Distributed Solar: The Democratizaton of Energy
Author Archives: ecoquant
Series, symmetrized Normalized Compressed Divergences and their logit transforms
(Major update on 11th January 2019. Minor update on 16th January 2019.) On comparing things The idea of a calculating a distance between series for various purposes has received scholarly attention for quite some time. The most common application is … Continue reading
Posted in Akaike Information Criterion, bridge to somewhere, computation, content-free inference, data science, descriptive statistics, divergence measures, engineering, George Sughihara, information theoretic statistics, likelihood-free, machine learning, mathematics, model comparison, model-free forecasting, multivariate statistics, non-mechanistic modeling, non-parametric statistics, numerical algorithms, statistics, theoretical physics, thermodynamics, time series
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Winter composting: How to make friends with microbes and defy weather (podcast, too)
(This blog post is accompanied by an explanatory podcast. See below.) Many people compost. It can be easy or hard, depending upon your tolerance for turning and work, and of the Wild Thing who wants a free meal. I can … Continue reading
Posted in agroecology, argoecology, Botany, Carbon Cycle, composting, ecological services, Ecological Society of America, ecology, engineering, environment, fermentation, First Parish Needham, karma, local self reliance, Nature, science, solid waste management, sustainability, sustainable landscaping, Unitarian Universalism, UU, UU Humanists, UU Needham, water as a resource
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Gov Jerry Brown on Meet the Press, a parting comment on 2018 at Bill Gates’ Notes, and the best climate blog post of 2018
Segment One Outgoing Governor Jerry Brown of California on NBC’s Meet the Press this morning: I’ll miss him there, but I don’t think Gov Jerry is going anywhere soon. Segment Two Bill Gates Notes offered an end of year summary … Continue reading
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Chemical Society, American Meteorological Association, an ignorant American public, Anthropocene, anti-science, astronomy, atmosphere, attribution, being carbon dioxide, Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, Bill Gates, Blackbody radiation, bridge to somewhere, California, carbon dioxide, cement production, climate, climate change, climate zombies, development as anti-ecology, ecological services, economics, Eli Rabett, energy flux, environment, evidence, friends and colleagues, global warming, Grant Foster, greenhouse gases, Hyper Anthropocene, investment in wind and solar energy, Jerry Brown, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, meteorology, nuclear power, oceanography, oceans, Principles of Planetary Climate, quantum mechanics, science, sea level rise, solar democracy, solar energy, solar power, sustainability, the energy of the people, the green century, the tragedy of our present civilization, tragedy of the horizon, University of California, University of California Berkeley, water as a resource, wind energy, wind power, wishful environmentalism, zero carbon
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Mark Carney is aligned with the geo-biological-physical everything
Bank of England Governor Mark Carney might not be popular on all his pronouncements, but he’s the most comprehensively educated on the matter of climate risk of any in the international discussion groups of the OECD. Some people will be … Continue reading
administrative note
Two users — actually one masquerading as two — have been banned from commenting, both because, for the most part, they/he/it have contributed very little to the discussion here, have of late been both arrogant and personally insulting, both here … Continue reading
Posted in science
Why Americans and Britons work such long hours
Why Americans and Britons work such long hours.
Posted in business, economics, labor, statistics
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Negative Nuclear Power
This post was originally a little too concise. (I posted it from my Google Pixel 2.) The referenced papers are Grubler (2010), Boccard (2014), and Escobar-Rangel and Lévêque, as well as a slide presentation by them. In addition, there is … Continue reading
“Electric Dreams”, from BBC Radio 4’s “Costing the Earth”
I just listened to the podcast from Peter Gibbs of BBC Radio 4‘s program, “Costing the Earth”. He recounts the experience of owning and driving a nominally 200 mile range EV: Is the time finally right to buy an electric … Continue reading
Towards the end of 2018, Newtonmas, and on commenting standards that have excelled
I have published 1,036 posts at my blog, and the very first was published on 29th November 2012. It concerned dangers of indiscriminately using clustering algorithms, such as K-means. For example, K-means cannot successfully recognize many clusters which are not … Continue reading
Posted in blog, P Z Myers, Pharyngula, Wordpress
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Earth’s energy imbalance: Rise in ocean heat content is accelerating
L. Cheng, K. E. Trenberth, J. Fasullo, T. Boyer, J. Abraham, J. Zhu, “Improved estimates of ocean heat content from 1960 to 2015“, Science Advances, 10 March 2017, 3(3), e1601545. Abstract Earth’s energy imbalance (EEI) drives the ongoing global warming … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, climate change, geophysics, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, oceanography, oceans, science
People ask me, When you want to feel optimistic, or be optimistic, what do you do?
Updated, 1st January 2019 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. … Continue reading
Posted in Ørsted, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, CleanTechnica, energy, energy utilities, Tony Seba
“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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