Written by www.carbonbrief.org
Every year, thousands of scientific journal papers are published by researchers across the world, but only a tiny proportion make it into the pages of the newspapers. Using Altmetric, we’ve compiled a list of the 25 most talked-about climate papers of 2016. You can see the Top 10 in our infographic above (zoomable version here).
Written by Mark J. Perry
In the May 2000 issue of Reason Magazine, award-winning science correspondent Ronald Bailey wrote an excellent article titled “Earth Day, Then and Now” to provide some historical perspective on the 30th anniversary of Earth Day. In that article, Bailey noted that around the time of the first Earth Day in the 1970, and in the years following, there was a “torrent of apocalyptic predictions” and many of those predictions were featured in his Reason article.
Written by American Chemical Society
Billions of pounds of plastic waste are littering the world’s oceans. Now, a Ph.D. organic chemist and a sailboat captain report that they are developing a process to reuse certain plastics, transforming them from worthless trash into a valuable diesel fuel with a small mobile reactor. They envision the technology could someday be implemented globally on land and possibly placed on boats to convert ocean waste plastic into fuel to power the vessels.
Written by Ethan Siegel
“Resources exist to be consumed. And consumed they will be, if not by this generation then by some future. By what right does this forgotten future seek to deny us our birthright?” –Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri
Written by Sarah Knapton
Ancient stone carvings confirm that a comet struck the Earth around 11,000BC, a devastating event which wiped out wooly mammoths and sparked the rise of civilisations. Experts at the University of Edinburgh analysed mysterious symbols carved onto stone pillars at Gobekli Tepe in southern Turkey, to find out if they could be linked to constellations.
The markings suggest that a swarm of comet fragments hit Earth at the exact same time that a mini-ice age struck, changing the entire course of human history. Scientists have speculated for decades that a comet could be behind the sudden fall in temperature during a period known as the Younger Dryas. But recently the theory appeared to have been debunked by new dating of meteor craters in North America where the comet is thought to have struck.
However, when engineers studied animal carvings made on a pillar – known as the vulture stone – at Gobekli Tepe they discovered that the creatures were actually astronomical symbols which represented constellations and the comet. The idea had been originally put forward by author Graham Hancock in his book Magicians of the Gods.
Written by Daniel J. McKaughan
The idea that science is a “value-free” enterprise is deeply entrenched. “Under standard conditions, water boils at 100°C.” This and countless other facts about nature are mind-independent; that is, they do not depend on what you or I think or feel. And the procedures by which we discover such facts are available to and respected by a diverse public, man or woman, black or white, rich or poor. It may seem, then, that the activities and results of science are inherently insulated from racism, sexism, political agendas, financial interests, and other value-laden biases that permeate the larger social context. Some even vigorously insist on keeping values out of science.
Written by co2islife
In real science, numbers speak, and they talk through what is called a regression. Most people are familiar with the 2nd-grade bean plant experiment where you shine different amounts of light on different bean plants and measure the rate of growth. Y, the dependent variable, is the bean plant height, X, the independent variable, is the amount of sunlight allowed to reach the bean plant, m is the slope or rate of change of the bean plant per unit of light, and b is the constant, which in this case would be the starting height of the plants.
Written by Andrew Porterfield
Many non-government organizations aim to inform the public, policymakers and scientists about a wide range of complex and important issues. But there are times when science takes a backseat to ideology. Perhaps nowhere is this more common than in the volatile landscape surrounding genetically modified foods and modern agriculture. Criticism of GMOs, and everything connected to them, has given rise to a host of organizations pushing messages that often lack scientific support. Here are 10 NGOs that often abandon the science behind genetic modification of food in favor of such ideology.
Written by Frank Bosse and Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt (Translated/edited by P. Gosselin)
Our source of energy continued to be especially quiet last month. The mean sunspot number (SSN) was 17.7 and the sun was completely blank for 16 days.
It is important to recall once again that the SSN is not simply the sum of the observed sunspots, rather it is generated by the number of spots multiplied by the 10-fold of the observed sunspot regions. When one single spot is observed in an active region, this yields an SSN of 11.
Written by bbc.co.uk
Image copyright: NASA/JPL-CALTECH/GSSRA large asteroid the size of the Rock of Gibraltar has passed safely by Earth. The object, measured to be almost a kilometre wide, came within five times the distance between the Earth and the Moon. Known as 2014 JO25, the asteroid is the biggest such space rock to skim our world since 2004.
Written by Steve Milloy
Written by Jitesh Motwani
For almost six decades since Sputnik first circled the Earth, satellites have been the exclusive domain of the richest governments and companies, costing billions and weighing tons. Now with the advancements in space flight and digital cameras, cheap orbiting cameras are becoming ubiquitous.
Written by co2islife
Back in 1986 NASA’s climate “expert” James Hansen claimed ozone depletion would result in catastrophic warming. No mention of CO2.
“A dramatic loss of ozone over the Antarctica proves the “greenhouse” effect” is real and presages a gradual warming of the earth that threatens floods, drought, human misery in a few decades and — if not checked — eventually extinction of the human species, scientists warned Tuesday… James Hansen, Director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said global temperatures should be 2 degrees higher in 20 years. “Which is the warmest the earth has been in the last 100,000 years.”
Written by Jonathan Amos and Rebecca Morelle
Image copyright: GETTY IMAGESA UK-led team of scientists is rolling out a project to monitor every land volcano on Earth from space. Two satellites will routinely map the planet’s surface, looking for signs that might hint at a future eruption. They will watch for changes in the shape of the ground below them, enabling scientists to issue an early alert if a volcano appears restless.
Written by John O'Sullivan
Top climate experts are admitting the science behind man-made global warming isn’t what has been claimed. We examine the astonishing new evidence getting scientists talking – serious numerical errors in the supposed ‘settled science’ of the greenhouse gas theory.
For this article we put under the microscope two key players from British meteorology, W. H. Dines & Lewis Fry Richardson. These are the men responsible for creating the mathematical algorithms that turned the greenhouse gas theory into the number form fed into modern computer models.
Written by Daniel Lakens
The Dutch toilet cleaner ‘WC-EEND’ (literally: ‘Toilet Duck’) aired a famous commercial in 1989 that had the slogan ‘We from WC-EEND advise… WC-EEND’. It is now a common saying in The Netherlands whenever someone gives an opinion that is clearly aligned with their self-interest. In this blog, I will examine the hypothesis that blogs are, on average, of higher quality than journal articles. Below, I present 5 arguments in favor of this hypothesis. [EDIT: I’m an experimental psychologist. Mileage of what you’ll read below may vary in other disciplines].
