NEWS: COP21: Rallies call for Paris climate change action

Pairs of shoes have been symbolically placed on the Place de la République in Paris

Photo by Eric Gaillard/Reuters via The Guardian.

Nuns in South Korea rally. Phoyo by Photograph: Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters via The Guardian.

Photo by Hani Mohammed/AP via The Guardian.

Pope Francis shoes in Place de la République, Paris.

Emma Thompson and Dame Vivienne Westwood attend the London march

Photo by David M Benett/Dave Benett/Getty Images via The Guardian.

Berlin, Germany. Photo by

John Macdougall/AFP/Getty Images

via The Guardian.

Hundreds of thousands of people have marched worldwide to demand action to stop climate change, the day before a UN summit starts in Paris.

One campaign group says more than 570,000 protesters took part in marches on all the main continents.
Activists want action at the Paris talks to limit the rise in the average global temperature to 2C (3.6F) above pre-industrial levels.

Hundreds of pairs of shoes were left on Place de la Republique to remember those left frustrated in their plans to march. Among them were a pair donated by Pope Francis, who has called for urgent action on climate change.

Elsewhere across the world:

• an estimated 50,000 people took part in a march in central London, where opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn addressed crowds
• some of the earliest protests in the day took place in the Marshall Islands, a US territory in the Pacific Ocean threatened by rising seas
• in Kenya, a march took place across the equator
• a small group took part in a march across a glacier in the south of Chile

• the mayor of Sydney in Australia tweeted to say that there were "at least 45,000" demonstrators, making it the biggest ever such march in the city

Read more in BBC. E.T.P. 3'  and see photos from around the world The Guardian E.T.P. 3'

SCIENCE

Image via WIRED.

Antarctica Has Lost Enough Ice to Cause a Measurable Shift in Gravity. "Gravity—yes, gravity—is the latest victim of climate change in Antarctica. That’s the stunning conclusion announced Friday by the European Space Agency. 'The loss of ice from West Antarctica between 2009 and 2012 caused a dip in the gravity field over the region,' writes the ESA, whose GOCE satellite measured the change. Apparently, melting billions of tons of ice year after year has implications that would make even Isaac Newton blanch." Read full article in Wired. E.T.P. 4'

The Procrastinator (some) Times Sunday 6th of July

EDITORIAL

Morning friends! In our news section we have the story of the people of Kiribati who are the first to prepare to be “climate refugees”. Some estimate that the number of people displaced by the effects of global warming will reach 700 million by 2050. Also in News, your weekly dose of Venezuela, this time featuring the ongoing coverage of Al Jazeera, and an article in El País on how Google helped prove the government is lying. In Science a set of surprising experiments has revived old skepticism about quantum mechanics. In Culture & Entertainment, Aaron Rose's Coney Island photographs via The New Yorker, and The Paris Review claims to be loving procrastination... and peacocks.  In Dog We Trust tell us about the Black Dog Syndrome and some hard working dogs with incredible jobs. Finally in Our Weekly Procrastination we talked about Radical Geometry, the new exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts.

Happy Sunday and happy reading!

NEWS
 

Photo via Quartz.

An entire island nation is preparing to evacuate to Fiji before they sink into the Pacific: "This has to be the weirdest business deal of the week: The Church of England just sold a chunk of forest-covered land on the Fijian island Vanau Levu for $8.8 million to the government of the Pacific island nation of Kiribati. For the moment, Kiribati plans to use its 20-square-kilometer (7.7-square-mile) plot for agriculture and fish farming. But the investment is really a fallback for its 103,000 residents—a place to live if they must leave their home island." I don't know what shock me the most, reading about the first climate refugees or about the prevention capabilities of the Kiribati people. I know for a fact that some countries wouldn't start planning anything until they are in full Atlantis mode. Read full article in Quartz. E.T.P. 4' 

 

Screenshot from AlJazeera's Website.

In Venezuela's news, Al Jazeera has been covering the ongoing unrest in the country. Fault Lines Venezuela Divided premiered one week ago, and the latest entry in their blog is from June 27, there you can see what happened when they tried to filmed one of the many food lines that Venezuelans have to make daily to buy food. Have a look here. E.T.P. 3'

When the Venezuelan government finally decided to present evidences of one of its conspiration accusations (deliriums), these turned out to be (as expected) false. They are accusing 3 leaders of the opposition of plotting the president's murder and presented some emails as evidence. Pedro Burelli, one of the accused, asked Google to investigate if the emails were authentic and Google confirmed that they are fakes, "there is no proof that those emails ever existed". The Venezuelan government is caught once again lying, and once again they will pretend that nothing is happening or blame the CIA, Starbucks, the World Cup, a lizard or Mercury retrograde. Read full article (in Spanish) in El País. E.T.P. 6'

SCIENCE

Photo via The Independent.

The collapse of the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet, which holds enough water to raise global sea levels by several metres, has already begun and is ‘unstoppable’, say two new reports. . .  They estimated that the fast-moving Thwaites Glacier will probably collapse into the sea somewhere in the next 200 to 1,000 years, raising sea levels by two feet. This glacier acts as a dam for the rest of the western ice sheet and its disappearance could precipitate the collapse of a frozen mass large enough to raise sea levels by three to four metres. Read full article in The Independent. E.T.P. 5'30''

SCIENCE

Photo: NASA via PolicyMic.

"Civilization was pretty great while it lasted, wasn't it? Too bad it's not going to for much longer. According to a new study sponsored by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, we only have a few decades left before everything we know and hold dear collapses.
The report, written by applied mathematician Safa Motesharrei of the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center along with a team of natural and social scientists, explains that modern civilization is doomed. And there's not just one particular group to blame, but the entire fundamental structure and nature of our society". Read full article in PolicyMic. E.T.P 6'

Image via Fast Company.

"The question of who has accelerated climate change the most isn't that complicated. It was just a few dozen companies that extracted the majority of our oil, gas, and coal over the last 150 years, allowing the fuel to be burned, and the emissions to cause havoc in the atmosphere.
A recent paper by Richard Heede, from the Climate Accountability Institute, in Colorado, shows that just 90 companies produced two-thirds of the fossil fuels burned in the industrial era. That includes 50 investor-owned companies like Chevron and Exxon, 31 state-owned companies like Mexico's Pemex, and nine government-run entities from the ex-Soviet Union, China and other countries." E.T.P. 6'

SCIENCE

Anti-carbon tax protesters in Canberra, motivated by politics, not science. Photograph: Torsten Blackwood/AFP/Getty via The Guardian.

Last week Adam Corner in the New Scientist asked why people is not listening what is being said about climate change. This week, John Abraham and Dana Nuccitelli, keep the conversation going in The Guardian pointing out that, being honest, the global warming debate isn't about science. The scientific evidence on human-caused global warming is clear. Opposition stems from politics, not science. Read full article in The Guardian.

Crystals in polarized light (urea) by Fernan Federici via Wired.

Wired published this week a series of microscopic images that belong to Fernan Federici, Biological Sciences Ph.D. from Cambridge University, that will definitely blow your mind. "A couple years ago, Federici was working on his Ph.D. in biological sciences at Cambridge University studying self-organization (...) using microscopes and a process called fluorescence microscopy to see if he could identify these kinds of patterns on a cellular level. Have a look at this amazing colleciton of images in Wired.

Photo The trail left behind by the Chelyabinsk meteorite as it rushed through the atmosphere. Image: Константин Кудинов/Wikimedia, via Wired.

According to Wired and their report on a Russian meteorite, it turns out that Earth gets hit by meteorites more often than we think. "Meteorite collisions are often compared in size to nuclear explosions, but because they are speeding toward Earth they have momentum that makes them far more destructive. And to make matters worse, they may occur more often than currently estimated". Read full article in Wired.

SCIENCE

 Photo via Brain Pickings.

Why do we go to space? "In the beginning of our space program, the answer had a lot to do with war and paranoia. But with the dawn of the space shuttle, that all changed." Explore invite us to watch the new episode of It’s Okay To Be Smart, the thoughts of Isaac Asimov on why spend money on it, and also a priceless conversation between Carl Sagan, Ray Bradbury, and Isaac Asimov on the subject. Have a look at all the links via Explore.

Photo: The Procrastinator (some) Times.

This week Adam Corner for New Scientist asks a very simple question about climate science: why the world won't listen? Surely, back in 2008, after Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth buzz the scientific and economic cases were made for political and civil actions to be taken. However, the exact opposite happened and "apathy, lack of interest and even outright denial are more widespread than they were in 2008". Apparently, when it comes to climate change, as the New Scientist points out, "communicators need to find better ways to connect with their audience". Read full article here.

 

Image via Meat the Future Cookbook IndieGogo.

This week the people from Next Nature shared with us their new project the In Vitro Meat Cookbook, a visually stunning exploration of the new “food cultures” lab-grown meat might create and their contribution to solve the world's protein crisis. "This book approaches lab-grown meat not just from a design and engineering perspective, but also from a societal and ethical one." If you want more info or you want to back-up this project, click here.