Week in review – science edition

by Judith Curry
A few things that caught my eye this past week.

Global trends in wildfire and its impacts. “For the western USA, they indicate little change overall, and also that area burned at high severity has overall declined compared to pre-European settlement” [link]
2018 The First Year With No Violent Tornadoes In U.S. – “We’re now days away from this becoming the first year in the modern record with no violent tornadoes touching down in the United States.” [link]
Increasingly powerful tornadoes in the U.S. [link]
Washington Times article on my new report Sea Level and Climate Change [link]
An argument for greater inclusion of machine learning in subseasonal to seasonal forecasts. [link]
Domino effect of tipping points [link]
Wind farms could cause surface warming [link]
How air pollution has put a break on global warming [link]
Pliocene and Eocene provide best analogs for near-future climate [link]
Rapid Drying of Northeast India in the Last Three Decades: Climate Change or Natural Variability? [link]
Estimating the Deep Overturning Transport Variability at 26° N Using Bottom Pressure Recorders [link]
Reassessment of pre-industrial emissions strongly affects anthropogenic aerosol forcing.   [link]
Ray Bates: Critique of the IPCC Special Report on 1.5 degrees [link]
Asymmetric dynamical ocean responses in warming icehouse and cooling greenhouse climates  [link]
Lewandowsky et al. ‘disappear’ the ‘pause’ [link]
Changes in the severity of compound drought and hot extremes over global land areas  [link] 
Separating physically distinct influence on Pacific sea surface temperature variability [link]
Sampling bias overestimates climate change impacts on forest growth in the southwestern United States [link]
Natural variability has slowed the decline of western US snowpack since the 1980s [link]
Climate change has made western U.S.  mega drought 38% more severe [link]
Air‐Sea CO2 Flux Estimates in Stratified Arctic Coastal Waters: How Wrong Can We Be? [link] 
Outer space may have just gotten a lot closer [link]
Ocean carbon inventory under warmer climate conditions – the case of the Last Interglacial  [link]
Social science, policy & technology
Robert Stavins:  assessment of the COP-24 climate talks in Katowice [link]
The Next Climate Frontier: Predicting a Complex Domino Effect – Scientific American [link]
What will we do with used solar panels? [link]
The surprising resurgence of hydrogen fuel [link]
Molten salt reactors: will it ever be commercialized [link]
Roy Spencer:  the five big questions global warming policy must answer [link]
Mike Hulme: Climate change and Brexit: what to do when negotiations lead nowhere [link]
About science & scientists
The doctor’s analogy again: the climate is like a child diagnosed with cancer [link]
Isaiah Berlin: Against dogma [link]
Good analysis: Academics should not be activists [link]
A Nature survey of 3,200 scientists reveals that a lack of training in lab and personnel management is one of the strongest contributors to an unhealthy lab culture. [link]
Quine’s naturalism [link]
Emergence: How complex wholes emerge from simple parts [link]
The causal hype ratchet – science to media [link]
Oreskes, Harvard and the Destruction of Scientific Revolutions [link] …
Unintended effects of emphasizing the role of climate change in recent natural disasters [link]
Statistical certainty: less is more [link]
The University of Texas – Austin’s definition of harassment is breathtakingly broad: challenged by First Amendment lawsuit [link]
Brave spaces versus safe spaces [link]

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