An overwhelming 82 percent of research papers produced by academics in the humanities are never cited, according to a recent study.

According to Inside Higher Ed, citations are the primary measure of a paper’s “scholarly impact.” The humanities, which include anthropology, archaeology, history, law and politics, literature, and the arts, has faced an overwhelmingly low citation rate in recent years. Recent studies have suggested that over 80 percent of humanities paper are never cited.

Late last year, a story emerged questioning the validity of a paper that had made a big splash when it was published in Science earlier in 2016. [featured above in The Guardian and round the world]

The paper was high profile, in large part because of its subject — the effect of plastic microbeads on fish. The authors claimed their data showed that young fish preferentially eat plastic microbeads instead of their other food options.

The Global Wind Energy Council recently released its latest report, excitedly boasting that ‘the proliferation of wind energy into the global power market continues at a furious pace, after it was revealed that more than 54 gigawatts of clean renewable wind power was installed across the global market last year’.

In the wake of last month’s marches for science and climate in Washington and around the country, Americans are divided in their support of the events’ goals and their sense of whether it will make a difference. In particular, a new Pew Research Center survey finds that most Democrats and younger adults are convinced that these public events will help the causes of scientists.

Obviously it can’t be both. If you are surprised it means you didn’t predict it would happen. And then to call the surprise “inevitable” means the only thing you are certain of is that you can’t predict climate.

I (Duane Thresher) was a contributor to the National Academy book “Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises”. So was Dr. Gavin Schmidt, leading global warming spokesperson and current head of NASA GISS (anointed by former head Dr. James Hansen, father of global warming). Unlike Schmidt, I questioned the whole premise but was just a graduate student at the time so didn’t speak up.

It is good to see constructive dialog among colleagues. To further such discussion it is necessary to keep to PSI’s commitment to open public debate, when the science demands it. John O’Sullivan – https://principia-scientific.com

Well said John. Your point was exemplified in the traditional math exam instructions “Show your work.” In fact it is more important in real science because without it reproducible results are not possible. 

‘Sustainable’ has become a buzzword applicable not only to agriculture and energy production but to sectors as far afield as the building and textile industries. Many large companies tout the concept and boast a sustainability department, and the United Nations has hundreds of projects concerned with sustainability throughout its many agencies and programs.

Until around half a century ago, this scepticism chimed with the scientific evidence. According to scientists’ best understanding of how waves are generated, a 30m wave might be expected once every 30,000 years. Rogue waves could safely be classified alongside mermaids and sea monsters. However, we now know that they are no maritime myths.

From the Guardian, via Yahoo: Finland, the new chair of the Arctic council, has appealed to climate change scientists to fight the threat of the US and Russia tearing up commitments to combat global warming.

The Nordic country takes up the two-year chairmanship of the body, increasingly a forum where arguments about climate change play out, at a ministerial meeting on Thursday in Fairbanks, Alaska, where the US secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, will represent the Trump administration.

On April 29 German ARD public television presented a report on a Canadian sea ice reconstruction using coral algae growth. The report (in German) can be seen at the ARD-Mediathek in the Internet (begins at the 16:38 mark).

German researcher Jochen Halfar of the University of Toronto found a coral algae type in Canada’s Arctic Ocean that forms annual rings. During the polar nights of winter, photosynthesis stops. In the spring it reactivates again and the algae starts to grow, and does so much better when there is less ice to block out the sunlight. This allows the sea ice cover to be reconstructed over the past several centuries.

One of the main accusations launched by climate activists is that anyone arguing against man-made global warming is “anti-science.” They tell us that the science is “settled,” and that anyone who objects is ignoring a blindingly obvious set of facts.

But what to do about someone like me? I’m in hearty agreement that the global climate has warmed by roughly one degrees Celsius over the past 150 years. However, my study of the relevant geology and physics leads me to believe that solar variability, not carbon dioxide, is responsible for this warming.

So, you keep hearing about the Paris Climate Agreement but still don’t know anything about it?  That’s OK.  There’s a lot of hot air but not really much to know.

Ostensibly the agreement is about countries reducing their carbon emissions to fight global warming.  But the most important thing to know is that the only agreement in the Paris Climate Agreement — by both climate change warriors and global warming skeptics — is that it will have little, if any, effect on global warming.

Scientists associated with the UN’s IPCC predicted that the huge consumer/industrial emissions of the modern era would cause not only “unprecedented” global warming but also dangerous “runaway” warming, which would then produce “tipping point” climate change.