
Distributed Solar: The Democratizaton of Energy

Blogroll
- All about models
- London Review of Books
- Mertonian norms
- Gavin Simpson
- WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION Cathy O’Neil’s WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION,
- Rasmus Bååth's Research Blog Bayesian statistics and data analysis
- GeoEnergy Math Prof Paul Pukite’s Web site devoted to energy derived from geological and geophysical processes and categorized according to its originating source.
- Mike Bloomberg, 2020 He can get progress on climate done, has the means and experts to counter the Trump and Republican digital disinformation machine, and has the experience, knowledge, and depth of experience to achieve and unify.
- Ted Dunning
- Awkward Botany
- Brendon Brewer on Overfitting Important and insightful presentation by Brendon Brewer on overfitting
- WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION, reviews Reviews of Cathy O’Neil’s new book
- Dollars per BBL: Energy in Transition
- Team Andrew Weinberg Walking September 8th for the Jimmy Fund!
- Slice Sampling
- John Cook's reasons to use Bayesian inference
- Mrooijer's Numbers R 4Us
- Simon Wood's must-read paper on dynamic modeling of complex systems I highlighted Professor Wood’s paper in https://hypergeometric.wordpress.com/2014/12/26/struggling-with-problems-already-attacked/
- Busting Myths About Heat Pumps Heat pumps are perhaps the most efficient heating and cooling systems available. Recent literature distributed by utilities hawking natural gas and other sources use performance figures from heat pumps as they were available 15 years ago. See today’s.
- Bob Altemeyer on authoritarianism (via Dan Satterfield) The science behind the GOP civil war
- Fear and Loathing in Data Science Cory Lesmeister’s savage journey to the heart of Big Data
- Earth Family Alpha Michael Osborne’s blog (former Executive at Austin Energy, now Chairman of the Electric Utility Commission for Austin, Texas)
- Carl Safina's blog One of the wisest on Earth
- Professor David Draper
- "The Expert"
- All about Sankey diagrams
- Quotes by Nikola Tesla Quotes by Nikola Tesla, including some of others he greatly liked.
- AP Statistics: Sampling, by Michael Porinchak Twin City Schools
- Mark Berliner's video lecture "Bayesian mechanistic-statistical modeling with examples in geophysical settings"
- Brian McGill's Dynamic Ecology blog Quantitative biology with pithy insights regarding applications of statistical methods
- The Mermaid's Tale A conversation about biological complexity and evolution, and the societal aspects of science
- John Kruschke's "Dong Bayesian data analysis" blog Expanding and enhancing John’s book of same title (now in second edition!)
- Leadership lessons from Lao Tzu
- The Plastic Pick-Up: Discovering new sources of marine plastic pollution
- Subsidies for wind and solar versus subsidies for fossil fuels
- Harvard's Project Implicit
- Giant vertical monopolies for energy have stopped making sense
- Dr James Spall's SPSA
- Leverhulme Centre for Climate Change Mitigation
- Beautiful Weeds of New York City
- In Monte Carlo We Trust The statistics blog of Matt Asher, actually called the “Probability and Statistics Blog”, but his subtitle is much more appealing. Asher has a Manifesto at http://www.statisticsblog.com/manifesto/.
- Comprehensive Guide to Bayes Rule
- Number Cruncher Politics
- Earle Wilson
- Survey Methodology, Prof Ron Fricker http://faculty.nps.edu/rdfricke/
- distributed solar and matching location to need
- "Impacts of Green New Deal energy plans on grid stability, costs, jobs, health, and climate in 143 countries" (Jacobson, Delucchi, Cameron, et al) Global warming, air pollution, and energy insecurity are three of the greatest problems facing humanity. To address these problems, we develop Green New Deal energy roadmaps for 143 countries.
- All about ENSO, and lunar tides (Paul Pukite) Historically, ENSO has been explained in terms of winds. But recently — and Dr Paul Pukite has insisted upon this for a long time — the oscillation of ENSO has been explained as a large-scale slosh due to lunar tidal forcing.
- "Consider a Flat Pond" Invited talk introducing systems thinking, by Jan Galkowski, at First Parish in Needham, UU, via Zoom
- Prediction vs Forecasting: Knaub “Unfortunately, ‘prediction,’ such as used in model-based survey estimation, is a term that is often subsumed under the term ‘forecasting,’ but here we show why it is important not to confuse these two terms.”
climate change
- Tell Utilities Solar Won't Be Killed Barry Goldwater, Jr’s campaign to push for solar expansion against monopolistic utilities, as a Republican
- "Impacts of Green New Deal energy plans on grid stability, costs, jobs, health, and climate in 143 countries" (Jacobson, Delucchi, Cameron, et al) Global warming, air pollution, and energy insecurity are three of the greatest problems facing humanity. To address these problems, we develop Green New Deal energy roadmaps for 143 countries.
- Climate Communication Hassol, Somerville, Melillo, and Hussin site communicating climate to the public
- "Climate science is setttled enough"
- Updating the Climate Science: What path is the real world following? From Professors Makiko Sato & James Hansen of Columbia University
- Sea Change Boston
- NOAA Annual Greenhouse Gas Index report The annual assessment by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the radiative forcing from constituent atmospheric greenhouse gases
- Ricky Rood's “What would happen to climate if we (suddenly) stopped emitting GHGs today?
- And Then There's Physics
- Climate Change Denying Organizations
- Ray Pierrehumbert's site related to "Principles of Planetary Climate" THE book on climate science
- RealClimate
- Climate change: Evidence and causes A project of the UK Royal Society: (1) Answers to key questions, (2) evidence and causes, and (3) a short guide to climate science
- Risk and Well-Being
- "When Did Global Warming Stop" Doc Snow’s treatment of the denier claim that there’s been no warming for the most recent N years. (See http://hubpages.com/@doc-snow for more on him.)
- On Thomas Edison and Solar Electric Power
- Agendaists Eli Rabett’s coining of a phrase
- SolarLove
- Solar Gardens Community Power
- Documenting the Climate Deniarati at work
- All Models Are Wrong Dr Tamsin Edwards blog about uncertainty in science, and climate science
- Isaac Held's blog In the spirit of Ray Pierrehumbert’s “big ideas come from small models” in his textbook, PRINCIPLES OF PLANETARY CLIMATE, Dr Held presents quantitative essays regarding one feature or another of the Earth’s climate and weather system.
- Climate impacts on retail and supply chains
- Climate at a glance Current state of the climate, from NOAA
- Ellenbogen: There is no Such Thing as Wind Turbine Syndrome
- James Powell on sampling the climate consensus
- Paul Beckwith Professor Beckwith is, in my book, one of the most insightful and analytical observers on climate I know. I highly recommend his blog, and his other informational products.
- Spectra Energy exposed
- "Warming Slowdown?" (part 2 of 2) The idea of a global warming slowdown or hiatus is critically examined, emphasizing the literature, the datasets, and means and methods for telling such. The second part.
- CLIMATE ADAM Previously from the Science news staff at the podcast of Nature (“Nature Podcast”), the journal, now on YouTube, encouraging climate action through climate comedy.
- `The unchained goddess' 1958 Bell Telephone Science Hour broadcast regarding, among other things, climate change.
- Eli on the spectroscopic basis of atmospheric radiation physical chemistry
- Ice and Snow
- ATTP summarizes all that stuff about Committed Warming from AND THEN THERE’S PHYSICS
- Steve Easterbrook's excellent climate blog: See his "The Internet: Saving Civilization or Trashing the Planet?" for example Heavy on data and computation, Easterbrook is a CS prof at UToronto, but is clearly familiar with climate science. I like his “The Internet: Saving Civilization or Trashing the Planet” very much.
- Simple models of climate change
- David Appell's early climate science
- Climate model projections versus observations
- `Who to believe on climate change': Simple checks By Bart Verheggen
- Équiterre Equiterre helps build a social movement by encouraging individuals, organizations and governments to make ecological and equitable choices, in a spirit of solidarity.
- Energy payback period for solar panels Considering everything, how long do solar panels have to operate to offset the energy used to produce them?
- The Sunlight Economy
- Dessler's 6 minute Greenhouse Effect video
- Tamino's Open Mind Open Mind: A statistical look at climate, its science, and at science denial
- "Warming Slowdown?" (part 1 of 2) The idea of a global warming slowdown or hiatus is critically examined, emphasizing the literature, the datasets, and means and methods for telling such. In two parts.
- Bloomberg interactive graph on “What's warming the world''
- The great Michael Osborne's latest opinions Michael Osborne is a genius operative and champion of solar energy. I have learned never to disregard ANYTHING he says. He is mentor of Karl Ragabo, and the genius instigator of the Texas renewable energy miracle.
- Warming slowdown discussion
- The Keeling Curve The first, and one of the best programs for creating a spatially significant long term time series of atmospheric concentrations of CO2. Started amongst great obstacles by one, smart determined guy, Charles David Keeling.
- The beach boondoggle Prof Rob Young on how owners of beach property are socializing their risks at costs to all of us, not the least being it seems coastal damage is less than it actually is
Archives
Jan Galkowski
from Canada PM Mark Carney
Mark Carney, Canada’s prime minister, said in Davos this year that the longtime U.S.-led, rules-based system was rupturing, and that middle powers like Canada had to diversify their partnerships if they hoped to survive. “The old order is not coming back,” he stated. “We shouldn’t mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy.”
From the New York Times.
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thanks DT for making the case for solar and EVs and NOT oil
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Go EVs!
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2026 March 14 [J 073.87] “Pi Day”



Geographic coordinates N42.227, W71.230, Westwood, MA, USA
Rare and hard to find 1937-1938
https://667-per-cm.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/ChronicaBryophyta-1938.pdf is a PDF of 1938 paper ‘A YEAR-BOOK Devoted to the Study), of Mosses and Hepatics</a> by Fr. VERDOORN, Volume X, 1937, published by the Chronica Botanica Company, Leiden.



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EPA official actions on their “endangerment finding”
Posted in climate, greenhouse gases, zero carbon
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Could this be why DT wants Greenland?
“Camp Century”, a former U.S. military base, is buried in the ice in Greenland. Apparently it contains lots of radioactive and toxic stuff.
Maybe they don’t want the USA retroactively embarrassed? This also would not be a problem if climate change were not real, but it is, despite what DT and cronies say and think.
Posted in climate change, climate denial, radioactivity
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AI and GPT don’t manufacture results from nothing
If the AI and GPT result reported in Nature is other than superstition,there must be a statistical model justifying it.
I’d like to know what it is and how it compares to existing well known prediction schemes and algorithms. Right now, can’t tell.
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16th September 2025, Westwood, MA
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Posted in zero carbon
Tagged Atrichum, macrophotography, mosses, New England garden, Polytrichum
Comments Off on 16th September 2025, Westwood, MA
Pohlia lescuriana
Posted in ABLS, blog, Botany, bryology, bryophyte, bryophytes, mosses, New England Botanical Society
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Mckibben vs Nordhous
There’s a review of McKibben’s new book in The New Atlantis at https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/how-bill-mckibben-lost-the-plot
I think people should read in full the Wikipedia article about Nordhaus before buying into this, even much at all I’d say. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Nordhaus
Welcome comments here.
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NOAA climate assessment which has been taken off the federal site
… By You Know Who …
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Fast-Track Review of Latest Evidence for Whether Greenhouse Gas Emissions Endanger Public Health and Welfare
On 7 August 2025, the United States National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine initiated a new study to “review the latest scientific evidence on whether greenhouse gas emissions are reasonably anticipated to endanger public health and welfare in the U.S.” (press release). Summarizing its purpose:
“The committee conducting the study will focus on evidence gathered by the scientific community since 2009 — when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency first declared greenhouse gas emissions a danger to public health. Any conclusions in the committee’s report will describe supporting evidence, the level of confidence in a conclusion, and areas of disagreement or unknowns.
The EPA recently announced that it intends to rescind its “endangerment finding,” a statement issued by the agency in 2009 that found that greenhouse gas emissions do pose risks to public health and welfare. The National Academies study will be completed and publicly released in September, in time to inform EPA’s decision process.
“It is critical that federal policymaking is informed by the best available scientific evidence,” said Marcia McNutt, president of the National Academy of Sciences. “Decades of climate research and data have yielded expanded understanding of how greenhouse gases affect the climate. We are undertaking this fresh examination of the latest climate science in order to provide the most up-to-date assessment to policymakers and the public.”
The committee will be led by Shirley Tilghman, professor of molecular biology and public affairs, emeritus, and former president, Princeton University. The committee will also include experts in public health, extreme weather, climate modeling, agriculture, infrastructure, and other areas.
The committee has issued a request for information to the public and scientific community. The study is being self-funded by the National Academy of Sciences.
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine are private, nonprofit institutions that provide independent, objective analysis and advice to the nation to solve complex problems and inform public policy decisions related to science, engineering, and medicine. They operate under an 1863 congressional charter to the National Academy of Sciences, signed by President Lincoln.”
Some recent NAS papers related to this subject:
- “The intensification of the strongest nor’easters.”
- “Human and climate impacts on the alpine Critical Zone over the past 10,000 y.”
- “Barystatic sea level change observed by satellite gravimetry: 1993–2022.”
- “Abrupt shift of El Niño periodicity under CO2 mitigation.”
- “Human influence on climate detectable in the late 19th century.”
- “Fossil fuel methane emissions likely underestimated in a model based on atmospheric δ13C trends.”
- “Observation-based estimate of Earth’s effective radiative forcing.”
- “Increasing boreal fires reduce future global warming and sea ice loss.”
There are of course many more.
RFI.
P.S. 8 August 2025: Another report related to this “Outrage over Trump team’s climate report spurs researchers to fight back”. See article in Nature.
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A New Phase in Trump’s War on Data

“RIGGED”
Nothing new …
Censorship of Science by the administration of President Donald Trump
“Azimuth Backup Project (Part 5)”, upcoming presentation by Prof John Carlos Baez
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Biofluorescent marsupial

(from Nature)
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25mm compact lens equivalent to 50mm
Versatile yet simple, the black M.Zuiko Digital 25mm f/1.8 II Lens from OM System is an IPX1-rated 50mm equivalent prime for Micro Four Thirds mirrorless cameras. Its normal field of view is complemented by a fast f/1.8 maximum aperture for controlling depth of field and producing selective focus effects, and it also benefits working in difficult lighting conditions. Two aspherical elements with ZERO coating are used in the optical design to help reduce spherical aberrations in order to achieve a high degree of sharpness, and these elements also help to reduce the overall size and weight of the lens. Additionally, a Movie & Still Compatible (MSC) autofocus system is employed to deliver quick, quiet, and precise focusing performance to suit both video and photo applications.
Sample photos:





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“Macro Treasures”
Flower photography by Thomas Stirr. Part of his Web site Small Sensor Photography.
Flickr Account
I also have a collection of photos, mostly of bryophytes, on Flickr.
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2025 April 19 J109 some close-ups of Polytrichum



































OM Systems OM5 camera with OM System M.Zuiko 90mm macro and non-macro 1:3.5 digital lens. Also used M.Zuiko 40mm-150mm 1:4 zoom macro, and Mitakon Zhongyi 20mm f/2 4.5x Super Macro Lens for Micro Four Thirds.
Most of these are also stored in the author’s Flickr photostream.
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A New Lens
A new lens for macrophotography, an OM Systems M.Zuiko ED40-150mm F4.0 PRO.
































































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