
Distributed Solar: The Democratizaton of Energy

Blogroll
- "Consider a Flat Pond" Invited talk introducing systems thinking, by Jan Galkowski, at First Parish in Needham, UU, via Zoom
- John Cook's reasons to use Bayesian inference
- South Shore Recycling Cooperative Materials management, technical assistance and networking, town advocacy, public outreach
- 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.
- Bob Altemeyer on authoritarianism (via Dan Satterfield) The science behind the GOP civil war
- SASB Sustainability Accounting Standards Board
- Awkward Botany
- Tim Harford's “More or Less'' Tim Harford explains – and sometimes debunks – the numbers and statistics used in political debate, the news and everyday life
- International Society for Bayesian Analysis (ISBA)
- The Alliance for Securing Democracy dashboard
- Nadler Strategy, LLC, on sustainability Thinking about business, efficient and effective management, and business value
- Number Cruncher Politics
- 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.
- 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/
- Label Noise
- Mrooijer's Numbers R 4Us
- BioPython A collection of Python tools for quantitative Biology
- American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
- "Talking Politics" podcast David Runciman, Helen Thompson
- Thaddeus Stevens quotes As I get older, I admire this guy more and more
- All about Sankey diagrams
- 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
- Healthy Home Healthy Planet
- 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.”
- Pat's blog While it is described as “The mathematical (and other) thoughts of a (now retired) math teacher”, this is false humility, as it chronicles the present and past life and times of mathematicians in their context. Recommended.
- "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.
- Risk and Well-Being
- Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI)
- Professor David Draper
- Leverhulme Centre for Climate Change Mitigation
- Brian McGill's Dynamic Ecology blog Quantitative biology with pithy insights regarding applications of statistical methods
- 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/.
- 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.
- 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”
- Karl Broman
- Survey Methodology, Prof Ron Fricker http://faculty.nps.edu/rdfricke/
- The Mermaid's Tale A conversation about biological complexity and evolution, and the societal aspects of science
- Gabriel's staircase
- Flettner Rotor Bruce Yeany introduces the Flettner Rotor and related science
- Musings on Quantitative Paleoecology Quantitative methods and palaeoenvironments.
- Harvard's Project Implicit
- American Statistical Association
- AP Statistics: Sampling, by Michael Porinchak Twin City Schools
- Comprehensive Guide to Bayes Rule
- Logistic curves in market disruption From DollarsPerBBL, about logistic or S-curves as models of product take-up rather than exponentials, with notes on EVs
- What If
- Earth Family Beta MIchael Osborne’s blog on Science and the like
- Tony Seba Solar energy, electric vehicle, energy storage, and business disruption professor and visionary
- WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION, reviews Reviews of Cathy O’Neil’s new book
- Charlie Kufs' "Stats With Cats" blog “You took Statistics 101. Now what?”
climate change
- "Climate science is setttled enough"
- "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
- Earth System Models
- "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.
- The HUMAN-caused greenhouse effect, in under 5 minutes, by Bill Nye
- The net average effect of a warming climate is increased aridity (Professor Steven Sherwood)
- Mrooijer's Global Temperature Explorer
- 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.
- Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature
- HotWhopper: It's excellent. Global warming and climate change. Eavesdropping on the deniosphere, its weird pseudo-science and crazy conspiracy whoppers.
- Tamino's Open Mind Open Mind: A statistical look at climate, its science, and at science denial
- 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 discovery of global warming'' (American Institute of Physics)
- Ray Pierrehumbert's site related to "Principles of Planetary Climate" THE book on climate science
- Reanalyses.org
- 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.
- Non-linear feedbacks in climate (discussion of Bloch-Johnson, Pierrehumbert, Abbot paper) Discussion of http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1002/2015GL064240/abstract
- Agendaists Eli Rabett’s coining of a phrase
- Climate Change Reports By John and Mel Harte
- The Carbon Cycle The Carbon Cycle, monitored by The Carbon Project
- MIT's Climate Primer
- Eli on the spectroscopic basis of atmospheric radiation physical chemistry
- David Appell's early climate science
- Grid parity map for Solar PV in United States
- Tuft's Professor Kenneth Lang on the physical chemistry of the Greenhouse Effect
- Updating the Climate Science: What path is the real world following? From Professors Makiko Sato & James Hansen of Columbia University
- Spectra Energy exposed
- Climate impacts on retail and supply chains
- Warming slowdown discussion
- 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.
- "Betting strategies on fluctuations in the transient response of greenhouse warming" By Risbey, Lewandowsky, Hunter, Monselesan: Betting against climate change on durations of 15+ years is no longer a rational proposition.
- Social Cost of Carbon
- “The Irrelevance of Saturation: Why Carbon Dioxide Matters'' (Bart Levenson)
- James Powell on sampling the climate consensus
- Sir David King David King’s perspective on climate, and the next thousands of years for humanity
- Ricky Rood's “What would happen to climate if we (suddenly) stopped emitting GHGs today?
- weather blocking patterns
- Thriving on Low Carbon
- Exxon-Mobil statement on UNFCCC COP21
- On Thomas Edison and Solar Electric Power
- "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.
- Risk and Well-Being
- `Who to believe on climate change': Simple checks By Bart Verheggen
- All Models Are Wrong Dr Tamsin Edwards blog about uncertainty in science, and climate science
- "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.
- The Scientific Case for Modern Human-caused Global Warming
- And Then There's Physics
- Documenting the Climate Deniarati at work
- 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
- Jacobson WWS literature index
Archives
Jan Galkowski
Monthly Archives: November 2015
sonnenCommunity connects households and makes conventional electricity suppliers obsolete through self-generated power
Sonnenbatterie presents the sonnenCommunity; members can generate their own power, store it and share surpluses online with friends or each other. The sonnenCommunity completely replaces traditional power companies and will soon be available to every household in Germany. – sonnenCommunity … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, Bill Gates, carbon dioxide, Carbon Worshipers, clean disruption, climate disruption, conservation, consumption, COP21, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, economics, energy, energy reduction, energy utilities, engineering, environment, fossil fuel divestment, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, investment in wind and solar energy, mesh models, meteorology, microgrids, planning, prediction, solar energy, solar power, SolarPV.tv, sustainability, Tony Seba, wind energy, zero carbon
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Acting on climate change is fundamentally a moral question; it’s about what’s right; it’s about our values
http://climatecrocks.com/2015/11/27/pope-urges-real-deal-in-paris/ If acting to mitigate climate disruption is, indeed, a moral issue, where are the world’s religions on it? Sure, there are voices, there are movements, but I do not see pulpits sounding the alarm once per month or two … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, carbon dioxide, Carbon Worshipers, civilization, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate justice, compassion, decentralized electric power generation, demand-side solutions, denial, environment, fossil fuels, geophysics, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, James Hansen, meteorology, physical materialism, rationality, religion, science, sustainability, UU Humanists
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climate impacts upon corporate supply chains
http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/services/advisory/consulting/risk/resilience/publications/business-not-as-usual.html https://www.aig.com/Chartis/internet/US/en/TheVulnerabilityofGlobalSupplyChains_tcm3171-663222.pdf http://phys.org/news/2014-02-quantifying-global-chain-due-climate.html http://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2014/06/27/address-climate-risks-supply-chain
Posted in adaptation, Anthropocene, chance, civilization, climate change, climate disruption, climate justice, compassion, COP21, corporate litigation on damage from fossil fuel emissions, corporate supply chains, economics, evidence, forecasting, games of chance, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, investing, meteorology, optimization, planning, risk, Sankey diagram, science, sustainability
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reblog: “Tiny Data, Approximate Bayesian Computation and the Socks of Karl Broman”
It’s Rasmus Bååth, in a post and video of which I am very fond: http://www.sumsar.net/blog/2014/10/tiny-data-and-the-socks-of-karl-broman/.
Same Old, Same Old (“I’m your puppet”)
Posted in Anthropocene, carbon dioxide, Carbon Worshipers, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate zombies, denial, environment, fossil fuels, geophysics, global warming, greenhouse gases, Hyper Anthropocene, meteorology, obfuscating data, physics, politics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, zero carbon
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On infrared radiation and Earth temperature
Good to review the basics once again. Professors Dave Archer and Ray Pierrehumbert do, in my opinion, some of the best introductions: Infrared radiation and planetary temperature.
Posted in astrophysics, carbon dioxide, climate, climate change, climate models, David Archer, differential equations, diffusion, diffusion processes, environment, evidence, geophysics, global warming, greenhouse gases, meteorology, methane, oceanography, physics, Principles of Planetary Climate, rationality, Ray Pierrehumbert, reasonableness, science, Svante Arrhenius
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Walt Disney World holiday, November 2015
Link to photos and other information available at Google+: https://plus.google.com/110148824733929465219/posts/UzzEQ1azUPe If you are just interested in the photos and videos: https://goo.gl/2s5EQ0 The Epcot Food & Wine Festival was a bust: Too many people, walking in uncoordinated directions, and too little … Continue reading
Posted in biofuels, Carbon Cycle, carbon dioxide, clean disruption, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate education, compassion, conservation, consumption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, Disney, ecology, energy, energy reduction, energy utilities, engineering, environment, Florida, fossil fuels, global warming, microgrids, rationality, reasonableness, recycling, solar energy, solar power, SolarPV.tv, Spaceship Earth, Walt Disney Company
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Courage in Congress
When someone cannot argue on the basis of evidence and logic, a tempting ploy is to discredit their opponent by tarnishing their character. This is, of course, an invalid argument, since it is entirely possible that even one of tarnished … Continue reading
How fossil fuels “help the poor” in developing nations, like Nigeria
(From The Atlantic.) CAPTION (Credit– The Atlantic): A man working at an illegal oil-refinery site pours oil under a locally made burner to keep the fire going, near River Nun in Nigeria’s oil state of Bayelsa on November 27, 2012. … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, Carbon Worshipers, citizenship, civilization, clean disruption, consumption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, destructive economic development, disingenuity, economics, energy reduction, Exxon, fear uncertainty and doubt, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, Hyper Anthropocene, ignorance, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, microgrids, natural gas, obfuscating data, pipelines, rationality, reasonableness, risk, selfishness, solar energy, solar power, SolarPV.tv, Spaceship Earth, sustainability, Tony Seba, wind energy, wind power, zero carbon
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Is Earth Much More Sensitive to CO2 Than Thought?
“Take notice that carbon dioxide 50 million years ago may not have been as high as we once thought it was. We may reach that level in the next century, and so the climate change from that increase could be pretty severe, pretty dramatic. CO2 and other climate forcings may be more important for global warming than we realized.” Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, Carbon Cycle, carbon dioxide, climate, climate change, climate data, climate disruption, differential equations, diffusion processes, dynamic linear models, dynamical systems, environment, fossil fuels, generalized linear models, geophysics, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, Principles of Planetary Climate, risk, science
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Southern Oscillation (SOI) correlated with Outgoing Longwave Radiation (OLR)
To the climate community this is nothing at all new, but I spotted these time series today and thought they would make a nice exhibit on how something people have direct control over, greenhouse gas emissions, affect a “teleconnection mechanism” … Continue reading
Posted in AMETSOC, bifurcations, carbon dioxide, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate models, Dan Satterfield, differential equations, dynamic linear models, dynamical systems, ENSO, environment, forecasting, generalized linear models, geophysics, global warming, greenhouse gases, IPCC, Mathematica, mathematics, maths, meteorology, NCAR, NOAA, numerical software, oceanography, open data, physics, population biology, Principles of Planetary Climate, rationality, reasonableness, science, Spaceship Earth, state-space models, thermodynamics, time series
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“It’s real. There’s nothing we can do about it.”
Posted in Anthropocene, carbon dioxide, climate, climate change, climate disruption, environment, geophysics, global warming, greenhouse gases, Hyper Anthropocene, meteorology, physics, Principles of Planetary Climate, rationality, reasonableness, reproducible research, risk, science, Spaceship Earth, sustainability, Svante Arrhenius, the right to know
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On morality, and the need for an energy transition (Shell Oil): How about energy for free?
“The Price of Renewables? How Does ‘Free’ Grab You?”, from Peter Sinclair’s Climate Denial Crock of the Week. In Texas, wind farms are generating so much energy that some utilities are giving power away … It is possible because Texas … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, Anthropocene, Cape Wind, Carbon Worshipers, clean disruption, climate disruption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, economics, energy, engineering, Hyper Anthropocene, investment in wind and solar energy, meteorology, microgrids, politics, public utility commissions, solar energy, solar power, SolarPV.tv, wind energy, wind power, zero carbon
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House Science, Space, and Technology Committee vs National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administation
I wonder if this has anything to do with giving Exxon legal cover? Hmmm …
Posted in AMETSOC, Anthropocene, bollocks, bridge to nowhere, Carbon Worshipers, citizen science, citizenship, clean disruption, climate change, climate disruption, climate justice, denial, disingenuity, education, environment, ethics, Exxon, fear uncertainty and doubt, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, games of chance, geophysics, global warming, hiatus, Hyper Anthropocene, ignorance, meteorology, NCAR, NOAA, physics, politics, rationality, reasonableness, science, statistics, time series, zero carbon
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“Climate Science, 50 years later”
Hat tip to Peter Sinclair who let us all know about this symposium on his blog. The link is supposed to start at Dr John Holdren’s talk, but in case it does not, his talk begins at 35:00 into the … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, astronomy, astrophysics, carbon dioxide, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate models, environment, forecasting, fossil fuels, geophysics, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, meteorology, oceanography, physics, Principles of Planetary Climate, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, Svante Arrhenius, zero carbon
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“More benefits for everybody”
Posted in Anthropocene, bifurcations, Carbon Worshipers, citizenship, civilization, clean disruption, climate, conservation, consumption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, destructive economic development, economics, efficiency, energy, energy reduction, energy utilities, engineering, ethics, forecasting, Hyper Anthropocene, investment in wind and solar energy, mesh models, meteorology, microgrids, mitigation, optimization, planning, politics, public utility commissions, PUCs, rationality, reasonableness, Sankey diagram, solar energy, solar power, SolarPV.tv, sustainability, taxes, wind energy, wind power, zero carbon
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Only One Word: EVIL
(There is an update and analysis of Exxon’s reaction to the subpoena issued it by New York State towards the bottom of this post. Click this link.) Exxon in recent days has vehemently denied it had any campaign to discredit … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, citizenship, civilization, climate change, climate disruption, climate justice, consumption, COP21, corruption, denial, disingenuity, energy, Exxon, fear uncertainty and doubt, fossil fuel divestment, geophysics, obfuscating data, perceptions, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, temporal myopia
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time to hear
Posted in Anthropocene, bridge to nowhere, capricious gods, carbon dioxide, Carbon Worshipers, citizenship, civilization, clean disruption, climate change, climate justice, COP21, decentralized electric power generation, demand-side solutions, fossil fuel divestment, games of chance, global warming
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What the future of energy everywhere looks like
What will the energy landscape look like after utility companies are either dead, dying, or revert to a tiny portion of their territory? Silicon Valley CCE Partnership gives us all a clue. It’s been described in the San Francisco Chronicle, … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, Anthropocene, capricious gods, chance, citizenship, civilization, clean disruption, conservation, consumption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, destructive economic development, dynamical systems, economics, efficiency, energy, energy reduction, energy utilities, engineering, environment, ethics, forecasting, fossil fuel divestment, geophysics, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, investment in wind and solar energy, living shorelines, mesh models, meteorology, microgrids, mitigation, obfuscating data, oceanography, physical materialism, physics, pipelines, planning, politics, prediction, probabilistic programming, public utility commissions, PUCs, quantum, reasonableness, reproducible research, risk, Sankey diagram, science, sea level rise, selfishness, solar energy, solar power, SolarPV.tv, Spaceship Earth, statistics, stochastic algorithms, stochastics, Svante Arrhenius, taxes, temporal myopia, the right to know, the value of financial assets, transparency, UU Humanists, WHOI, wind energy, wind power, zero carbon
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Global Sea Level Rise by NASA Satellite since 1993
Y’know those NASA satellites Republican Presidential candidate Ted Cruz is so proud to tell us say that there’s been no warming of Earth in 18 years? Well, that’s wrong, of course, but it’s the same organization and the same kinds … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, carbon dioxide, Carbon Worshipers, Cauchy distribution, citizenship, civilization, climate change, climate disruption, destructive economic development, economics, floods, forecasting, games of chance, geophysics, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, icesheets, living shorelines, MA, meteorology, oceanography, planning, politics, rationality, reasonableness, science, sea level rise, statistics
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