Week in review – science edition

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

In the news
Phys.org:  Irregular heartbeat of sun driven by double dynamo [link] Is a mini ice age on the way?  Scientists warn that the sun will go to sleep in 2020 [link]
Some highlights of the big Paris science meeting on climate change [link]
Strong and intensifying El Niño/+PDO signal in the North Pacific, with worldwide implications. [link]
Nice article in Physics Today: Understanding the Madden-Julien Oscillation [link]
Medievalist  helps scientists rewrite climate records [link]
Scientists Baffled After Finding 10th Century Medicine that Kills Antibiotic-Resistant ‘Superbug’ [link]
New papers
New paper shows climate models have long way to go before they can simulate climate of the past, much less the future [link]
Study: During 3 prior warm periods seas rose nearly 20 feet higher than now [link]
Marine biodiversity may be greater than few decades ago due to “human activities [link]
New paper finds where 75% of water from rain & snow actually goes (not ocean, i.e. a negative-feedback on sea levels) [link]  …
New paper: Sea levels up to 13m (43 ft) higher during Pliocene when CO2 same as today [link]  …
“Synchronizing the Greenland ice core and radiocarbon timescales over the Holocene” [link]
New paper finds most warming & precipitation changes in central India since 1950 due to land-cover changes, not CO2 [link]
New paper finds strong winds can turn a forest from a CO2 sink to a CO2 source [link]
Large volcanic eruptions were responsible for cold temperature extremes recorded since early Roman times [link]
The Lew paper gets recycled (Recursive Fury) [link]
CO2 “may have possibly contributed to, but certainly cannot account alone for Cenozoic warming” [link]
Study finds surprisingly high geothermal heating beneath west antarctic ice sheet [link]
Steve McIntyre has a new post  on a new paper by Raymond Bradley that supports a longstanding Climate Audit criticism of varve proxies.
Nassim Taleb has a provocative new paper:  Error, dimensionality & predictability [link]
New paper discovers another natural source of mercury in environment: oceans [link]
Waist high snowfall in 822 led to Irish famine and death [link]  …
About science
The Tim Hunt affair – a call for evidence-based judgement and decision making [link]
The Tim Hunt affair is destroying our community from within. “We have made almost every argument one about identity and ideology rather than about ideas” [link]
Almost every academic knows that public engagement damages your career. [link]
Broader Impact Statements: Are Researchers Thinking Broadly Enough? [link]
Is withholding your data merely bad science, or should it fall under misconduct? [link]  Check out the comments, also.
Why biology students have misconceptions about science [link]
The ‘hot hand’ fallacy [link]
12 tools for communicating climate change more effectively [link]
Tamino admits he was wrong to criticize my post on Sardeshmukh’s paper [link]Filed under: Week in review

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