
Distributed Solar: The Democratizaton of Energy

Blogroll
- Gabriel's staircase
- NCAR AtmosNews
- AP Statistics: Sampling, by Michael Porinchak Twin City Schools
- Leverhulme Centre for Climate Change Mitigation
- 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.
- What If
- Dollars per BBL: Energy in Transition
- Harvard's Project Implicit
- 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.”
- Comprehensive Guide to Bayes Rule
- Higgs from AIR describing NAO and EA Stephanie Higgs from AIR Worldwide gives a nice description of NAO and EA in the context of discussing “The Geographic Impact of Climate Signals on European Winter Storms”
- WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION, reviews Reviews of Cathy O’Neil’s new book
- Professor David Draper
- James' Empty Blog
- 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.
- South Shore Recycling Cooperative Materials management, technical assistance and networking, town advocacy, public outreach
- Fear and Loathing in Data Science Cory Lesmeister’s savage journey to the heart of Big Data
- Tony Seba Solar energy, electric vehicle, energy storage, and business disruption professor and visionary
- All about models
- The Keeling Curve: its history History of the Keeling Curve and Charles David Keeling
- Giant vertical monopolies for energy have stopped making sense
- OOI Data Nuggets OOI Ocean Data Lab: The Data Nuggets
- Flettner Rotor Bruce Yeany introduces the Flettner Rotor and related science
- American Statistical Association
- Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard on how businesses can help our collective environmental mess Patagonia’s Yvon Chouinard set the standard for how a business can mitigate the ravages of capitalism on earth’s environment. At 81 years old, he’s just getting started.
- Quotes by Nikola Tesla Quotes by Nikola Tesla, including some of others he greatly liked.
- Healthy Home Healthy Planet
- Number Cruncher Politics
- Brendon Brewer on Overfitting Important and insightful presentation by Brendon Brewer on overfitting
- WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION Cathy O’Neil’s WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION,
- Lenny Smith's CHAOS: A VERY SHORT INTRODUCTION This is a PDF version of Lenny Smith’s book of the same title, also available from Amazon.com
- Musings on Quantitative Paleoecology Quantitative methods and palaeoenvironments.
- Earle Wilson
- Dr James Spall's SPSA
- Mertonian norms
- BioPython A collection of Python tools for quantitative Biology
- distributed solar and matching location to need
- 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/
- 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.
- London Review of Books
- John Cook's reasons to use Bayesian inference
- Peter Congdon's Bayesian statistical modeling Peter Congdon’s collection of links pertaining to his several books on Bayesian modeling
- Darren Wilkinson's introduction to ABC Darren Wilkinson’s introduction to approximate Bayesian computation (“ABC”). See also his post about summary statistics for ABC https://darrenjw.wordpress.com/2013/09/01/summary-stats-for-abc/
- "Consider a Flat Pond" Invited talk introducing systems thinking, by Jan Galkowski, at First Parish in Needham, UU, via Zoom
- "Talking Politics" podcast David Runciman, Helen Thompson
- Nadler Strategy, LLC, on sustainability Thinking about business, efficient and effective management, and business value
- Team Andrew Weinberg Walking September 8th for the Jimmy Fund!
- Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI)
- Subsidies for wind and solar versus subsidies for fossil fuels
- John Kruschke's "Dong Bayesian data analysis" blog Expanding and enhancing John’s book of same title (now in second edition!)
climate change
- Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature
- Ellenbogen: There is no Such Thing as Wind Turbine Syndrome
- 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.
- "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.
- Simple models of climate change
- Climate Change Denying Organizations
- Wally Broecker on climate realism
- SOLAR PRODUCTION at Westwood Statistical Studios Generation charts for our home in Westwood, MA
- Spectra Energy exposed
- Reanalyses.org
- Solar Gardens Community Power
- Skeptical Science
- “Ways to [try to] slow the Solar Century''
- 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.
- Jacobson WWS literature index
- Thriving on Low Carbon
- "A field guide to the climate clowns"
- Updating the Climate Science: What path is the real world following? From Professors Makiko Sato & James Hansen of Columbia University
- 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.
- Non-linear feedbacks in climate (discussion of Bloch-Johnson, Pierrehumbert, Abbot paper) Discussion of http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1002/2015GL064240/abstract
- Dessler's 6 minute Greenhouse Effect video
- 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
- 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
- An open letter to Steve Levitt
- Climate Communication Hassol, Somerville, Melillo, and Hussin site communicating climate to the public
- Mathematics and Climate Research Network The Mathematics and Climate Research Network (MCRN) engages mathematicians to collaborating on the cryosphere, conceptual model validation, data assimilation, the electric grid, food systems, nonsmooth systems, paleoclimate, resilience, tipping points.
- Grid parity map for Solar PV in United States
- AIP's history of global warming science: impacts The American Institute of Physics has a fine history of the science of climate change. This link summarizes the history of impacts of climate change.
- Simple box models and climate forcing IMO one of Tamino’s best posts illustrating climate forcing using simple box models
- Sir David King David King’s perspective on climate, and the next thousands of years for humanity
- Climate Change Reports By John and Mel Harte
- Klaus Lackner (ASU), Silicon Kingdom Holdings (SKH) Capturing CO2 from air at scale
- Interview with Wally Broecker Interview with Wally Broecker
- SolarLove
- Andy Zucker's "Climate Change and Psychology"
- History of discovering Global Warming From the American Institute of Physics.
- The HUMAN-caused greenhouse effect, in under 5 minutes, by Bill Nye
- "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.
- James Powell on sampling the climate consensus
- Tamino's Open Mind Open Mind: A statistical look at climate, its science, and at science denial
- Agendaists Eli Rabett’s coining of a phrase
- "Mighty Microgrids" Webinar This is a Webinar on YouTube about Microgrids from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR), featuring New York State and Minnesota
- Nick Bower's "Scared Scientists"
- "Climate science is setttled enough"
- HotWhopper: It's excellent. Global warming and climate change. Eavesdropping on the deniosphere, its weird pseudo-science and crazy conspiracy whoppers.
- Sea Change Boston
- Jacobson WWS literature index
- 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.
- MIT's Climate Primer
- Eli on the spectroscopic basis of atmospheric radiation physical chemistry
Archives
Jan Galkowski
Monthly Archives: September 2015
On Changing Things
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. That’s from Buckminster Fuller, a fellow Unitarian.
Posted in adaptation, Anthropocene, bifurcations, bridge to nowhere, Buckminster Fuller, Cauchy distribution, clean disruption, climate disruption, demand-side solutions, destructive economic development, Disney, dynamic linear models, dynamical systems, Epcot, exponential growth, fossil fuel divestment, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, physical materialism, planning, rationality, reasonableness, Spaceship Earth, stochastic algorithms
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“Projected Costs of Generating Electricity” (IEA report)
The 2015 edition is now available. Some highlights: They included a sensitivity analysis (!) along with their statistical findings. Applause!! Figure ES.2 shows the LCOE ranges for various renewable technologies – namely, the three categories of solar PV in the … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, carbon dioxide, clean disruption, climate change, climate disruption, conservation, consumption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, destructive economic development, ecology, economics, efficiency, EIA, energy, energy reduction, energy utilities, environment, forecasting, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, natural gas, NIMBY, pipelines, planning, public utility commissions, rationality, reasonableness, solar power, SolarPV.tv, temporal myopia, time series, Tony Seba, wind energy, wind power, zero carbon
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Carbon Worshipers and Worship
There’s agitation and angst in some circles regarding the proper term to dub individuals who, however technical their training, reject the conclusions of climate science, physics, and even Exxon from the 1970s. (Graphs are from Greg Laden’s blog.) There’s denial, … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, atheism, bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, chemistry, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate change, climate data, climate models, Cult of Carbon, denial, energy, environment, Exxon, fossil fuels, geophysics, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, ignorance, IPCC, meteorology, oceanography, physical materialism, physics, rationality, reasonableness, science, UNFCCC, UU Humanists, zero carbon
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The Art and Science of Stefan Rahmstorf
Updated, 21st September 2015 I particularly like the last scene from TDAT. James Hansen and Makiko Sato have an update titled “Predictions Implicit in ‘Ice Melt’ Paper and Global Implications”. WHOI has studied the Irminger Sea and continues the study … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, art, bifurcations, carbon dioxide, Cauchy distribution, civilization, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate education, destructive economic development, disingenuity, ecology, economics, education, environment, ethics, Exxon, games of chance, geophysics, global warming, humanism, Hyper Anthropocene, icesheets, IPCC, James Hansen, mathematics, maths, physical materialism, physics, rationality, reasonableness, science, sea level rise, statistics, sustainability, the right to know
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Ahmed: arrested for having electronics in his possession simpler than a smart phone
I have made my comments at The Times news article on the subject. If I, as a youngster, brought my Newtonian telescope lens-in-progress into school, and because it looked like it was wrapped in putty, would I, in this day, … Continue reading
Posted in astronomy, astrophysics, atheism, Bill Nye, Boston Ethical Society, Carl Sagan, citizenship, civilization, Dan Satterfield, disingenuity, education, engineering, ethics, humanism, ignorance, physical materialism, physics, politics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, Susan Jacoby, the right to know, Unitarian Universalism, UU Humanists
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The Sounds of Wind
You, too, can power your house with wind. If in New England, check out New England Wind. (I think the above sound track sounds remarkably like the sound of the extraterrestrial intelligence signal from the movie Contact.) And the sound … Continue reading
Exxon knew, in detail
The Exxon Corporation (XOM) turned its back on its own evidence-based, scientific culture when it came to climate change. It’s a very sad story. There are now more parts available. (The above letter is reproduced from The New York Times … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, carbon dioxide, civilization, climate change, climate disruption, denial, ecology, economics, environment, ethics, Exxon, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, geophysics, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, physics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, sociology
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No turning back: On the effectiveness of artificially removing emitted CO2 from atmosphere for remediating climate disruption
A new paper, by Tokarska and Zickfeld, just published in the Institute Of Physics (“IOP”) Environmental Research Letters examines the question of what happens to climate change and disruption should, at some time, we collectively decide it’s too bad and … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, Anthropocene, carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide capture, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate change, climate disruption, denial, diffusion processes, dynamical systems, environment, ethics, forecasting, fossil fuels, games of chance, geoengineering, geophysics, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, ignorance, James Hansen, oceanography, physics, Principles of Planetary Climate, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, scientific publishing, sea level rise, statistics, sustainability, the right to know, thermodynamics, zero carbon
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Deep Recurrent Learning Networks
(Also known to statisticians as deep exponential families.) Large scale deep learning Four easy lessons on Deep Learning from Google
Posted in Bayes, Bayesian, neural networks, optimization
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interesting: Cap-and-Trade died not only because of the fossil fuel lobby, but because of proponents of corn methanol
Read the details in a summary of a new paper by Holland, Hughes, Knittel, and Parker. The summary also contains a link to the technical paper itself. Not surprised. Professor Tony Seba writes how horribly inefficient biofuels are in his … Continue reading
Foul concerns (UPDATE: 14th September 2015)
Updated, 14th September 2015 I submitted a Letter to the Editor of The Westwood Press last week, one which was published in Friday’s paper edition. It did not/has not yet made it online. It was in response to an article … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, bifurcations, Boston, bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, citizenship, civilization, clean disruption, climate disruption, conservation, consumption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, destructive economic development, economics, efficiency, EIA, energy, energy reduction, energy utilities, engineering, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, fracking, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, meteorology, methane, microgrids, mitigation, natural gas, pipelines, planning, politics, public utility commissions, PUCs, rationality, reasonableness, risk, solar energy, solar power, SolarPV.tv, sustainability, temporal myopia, Tony Seba, Westwood, wind power, zero carbon
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The 2015 edition of the Jimmy Fund Walk, Team Andrew Weinberg
Once again I am participating in Dana-Farber Jimmy Fund Walk with Team Andrew Weinberg. This year I am walking longer, starting from Wellesley College, and meeting up with James and the rest of Team Andrew Weinberg at Boston College. The … Continue reading
Posted in cancer research, JImmy Fund, Team Andrew Weinberg
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Bob Inglis: “Energy optimists. Climate realists.”
Kudos. http://climateeye.republicen.org/ http://blog.republicen.org/ http://republicen.org/areyouen/ http://republicen.org/the-solution-element/ http://republicen.org/the-solution-element/realist-guide/ I’m not, by their definition anyway, a conservative. In fact, I’m pretty apolitical these days although I will do things like demonstrate. But it’s completely clear to me this problem isn’t going to get … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, atheism, bifurcations, Bill Nye, bridge to nowhere, capricious gods, carbon dioxide, Carbon Tax, citizenship, civilization, clean disruption, climate change, climate disruption, compassion, conservation, consumption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, destructive economic development, ecology, economics, education, energy reduction, energy utilities, environment, ethics, finance, fossil fuel divestment, global warming, humanism, Hyper Anthropocene, ignorance, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, meteorology, new forms of scientific peer review, NOAA, oceanography, physical materialism, physics, politics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, sociology, statistics, sustainability, Tea Party, UU Humanists
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Questions About El Nino Answered – Dan’s Wild Wild Science Journal – AGU Blogosphere
Source: Questions About El Nino Answered – Dan’s Wild Wild Science Journal – AGU Blogosphere
STUFF IN PROGRESS
It’s a good time to reconnoiter and review the things I have in progress and are planned, both as a teaser, and as a promise. I am currently working the following technical projects, entirely on my personal time outside of … Continue reading
Posted in numerical analysis, planning, R, rationality, reasonableness, state-space models, statistics
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Tell Utilities Solar won’t be Killed
TUSK, and former Congressman Barry Goldwater, Jr, interviewed at midwestenergynews.com. Goldwater says “you could almost call it a conspiracy” the way utilities are trying to recoup costs from customers who generate their own solar power, avoiding what utilities claim are … Continue reading
“Natural Gas Pipeline Replacement Programs Reduce Methane Leaks and Improve Consumer Safety”
Update, 2018-11-19 Pipeline replacements, yes, assuming they are done correctly. Otherwise, strand them. See “NTSB faults NiSource for deadly Massachusetts gas explosions“. NiSource is the parent company of Columbia Gas of Massachusetts. Here are the NTSB recommendations and report. Natural … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, bridge to nowhere, citizenship, climate, climate change, climate disruption, consumption, economics, energy utilities, environment, fossil fuels, fracking, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, investing, methane, mitigation, natural gas, pipelines, politics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, sociology, spatial statistics, the right to know
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Antarctic Ice Sheet Mass Balance (from SCAR report)
This is from the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (“SCAR”) Annual Report 2014-2015, Bulletin No. 191, August 2015. Ice Sheet Mass Balance The floating ice shelves surrounding the Antarctic Ice Sheet restrain the grounded icesheet flow. Thinning of an ice … Continue reading
Posted in Antarctica, Anthropocene, bifurcations, carbon dioxide, Cauchy distribution, climate, climate change, climate disruption, environment, games of chance, geophysics, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, James Hansen, oceanography, physics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, sea level rise, sustainability, WHOI
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“Dismantling the Utility Model is the Fastest Path to a Cleaner Electricity Infrastructure”
Dismantling the Utility Model is the Fastest Path to a Cleaner Electricity Infrastructure, by Thomas Conroy.
Posted in Cauchy distribution, clean disruption, climate disruption, conservation, consumption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, destructive economic development, economics, efficiency, EIA, energy, energy reduction, energy utilities, engineering, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, global warming, investment in wind and solar energy, maths, mitigation, natural gas, optimization, pipelines, politics, public utility commissions, rationality, reasonableness, solar energy, solar power, SolarPV.tv, Tony Seba, zero carbon
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“Ignorance is not a cultural identity to celebrate. “
From meteorologist Dr Dan Satterfield, from his blog post, “The Real Reason U.S. SAT Test Scores Keep Dropping“: Far too many Americans just don’t think education is important. They may claim they do, but when a state gives 250 million … Continue reading
“Solar: A convenient truth” (2016)
http://solarpv.tv/embed/163 A major documentary regarding the revolutionary emergency of solar energy is in the works, scheduled to be released in 2016. Update, 23rd September 2019 Apparently not only wasn’t this made, but the site touting it has gone away. Would … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, carbon dioxide, clean disruption, climate, climate change, conservation, consumption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, destructive economic development, economics, efficiency, energy, energy reduction, energy utilities, exponential growth, fossil fuel divestment, global warming, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, meteorology, optimization, physics, politics, rationality, reasonableness, solar energy, solar power, SolarPV.tv, sustainability, temporal myopia, the right to know, Tony Seba, wind power, zero carbon
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