Hap tip to Tamino:
Distributed Solar: The Democratizaton of Energy
Blogroll
- 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
- Team Andrew Weinberg Walking September 8th for the Jimmy Fund!
- Beautiful Weeds of New York City
- 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
- All about models
- ggplot2 and ggfortify Plotting State Space Time Series with ggplot2 and ggfortify
- Brendon Brewer on Overfitting Important and insightful presentation by Brendon Brewer on overfitting
- Los Alamos Center for Bayesian Methods
- Quotes by Nikola Tesla Quotes by Nikola Tesla, including some of others he greatly liked.
- 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
- What If
- International Society for Bayesian Analysis (ISBA)
- The Plastic Pick-Up: Discovering new sources of marine plastic pollution
- John Kruschke's "Dong Bayesian data analysis" blog Expanding and enhancing John’s book of same title (now in second edition!)
- BioPython A collection of Python tools for quantitative Biology
- Subsidies for wind and solar versus subsidies for fossil fuels
- Giant vertical monopolies for energy have stopped making sense
- Brian McGill's Dynamic Ecology blog Quantitative biology with pithy insights regarding applications of statistical methods
- Flettner Rotor Bruce Yeany introduces the Flettner Rotor and related science
- Ives and Dakos techniques for regime changes in series
- 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.
- Risk and Well-Being
- All about Sankey diagrams
- "Consider a Flat Pond" Invited talk introducing systems thinking, by Jan Galkowski, at First Parish in Needham, UU, via Zoom
- 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.
- "Perpetual Ocean" from NASA GSFC
- WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION Cathy O’Neil’s WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION,
- Carl Safina's blog One of the wisest on Earth
- 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/
- Awkward Botany
- Dominic Cummings blog Chief advisor to the PM, United Kingdom
- Label Noise
- 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/
- The Mermaid's Tale A conversation about biological complexity and evolution, and the societal aspects of science
- Rasmus Bååth's Research Blog Bayesian statistics and data analysis
- Number Cruncher Politics
- Dollars per BBL: Energy in Transition
- "Talking Politics" podcast David Runciman, Helen Thompson
- "The Expert"
- 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”
- Leadership lessons from Lao Tzu
- SASB Sustainability Accounting Standards Board
- Musings on Quantitative Paleoecology Quantitative methods and palaeoenvironments.
- Harvard's Project Implicit
- Nadler Strategy, LLC, on sustainability Thinking about business, efficient and effective management, and business value
- "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.
- 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.”
- American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
- 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
climate change
- Climate model projections versus observations
- “Ways to [try to] slow the Solar Century''
- On Thomas Edison and Solar Electric Power
- "Lessons of the Little Ice Age" (Farber) From Dan Farber, at LEGAL PLANET
- Transitioning to fully renewable energy Professor Saul Griffiths talks to transitioning the customer journey, from a dependency upon fossil fuels to an electrified future
- Sea Change Boston
- "Climate science is setttled enough"
- “The Irrelevance of Saturation: Why Carbon Dioxide Matters'' (Bart Levenson)
- Sir David King David King’s perspective on climate, and the next thousands of years for humanity
- Updating the Climate Science: What path is the real world following? From Professors Makiko Sato & James Hansen of Columbia University
- The net average effect of a warming climate is increased aridity (Professor Steven Sherwood)
- "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.
- 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.
- Solar Gardens Community Power
- "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.
- Équiterre Equiterre helps build a social movement by encouraging individuals, organizations and governments to make ecological and equitable choices, in a spirit of solidarity.
- SolarLove
- `The unchained goddess' 1958 Bell Telephone Science Hour broadcast regarding, among other things, climate change.
- Simple models of climate change
- Ricky Rood's “What would happen to climate if we (suddenly) stopped emitting GHGs today?
- Rabett Run Incisive analysis of climate science versus deliberate distraction
- Climate Change Denying Organizations
- The Green Plate Effect Eli Rabett’s “The Green Plate Effect”
- "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.)
- 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.
- David Appell's early climate science
- Nick Bower's "Scared Scientists"
- Ray Pierrehumbert's site related to "Principles of Planetary Climate" THE book on climate science
- Mrooijer's Global Temperature Explorer
- Model state level energy policy for New Englad Bob Massie’s proposed energy policy for Massachusetts, an admirable model for energy policy anywhere in New England
- Jacobson WWS literature index
- MIT's Climate Primer
- James Powell on sampling the climate consensus
- Wind sled Wind sled: A zero carbon way of exploring ice sheets
- 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.
- Tell Utilities Solar Won't Be Killed Barry Goldwater, Jr’s campaign to push for solar expansion against monopolistic utilities, as a Republican
- Climate Change Reports By John and Mel Harte
- Climate Change: A health emergency … New England Journal of Medicine Caren G. Solomon, M.D., M.P.H., and Regina C. LaRocque, M.D., M.P.H., January 17, 2019 N Engl J Med 2019; 380:209-211 DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp1817067
- 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
- The Carbon Cycle The Carbon Cycle, monitored by The Carbon Project
- Climate impacts on retail and supply chains
- 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.
- HotWhopper: It's excellent. Global warming and climate change. Eavesdropping on the deniosphere, its weird pseudo-science and crazy conspiracy whoppers.
- 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 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?" (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.
- Andy Zucker's "Climate Change and Psychology"
- SOLAR PRODUCTION at Westwood Statistical Studios Generation charts for our home in Westwood, MA
- The Scientific Case for Modern Human-caused Global Warming
- 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
Archives
Jan Galkowski
ecoquant
Dear mr.Blanket Man.
[snip]
The second law says that transfer of energy from cold to hot, can only be in the form of work.
Why does the gh-theory say that energy is transferred as heat to the surface?
[snip]
I don’t get many comments. shrug Getting comments or even traffic is not why I write my blog, but I do have the utmost respect for my 177 followers.
I’m leaving this one here as an example of what not to post.
Responding and engaging trolls are simply a waste of time that could be put to better purposes.
With the edits (made by the Moderator), the comment from @lifeisthermal now can be addressed in a proper context. The physical work related to the greenhouse effect is adiabatic expansion (where the “work” is coming from internal cooling) coupled with radiation of heat energy into space. The adiabatic portion occurs with constant potential temperature, at constant entropy. Lost of energy by emission is another energy exchange, indicative of a non-closed system. (Second law only applies to closed.) And the greenhouse effect and global warming are simply corollaries of the First and Second Law.
First note: Temperature of parcels of air decrease monotonically as altitude about Earth’s surface decreases. The rate of decrease is termed the lapse rate, and its profile is uniquely specified by any given atmosphere, whether it contains greenhouse gases or not. Atmosphere at higher altitudes is colder than atmosphere at lower ones, and the atmosphere at the surface boundary layer, in contact with the surface is the warmest of all.
Second note: The atmosphere, sans clouds and other scattering, is transparent to high frequently radiation from the Sun. It warms the Earth’s surface and, to the degree water is involved there (and pretending no water above) water in air near it. Because of the First Law, Earth must remain in thermal equilibrium with space about it. Since upon receiving a parcel of energy from Sun, Earth is incrementally warming because of it, this must be radiated out. And so it is, but the layers which radiate are high in the atmosphere, not near the surface. Thermal radiation is exchanged the dense layers by convection and collisions of molecules, and very little by direct radiation. Moreover, presence of dense layers of atmosphere above mean their cross section for thermal photos is very high. So they rarely escape.
Third note: Introduce, now, greenhouse gases in atmosphere. These are per unit mass much more opaque to thermal photons than ambient Oxygen and Nitrogen, and, so, impede the emission of thermal energy from any rising parcel of air. The effect is to change the lapse rate so high atmosphere at a temperature
before the addition of greenhouse gas has 
only when 
where 
is the new altitude and 
was the old one.
Fourth and final note: But if the lapse rate is such that the new equilibrium-by-thermal emission altitude
is higher than the original 
, that means, because the lapse rate is a monotonic decrease in temperature the temperature of atmosphere near Earth’s surface must necessarily be higher. So, it warms the surface more than it would without the greenhouse gases.
That’s it.