Daily briefing: Global CO2 emissions might have been flat for a decade

At the end of the first week of COP26, Glasgow has filled with residents, activists and delegates — and countless police officers — as demonstrators take to the streets.

Many chant what has become one of week’s motifs: activist Greta Thunberg’s assertion that the event is nothing more than “blah blah blah”.

The key to separating the blah from the bottom line will be attention to detail, says Nature journalist Ehsan Masood.

“There have been big announcements every day, leading to a lot of hope,” he says. The hope is valid, but the volley of ‘good-news’ stories is overwhelming, to some extent, our ability to properly analyse each one before another comes along. “There’s clearly a media strategy to rush out a new account every day to influence the news agenda,” says Masood.

“It’s like an onion — when you start to peel back the layers, an announcement to, say, end deforestation, or shift trillions of dollars in investments to net-zero projects, is not quite what it appears.”

“Remember, these announcements are press releases, not scientific reports — we need researchers and science journalists to interrogate them,” he says. “That’s what Nature’s team at COP26 will be doing over the days and weeks ahead. We’re going to bring our readers a reality check.”

We are gathering our coverage of COP26 in this collection, including what scientists think about the COP26 climate pledges so far (7 min read).

Glass is the hidden gem in a carbon-neutral future, argues a Nature editorial. (Nature | 5 min read)

The final episodes of Nature Biotechnology’s ten-part podcast series about the astonishing life and work of biotech researcher Stan Crooke focus on the people who benefit from his company’s pioneering drug. Spinraza is the first treatment for a devastating childhood degenerative disease called spinal muscular atrophy (SMA). The majority of children with SMA, if untreated, die before their second birthday. Now, for some kids regularly receiving Spinraza from birth, the treatment can look like a cure. “We didn’t think he’d have the opportunity to run around and play with his brothers like he does,” says the father of four-year-old Gabriel Peters. “It’s just amazing to see it.”

Nature Biotechnology | 47 min listen

BACKSTORY: FROM THE REPORTER’S PERSPECTIVE

The 2016 approval of Spinraza was hailed as a “miracle” by some neurologists and people with SMA. Of course it wasn’t — it was the direct result of more than a decade of work by two remarkable scientists, and nearly 30 years perfecting a brand new drug modality called antisense. But because the disease had been killing children for more than 100 years before the approval, it’s easy to understand why some likened the Spinraza approval to divine intervention. Spinraza also helped put a capstone on Stan Crooke’s career, and validated his decades of dogged belief in antisense. The entire podcast series can be found here, and wherever you get your podcasts.

Brady Huggett, Senior editor

Cervical cancer has been almost eliminated in young women in the United Kingdom who received the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine as young teenagers. (The Guardian | 3 min read)Reference: Lancet paper