…an endless stream of anthropologists have assured us that race is just a social construct, that ancient peoples made pots not war, that Aryan conquests in India and Europe were Nazi delusions, that the caste system was imposed on the egalitarian Indians by British colonialists, and many other agreeable suppositions.
As Fitzgerald’s friend Hemingway ended The Sun Also Rises, “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”
Via Kathy Shaidle
Scientists have been left baffled by a wild elephant caught on camera blowing out plumes of smoke while consuming smouldering lumps of charcoal.
Plastic bags best for the environment:
You must reuse a regular cotton bag 7,100 times to make it better for the environment
Organic cotton bag needs 20,000 reuses
Paper needs 43 reusesNew Danish EPA analysishttps://t.co/bsK7MOwCkq pic.twitter.com/Xlwu94H65m
— Bjorn Lomborg (@BjornLomborg) March 15, 2018
The abundance of recent discoveries of dinosauromorphs, a group that includes the dinosaur-like creatures that lived right before and alongside early dinosaurs, does more than call diagnostic features into question. It is shaking up long-standing ideas about the dinosaur family tree.
To Nesbitt, all this upheaval has placed an even more sacred cow on the chopping block: the uniqueness of the dinosaur.
“What is a dinosaur?” Nesbitt says. “It’s essentially arbitrary.”
Judith Curry — New paper: Arctic sea ice extent is greater now than at any time during the Holocene except during the Little Ice Age.
They’re always in the last place you look: Previously Unknown “Supercolony” of Adelie Penguins Discovered in Antarctica
h/t jcd
This is not the melting we were promised;
The surprises began almost as soon as a camera was lowered into the first borehole, around December 1. The undersides of ice shelves are usually smooth due to gradual melting. But as the camera passed through the bottom of the hole, it showed the underside of the ice adorned with a glittering layer of flat ice crystals–like a jumble of snowflakes–evidence that in this particular place, sea water is actually freezing onto the base of the ice instead of melting it.
“It blew our minds,” says Christina Hulbe, a glaciologist from the University of Otago in New Zealand, who co-led the expedition. The Ross Ice Shelf is considered more stable, at present, than many of West Antarctica’s other floating shelves–and this observation could help explain that: if a few inches of sea water periodically freezes onto the bottom of its ice, this could buffer it from thinning more rapidly.
Recently, more than 270 psychologists set out to repeat 100 experiments to see if they could generate the same results. They successfully replicated only 39 of the 100 studies.
Over several years, failed attempts to replicate published studies have caused generally accepted bodies of research to be called into question — or rejected outright.
One example is the idea that your willpower is a limited resource that, like a muscle, becomes exhausted when it is used. Another is that power posing — standing like a superhero for two minutes — makes you feel bolder, reduces stress hormones and increases testosterone. Both have fallen aside due to failed replications.
These aren’t dusty, arcane findings limited to academic journals; a TED talk by social psychologist Amy Cuddy on the effectiveness of power posing has been viewed over 45 million times and is near the top of the list of the most popular TED talks of all time.
In this incident, what I see is a field of study that has apparently taken a values-position on a research topic and allowed that values-judgement to bias and taint their work to the point that their findings are knowingly or unknowingly, intentional or unintentionally, skewed to agree with their political advocacy goals and support their value-judgement. The prevailing bias in the field, in this case demography, thus leads to attacks on any research finding contrary to the bias — on moral grounds.
This situation may remind you of another field of study — Climate Science.
The last instalment (probably) of this mini-series, I go on a picture tour of the N hemisphere looking into big snow and extreme cold events and ask whether these events are down to CO2 warming or could they be linked to the premature death of sunspot cycle 24?
There’s huge snowfall in the Alps this year, and one picture in particular caught my attention.
The Death of Sunspot Cycle 24, Huge Snow and Record Cold
What has this winter been like where you are?
In my recent post on The Cosmogenic Isotope Record and the Role of The Sun in Shaping Earth’s Climate an interesting discussion developed in comments where there was a fair amount of disagreement among my sceptical colleagues. A few days later, retired Apollo astronaut Phil Chapman sent me this article which lays some of the doubts to rest. Phil never got to fly in space but was mission Scientist on Apollo 14. It is not every day I get the opportunity to publish an article from such a pre-eminent scientist.
Cosmic Rays, Magnetic Fields and Climate Change
The N magnetic pole used to lie in northern Canada, but not any more.
Sorry, Quebec is still with us: Long-lost chunk of Canada found in Australia
A couple of weeks ago we began a discussion on my blog with the Geological Society of London (GSL) about their published statement on climate change which pretty well follows IPCC orthodoxy. The GSL have participated in the discussion (commenter Polar Scientist). The post is stuck to the top of Energy Matters. We have a series of articles in progress that examine the roles of the Sun’s and the Earth’s magnetic fields in deflecting cosmic rays and how this may impact climate change.
The Cosmogenic Isotope Record and the Role of The Sun in Shaping Earth’s Climate
In 1728, an Inuit paddled this canoe into the estuary of the River Don, Aberdeen, Scotland.
Recent Deaths In Texas Attributed To Climate Change
First, let’s pretend we’re back in USDA Hardiness Zone 7. We got pushed into the warmer Zone 8 in the newest map in 2012, but many of those Zone 8 plants have suffered mightily in our cold winters since. As you’re replacing them this spring, concentrate your re-plantings on Zones 7 and 6 plants that will hold up to the cold. Limit the numbers of more tender types that you plant to smaller quantities.
Related: The mercury fell to 2.6 degrees Celsius at Tetulia in Panchagarh on January 8, the lowest temperature ever recorded in the country’s history
A new study has found that parasites carried by rats were probably not behind the outbreak of plague in Europe.
h/t nv53
A new study led by geologists at the University of Johannesburg found that compounds in the Hypatia stone are distinct from anything discovered in the solar system. The researchers therefore conclude that parts of the rock formed before the solar system, and if these compounds are not presolar, the prevailing idea that the solar system formed from a nebula of homogenous gas is called into question.
‘Economists Say’ is used to coat liberal policy positions with a veneer of scientific certitude.
h/t TLH
The discovery of two infants, ceremonially buried by a previously unknown population of ancient humans in Alaska around 11,500 years ago, offers stunning new clarity to the story of how humans came to inhabit the Americas, according to a new scientific paper.
By confirming the theory that Indigenous Americans are descended from Asians, the find also threatens to inflame a cultural controversy that has long troubled the study of human origins in the New World.
These results indicate that higher economic status can offset lower physical attractiveness in men much more easily than in women. Neither raters’ BMI nor age influenced this effect for females rating male attractiveness. This difference explains many features of human mating behavior and may pose a barrier for male engagement in low-consumption lifestyles.