πͺ W45 - π What you need to know about the recent COP26 climate conference
Successes and failures of the COP26, Does your smartphone know how you feel? & Dropshipping as a business to make money
Hi,
and welcome to the 14th edition of your favourite Wednesday bite, with again some bite-sized knowledge to make you popular at dinner conversations and bar chats.
In this edition:
Successes and failures of the COP26
Does your smartphone know how you feel?
Dropshipping as a business to make money
And some additional π Crumbs & π§ Brain game
Happy reading.
Regards,
Steven
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6 min to chew through this one.
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β π Successes and failures of the COP26
The Climate change conference (COP26) with 39,000 registered attendees across the sprawling Scottish Event Campus along the River Clyde, was the largest climate meeting in history.
As the outcome, a final agreement, dubbed the Glasgow Climate Pact, was created and endorsed by nearly 200 countries.
However, it is still not enough to meet the ambitious targets of the Paris climate agreement and stave off some of the worst consequences of global warming.
What was accomplished?
Almost 1.5
The 1.5Β°C of the Paris agreement seems too ambitious, with the world already having warmed up by about 1.1Β°C and some fossil fuel-producing countries like Saudi Arabia and Russia resisting an aggressive phaseout of coal, oil, and natural gas.
With the commitments of each country on the table, estimations would put the world on course to warm by roughly 1.8Β°C.
Next year, countries need to provide stronger and more detailed plans for cutting their emissions by the end of the decade and by the middle of the century.
Ending fossil fuels
The COP26 declaration for the first time calls for the end of fossil fuels, which unfortunately was watered down at the last minute. India asked for a βphase-down,β implying reduction, but not yet elimination.
Rules for international carbon markets
Under Article 6 of the Paris climate agreement, countries can work across borders to meet their climate goals. For example, one country being well below the emission threshold could sell emission credits to a country thatβs falling behind.
Rules are not set for the transfer of these emission credits, allowing a more thorough check ensuring real reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
Smaller agreements
US and China will do more to cut fossil fuel pollution over the next 10 years.
The end of deforestation by 2030
Cutting methane emissions by 30% by 2030
More than 40 countries have committed to ending their domestic use of coal for electricity, and 25 countries agreed to stop financing coal power in developing countries.
Ending oil and gas production by phasing out new licenses for these means of production
What was not addressed?
20 countries equal 80% of all the emissions, but many including the US have pushed back on paying for the climate damages theyβve already caused. Actually, only Scotland with $2.68 million, has chipped in.
A commitment was made in 2009 that wealthy countries should help developing countries to shift to clean energy by providing a jointly $100B/year by 2020, but this funding has yet to be met.
Several countries that claim to have net-zero emissions targets are planning to invest in more fossil fuel production in the near future. US, Norway, Australia, Canada, and the UK are still subsidizing and expanding fossil fuel production.
The future
The next challenge will be to strengthen the commitments that are now on paper.
βGlasgow has delivered a strong message of hope, a strong message of promise, what is left now is for us to deliver on that promise.β
Next yearβs COP27 will take place in Egypt, where the whole process will repeat again.
Source: Vox - 16 minΒ read
β‘ π± Does your smartphone know how you feel?
In short, not yet. But this could change.
Your smartphone already has a lot of data on how you use your phone (screen and app time) but is capable of even more. It could also keep track of how much and how you tap and touch your phone screen.
According to QuantActions, a European company, the way you tap and touch so-called βtappigraphy patternsβ will enable detecting important indicators related to mental/neurological health.
Arko Ghosh, the companyβs co-founder and a neuroscientist at Leiden University in the Netherlands, published a small clinical study of people with epilepsy that shows how subtle changes in smartphone tappigraphy alone could be used to infer abnormalities in their brainwaves.
βOur hope is that someday we can forecast upcoming episodes.β
The technology is attracting big tech companiesβ interest. In September, the Wall Street Journal reported that Apple is working on iPhone features to help diagnose depression and cognitive decline. Others, such as Google, are also reportedly interested.
Additionally, Silicon Valley-based consumer health and wellness startups are already incorporating aspects of the technology into their products, albeit not yet for clinical diagnosis. Digital phenotyping offers the possibility of collecting continuous behavioural data capturing a personβs lived experiences, allowing a more accurate way to diagnose people.
Still some way to go
More extensive study is necessary as the current academic studies only covered a limited number of participants/data.
Also, people use their phones so differently, it can be hard to compare behaviour between individuals or even in the same person over time.
There is also the potential for bias in algorithms. A lot of health-related research tends to use white, more affluent and educated populations, which would not apply to everyone.
And what happens if a toolβs recommendations differ from a physicianβs?
Last but not least, privacy.
While data gathered for academic research studies follow strict protocols, things can get murkier with data gathered by private companies.
Source: The Guardian - 8Β minΒ read
β’ π’ Dropshipping as a business to make money
Today, a lot of people seek opportunities to make money online. One way that people are claiming they do this is via dropshipping.
But what exactly is dropshipping?
Dropshipping is a way for retailers to fulfil customer orders. After a customer purchases a product, the order is shipped directly from the supplier to the customer, so the retailer doesnβt have to keep inventory on hand.
As an example of dropshipping, you have Wayfair, a furniture store that doesnβt manufacture any of the products it sells but works with a network of suppliers. Or a similar example is Bol, an all-in-one shop, ranging from books to furniture, tech,β¦ offering you the ease of shipment of these products while not manufacturing any of them.
How to do dropshipping as an individual?
First, you need to define the product you want to sell.
Secondly, set up a βgenuineβ website where customers can buy the product.
Once people buy your product, you place an order via a real supplier like Alibaba and have them ship the product to the customer.
Why is it so popular?
Itβs extremely easy to set up. Platforms like Amazon and Shopify allow you to create a website that has everything from a shopping cart, payment and shipping which can be set up in a matter of minutes.
Also, more and more, people are less concerned about where the products they buy are coming from, or how they are produced. Additionally, people are getting used to buying products from brands and websites theyβve never heard of.
Then there are social media, where platforms like TikTok can make your product video go viral, instantly making it a must-buy.
Downside and risks
These business ventures are rarely regulated so you donβt know who youβre buying from and what product or quality you get. If youβre buying from a dropshipper who uses Amazon as a storefront, youβre in luck, as products sold through Amazon allow returns and refunds under the Amazon policy. But for other platforms, youβre on your own.
Also, dropshippers are using the same platforms as real artists do to sell their products, like Etsy, making it much harder for these artists to get their products sold vs the thousands of copycats.
Is it that easy to make money via dropshipping?
New sellers are competing for attention and money from a limited pool of shoppers, so there are only a handful of sellers who are really successful raking in millions in revenue.
Most are operating in the middle or bottom part of the βpyramidβ, who earn a living wage, need to supplement their drop-shipping income with other activities or those whose stores are fully unprofitable and fail to βtake offβ.
Who ultimately benefits from dropshipping?
The biggest winners in the Great Drop-shipping Game are still the tech platforms that are actively profiting from it, but every day, thousands of drop shippers, from the aspiring to the seasoned, hope they can emerge as the second-biggest winners of the e-commerce boom.
Source: Vox - 12Β minΒ read
π Crumbs
Firefox is tracking you without your consent, IT researcher finds
Microsoft partners with Meta to integrate Teams into its Facebook-like Workplace
How has Cop26 shifted the dial on the climate crisis? A visual guide
Twitter acquires Threader, an app that compiles and shares threads
Twitter launched Twitter Blue, a premium subscription to get more out of your twitter experience. But some see it as putting basic features behind a paywall.
Meat consumption is associated with better mental health, meta-analysis finds
ποΈ Limitless with Chris Hemsworth
What if you could combat ageing and discover the full potential of the human body?
New scientific research is shattering conventional wisdom about the human body and offering fascinating insights into how we can all unlock our bodyβs superpowers to fight illness, perform better and even reverse the ageing process!
This science is put to the test by Hemsworth, who, despite being in peak superhero condition, is on a personal mission to learn how to stay young, healthy, strong, and resilient.
Iβm quite interested to see how this turns out, having tried cold showers and holding my breath to increase resilience in my marathon preparation.
Limitless is a National Geographic documentary series and will be available in 2022 on Disney+.
π§ Brain game
Do you know the most common and most uncommon blood type in the world?
Most common: O+ / Most uncommon: AB-
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