Distributed Solar: The Democratizaton of Energy
Monthly Archives: February 2016
patents disincentivize progress
Very interesting.
seek the beautiful, and avoid “climate justice”
Some people along the coast of Massachusetts are missing out. No matter. After the homes are flooded and razed, because their parents and grandparents were too foolish and short-sighted to see what should be done, the kids will turn the … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, Anthropocene, bridge to nowhere, Canettes Blues Band, Cape Wind, capricious gods, carbon dioxide, Carbon Worshipers, clean disruption, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate justice, coastal communities, corporate litigation on damage from fossil fuel emissions, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, denial, destructive economic development, disingenuity, ecology, economics, electricity markets, energy, energy utilities, engineering, environment, extended supply chains, forecasting, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, global warming, greenhouse gases, greenwashing, Hyper Anthropocene, investment in wind and solar energy, liberal climate deniers, living shorelines, local generation, meteorology, microgrids, rationality, reasonableness, regime shifts, risk, Sankey diagram, Scituate, sea level rise, selfishness, sociology, solar energy, solar power, SolarPV.tv, Spaceship Earth, sustainability, T'kun Olam, temporal myopia, the right to be and act stupid, the right to know, the value of financial assets, Tony Seba, wind energy, wind power, zero carbon
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On generating close to point of consumption
I’ve written about Sankey diagrams before, and Professor Kevin Anderson appeals to them to promote demand reduction as a powerful pathway to reducing Carbon emissions. But the overheads associated with transmission and distribution affect large scale generation of solar and … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, Anthropocene, bridge to nowhere, Cape Wind, citizenship, clean disruption, conservation, consumption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, destructive economic development, distributed generation, economics, efficiency, Egbert van Nes, electricity, electricity markets, energy, energy reduction, energy utilities, engineering, environment, evidence, fossil fuel divestment, greenwashing, Hyper Anthropocene, ignorance, investment in wind and solar energy, Kevin Anderson, local generation, maths, microgrids, public utility commissions, PUCs, rate of return regulation, rationality, reasonableness, regulatory capture, Sankey diagram, solar energy, solar power, sustainability, Tony Seba, wind energy, wind power, zero carbon
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Who the heck is Robert Rio? And what does a B.A. biologist-turned-attorney know about solar energy?
The Associated Industries of Massachusetts have turned their gunsights on the solar energy industry of Massachusetts, attempting to destroy it. They are lobbying Beacon Hill to not only cap rollouts of solar, but nix net metering, and, if patterns in … Continue reading
Posted in carbon dioxide, Carbon Tax, Carbon Worshipers, clean disruption, climate change, climate disruption, corporate litigation on damage from fossil fuel emissions, corporate supply chains, corruption, decentralized electric power generation, energy, politics, solar energy, solar power, SolarPV.tv, wind energy, wind power
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I ask again: Does Massachusetts have a share of the clean energy future?
Or is Governor Baker and the Massachusetts House going to subcontract that to other states, like Maine, Rhode Island, Vermont, and New York? They are coming. Update, 2016-02-23 Where does Massachusetts get its energy now?
Posted in Anthropocene, Cape Wind, Carbon Cycle, carbon dioxide, Carbon Worshipers, clean disruption, climate, climate change, climate disruption, conservation, consumption, corporate litigation on damage from fossil fuel emissions, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, destructive economic development, ecology, EIA, electricity, electricity markets, energy, energy reduction, energy utilities, engineering, environment, exponential growth, extended supply chains, forecasting, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, global warming, greenhouse gases, greenwashing, Hyper Anthropocene, ignorance, investment in wind and solar energy, Mark Jacobson, methane, municipal solid waste, natural gas, optimization, pipelines, planning, politics, public utility commissions, PUCs, rate of return regulation, rationality, reasonableness, Sankey diagram, solar energy, Solar Freakin' Roadways, solar power, SolarPV.tv, Spaceship Earth, sustainability, the right to be and act stupid, the right to know, the value of financial assets, Tony Seba, wind energy, wind power, zero carbon
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France to pave 1,000km of road with solar panels
In Global Construction Review, Ségolène Royal, France’s minister of ecology and energy, has said that the government intends to pave 1,000km of road with photovoltaic panels in the next five years, supplying power to millions of people. (To see larger … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, clean disruption, climate, climate change, climate disruption, conservation, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, destructive economic development, Ecology Action, economics, electricity, electricity markets, energy, energy reduction, energy utilities, environment, fossil fuel divestment, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, investment in wind and solar energy, microgrids, rationality, reasonableness, solar energy, Solar Freakin' Roadways, solar power, SolarPV.tv, sustainability, Tony Seba, wind energy, wind power, zero carbon
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Twila Moon, glaciologist
Twila Moon, University of Oregon, and, soon, University of Bristol, “Face to face with climate change, in Greenland”. Her research concerns ice interface dynamics, principally concerning glaciers.
Posted in adaptation, Anthropocene, Arctic, climate, climate change, climate disruption, coastal communities, ecology, environment, fossil fuels, geophysics, glaciers, glaciology, global warming, greenhouse gases, Hyper Anthropocene, ice sheet dynamics, icesheets, physics, planning, rationality, reasonableness, the right to know, zero carbon
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In celebration of the unification of Gravity with the other fundamental forces …
It was announced today that LIGO found definitive evidence of gravity waves last September. Excellent descriptions at IOP, including a beginners guide. No better way to celebrate than with the Canettes Blues Band, from CERN: A group of physicists who … Continue reading
Bernie. Bernie. BERNIE. 2016.
I’m a one issue voter: Climate disruption. Minimizing it. Little else matters. “All the good that you have done, all the good you can imagine doing, will be wiped out by floods, by fires, by superstorms, if you fail to … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, Anthropocene, bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, Carbon Worshipers, citizenship, civilization, clean disruption, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate models, coastal communities, compassion, corporate litigation on damage from fossil fuel emissions, corporate supply chains, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, destructive economic development, Eaarth, ecology, economics, environment, exponential growth, fossil fuel divestment, geophysics, global warming, greenhouse gases, Hyper Anthropocene, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, liberal climate deniers, meteorology, physical materialism, physics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, Spaceship Earth, sustainability, T'kun Olam, temporal myopia, the right to know, the value of financial assets, zero carbon
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Phytoplankton-delineated oceanic eddies near Antarctica
Excerpt, from NASA: Phytoplankton are the grass of the sea. They are floating, drifting, plant-like organisms that harness the energy of the Sun, mix it with carbon dioxide that they take from the atmosphere, and turn it into carbohydrates and … Continue reading
Posted in AMETSOC, Antarctica, Arctic, bacteria, Carbon Cycle, complex systems, differential equations, diffusion, diffusion processes, dynamic linear models, dynamical systems, Emily Shuckburgh, environment, fluid dynamics, geophysics, GLMs, John Marshall, marine biology, Mathematics and Climate Research Network, NASA, numerical analysis, numerical software, oceanic eddies, oceanography, physics, phytoplankton, science, thermohaline circulation, WHOI, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
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That two degree limit is closer than it appears
The UNFCCC’s COP21 concluded goals which aimed for limiting global warming to C, and certainly keeping it below C, both measured with respect to pre-industrial temperatures. Bad news. According to the United States National Center for Atmospheric Research (“NCAR”), in … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, Anthropocene, carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide capture, carbon dioxide sequestration, Carbon Worshipers, chaos, civilization, climate, climate change, climate disruption, complex systems, COP21, corporate litigation on damage from fossil fuel emissions, corporate supply chains, critical slowing down, differential equations, Eaarth, ecology, environment, evidence, exponential growth, extended supply chains, forecasting, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, geoengineering, geophysics, global warming, greenhouse gases, Hyper Anthropocene, IPCC, James Hansen, meteorology, mitigation, NCAR, NOAA, oceanography, physics, Principles of Planetary Climate, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, temporal myopia, the right to be and act stupid, the right to know, the value of financial assets, Wally Broecker, zero carbon
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“Grid shading by simulated annealing” [Martyn Plummer]
Source: Grid shading by simulated annealing (or what I did on my holidays), aka “fun with GCHQ job adverts”, by Martyn Plummer, developer of JAGS. Excerpt: I wanted to solve the puzzle but did not want to sit down with … Continue reading
Posted in approximate Bayesian computation, Bayesian, Bayesian inversion, Boltzmann, BUGS, Christian Robert, Gibbs Sampling, JAGS, likelihood-free, Markov Chain Monte Carlo, Martyn Plummer, mathematics, maths, MCMC, Monte Carlo Statistical Methods, optimization, probabilistic programming, SPSA, stochastic algorithms, stochastic search
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Ah, Hypergeometric!
(“Ah, Hypergeometric!” To be said with the same resignation and acceptance as in “I’ll burn my books–Ah, Mephistopheles!” from Faust.)😉 Dr John Cook, eminent all ’round statistician (with a specialty in biostatistics) and statistical consultant, took up a comment I … Continue reading
high dimension Metropolis-Hastings algorithms
If attempting to simulate from a multivariate standard normal distribution in a large dimension, when starting from the mode of the target, i.e., its mean γ, leaving the mode γis extremely unlikely, given the huge drop between the value of the density at the mode γ and at likely realisations Continue reading
Posted in Bayes, Bayesian, Bayesian inversion, boosting, chance, Christian Robert, computation, ensembles, Gibbs Sampling, James Spall, Jerome Friedman, Markov Chain Monte Carlo, mathematics, maths, MCMC, Monte Carlo Statistical Methods, multivariate statistics, numerical software, numerics, optimization, reasonableness, Robert Schapire, SPSA, state-space models, statistics, stochastic algorithms, stochastic search, stochastics, Yoav Freund
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Tesla. No, not the car.
From Climate Denial Crock of the Week. THE PROBLEM OF INCREASING HUMAN ENERGY WITH SPECIAL REFERENCES TO THE HARNESSING OF THE SUN’S ENERGY (Excerpt) THE SOURCE OF HUMAN ENERGY—THE THREE WAYS OF DRAWING ENERGY FROM THE SUN First let us … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, Anthropocene, Cape Wind, Carbon Worshipers, civilization, clean disruption, climate, climate change, climate disruption, conservation, consumption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, destructive economic development, economics, efficiency, electricity, electricity markets, energy, energy reduction, energy utilities, engineering, environment, fossil fuels, games of chance, global warming, greenhouse gases, Hyper Anthropocene, investment in wind and solar energy, Mark Jacobson, meteorology, microgrids, Nikola Tesla, rationality, reasonableness, solar energy, solar power, SolarPV.tv, wind energy, wind power, zero carbon
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Underestimated Rates of Sea Level Rise
Posted in adaptation, Antarctica, Anthropocene, Arctic, bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, civilization, climate, climate change, climate disruption, coastal communities, ecology, floods, Florida, fossil fuels, geophysics, glaciers, global warming, greenhouse gases, Hyper Anthropocene, icesheets, IPCC, James Hansen, John Englander, Richard Alley, Scituate, sea level rise, Stefan Rahmstorf, temporal myopia, the right to know, Wally Broecker, zero carbon
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Techno Utopias
Professor Kevin Anderson on Techno Utopias. The Paris “COP21” agreement is/was not only expecting miracles, it was counting on them. Y’think climate disruption causes ecosystem disruption: Try geoengineering. Well the answer was simple. If we choose to continue our love … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, Anthropocene, bollocks, bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide capture, carbon dioxide sequestration, civilization, climate, climate change, climate disruption, coastal communities, complex systems, consumption, COP21, corporate supply chains, denial, disingenuity, economics, environment, ethics, evidence, exponential growth, extended supply chains, FEMA, finance, fossil fuels, games of chance, geophysics, glaciers, global warming, greenhouse gases, greenwashing, Hyper Anthropocene, icesheets, ignorance, IPCC, James Hansen, Kevin Anderson, Lenny Smith, liberal climate deniers, living shorelines, MA, meteorology, Neill deGrasse Tyson, oceanography, physics, planning, population biology, rationality, Ray Pierrehumbert, reasonableness, regime shifts, Sankey diagram, science, sea level rise, selfishness, silly tech devices, Techno Utopias, the right to know, the value of financial assets
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