Distributed Solar: The Democratizaton of Energy
Author Archives: ecoquant
People ask me, When you want to feel optimistic, or be optimistic, what do you do?
Simple. I bring up the latest, and listen to Professor Tony Seba of Stanford University. I am also a devoted enthusiast for the energy programs of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, per John Farrell’s excellent work.
“You say you love your children above all else, and yet you are stealing their future in front of their very eyes.”
Not much else needs to be said here. Hat tip to WaPo. Thunberg accused leaders of speaking only about “green eternal economic growth because you are too scared of being unpopular.” “You only talk about moving forward with the same … Continue reading
Plastics in the oceans!
From Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution: (Click on image to see a larger figure, and use browser Back Button to return to blog.) “Tracking a snow globe of microplastics“ “WHOI Marine Microplastics Initiative“ “Sweat the small stuff“ “A hitchhiker’s guide to … Continue reading
Cold Massachusetts Thanksgiving powered by Massachusetts solar
Update, 2018-12-15 (Click on image to see larger figure, and use your browser Back Button to return to reading blog.) Thanksgiving in 2018 was cold, but it was also sunny. That means the 150,000 solar installations in Massachusetts could delivery … Continue reading
Posted in American Solar Energy Society, Ørsted, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, clean disruption, CleanTechnica, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, disruption, distributed generation, electrical energy storage, electricity markets, energy utilities, explosive methane, green tech, Green Tech Media, grid defection, ILSR, investment in wind and solar energy, ISO-NE, local generation, local self reliance, marginal energy sources, Mark Jacobson, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, Mathematics and Climate Research Network, pipelines, solar democracy, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, SolarPV.tv, Sonnen community, Spaceship Earth, the energy of the people, the green century, Tony Seba, utility company death spiral, wind energy, zero carbon
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Remember …
Updated, 2018-12-51, 14:10 ET Remember who it was that told you it would okay, just fine to continue to emit CO2 as we have been, despite over 50 years of science, scientists, from physicists, to chemists, to engineers, and biologists … Continue reading
Codium fragile, for 5th December 2018
Less frequent than I originally intended, but here’s today’s: C. Wienberg, “Shipping Giant Maersk Aims for Zero Net Carbon Emissions by 2050“, today J. Pyper, “Xcel Energy Commits to 100% Carbon-Free Electricity by 2050>“, today J. A. Dlouhy, “The Trump … Continue reading
Posted in Akamai Technologies, economics, entrpreneurs, Tom Leighton
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Edward Gorey, mischievous artist, droll mirror of Life
Updated, 2018-12-05 I’m a fan of Edward Gorey’s work and life story. There is, today, a profile of Edward Gorey and his life by Joan Acocella at and of The New Yorker. I’m a member of the House, and just … Continue reading
Posted in Edward Gorey, Yarmouth Port
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Quick program note: Abandoning Github for my own code
I’ve abandoned Github to store my own code and have, instead, opted to simply dump it into a shared read-only Google Drive folder. Too much trouble, and I don’t really need deep source control, even though Google offers it with … Continue reading
Posted in science
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The Climate Crunch
(with the possibility of rapid 15-20 foot SLR out there) David Suzuki aptly calls the corner we’ve painted ourselves into “the climate crunch”. See his article. Why a “crunch”? Had we heeded early warnings and had political representatives done more … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Petroleum Institute, an ignorant American public, an uncaring American public, Anthropocene, being carbon dioxide, bridge to somewhere, carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide capture, carbon dioxide sequestration, Carbon Worshipers, cement production, clear air capture of carbon dioxide, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate economics, Cult of Carbon, David Suzuki, emissions, geoengineering, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, James Hansen, klaus lackner, Wally Broecker
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Media treatment of the 4th National Climate Assessment
Regarding media treatment of the 4th National Climate Assessment: (Updated, 29 Nov 2018) The Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4) fulfills that mandate in two volumes. This report, Volume II, draws on the foundational science described in Volume I, the Climate … Continue reading
Posted in journalism, science
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Comment on “How Much Does Climate Science Matter In A World Run By Politics?” (from FiveThirtyEight.com)
It’s odd that 538 only accepts comments from people with Facebook accounts, despite being associated with ABCNews, which has its own user accounting system. I’m commenting here instead #fivethirtyeight. Anyway, per this post, a recent article and podcast at 538 … Continue reading
Bad Science kills. When quality is repeatedly sacrificed for quantity, we all pay.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0001b1k (from 28th November 2018) An episode of Richard Dawkins‘ “Trust Me, I’m a Scientist.
Not just having bad ideas, but because of deliberate ignorance despite overwhelming evidence, necessarily bad people
I’m afraid I need to agree with Krugman’s conclusion: While Donald Trump is a prime example of the depravity of climate denial, this is an issue on which his whole party went over to the dark side years ago. Republicans … Continue reading
Oil and Gas
What the head of the American Petroleum Institute, Frank Ikard, said in 1965.
Posted in Adam Smith, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Petroleum Institute, American Statistical Association, Ørsted, being carbon dioxide, BNEF, bridge to nowhere, Carbon Worshipers, Cult of Carbon, decentralized electric power generation, EIA, energy, explosive methane, solar domination, the green century, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets
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The Johnson-Lindenstrauss Lemma, and the paradoxical power of random linear operators. Part 1.
Updated, 2018-12-04 I’ll be discussing the ramifications of: William B. Johnson and Joram Lindenstrauss, “Extensions of Lipschitz mappings into a Hilbert space, Contemporary Mathematics, 26:189–206, 1984. for several posts here. Some introduction and links to proofs and explications will be … Continue reading
Posted in clustering, data science, dimension reduction, information theoretic statistics, Johnson-Lindenstrauss Lemma, k-NN, Locality Sensitive Hashing, mathematics, maths, multivariate statistics, non-parametric model, numerical algorithms, numerical linear algebra, point pattern analysis, random projections, recommender systems, science, stochastic algorithms, stochastics, subspace projection methods
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667-per-cm.net, the Podcast: Episode 2, or Probability is Real.
This is the second installment of the Podcast here, hopefully with better sound quality.
Posted in probability, random walks, statistics
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667-per-cm.net, the Podcast: Episode 1.
Commencing today, I’m offering another channel of this blog, a podcast. This will range over the interface between people, their behavior, and the natural world. It’s primarily an opportunity for a less structured and more personal presentation of my experience … Continue reading
Posted in biology, earth, global warming, Nature, podcast, science
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Prof Nic Lewis, Reason, and a claimed criticism of Resplandy, et al
Updated 2018-11-14: See at bottom Professor Nic Lewis has criticised the Resplandy, Keeling, et al report in Nature which I previously mentioned. A summary of his criticism appears in the somewhat libertarian ezine Reason. I have responded there, but their … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, climate, climate change, global warming, luckwarmers
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Watch!
(Update 2018 November 25) There’s a slew of bad news which has hit the scientific journals, the most notable being L. Resplandy, R. F. Keeling, Y. Eddebbar, M. K. Brooks, R. Wang, L. Bopp, M. C. Long, J. P. Dunne, … Continue reading
Our Children’s Trust
We are going to trial! https://www.youthvgov.org/trial Event hugely successful! 100+ people, media coverage. Photos at bottom Update, 2018-10-19 Youth Climate Case Vs. U.S. Government Will Head to Trial in October. Trump admin again asks Supreme Court to stop youth climate … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, climate change, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene
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Fraunhofer ISE assessment of practicality and cost of reducing emissions by 80% in Germany by 2050
The report. From the Summary: Figure 1 summarizes the main results of the analysis. A future energy scenario emitting 85% less CO2 emissions than 1990 levels is compared with a reference scenario, which assumes that the German energy system operates … Continue reading
Numbers, feelings, and imagination
“But numbers don’t make noises. They don’t have colours. You can’t taste them or touch them. They don’t smell of anything. They don’t have feelings. They don’t make you feel. And they make for pretty boring stories.” That’s from here, … Continue reading
Posted in mathematics, maths, numbers, numerics, oceanography
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Alex Steffen on Climate Defeatism
On 31st July 2018, Alex Steffen wrote (on Twitter) that: Reminder that climate defeatism—arguing that we are already so screwed that there’s no real point in acting to limit climate emissions or ecological damage—is absolutely a form of denialism, and … Continue reading
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Solar Energy Society, Anthropocene, anti-science, attribution, being carbon dioxide, Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, Bill Maher, Bill Nye, Bloomberg, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, Buckminster Fuller, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, climate business, climate change, climate economics, corporations, denial, engineering, global warming, greenhouse gases, Hyper Anthropocene, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, investments, James Hansen, John Farrell, Kerry Emanuel, klaus lackner, liberal climate deniers, Mark Jacobson, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, Mathematics and Climate Research Network, Michael Bloomberg, reason, reasonableness, science denier, secularism, Stewart Brand, the green century, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, Tony Seba, tragedy of the horizon, unreason, zero carbon
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No, Senator Marco Rubio and Larry Kudlow, we know how much humans contribute to climate change, at least precisely enough for Congress and an administration
14th October 2018, quoting Senator Marco Rubio and White House economic advisor Larry Kudlow, the Washington Post reported they each claimed that the recent UN report was an `overestimate`: “I think they overestimate,” Kudlow said of the U.N. report, which … Continue reading
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Meteorological Association, American Statistical Association, anomaly detection, anti-intellectualism, anti-science, being carbon dioxide, Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, bollocks, carbon dioxide, changepoint detection, children as political casualties, climate change, climate data, evidence, global warming, Humans have a lot to answer for, Hyper Anthropocene, Juliana v United States, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, physics, radiative forcing, science, science denier, tragedy of the horizon, UNFCCC, unreason
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Sampling: Rejection, Reservoir, and Slice
An article by Suilou Huang for catatrophe modeler AIR-WorldWide of Boston about rejection sampling in CAT modeling got me thinking about pulling together some notes about sampling algorithms of various kinds. There are, of course, books written about this subject, … Continue reading
Posted in accept-reject methods, American Statistical Association, Bayesian computational methods, catastrophe modeling, data science, diffusion processes, empirical likelihood, Gibbs Sampling, insurance, Markov Chain Monte Carlo, mathematics, Mathematics and Climate Research Network, maths, Monte Carlo Statistical Methods, multivariate statistics, numerical algorithms, numerical analysis, numerical software, numerics, percolation theory, Python 3 programming language, R statistical programming language, Radford Neal, sampling, slice sampling, spatial statistics, statistics, stochastic algorithms, stochastic search
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No ordinary lawsuit: Levi Draheim, UUMFE Guardian of the Future
No Ordinary Lawsuit Federal climate change lawsuit plaintiff Levi Draheim in Washington, D.C. (Photo credit: Robin Loznak/Our Children’s Trust) The full story, and in audio from PRI. UU Ministry for Earth description of his award. Levi is a plaintiff in … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, atmosphere, being carbon dioxide, bridge to somewhere, carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide capture, children as political casualties, clear air capture of carbon dioxide, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate justice, environment, environmental law, First Parish Needham, fossil fuels, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, James Hansen, Juliana v United States, Levi Draheim, New England, Our Children's Trust, Unitarian Universalism, UU, UU Mass Action, UU Ministry for Earth, UU Needham, UUMFE
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Seven degrees, whaddya get, a century older and deeper in Carbon debt …
In an amazing report, the Trump administration forecasts +7F rise in global temperatures by 2100, insisting nothing can be done to prevent it happening. In the associated report, the administration claimed that the deep cuts in emissions needed to prevent … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Anthropocene, anti-intellectualism, anti-science, being carbon dioxide, bridge to nowhere, capitalism, carbon dioxide, climate change, climate disruption, climate economics, corruption, Cult of Carbon, dump Trump, global warming
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`If we don’t protect Nature, we cannot protect ourselves’
Harrison Ford‘s speech, at the Climate Action Summit, below: “… Don’t forget Nature.” “If we don’t stop the destruction of our natural world, nothing else will matter.” “We need to include Nature in every corporate, state, and national climate goal.”
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, Anthropocene, bridge to somewhere, carbon dioxide, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate education, corporate responsibility, David Suzuki, ecology, Ecology Action, global warming, Harrison Ford, Hyper Anthropocene, science
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Press conference from Global Climate Action Summit, by the U.S. Climate Alliance
Executive Summary report: FightingForOurFuture–GrowingOurEconomiesAndProtectingOurCommunitiesThroughClimateLeadership–UnitedStatesClimateAlliance2018–ExecutiveSummary Full Report: FightingForOurFuture–GrowingOurEconomiesAndProtectingOurCommunitiesThroughClimateLeadership–UnitedStatesClimateAlliance2018 Precis: Climate-Alliance-FactSheet-June_2018
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, Anthropocene, Arnold Schwarzennegger, Bloomberg, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, carbon dioxide, climate, climate business, climate change, climate disruption, climate economics, decentralized electric power generation, fossil fuel divestment, Hyper Anthropocene, Jerry Brown, Michael Bloomberg, mitigation, moral leadership
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