Future Beat: the whole world is watching Cop28

Amid high hopes and more than a little anticipation, the Cop28 climate conference is under way in Dubai.

More than 97,000 participants from around the world are taking part to try to save the planet.

That might sound dramatic, but that’s the point.

It’s easy to become cynical and point to the previous Cop climate gatherings, but Cop28 comes during a time of tremendous technological transformation via artificial intelligence, a backdrop of enormous geopolitical conflict and violence, and an unprecedented concern from young people about a looming climate catastrophe.

While officials try to hammer out a plan to reduce carbon emissions and take stock of the planet’s progress, there will also be NGOs with platforms, businesses with ideas, activists with messages and pundits with pens, all trying to push the envelope at the event as it unfolds.

What that all means, of course, is a lot of news content. As always, with this newsletter, we do our level best to pick and explain the most important items that will affect all of us in the months and years ahead.

Cody Sigel Combs , Future Editor

The Big Story

Cop28: it's under way

In brief | No more countdowns. No more preview articles. No more logistics questions. The Cop28 climate conference has begun in Dubai.

What sort of agreements will be hammered out? That remains to be seen. As is often the case with these important world events, the past is prologue. There are a lot of clues that stretch back to the mid-1990s that could give us a hint of how Cop28 might end.

Speaking to the media at Expo City Dubai, Cop28 President Dr Sultan Al Jaber urged decision-makers to bring a “supercharged mindset that is centred around implementation”, eight years after world leaders met in Paris to agree to keep the global increase in temperatures to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

Yet the global climate crisis is about more than just the Paris Agreement. You have the global stocktake, loss and damage fund , and mitigation and adaptation issues that will keep officials, thought leaders and activists busy. It might be easy to dismiss it all as jargon, but when that jargon is all succinctly explained , you start to see what's at stake.

Why it matters | More than 97,000 delegates from around the world have registered for Cop28, far more than anticipated.

Over the past few years, the world has witnessed extreme climate events, increasing the need for solutions across the board and increasing the urgency to secure a safe future for the world's inhabitants.

The past is cluttered with important Cop moments and disappointments, but the pursuit of Cop perfection has reached a crescendo in Dubai, and it's safe to say the whole world is watching .

Quoted | "We feel that the prospects of an extraordinary outcome are at hand ... and we will step up to deliver it” – Cop28 President Dr Sultan Al Jaber

Future in focus

Robust coffee discovery | Scientists are battling to find crops that can survive floods and drought to protect food security.

New partnership launched | IBM and Nasa have announced plans to work on a new artificial weather model to understand more about climate change and predict future weather events with greater accuracy.

A cryptocurrency pledge | The new chief executive of Binance has admitted to "missteps and misguided decisions", as the company pledges to work closely with regulators to boost regulation in the highly volatile cryptocurrency industry.

Hydrogen help | Belgium's leading hydrogen manufacturer is hoping to crack the "chicken and egg" issues that are besetting European expansion.

Predicting the future: Signal or noise?

Does “Zoom fatigue” deserve more attention? It turns out the term might be more than just a mere feeling.

A study published in the journal Scientific Reports in October conducted an experiment scanning the brain and heart activities of 35 students attending a lecture at Graz University of Technology in Austria.

The researchers found hints of mental fatigue, including brain waves, reduced heart rate and signs that the nervous system was overworking to combat exhaustion.

This is a signal: Sometimes the best stories are those that tell you the things you already intrinsically know.

Many of us feel absolutely depleted after several video conference calls. We didn’t need a study to tell us this, but what makes this particular study so different is the neurophysiological evidence it provides, along with a control group that did in-person meetings, but didn’t experience fatigue.

Previous studies relied strictly on self-reporting by participants who took questionnaires. There’s more proof in the “Zoom fatigue” pudding. It’s safe to say more research will follow as Zoom (and Microsoft Teams) continue to consume more of our office time.

In case you missed it

?? New balls please: How one company is giving discarded tennis balls a new lease of life

?? Back to the future: a climate historian explains big moments at previous Cop climate conferences.

?? New UAE pilot plant converts bauxite residue to manufactured soil.

?? How biometric technology is changing the aviation game.

?? Will transformative solar power projects ease the financial burden on Iraqi families?

?? Move over plastic, NHS-approved biodegradable 'paper' bottle to launch in the UAE.