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by Mariam Arshad, working individually

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Definition:

Appeal to authority is used to claim that something is true or that it's logical because a person of "authority" claims it does. This could be a celebrity, certain statements, people with power, etc.

Connection:

This video demonstrates Appeal to Authority because someone who is a professional claim that the product has effective results. He makes statements using professional terms and percentages that can influence viewers to believe that it works. There are also "customers" in the video who make positive statements about the product, in hopes of influencing others.

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Definition:

Confirmation Bias is when a person searches and favours information that supports/confirms their beliefs on a topic. They will deny any information that contradicts, debunks and/or doesn't confirm their beliefs.

Connection:

Eyewitness testimonies correlate with confirmation bias, in the sense that they can be skewed and false. This article talks about the George Zimmerman Trial, where Zimmerman was accused of killing Trayvon Martin, and claimed to be acting in self-defence. During the investigation and trial, 4 key witnesses made huge changes to their stories. They made them more incriminating than their original stories to Zimmerman's claim. This may have happened because they heard more information about the crime and molded their stories to fit the narrative. Moreover, the witnesses used confirmation bias in order to confirm their beliefs of Zimmerman being guilty.

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Newly released court documents in the second-degree-murder case against neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman reveal that, in the month following his fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin on Feb. 26, four key witnesses significantly changed their accounts of what they saw and heard that night. The more recent versions of their memories tend to be more damning of Zimmerman than their initial statements.

Which raises the question: How reliable are eyewitnesses?

For example, days after the shooting, one woman told police she had seen two men running through the streets and then engaging in a fistfight. Less than one month later, she told investigators she saw just one person running, and couldn't describe his or her appearance as she hadn't had her contact lenses in at the time.

Another witness, who was initially interviewed March 20, said she saw two people on the ground immediately after the shooting but was not sure which one was on top. In another interview with investigators six days later, she said it had definitely been Zimmerman on top, explaining that she was sure because she had been able to compare Zimmerman's and Martin's sizes after seeing them on TV.

A third witness originally said he saw a black man (presumably Martin) pinning down and punching a lighter-skinned man (Zimmerman) who was calling for help. Later, the witness wasn't sure any punches were thrown or that he had heard distress calls.

And a man who initially described Zimmerman as looking bloody and in shock after the shooting later implied the shooter had been calm, cool and collected.

Why do people's memories change over time? And which versions of these witnesses' stories are to be believed - the earlier ones untarnished by time, or the later ones, perhaps less sullied by what may have been false impressions imbued early on by news reports or police interviewers?

The reliability of witness testimony is a vastly complex subject, but legal scholars and forensic psychologists say it's possible to extract the truth from contradictory accounts and evolving memories. According to Barbara Tversky, professor emerita of psychology at Stanford University, the bottom line is this: "All other things equal, earlier recountings are more likely to be accurate than later ones. The longer the delay, the more likely that subsequent information will get confused with the target memory."

However, in some cases not all other things are equal.

How we remember

Memory is a reconstructive process, says Richard Wise, a forensic psychologist at the University of North Dakota. "When an eyewitness recalls a crime, he or she must reconstruct his or her memory of the crime." This, he says, is an unconscious process. To reconstruct a memory, the eyewitness draws upon several sources of information, only one being his or her actual recollection.

"To fill in gaps in memory, the eyewitness relies upon his or her expectation, attitudes, prejudices, bias, and prior knowledge. Furthermore, information supplied to an eyewitness after a crime (i.e., post-event information) by the police, prosecutor, other eyewitnesses, media, etc., can alter an eyewitness's memory of the crime," Wise said in an email. [ How Are Memories Stored in the Brain?]

That external input is what makes eyewitness testimony so unreliable. Eyewitnesses are generally unaware that their memory has been altered by post-event information, and feel convinced they're recalling only the incident itself. "Once an eyewitness's memory of the crime has been altered by post-event information, it is difficult or impossible to restore the eyewitness's original memory of the crime," Wise told Life's Little Mysteries.

Elizabeth Loftus, a law professor at University of California at Irvine, said of the Zimmerman case, "There was so much media coverage that it could be that the new information that Trayvon Martin had died, that he was unarmed, the new information about the outcry and outrage, had the potential for contaminating and distorting the witnesses' memory."

Although the eyewitnesses' earlier accounts of that fateful night - descriptions that were generally less damning of Zimmerman - might be closer to the truth, they aren't what the jury will hear during the trial.

On the witness stand

According to Clifford Fishman, a law professor at the Catholic University of America, a jury tends to accept as accurate the version of events a witness describes when testifying - "even if that version is inconsistent in many significant ways with that witness's earlier statements." In other words, legally, the later versions of memories reign supreme. The burden falls to the defense attorneys to point out the weaknesses or inconsistencies in the witness's testimony at trial, and to cast doubt in the minds of the jurors about the accuracy of the witness's descriptions. [ What is Reasonable Doubt?]

The prosecutors can retaliate by disputing the witness's earlier accounts; to do this, they might demonstrate that the police had initially asked leading questions or otherwise influenced the witnesses' statements in a way that made them more sympathetic of Zimmerman. In that case, the witnesses' later descriptions could be proved more trustworthy.

Furthermore, it could be that later additions to accounts, as with the witness who initially did not know whether she had seen Zimmerman or Martin on top during their fight, but later named Zimmerman, it could be that her fuller memory really had been triggered by seeing Zimmerman on television. "Appropriate cues given afterwards can retrieve additional reliable information that was not originally retrieved," Tversky noted.

Either way, Loftus said, "It looks like these witnesses are going to have some explaining to do. If they use version two of their stories in court, one attorney or the other is going have access to version one. And that can make the case against Zimmerman weaker."

Follow Natalie Wolchover on Twitter @nattyover. Follow Life's Little Mysteries on Twitter @llmysteries, then join us on .

Copyright 2012 Lifes Little Mysteries, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. ]]>

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Natalie Wolchover, Life's Little Mysteries

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Are Eyewitnesses in the Zimmerman Trial Reliable?

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Newly released court documents in the second-degree-murder case against neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman reveal that, in the month following his fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin on Feb. 26, four key witnesses significantly changed their accounts of what they saw and heard that night.

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Definition:

A Red Herring is something that misleads from an important argument or truth that's being discussed. Someone/something may provide irrelevant information that may seem relevant to divert the attention.

Connection:

This article talks about the Occupy Wall Street Movement that occurred in New York, in 2011. Protesters raised awareness of the social and economic inequality and corruption made by the influences of corporations on the government. It dealt with the financial issues among the "regular people", sparking the saying, "We are the 99%". However, this is considered a red herring because the government had diverted the situation by making claims of wanting to change the economy. Instead, they reverted back to their original ways, convincing societies that their current form of capitalism was the true economic system.

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hy are people occupying Wall Street? Why has the occupation - despite the latest police crackdown - sent out sparks across America, within days, inspiring hundreds of people to send pizzas, money, equipment and, now, to start their own movements called OccupyChicago, OccupyFlorida, in OccupyDenver or OccupyLA?

There are obvious reasons. We are watching the beginnings of the defiant self-assertion of a new generation of Americans, a generation who are looking forward to finishing their education with no jobs, no future, but still saddled with enormous and unforgivable debt. Most, I found, were of working-class or otherwise modest backgrounds, kids who did exactly what they were told they should: studied, got into college, and are now not just being punished for it, but humiliated - faced with a life of being treated as deadbeats, moral reprobates.

Is it really surprising they would like to have a word with the financial magnates who stole their future?

Just as in Europe, we are seeing the results of colossal social failure. The occupiers are the very sort of people, brimming with ideas, whose energies a healthy society would be marshaling to improve life for everyone. Instead, they are using it to envision ways to bring the whole system down.

But the ultimate failure here is of imagination. What we are witnessing can also be seen as a demand to finally have a conversation we were all supposed to have back in 2008. There was a moment, after the near-collapse of the world's financial architecture, when anything seemed possible.

Everything we'd been told for the last decade turned out to be a lie. Markets did not run themselves; creators of financial instruments were not infallible geniuses; and debts did not really need to be repaid - in fact, money itself was revealed to be a political instrument, trillions of dollars of which could be whisked in or out of existence overnight if governments or central banks required it. Even the Economist was running headlines like "Capitalism: Was it a Good Idea?"

It seemed the time had come to rethink everything: the very nature of markets, money, debt; to ask what an "economy" is actually for. This lasted perhaps two weeks. Then, in one of the most colossal failures of nerve in history, we all collectively clapped our hands over our ears and tried to put things back as close as possible to the way they'd been before.

Perhaps, it's not surprising. It's becoming increasingly obvious that the real priority of those running the world for the last few decades has not been creating a viable form of capitalism, but rather, convincing us all that the current form of capitalism is the only conceivable economic system, so its flaws are irrelevant. As a result, we're all sitting around dumbfounded as the whole apparatus falls apart.

What we've learned now is that the economic crisis of the 1970s never really went away. It was fobbed off by cheap credit at home and massive plunder abroad - the latter, in the name of the "third world debt crisis". But the global south fought back. The "alter-globalisation movement", was in the end, successful: the IMF has been driven out of East Asia and Latin America, just as it is now being driven from the Middle East. As a result, the debt crisis has come home to Europe and North America, replete with the exact same approach: declare a financial crisis, appoint supposedly neutral technocrats to manage it, and then engage in an orgy of plunder in the name of "austerity".

The form of resistance that has emerged looks remarkably similar to the old global justice movement, too: we see the rejection of old-fashioned party politics, the same embrace of radical diversity, the same emphasis on inventing new forms of democracy from below. What's different is largely the target: where in 2000, it was directed at the power of unprecedented new planetary bureaucracies (the WTO, IMF, World Bank, Nafta), institutions with no democratic accountability, which existed only to serve the interests of transnational capital; now, it is at the entire political classes of countries like Greece, Spain and, now, the US - for exactly the same reason. This is why protesters are often hesitant even to issue formal demands, since that might imply recognising the legitimacy of the politicians against whom they are ranged.

When the history is finally written, though, it's likely all of this tumult - beginning with the Arab Spring - will be remembered as the opening salvo in a wave of negotiations over the dissolution of the American Empire. Thirty years of relentless prioritising of propaganda over substance, and snuffing out anything that might look like a political basis for opposition, might make the prospects for the young protesters look bleak; and it's clear that the rich are determined to seize as large a share of the spoils as remain, tossing a whole generation of young people to the wolves in order to do so. But history is not on their side.

We might do well to consider the collapse of the European colonial empires. It certainly did not lead to the rich successfully grabbing all the cookies, but to the creation of the modern welfare state. We don't know precisely what will come out of this round. But if the occupiers finally manage to break the 30-year stranglehold that has been placed on the human imagination, as in those first weeks after September 2008, everything will once again be on the table - and the occupiers of Wall Street and other cities around the US will have done us the greatest favour anyone possibly can.

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Occupy Wall Street rediscovers the radical imagination | David Graeber

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hy are people occupying Wall Street? Why has the occupation - despite the latest police crackdown - sent out sparks across America, within days, inspiring hundreds of people to send pizzas, money, equipment and, now, to start their own movements called OccupyChicago, OccupyFlorida, in OccupyDenver or OccupyLA? There are obvious reasons.

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Definition:

Ancient Wisdom is something that is believed to or does still hold true today. It comes from pre-knowledge, philosophy and beliefs.

Connection:

Reincarnation is an example of ancient wisdom, as it dates back to centuries ago (in AD). This article talks about the topics of reincarnation and rebirth, how they are rooted in Buddhism, and their history in the religion.

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Would you be surprised to learn that reincarnation is not a Buddhist teaching?

"Reincarnation" normally is understood to be the transmigration of a soul to another body after death. There is no such teaching in Buddhism--a fact that surprises many people, even some Buddhists One of the most fundamental doctrines of Buddhism is anatta, or -- no soul or no self. There is no permanent essence of an individual self that survives death, and thus Buddhism does not believe in reincarnation in the traditional sense, such as the way it is understood in Hinduism.

However, Buddhists often speak of "rebirth." If there is no soul or permanent self, what is it that is "reborn"?

What Is the Self?

The Buddha taught that what we think of as our "self"--our ego, self-consciousness, and personality -- is a creation of the skandhas. Very simply, our bodies, physical and emotional sensations, conceptualizations, ideas and beliefs, and consciousness work together to create the illusion of a permanent, distinctive "me."

The Buddha said, "Oh, Bhikshu, every moment you are born, decay, and die." He meant that in every moment, the illusion of "me" renews itself. Not only is nothing carried over from one life to the next; nothing is carried over from one moment to the next. This is not to say that "we" do not exist--but that there is no permanent, unchanging "me," but rather that we are redefined in every moment by shifting impermanent conditions. Suffering and dissatisfaction occur when we cling to desire for an unchanging and permanent self that is impossible and illusory. And release from that suffering requires no longer clinging to the illusion.

These ideas form the core of Three Marks of Existence: impermanence), dukkha (suffering) and anatta (egolessness). The Buddha taught that all phenomena, including beings, are in a constant state of flux -- always changing, always becoming, always dying, and that refusal to accept that truth, especially the illusion of ego, leads to suffering. This, in a nutshell, is the core of Buddhist belief and practice.

What Is Reborn, if Not the Self?

In his book What the Buddha Taught (1959), Theravada scholar Walpola Rahula asked,

"If we can understand that in this life we can continue without a permanent, unchanging substance like Self or Soul, why can't we understand that those forces themselves can continue without a Self or Soul behind them after the non-functioning of the body?
"When this physical body is no more capable of functioning, energies do not die with it, but continue to take some other shape or form, which we call another life. ... Physical and mental energies which constitute the so-called being have within themselves the power to take a new form, and grow gradually and gather force to the full."

Famous Tibetan teacher Chogyam Trunpa Rinpoche once observed that what gets reborn is our neurosis--our habits of suffering and dissatisfaction. And Zen teacher John Daido Loori said:

"... the Buddha's experience was that when you go beyond the skandhas, beyond the aggregates, what remains is nothing. The self is an idea, a mental construct. That is not only the Buddha's experience, but the experience of each realized Buddhist man and woman from 2,500 years ago to the present day. That being the case, what is it that dies? There is no question that when this physical body is no longer capable of functioning, the energies within it, the atoms and molecules it is made up of, don't die with it. They take on another form, another shape. You can call that another life, but as there is no permanent, unchanging substance, nothing passes from one moment to the next. Quite obviously, nothing permanent or unchanging can pass or transmigrate from one life to the next. Being born and dying continues unbroken but changes every moment."

Thought-Moment to Thought-Moment

The teachers tell us that our sense of a "me" is nothing more than series of thought-moments. Each thought-moment conditions the next thought-moment. In the same way, the last thought-moment of one life conditions the first thought-moment of another life, which is the continuation of a series. "The person who dies here and is reborn elsewhere is neither the same person, nor another," Walpola Rahula wrote.

This is not easy to understand, and cannot be fully understood with intellect alone. For this reason, many schools of Buddhism emphasize a meditation practice that enables an intimate realization of the illusion of self, leading ultimately to liberation from that illusion.

Karma and Rebirth

The force that propels this continuity is ​known as karma. Karma is another Asian concept that Westerners (and, for that matter, a lot of Easterners) often misunderstand. Karma is not fate, but simple action and reaction, cause and effect.

Very simply, Buddhism teaches that karma means "volitional action." Any thought, word or deed conditioned by desire, hate, passion, and illusion create karma. When the effects of karma reach across lifetimes, karma brings about rebirth.

The Persistence of Belief in Reincarnation

There is no question that many Buddhists, East and West, continue to believe in individual reincarnation. Parables from the sutras and "teaching aids" like the Tibetan Wheel of Life tend to reinforce this belief.

The Rev. Takashi Tsuji, a Jodo Shinshu priest, wrote about belief in reincarnation:

"It is said that the Buddha left 84,000 teachings; the symbolic figure represents the diverse backgrounds characteristics, tastes, etc. of the people. The Buddha taught according to the mental and spiritual capacity of each individual. For the simple village folks living during the time of the Buddha, the doctrine of reincarnation was a powerful moral lesson. Fear of birth into the animal world must have frightened many people from acting like animals in this life. If we take this teaching literally today we are confused because we cannot understand it rationally.
"...A parable, when taken literally, does not make sense to the modern mind. Therefore we must learn to differentiate the parables and myths from actuality."

What's the Point?

People often turn to religion for doctrines that provide simple answers to difficult questions. Buddhism doesn't work that way. Merely believing in some doctrine about reincarnation or rebirth has no purpose. Buddhism is a practice that makes it possible to experience illusion as illusion and reality as reality. When the illusion is experienced as illusion, we are liberated.

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What the Buddha Didn't Teach About Reincarnation

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Would you be surprised to learn that reincarnation is not a Buddhist teaching? "Reincarnation" normally is understood to be the transmigration of a soul to another body after death. There is no such teaching in Buddhism--a fact that surprises many people, even some Buddhists One of the most fundamental doctrines of Buddhism is anatta, or -- no soul or no self.

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Definition:

All Natural is when someone believes that because something is natural, it is beneficial and healthy for you. However, there are certain natural things that can debunk this term because of their harmful natural elements.

Connection:

This article debunks myths about natural cleaning products. It proves that even though many cleaners have ingredients listed as "all-natural" and claim to be safe for the environment/health, there are factors that disapprove of it.

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If you have a curious toddler, eager young children who can't pass up a good spray bottle, or a helpful teenager (congratulations!), you're probably buying natural cleaning products. The toxic chemicals in conventional cleaners are linked with all kinds of health issues like reproductive toxicity, cancer, asthma, allergies, burns & poisonings. The bad news is that many natural cleaners are not nearly as safe as most parents think! Here's what you need to know to separate the truths from the myths in your pursuit of safe, chemical free cleaners.

Myth #1: "Natural" cleaners are toxic chemical free cleaners.

It's hard to believe, but there are no federal regulations that dictate standards for products labeled as "natural". So while you may think "natural" means no dangerous chemicals, that's actually not at all the case. While many natural cleaners may be somewhat safer than conventional cleaners, the reality is that many products labeled as "natural" are actually not toxic chemical free cleaners at all. Products from brands like Seventh Generation, Method, Mrs. Meyers, Honest Company & Green Works all contain toxic chemicals like allergens, skin and respiratory irritants.

Myth #2: Natural cleaning products are safe.

In fact, many cleaners labeled as "natural" contain dangerous fragrances, dyes, preservatives, allergens & irritants. Check out these surprising safety ratings from the Environmental Working Group (EWG) that show "natural" brands earning the same safety ratings as conventional cleaners:

So as much as you might want your children to help you clean, you can't be sure your "natural" cleaning product is actually safe enough to use around them.

Myth #3: The ingredient list actually tells you what's in the product.

Unlike the manufacturers of food, beverages, cosmetics & personal care products, manufacturers of cleaning products are not required to disclose all of their products' ingredients on their packaging labels. Shocking, right? So how do you hunt down the toxic chemical free cleaners? First, look for specificity. Many manufacturers use vague terms that can hide all sorts of toxic ingredients. For example "fragrance" can actually mean a cocktail of undisclosed ingredients, when even natural fragrances can cause allergic reactions. Other vague descriptions to watch for are "surfactants", "cleaning agents" or "preservatives", where the lack of specificity means you can't easily research the ingredients yourself. An example is methylisothiazolinone, which is often just labelled as "preservative". It's as scary as it is unpronounceable, given its association with lung toxicity, allergies, and possible neurotoxicity.

Myth #4: Botanical ingredients are safe.

Don't be fooled by safe-sounding botanical-based ingredients like thymol, which is actually a known allergen. When you see a natural or botanical ingredient, do your own research because many aren't as safe as you think. For example, citrus and pine oil cleaners emit chemicals called terpenes that can form formaldehyde when they react with ozone in the air. Or some essential oils contain substances like eugenol and limonene which can trigger allergic reactions.

Myth #5: The government tests cleaning products for safety.

Ready for a jaw-dropper? Out of some 62,000 chemicals approved for use in the US, only about 300 have actually been tested for safety. The last time the law governing the safety of chemical products was changed, the cost of gas was $.59 a gallon and the average cost of a new house was $43,400. That would be 1976. Scary! That means the onus is really on you to do your own research. The good news is that an excellent resource for researching cleaning product health and environmental safety is the Environmental Working Group, which has a searchable database of products.

Remove the Guesswork

Or you can stop worrying about deciphering ingredient labels and instead try Force of Nature, which uses electricity to convert salt, water & vinegar into a cleaner and EPA registered disinfectant as effective as bleach - but with no harmful chemicals. No dyes, fragrances, preservatives, allergens or irritants, no mysterious ingredient list. And it powers through grease, grime, soap scum & odors as effectively as top conventional brands but without the nasty chemicals you don't want around your children & pets. It's even gentle on skin, with no toxic residues to harm the little hands in your home, no rinsing needed. Force of Nature is actually the only EPA registered disinfectant that you can make on your kitchen countertop. It kills 99.9% of viruses and bacteria and meets EPA standards as a Hospital-Grade Disinfectant. Force of Nature is also on EPA's list N, the disinfectants approved for use against SARS-CoV-2, the cause of COVID-19, and EPA expects all products on List N to kill all strains and variants of SARS-CoV-2. You can learn more about Force of Nature's technology called electrolyzed water or how Force of Nature kills viruses & bacteria. And if you want to dig in even more, we've also got the scoop on how Force of Nature is safe to use on virtually any surface in your home, and about how Force of Nature actually works.

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5 Ways Natural Cleaning Products Aren't As Safe As You Think - Force of Nature

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Did you know even natural cleaners contain toxic chemicals? We de-bunk the myths that make you think your natural products are toxic chemical free cleaners.

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Definition:

Patternicity is the inclination to look for patterns in meaningless noise. People try to find meaningful patterns and forms in everything.

Connection:

In this optical illusion, the first thing people may see are two faces. However, some people may see the vase first instead. When dealing with optical illusions, perception is very important in terms of what can be interpreted.

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Definition:

Ideology is a system of ideas and beliefs that people follow. These are usually seen in politics, culture and social environments.

Connection:

In recent years, climate change justice has become an outspoken topic amongst leaders and celebrities. This article explains what it is and the negative impacts it has on the Earth. This is an example of an ideology that speaks on the social and economical injustices that have affected climate change.

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In March and April 2019, two devastating cyclones swept through Mozambique, one of the world's poorest countries. Hundreds of people were killed and millions more left in need of humanitarian support, such as access to safe water. The first storm, Cyclone Idai, was the second deadliest to ever hit the Southern Hemisphere. The second, Cyclone Kenneth, was the strongest to ever hit Africa.

This year, a major drought has led to the "complete disappearance" of food sources in Madagascar, according to the United Nation's World Food Programme. The "famine-like conditions", driven by climate change, are leaving people to eat only locusts and cactus leaves, it said in November.

Catastrophic events like these are among the ways millions of people around the world are already being impacted by climate change, many of whom have made little contribution to global emissions. From heat waves and floods to sea level rise and glacial melt, each year we learn more about the human influence on our climate - and witness more of its impacts.

As the temperature of our planet creeps up, for many the fight to stop climate change is truly a matter of life and death. But exactly how it should be stopped, and who should take what action to stop it, is still far from settled. This matter is at the heart of the push to achieve international climate justice.

Complex politics and overlap with other legacies such as colonialism and national debt in vulnerable countries has left this subject pushed to the sidelines. In the wake of a dramatic series of extreme weather events across the globe this year, and with the biggest UN climate conference since Paris in 2015 taking place in Glasgow, is it time for climate justice to be brought to the foreground of climate action?
What is international climate justice?
Climate justice means many things to many people, but at its core is the recognition that those who are disproportionately impacted by climate change tend not to be those most responsible for causing it. Climate change is not only an environmental problem: it interacts with social systems, privileges and embedded injustices, and affects people of different class, race, gender, geography and generation unequally. The climate solutions proposed by climate justice advocates aim to address long-standing systemic injustices.

"A very wealthy and very small minority of the world's countries and corporations have been the principal cause of climate change, while the adverse effects of the climate crisis fall first and foremost on the poorest majority," says Yeb Saño, executive director of Greenpeace Southeast Asia and previously a climate negotiator for the Philippines.

Climate justice is also heavily interconnected with historical injustices, says Trusha Reddy, head of energy and climate justice at the WoMin African Alliance. "It relates to how the climate crisis came about, who caused it, and so ultimately, who really needs to take the biggest amount of action."

Since the foundational UN climate convention was negotiated in the early 1990s, climate justice has been an important topic of discussion. The Paris Agreement mentions it directly, albeit in rather vague terms, simply recognising "the importance for some of the concept of 'climate justice'".

It's clear that global emissions need to be cut to avoid dangerous levels of climate change. But for many a bedrock of climate justice is the need for fairness in who cuts which emissions, taking into account both historical and present circumstances. "You cannot keep having your luxury emissions, and then point fingers at the person who's having emissions just to survive," says Farhana Sultana, an associate professor of geography at Syracuse University in New York who teaches an undergraduate course on climate justice. "That's just absolutely unfair and unjust." (Read more about how the rich are diving climate change.)

Rich nations have contributed the most to climate change, yet do not bear the brunt of the consequences (Credit: Getty Images)

For example, just 0.09% of the world's total emissions are produced in Mozambique. On average, its 31 million citizens each have a carbon footprint around a quarter of someone in the UK. It is among the many vulnerable countries expected to bear the brunt of the impact of climate change, but can hardly be expected to dramatically cut its own emissions.

Carbon Cost

From carbon markets to flight levies, economic interventions have the potential to drastically reduce the world's carbon emissions. Carbon Cost analyses some of the most powerful measures that could reshape the way we live, and our relationship with the planet and nature.

Much research has gone into exploring the most equitable way emissions cuts could be divided among countries, based on things like historical emissions, capacity to act and the current carbon footprint of citizens.

But the debate over who should take what action is a politically thorny one. The UN climate talks, which bring together many of the world's most powerful politicians, provide one of the world's main arenas for such discussions, but the push for a fairer distribution of action is often cast aside by richer countries.

This is a problem because country climate pledges are still far from where they need to be. Almost 30 years ago, nations agreed to stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations "at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system". Yet with 1.2C of warming reached so far, the world is already experiencing both extreme weather events linked to climate change and slow-onset climate impacts such as sea level rise, and the dangers increase with every year of further emissions.

The 2015 Paris Agreement set out a goal for countries to collectively hold global warming to "well below" 2C and "pursu[e] efforts" to limit it to 1.5C. Crucially, it also recognised that developed countries will have to reduce their emissions quicker than developing countries. "There is common responsibility for all countries, and for all of us in fact," says Saño. "But... those who have contributed more to this problem have bigger responsibilities than those who contributed less to the problem."

One issue, though, is that the Paris Agreement was designed so that countries would set their own voluntary climate pledges. And not all rich countries agree that they should be doing more.

Climate Action Tracker (CAT), which reviews climate pledges covering 80% of global emissions, reports that only one country it assesses is 1.5C-aligned: The Gambia. The majority of countries' pledges line up with a 2C, 3C or even 4C world, it says.

"You are talking about a global crisis without setting up a target for each country based on their fair share," says Harjeet Singh, senior advisor on climate impacts at Climate Action Network International, a consortium of non-profits which pushes for progress at UN climate talks. "And here we are looking at a world which is going to be 3C warmer and beyond, where 1C is catastrophic for many communities and countries."

But while the Paris Agreement did not dish out binding climate targets based on equity and justice, its conciliatory approach has been credited for creating huge momentum for climate action across governments, businesses and citizens over the past six years. "A lot of people know I'm not a big fan of the Paris Agreement," says Saño. "But having been a climate negotiator for a good deal of my adult life, I understand the realpolitik that happens within multilateral negotiations. I would say that the Paris Agreement is basically the best we can arrive at as an international community."

There are many other aspects of international climate justice which intertwine with the push for individual countries to cut emissions. One big one is money. Many poorer countries haven't had the chance to amass wealth from burning huge amounts of fossil fuels, but are now being asked to give them up, an issue which has been acknowledged at the UN talks. Back in 2009, developing countries were promised $100bn (£73bn) a year every year from 2020 onwards to help them tackle climate change, a pledge which is sometimes referred to as the "grand bargain" of the Paris Agreement.

It is now clear that this pledge has not been met. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, which tracks this finance, put the amount at $79.6bn (£58bn) in 2019, and has said that it only expects the annual $100bn funding to be met in 2023. In June 2021, UN secretary general António Guterres criticised G7 countries for their failure to meet the $100bn pledge, noting "a certain level of mistrust" in relation to the goal.

But it's not just the total amount of climate finance which is an issue here. There are also concerns about whether this money is being distributed fairly. For example, 71% of climate finance in 2019 was distributed as loans rather than grants. (Read about how much the world has spent on climate finance so far)

"This is criminal, you count loans as climate finance, which are going to come back to you with interest?" says Singh. "If the $100bn is not real, and you're including loans and guarantees and investments and everything into it, the reality is that the power of that $100bn to leverage trillions [more dollars] also goes down."

There are big concerns about the focus of this spending, which has been largely on measures to cut emissions rather than to help people adapt to climate change. The Paris Agreement said climate funding should achieve a "balance" between measures to cut emissions and projects that help people adapt to the impacts of climate change, but so far this has tipped far more towards emissions reductions. With climate change already significantly affecting people around the world, financial support to help people adapt to these impacts is another huge part of the justice conversation.

There is now a rising body of science linking climate change to events that are already happening today, such as extreme weather episodes and sea level rise. For example, while it is tricky to specifically attribute Mozambique's two 2019 cyclones to climate change, experts say the warming ocean surface means storms can intensify more quickly, and that flooding caused by tropical cyclones is amplified by rising sea levels. Countries need to build up resilience, but doing this requires money.

"We cannot just expect countries to keep trying to adapt and develop on their own," says Sultana. "Vulnerable countries for a long time have been diverting their meagre national resources on climate adaptation, risk reduction or disaster rehabilitation."

This mistrust on climate finance has become a major political issue at the UN climate talks in Glasgow, COP26. In his opening address, Gaston Browne, prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda and chair of the Alliance of Small Island States, criticised the failure to meet the climate finance pledge, arguing that G20 countries have meanwhile provided more than $3 trillion (£2.2tn) in support to the fossil fuel industry since the Paris Agreement was adopted. The lack of trust is also likely to impact discussions at the conference on a new, higher, climate finance target for 2025.

Many vulnerable countries are also asking for a new category of international finance to be delivered for the " loss and damage" from climate change, a term which refers to the inevitable consequences of climate change which can no longer be adapted to. "What 'loss and damage' recognises is that that's beyond adaptation," says Harpreet K Paul, a human rights lawyer currently undertaking a PhD in climate justice at the University of Warwick. "You've just lost that territory. You've just lost the ability to farm on a particular area that ancestrally your community would have done."

Loss and damage is mentioned in the Paris Agreement, but there has been a strong resistance from many developed countries to include it in regular negotiations, and especially to discuss specific finance to address it. "We are even fighting to secure a permanent agenda item [at the UN climate conferences] on loss and damage," says Singh. "It's not just about immediate response, we are talking about permanent relocation, we are talking about sea level rise and glacier melt. It's massive."

So far only one developed country has pledged funding for loss and damage: Scotland, which announced £1m ($1.4m) to help communities repair and rebuild from climate-related events such as flooding and wild fires. "Climate justice has to be at the heart of COP26," said First Minister Nicola Sturgeon when announcing the fund. While a small amount, the move was seen as highly symbolic.

But even if more money were transferred to help vulnerable countries with climate change, there are other deep-rooted financial inequalities between countries. Debt cancellation and other kinds of debt relief are increasingly considered by some as another crucial aspect of climate justice.

Many poor countries are embroiled in skyrocketing levels of debt linked with an international financial system they often had little hand in creating. This can severely impact their ability to act on climate change and protect themselves from its impacts.

Earlier this year, Browne called for "a permanent solution to the looming debt crisis", arguing that the debt of small states has risen to unsustainable levels "because of repeated borrowings to rebuild and recover from continuous debilitation by natural disasters, arising from climate change".

This month, the Jubilee Debt Campaign estimated that lower income countries spend five times more on external debt payments than dealing with climate change. In some countries, debt servicing is more than half of GDP, Singh links this directly with the ability of these countries to respond to the climate crisis. Paul agrees: "You're looking at countries in the Global South, and you're saying, yes, you need adaptation measures," she says. "But if at the same time, you've got requirements coming down from the provision of loans saying you need to engage in austerity, and that means reducing your social protection provision, you are not creating an economic equity that actually enables that."

For example, when Mozambique was hit by the twin cyclones in 2019, it was forced to take a loan from the International Monetary Fund, adding to its already large national debt.

Paul suggests that debt is actually owed to Mozambique instead as reparations due to the ongoing legacies of colonialism. Mozambique has a colonial history, with Portuguese and British interests imposing forced labour, forced crop cultivation, high taxes, low wages and land sieges, she says. "You have countries that have built their infrastructure and resources and resilience on the basis of extracting wealth from previously colonised countries. You need to undo the structures that got us here."

It's a view not often spotlighted by big players at the UN climate talks. But examining such legacies are crucial to many climate justice conversations. Sultana agrees that today's trade policies and the way goods and services are transferred between countries still display colonial imbalances and power relations.

Resource extraction often happens in impoverished countries at cheap costs, which benefits already wealthy former colonisers or present-day imperial nation states, and then, "further impoverishes and in-debts the countries of the global south, who are also facing the double whammy of disproportionate climate related hazards and disasters," she says. "[Climate justice] also gives us an opportunity to redress those colonial racial class-based harms that have occurred over time".

Saño says he has been inspired by how the Black Lives Matter movement has unearthed centuries of injustice. "It is the same with climate justice," he says. "This is not about any simple conversation on who reduces emissions today. We need to reflect on the harsh and inconvenient reality that many poor countries are poor because of colonisation, because of the raw materials and natural resources being taken from these countries and used by industrialised nations."

Justice, in many ways, has a timetable, adds Saño: "if you delay it, you deny it". Ultimately, climate justice is about respect for all humans, he adds. "That is what we're asking for. When we reach a point when every human being lives with a life of dignity, then we would have achieved climate justice."

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The emissions from travel it took to report this story were 0kg. The digital emissions from this story are an estimated 1.2g to 3.6g CO2 per page view. -- Join one million Future fans by liking us on If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter, called "The Essential List". A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Culture, Worklife, Travel and Reel delivered to your inbox every Friday. Facebook, or follow us on Twitter or Instagram. Find out more about how we calculated this figure here.

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Some of the world's poorest and lowest carbon-emitting countries are suffering the most from climate change. Is it time for 'climate justice'?

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Definition:

Something that can't be described or made clear. It can also be called the unknown.

Connection:

In this article, the Indiana State Museum talks about strange occurrences that have happened at their historical sites. Things such as sightings and noises have been reported. However, when investigating and trying to find a logical answer to these occurrences, they have not been able to come to a conclusion, leaving them to be unexplained.

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Stories about sightings of ghosts, spirits and other beings become commonplace as Halloween approaches, but Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites staff know it doesn't take the turn of a calendar for unexplained things to start happening.

To be clear, we're not saying any of our locations are haunted. There are just some things that we haven't been able to fully explain yet. Is it supernatural? Well, you'll have to visit to decide for yourself.

Several people have experience unexplained happenings in New Harmony buildings - like the Fauntleroy Home - for decades. Site manager Meagan Patterson said the first sighting of a ghostly figure in the home was reported in 1845.

Innocently enough, a woman who appeared to be wispy white was seen walking up the stairs. Over the years, multiple tour guides have reported being pushed down those same stairs when no one else is there.

Those aren't the only things that have happened at the home that can't be easily explained.

Neighbors have called to report lights being turned on at night in the second-floor rooms of the house. That's a bit unusual, because there's no electricity in the second story.

Then there's instances of piano music late at night. There is a piano in the parlor of the Fauntleroy House, but no one has ever been found inside during further investigation into the late-night concerts.

While preparing for an event several years ago, a volunteer attempted to enter the Hendricks House at Corydon Capitol with her daughter, but the young girl refused to enter the front door. The girl told her mother a "lady in the red dress" was standing at the top of the stairs, scaring her.

On another occasion, a group of Boy Scouts touring the home claimed to see the "lady in red" fly past the top of the kitchen stairs. That tour was cut a little short as the group of Boy Scouts promptly left the second floor, tumbling down the stairs as fast as they could.

Laura Spalding, Corydon Capitol's program developer, said hearing footsteps in other parts of the home when no one is in that area happens frequently too - and it's something she's experienced herself. When she first began working at Corydon Capitol, she and a family member heard footsteps following them up the stairs, but no one else was there.

It's not unusual for staff to hear footsteps early in the morning when there's only one person in the building before the site opens for the day, either.

Culbertson Mansion is host to the longest running haunted house in southern Indiana - open since 1985 - but real paranormal happenings have been documented in a file since the 1970s.

First responders have reported seeing a woman in the house during alarms wearing a gray dress and white apron with a bow and her hair up in a bun. That matches the description of Mary Ann Hopkins, the head housekeeper who lived at the mansion for nearly 20 years before her death in 1884 at the age of 74.

Then there's the mystery of the moving things. Dolls have mysteriously moved overnight to different floors of the mansion, and staff members are still searching for answers about how car keys can move themselves from the office space to the second-floor linen closet.

There are also items that won't move.

Southeast regional director Jessica Stavros was attempting to move a chair a few years ago, but the piece of furniture simply wouldn't budge. She checked to make sure the chair wasn't caught on something and tried to move it again.

She eventually asked aloud if she could move the chair, and - just as if someone had been sitting on it all along - she was able to move the furniture to another location.

Unexplained happenings don't just happen at locations with buildings constructed more than a century ago. Just ask the security team at the Indiana State Museum, which opened to visitors at its current location in 2002.

Borden Fleetwood usually works at night after the 270,000-square-foot building has closed to visitors for the day, and he admits senses are usually a little heightened after visitors leave and the lights have been dimmed.

That doesn't explain the voices in the gallery on the first floor though. While patrolling the building on the third floor one night, he heard someone talking in the first-floor gallery. He couldn't make out what was being said, and he didn't find anyone when he went to look. Security cameras didn't show anyone in that area when footage was reviewed.

That wasn't just a one-time occurrence.

Every once in awhile, Borden still hears those voices coming from the first floor, but he's never been able to track down exactly where they're coming from. They always seem to be around the corner and just out of reach.

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Real Encounters with the Unexplained - Indiana State Museum

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Stories about sightings of ghosts, spirits and other beings become commonplace as Halloween approaches, but Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites staff know it doesn't take the turn of a calendar for unexplained things to start happening. To be clear, we're not saying any of our locations are haunted.

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Post #10 Critical Thinking Process: Eyewitness Testimonies

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Post #10 Critical Thinking Process: Eyewitness Testimonies

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Define Problem:

Are eyewitness testimonies reliable and not skewed from confirmation bias?

Gather Information:

The source I used was an article that supports the red flag, confirmation bias. In the article, the writer argues against eyewitnesses. Although they are helpful in advancing within a case, witnesses can change their stories to fit the narrative of the evidence and statements.

Evaluate Evidence:

Throughout the article, the writer gives a detailed explanation of the Zimmerman case, such as the vents that took place and the changes in the witnesses' stories. At the end of the article, they also provided scientific information about memory and the brain that correlates with eyewitnesses.

Recognize Assumptions:

Some biases and opinions that can develop from this are that people may completely disregard eyewitnesses and choose to look for evidence in other resources. Also, this specific case can make people more sympathetic to those accused of a crime, in a way that they would believe they aren't guilty and won't jump to conclusions.

Synthesize Evidence, Identify Alternatives:

An alternative to this is that eyewitnesses can be beneficial to a case and help advance in the investigation. Another alternative is that we have to give the witnesses the benefit of the doubt when it comes to evaluating their statements.

Select Best Alternative:

The best alternative is that eyewitnesses can be beneficial in helping a case. Investigators have to keep an open mind and be open to all statements that come their way. In conclusion, when going through the process of critical thinking, my hypothesis is that eyewitnesses are something that we shouldn't completely rely on but take into consideration.