Distributed Solar: The Democratizaton of Energy
Author Archives: ecoquant
I just chose to support Climate Adam!
I just chose to support ClimateAdam. You can, too! One of my many favorite videos by Climate Adam: Here’s another: Why is supporting Climate Adam and talking about climate so important? Here’s one reason why: Backing this up:
October 2013 retrospective … Karl Ragabo on ‘Talk Solar’ podcast, regarding value of solar generation
In October of 2013, Karl Ragabo was interviewed on the Talk Solar podcast from Beth Bond of Decatur, GA. This was shortly after the first version of the Value of Solar report was issued by IREC. Listen to it below: … Continue reading
Posted in Beth Bond, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, bridge to somewhere, Buckminster Fuller, CleanTechnica, climate disruption, climate economics, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, distributed generation, ecomodernism, ecopragmatism, energy storage, energy utilities, engineering, investment in wind and solar energy, investments, Joseph Schumpeter, Karl Ragabo, microgrids, public utility commissions, regulatory capture, resiliency, RevoluSun, solar democracy, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, Sonnen community, Stewart Brand, stranded assets, Talk Solar, the energy of the people, the green century, Tony Seba, utility company death spiral
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Repeat of Long Mill 1, on a moderately warm day
(Click on map to be taken to my Ride with GPS site where you can interact with the route display.) I am, by the way, steadily changing my displays to present data in Metric Units rather than English Units. I … Continue reading
Posted in Massachusetts, Nature, running
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Weekend break: Theme for Earth Day
By John Williams:
Posted in agroecology, Aldo Leopold, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Statistical Association, an uncaring American public, argoecology, biology, Botany, Buckminster Fuller, climate, David Suzuki, dynamical systems, E. O. Wilson, earth, Earth Day, ecological disruption, ecological services, Ecological Society of America, ecology, Ecology Action, ecomodernism, ecopragmatism, ecopragmatist, Eli Rabett, environment, Equiterre, evolution, fragmentation of ecosystems, global warming, green tech, greenhouse gases, greenwashing, invasive species, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, investments, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Lotka-Volterra systems, marine biology, Mathematics and Climate Research Network, microbiomes, NOAA, oceans, Peter del Tredici, Peter Diggle, Pharyngula, physical materialism, quantitative biology, quantitative ecology, rate of return regulation, scientific publishing, Spaceship Earth, statistical dependence, Stefan Rahmstorf, Tamino
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Still a climate hawk, and appreciate all my climate friends: To the climate deniers, the greenwashers, the liberal environmental opportunists, and the environmental purists who will never compromise …
“Not ready to make nice” (Dixie Chicks) I stick by my friends in these hard times: Tamino’s community The Azimuth Project Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution The American Statistical Association The International Society for Bayesian Analysis Losing Earth: The decade we … Continue reading
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Statistical Association, Anthropocene, Bayesian, climate change, climate disruption, climate economics, climate grief, coastal investment risks, ecological disruption, ecological services, ecomodernism, ecopragmatism, engineering, environment, flooding, global warming, Grant Foster, Humans have a lot to answer for, Hyper Anthropocene, investment in wind and solar energy, investments, Joseph Schumpeter, Mathematics and Climate Research Network, mathematics education, personal purity, population biology, quantitative biology, quantitative ecology, regulatory capture, risk, riverine flooding, sampling without replacement, Scituate, secularism, shorelines, solar democracy, solar domination, solar energy, Solar Freakin' Roadways, solar power, SolarPV.tv, Spaceship Earth, statistical dependence, SunPower, the energy of the people, the green century, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets, tragedy of the horizon, Unitarian Universalism, unreason, utility company death spiral, UU Needham, Wally Broecker, Walt Disney Company, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, ``The tide is risin'/And so are we''
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Another reason why the future of Science and STEM education in the United States is cloudy
From Nature‘s “Universities spooked by Trump order tying free speech to grants“, with the subheading “White House policy will require universities to certify that they protect free speech to remain eligible for research funding”, comes this chilling news: US President … Continue reading
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Mathematical Society, American Statistical Association, an ignorant American public, an uncaring American public, anti-intellectualism, anti-science, climate change, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, emigration, European Union, mathematics, science, United States
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Long Mill 1, a run
(Click on map to be taken to my Ride with GPS site where you can interact with the route display.)
Posted in running, Westwood
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Result of our own fiddling: Bob Watson and climate risk
https://sms.cam.ac.uk/media/746045 Professor Bob Watson, University of East Anglia, presents the summary risk, climate change: The question is not whether the Earth’s climate will change in response to human activities, but when, where and by how much. Human activities are changing … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, attribution, carbon dioxide, Carbon Worshipers, catastrophe modeling, climate, climate change, climate data, climate disruption, climate economics, climate education, climate grief, climate justice, ecological disruption, ecology, Ecology Action, environment, global blinding, global warming, greenhouse gases, greenwashing, meteorology, National Center for Atmospheric Research, non-parametric model, Principles of Planetary Climate, radiative forcing, reasonableness, science, solar democracy, solar domination, solar energy, Solar Freakin' Roadways, solar power, SolarPV.tv, Solpad, Sonnen community, Spaceship Earth, stranded assets, sustainability, the energy of the people, the green century, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets, tragedy of the horizon, utility company death spiral, water, wind energy, wind power
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Welcome to snowy New England … Bad place for solar PV, right?
And this is ISO-NE, who, as little as three years back were highly sceptical anything other than additional natural gas generation could supply the ever increasing electrical power needs of the region, particularly with the withdrawal of generation from oil, … Continue reading
Posted in American Solar Energy Society, Amory Lovins, Arnold Schwarzennegger, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, bridge to somewhere, clean disruption, CleanTechnica, climate economics, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, corporations, decentralized energy, destructive economic development, distributed generation, ecological disruption, economic trade, economics, ecopragmatism, ecopragmatist, engineering, entrpreneurs, green tech, Green Tech Media, grid defection, investment in wind and solar energy, ISO-NE, Joseph Schumpeter, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, rate of return regulation, reworking infrastructure, rights of the inhabitants of the Commonwealth, Sankey diagram, solar democracy, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, SolarPV.tv, Sonnen community, Spaceship Earth, technology, the energy of the people, 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, UNFCCC, Unitarian Universalism, unreason, utility company death spiral, Wally Broecker, wishful environmentalism, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, zero carbon
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One of the happiest two hours I’ve spent in months: A Professor Tony Seba update
From end of 2018: from alianza FiiDEMAC. And, indeed, it was one of the most uplifting two hours I’ve recently spent. I have long been an admirer of Professor Tony Seba. I have read his books. This was an update … Continue reading
Posted in an ignorant American public, an uncaring American public, anti-intellectualism, anti-science, being carbon dioxide, bridge to somewhere, climate business, climate change, climate disruption, climate economics, climate education, corporations, Cult of Carbon, decentralized energy, distributed generation, ecomodernism, economics, ecopragmatism, ecopragmatist, electricity, entrpreneurs, extended producer responsibility, extended supply chains, Exxon, global warming, Green New Deal, Humans have a lot to answer for, Hyper Anthropocene, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, investments, Joseph Schumpeter, Juliana v United States, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, local generation, local self reliance, Mark Jacobson, Neill deGrasse Tyson, politics, science, solar democracy, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, supply chains, sustainability, temporal myopia, the energy of the people, the green century, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets, Tony Seba, trading, tragedy of the horizon, utility company death spiral, wishful environmentalism, zero carbon
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“Ridiculously well-designed rockets”, not to mention some seriously awesome Mathematics
I’m just amazed with the quality of their controls systems, understated in the video, but which are absolutely critical to success. For more technical details, see: B. Açıkmeşe, J. M. Carson III, L. Blackmore, “Lossless convexification of nonconvex control bound … Continue reading
Macros in R
via Macros in R See also: The gtools package of R which enables these. There’s a description and motivation beginninng on page 11 of an (old: 2001) R News issue. They have been around a long time, but I haven’t … Continue reading
Temperatures, Summers, Germany, ≈ 50.5N to 57.5N latitude
(Click on figure for larger image and use browser Back Button to return to blog.) Hat tip to Gregor Aisch, Adam Pearce, and Steve Hoey, and sourced from the mashup dataset and visuals by Lisa Charlotte Rost. Mr Aisch’s innovation … Continue reading
“Rising seas erode $15.8 billion in home value from Maine to Mississippi”
From the First Street Foundation‘s press release, with selected figures below. This is based upon the methods described in: S. A. McAlpine, J. R. Porter, “Estimating recent local impacts of Sea-Level Rise on current real-estate losses: A housing market case … Continue reading
Procrustes tangent distance is better than SNCD
I’ve written two posts here on using a Symmetrized Normalized Compression Divergence or SNCD for comparing time series. One introduced the SNCD and described its relationship to compression distance, and the other applied the SNCD to clustering days at a … Continue reading
Posted in data science, dependent data, descriptive statistics, divergence measures, hydrology, Ian Dryden, information theoretic statistics, J.T.Kent, Kanti Mardia, non-parametric statistics, normalized compression divergence, quantitative ecology, R statistical programming language, spatial statistics, statistical series, time series
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“Unpleasant surprises in the greenhouse” (in memorium, Professor Wallace Broecker)
These are excerpts from a 1987 paper by Professor Wallace Broecker, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest climate scientists and oceanographers in the last century. . . .
One possible way to do small, modular nuclear power
Featured in Science Magazine today, NuScale Power, a spinout from Oregon State University, is planning simpler, smaller, safer gang-lashable nuclear reactors, with a trial in the early 2020s. A schematic is shown below. As I’ve noted here elsewhere, the reason … Continue reading
Legacy
It should be noted that, exponential growth is a plank in the theoretical framework of modern Ecology. See L. Pásztor, Z. Botta-Dukát, G. Magyar, T. Gzárán, G. Meszéna, Theory-Based Ecology: A Darwinian approach, 2016. Dr Suzuki points out that, objectively, … Continue reading
Professor Kevin Anderson: “Climate’s holy trinity”
24th January 2019, Oxford, England, UK Appalling failure: Who is responsible: Yeah, it’s us.
On bag bans and sampling plans
Plastic bag bans are all the rage. It’s not the purpose of this post to take a position on the matter. Before you do, however, I’d recommend checking out this: and especially this: and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution has … Continue reading
Posted in bag bans, citizen data, citizen science, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Ecology Action, evidence, Google, Google Earth, Google Maps, goverance, lifestyle changes, microplastics, municipal solid waste, oceans, open data, planning, plastics, politics, pollution, public health, quantitative ecology, R, R statistical programming language, reasonableness, recycling, rhetorical statistics, sampling, sampling networks, statistics, surveys, sustainability
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A lagomorph has an idea which might save the world
Eli, who offers a clever and consistent consumption-based accounting scheme. Consumption-based Carbon accounting: Does it have a future? Consumption-based accounting of CO2 emissions
“Renewables are set to penetrate the global energy system more quickly than any fuel in history” (BP, 2019 Energy Outlook)
Selections from BP Energy Outlook: 2019 edition: In the ET scenario, the costs of wind and solar power continue to decline significantly, broadly in line with their past learning curves. To give a sense of the importance of technology gains … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, being carbon dioxide, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, BP, bridge to somewhere, Carbon Tax, clean disruption, CleanTechnica, climate change, climate disruption, corporate citizenship, corporate litigation on damage from fossil fuel emissions, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, ecomodernism, economic trade, ecopragmatist, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuel infrastructure, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, investments, local generation, local self reliance, solar democracy, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, the energy of the people, the green century, the right to be and act stupid, the right to know, the value of financial assets, Tony Seba, tragedy of the horizon, utility company death spiral, wind energy, wind power, zero carbon
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Tit-For-Tat in Repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma: President Donald Trump creates the Green New Deal
Jonathan Zasloff at Legal Planet offers “Donald Trump creates the Green New Deal”. The closing excerpt: But what goes around comes around. A President Harris, or Warren, or Booker, etc. etc. can just as easily declare a National Emergency on … Continue reading
Posted in climate change, game theory, global warming, Green New Deal
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“What’s new with recycling”
South Shore Recycling Cooperative Director Claire Galkowski, spoke in Norwell, at the South Shore Natural Science Center, a couple of weeks ago:
Posted in Amory Lovins, Anthropocene, biofuels, Carbon Cycle, Claire Galkowski, coastal communities, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, EBC-NE, ecomodernism, ecopragmatist, education, extended producer responsibility, extended supply chains, green tech, greenhouse gases, local self reliance, Massachusetts, microplastics, paper, plastics, public health, quantitative ecology, recycling, science, solid waste, South Shore Recycling Cooperative, sustainability
Tagged plastic bag bans
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“Is the Green New Deal’s ambition smart policy?”
Ann Carlson is the Shirley Shapiro Professor of Environmental Law and the co-Faculty Director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA School of Law. Writing at Legal Planet, she takes on assessing the Green New … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, anti-intellectualism, bollocks, bridge to somewhere, cement production, clear air capture of carbon dioxide, climate business, climate change, climate disruption, climate economics, climate education, global warming, Green New Deal, greenhouse gases, negative emissions, zero carbon
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From the YEARS Project: How Climate Impacts Mental Health (#climatefacts)
Dr Kate Marvel: “We need courage, not hope, to face Climate Change“. Also the magnificent “We should never have called it Earth“, also from Dr Marvel. In “Hope, despair and transformation: Climate change and the promotion of mental health and … Continue reading
Status of Solar PV in Massachusetts
From PV Magazine‘s John Weaver: At Solar Power Northeast, the DOER of Massachusetts noted that with the mandated 400 MW of qualified projects program review upcoming, and heavy volume deployed in National Grid territory, there is strong consideration to expand … Continue reading
Posted in Amory Lovins, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, clean disruption, CleanTechnica, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, distributed generation, investment in wind and solar energy, ISO-NE, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, solar democracy, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, sustainability, the energy of the people
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“Applications of Deep Learning to ocean data inference and subgrid parameterization”
This is another nail in the coffin of the claim I heard at last year’s Lorenz-Charney Symposium at MIT that machine learning methods would not make a serious contribution to advancements in the geophysical sciences. T. Bolton, L. Zanna, “Applications … Continue reading
Posted in American Meteorological Association, American Statistical Association, artificial intelligence, Azimuth Project, deep learning, deep recurrent neural networks, dynamical systems, geophysics, machine learning, Mathematics and Climate Research Network, National Center for Atmospheric Research, oceanography, oceans, science, stochastic algorithms
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The shelf-break front, fisheries, climate change, and finding things out
From Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Support them. Claire and I do.
