by Judith Curry
A few things that caught my eye this past week.
Coupled modes of North Atlantic ocean-atmosphere variability and the onset of the Little Ice Age [link]
Marine Ice Cliff Instability mitigated by slow removal of ice shelves [link] Overview/media article [link]
Erica Thompson and Lenny Smith: Escape from model-land [link]
Satellite-based time-series of sea-surface temperature since 1981 for climate applications https://nature.com/articles/s41597-019-0236-x…
Large loss of CO2 in 2inter observed across the northern permafrost region [link]
Pielke Jr: If climate scenarios are wrong for 2020, can they get 2100 right? [link]
Effect of mangrove forest structures on wave attenuation [link]
Vegetation structural change since 1981 significantly enhanced the terrestrial carbon sink [link]
ENSO modulation of the QBO: Results from MIROC models with and without non-orographic gravity wave parameterization https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JAS-D-19-0163.1?af=R#.XajQ0wIFees.twitter
How accurate are atmospheric reanalyses in the Arctic? [link]
The recent September trend in sea ice volume is larger in PIOMAS-20C than PIOMAS, although within uncertainty estimates. https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/10.1175/JCLI-D-19-0008.1
Recent droughts in India have been less severe, but more detrimental [link]
The North American hydrologic cycle through the last deglaciation https://eartharxiv.org/8q5kz/
Nick Lutsko: What drives uncertainty in transient warming? [link]
African evidence supports Younger Dryas impact hypothesis [link]
Global cooling linked to increased glacial carbon storage via changes in Antarctic sea ice https://nature.com/articles/s41561-019-0466-8…
Pielke Jr: It’s time to move beyond the toy models that guide climate policy [link]
Policy and technology
Don’t electrify everything. Avoiding lock-in is key [link]
Efficiency can cut US energy use and greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2050 [link]
How better land management (agriculture, forestry, wetlands, and bioenergy) could feasibly and sustainably contribute ~30% of mitigation to deliver on the 1.5 °C goal of the Paris Agreement. [link]
Is bi0-energy carbon capture and storage feasible? The contested authority of integrated assessment modeling [link]
Strategies to address climate change risk in low to moderate income communities [link]
Is climate change responsible for the conflicts we are seeing around the world today? Its complex [link]
The physical impossibility of renewable energy meeting the Paris Accord goals [link]
As the world’s garbage piles up, controversy over waste-to-energy incineration continues https://buff.ly/2P20hnk
If solar panels are so clean, why do they produce so much toxic waste? [link]
Golden rice: the true story of the genetically modified superfood that almost saved millions [link]
As PG&E shuts off power to 800,000 and SDG&E considers de-energizing lines for 30,000 in wake of fire risk, the debate over pre-emptive shutoffs ramps up: https://sandiegouniontribune.com/business/energy-green/story/2019-10-09/california-utilities-shutting-down-power-lines-as-santa-ana-winds-increase-wildfire-
Managed retreat through voluntary buyouts of flood prone properties [link]
Unmanaged retreat [link]
The health benefits of clean energy substantially outweigh the climate benefits (at least using standard economic analysis). [link]
Are nuclear disasters dangerous? [link]
Our refrigerators may one day run on greener technology in part to what scientists call a “twistocaloric” effect. [link]
Lord Howell: Energy transition? Not so fast [link]
Vietnamese man makes biodegradable straws from grass [link]
The economy keeps growing, but Americans are using less energy, steel, paper, fertilizer [link]
Low carbon options for heavy industry, steel and cement are scarce and expensive [link]
Making sense of wicked problems [link]
Only about 3 percent of the United States’ more than 80,000 dams generate electricity, and there are countless other conduits that could be readily outfitted for the generation of electricity. [link]
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About science and scientists
The cost of silence: Normalization of deviance and groupthink [link]
Acknowledging uncertainty impacts public acceptance of climate scientists’ predictions https://nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0587-5
Universities breed anger, ignorance and ingratitude [link]
Pielke Jr: The biggest threat to climate science comes from climate advocates [link]
Math is racist, according to Seattle Public Schools [link]
Cliff Mass: The real climae debate is not between ‘believers’ and ‘deniers’ [link]
How science has shifted our identity [link] Stephen Pinker doesn’t like this essay [link]
“The argument is that statistical nitpickers cause social harm by decreasing public confidence in a published claim… even if the published claim has errors, we should either shut up about the errors or talk about them very quietly.” https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/10/07/are-statistical-nitpickers-e-g-kaiser-fung-and-me-getting-the-way-of-progress-or-even-serving-the-forces-of-evil/…
Best tenure announcement ever [link]
Viewpoint diversity: necessary for quality science [link]
Revenge of the lazy ‘MSword’ people: “We show that LaTeX users were slower than Word users, wrote less text in the same amount of time, and produced more typesetting, orthographical, grammatical, and formatting errors” https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0115069
The absurdity of the Nobel Prizes in science [link]