Distributed Solar: The Democratizaton of Energy
Author Archives: ecoquant
Another kind of latent data: That encoded in journal and report figures
Many scholars today expect to find data as datasets. When I took some courses in Geology at Binghamton University, specifically in Tectonics and Paleomagnetism, I learned that libraries serves, in many cases, as Geologists’ repositories of data. No, the libraries … Continue reading
“Because we need to make the science stick.”
H. Holden Thorp, writing in Science, an excerpt: The scientific community needs to step out of its labs and support evidence-based decision-making in a much more public way. The good news is that over the past few years, scientists have … Continue reading
Australia: Too little, too late, and what about the future?
Or, in other words, borrowing from a bookstore in Cobargo, New South Wales: “Post-Apocalyptic Fiction has been moved to Current Affairs.”
Greta Thunberg on the BBC : Her guest edit
Also featuring: Svante Thunberg Sir David Attenborough Mark Carney Robert Del Naja Maarten Wetselaar Synopsis Svante Thunberg and Greta speaking to Sir David Attenborough for the first time. Also, outgoing Bank of England chief Mark Carney on how the financial … Continue reading
Posted in being carbon dioxide, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, Carbon Worshipers, climate disruption, corporate responsibility, Cult of Carbon, ecomodernism, global warming, Green New Deal, greenhouse gases, Greta Thunberg, Hyper Anthropocene, investment in wind and solar energy, Juliana v United States, keep fossil fuels in ground, Mark Carney, mitigating climate disruption, On being Carbon Dioxide, Our Children's Trust, radiative forcing, Svante Arrhenius, the green century, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets, zero carbon
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Why Massachusetts needs the Transportation and Climate Initiative
The Massachusetts Transportation and Climate Initiative (TCI) or something very much like it, perhaps stronger, is needed because of one simple reason. The false color heatmap below shows the Carbon Dioxide (CO2) emissions from roadways in Southern New England in … Continue reading
Posted in an uncaring American public, being carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide, Carbon Tax, Carbon Worshipers, climate change, climate disruption, ecological disruption, electricity markets, emissions, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuel infrastructure, fossil fuels, gas pipeline leaks, Global Carbon Project, global warming, Governor Charlie Baker, keep fossil fuels in ground, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, Massachusetts, mitigating climate disruption, pollution, public health, public transport, public utility commissions, public welfare, the tragedy of our present civilization, unreason, vehicle emissions, zero carbon
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We shouldn’t forget where we are on the course towards climate disruption
We shouldn’t forget where we are on the course towards climate disruption. We shouldn’t forget we’ve already disrupted. Emissions are still increasing. This means it’s getting worse every year. It is not something which is in the future. It’s here … Continue reading
More reasons why centralized grids and ISOs/RTOs cannot be trusted, with an afterthought
From Inside Climate News and I’m sure it’ll eventually show up at Legal Planet, where they touched the matter over a year ago: The new rules, approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, are designed to counteract state subsidies that … Continue reading
Posted in American Solar Energy Society, an ignorant American public, an uncaring American public, Ørsted, Berkeley Haas Energy, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, bridge to somewhere, Carbon Worshipers, children as political casualties, clean disruption, CleanTechnica, corporate litigation on damage from fossil fuel emissions, Cult of Carbon, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, destructive economic development, distributed generation, ecomodernism, ecopragmatism, electric vehicles, electrical energy storage, electricity, electricity markets, emissions, energy levy, energy storage, fossil fuel infrastructure, green tech, Green Tech Media, greenhouse gases, grid defection, Hermann Scheer, Hyper Anthropocene, IEEE, investment in wind and solar energy, ISO-NE, Karl Ragabo, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, local generation, local self reliance, Mark Jacobson, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, Mathematics and Climate Research Network, Michael Bloomberg, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, population dynamics, public utility commissions, PUCs, rate of return regulation, regulatory capture, solar democracy, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, solar revolution, SunPower, the green century, the right to be and act stupid, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets, Tony Seba, tragedy of the horizon, utility company death spiral, Westwood, wind energy, wind power, zero carbon
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On odds of storms, and extreme precipitation
People talk about “thousand year storms”. Rather than being a storm having a recurrence time of once in a thousand years, these are storms which have a 0.001 chance per year of occurring. Storms aren’t the only weather events of … Continue reading
Posted in American Meteorological Association, American Statistical Association, AMETSOC, catastrophe modeling, climate disruption, climate economics, climate education, ecopragmatism, evidence, extreme events, extreme value distribution, flooding, floods, games of chance, global warming, global weirding, insurance, meteorological models, meteorology, R, R statistical programming language, real estate values, risk, Risky Business, riverine flooding, science, Significance
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There’s Big Data, Tiny Data, and now Dead Data
You’ve heard of Big Data. You may have heard of Tiny Data. But now, presented in the Harvard Data Science Review, Professor Steve Stigler presents Dead Data See: S. M. Stigler, “Data have a limited shelf life”, Harvard Data Science … Continue reading
Posted in big data, dead data, statistics, tiny data
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JIGSAW-GEO v1.0
See: D. Engwirda, 2017: JIGSAW-GEO (1.0): Locally orthogonal staggered unstructured grid generation for general circulation modelling on the sphere, Geosci. Model Dev., 10, 2117-2140, doi:10.5194/gmd-10-2117-2017 and a general description at NASA. The figure below is copied from there.
ClimateAdam opines upon 45
Applause! Let it be said, apart from his so-called base, 45 is not a popular guy. Even his bud, Boris Johnson, is making moves to avoid his endorsement. Yeah, that’s a popular, well respected guy. Isn’t he?
Posted in Climate Adam, climate denial, climate disruption
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Consumption: Towards the Trillionth Tonne
(Click on figure to see a larger image. It will open in a new browser tab.) The Trillionth Tonne
What you need to do
Yes, I know, this is from Orsted, a public company which, primarily, builds offshore wind farms. And, as a result, you out there (which is, frankly, an infinitesimal fraction of the world, because, basically, no one follows me), will critique … Continue reading
Posted in #climatestrike, American Solar Energy Society, an uncaring American public, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, bridge to somewhere, clean disruption, climate disruption, climate policy, decentralized electric power generation, destructive economic development, distributed generation, ecological disruption, ecological services, ecomodernism, economics, ecopragmatism, electrical energy storage, emissions, exponential growth, extended producer responsibility, finance, Friedman, South Shore Recycling Cooperative
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What we’ve done and do to ourselves
Who do you think carries most of the burden for fixing the problem? Action. “We have work to do.” (Bill Nye)
A glimpse of Solar Domination
Hat tip to PV Magazine: B. Frew, W. Cole, P. Denholm, W. Frazier, N. Vincent, R. Margolis, “Sunny with a Chance of Curtailment: Operating the US Grid with very high levels of solar photovoltaics“, (open access) iScience, 21, 22 November … Continue reading
Posted in American Solar Energy Society, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, bridge to somewhere, Buckminster Fuller, clean disruption, climate economics, destructive economic development, disruption, distributed generation, EBC-NE, ecocapitalism, ecopragmatism, electrical energy storage, electricity, electricity markets, energy storage, energy utilities, FERC, fossil fuel divestment, green tech, Hermann Scheer, investment in wind and solar energy, keep fossil fuels in ground, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, photovoltaics, Sankey diagram, solar democracy, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, solar revolution, Spaceship Earth, the energy of the people, the green century, Tony Seba, tragedy of the horizon, wind energy, wind power, zero carbon
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On why I write this blog
I mused a bit about why I write this blog here.
Posted in science
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“On the road again …”
Suggested citation: Davis, Lucas. “Electrification? We Are Already On The Way“, Berkeley Haas Energy Institute Blog. Even without environmental incentives, the United States has moved towards greater electrification. Note, however, that Massachusetts is not numbered amongst the Enlightened.
Posted in adaptation, Amory Lovins, Anthropocene, Berkeley Haas Energy, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, bridge to somewhere, CleanTechnica, cliamate mitigation, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, electricity, electricity markets, energy utilities, global warming, greenhouse gases, greenwashing, ILSR, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, solar revolution
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Wanna buy some cheap land?
Hat tip to the Financial Times.
“Microplastics in the Ocean: Emergency or Exaggeration?” (Morss Colloquium, WHOI)
Update, 2019-10-28 00:34 ET I have compiled notes from the talks above, and from the audience Q&A and documented these in a Google Jam here.
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, bag bans, Claire Galkowski, coastal communities, coasts, diffusion processes, microbiomes, microplastics, NOAA, oceanic eddies, oceanography, oceans, perceptions, phytoplankton, plastics, pollution, quantitative biology, quantitative ecology, science, science education, statistical ecology, WHOI, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
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Agrivoltaics
A farmers’ guide to going solar. Money crop.
Sir David King (1), climate: What’s it all about, and what it will mean
Note the citing of how talent migrated from the fossil fuel industry to offshore wind energy.
“The financial crash and the climate crisis” (The New Yorker Radio Hour)
A great podcast episode. Check out the thoughts of the late Professor Martin Weitzman as well, in “The man who got economists to take climate nightmares seriously“.
Posted in American Statistical Association, an uncaring American public, Anthropocene, being carbon dioxide, bifurcations, bridge to nowhere, Buckminster Fuller, Carbon Cycle, carbon dioxide, Carbon Worshipers, catastrophe modeling, climate change, climate disruption, climate economics, climate grief, climate justice, climate mitigation, climate nightmares, climate policy, climate zombies, coastal investment risks, flooding, floods, Florida, global warming, global weirding, home resale values, Hyper Anthropocene, objective reality, oceans, Robert Young, Scituate, shorelines, Sir David King, temporal myopia, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets, unreason
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House Speaker Pelosi
Update, 2019-10-20, 00:37 EDT And it’s not only Speaker Pelosi, but Admiral William McRaven, and then General Joseph Votel.
The CO2 Coalition: A cabal of digital denial
That’s climate denial. And the CO2 Coalition is all over it. Led by 45‘s climate toady Dr William Happer, it is funded by a cast of the usual suspects: These funds make their way to (at least some of) their … Continue reading
Acceleration in rise of Global Mean Sea Level (Yi, Heki, Qian, from 2017)
Most impressive! This is Figure 2 of S. Yi, K. Heki, A. Qian, “Acceleration in the global mean sea level rise: 2005-2015”, 2017, Geophysical Research Letters: See also their data supplement. Of particular interest to me is their use of … Continue reading
Eminent Domain, the Natural Gas Act, and Explosive Methane Pipelines
Courts are beginning to question the appropriateness of eminent domain as applied to rights of way for pipelines. Damn about time.
Posted in American Petroleum Institute, an uncaring American public, Anthropocene, bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, CleanTechnica, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, emissions, explosive methane, FERC, fossil fuel divestment, Governor Charlie Baker, greenhouse gases, keep fossil fuels in ground, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, methane, mitigating climate disruption, natural gas, petroleum, pipelines, politics, public utility commissions, public welfare, PUCs, regulatory capture, rights of the inhabitants of the Commonwealth, stranded assets, the tragedy of our present civilization, tragedy of the horizon, utility company death spiral, zero carbon
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