc. There are table type set ups around and you might be able to get one second hand too.

What I like best about the Artemis II photos is that it was taken by actual humans. An actual person had to frame it and manually adjust settings. It's their own artistic rendition of what they thought looked best at the time, something no probe, rover or unmanned spacecraft can take. it's art