Distributed Solar: The Democratizaton of Energy
Category Archives: American Statistical Association
A “capacity for sustained muddle-headedness”
Hat tip to Paul Lauenstein, and his physician brother, suggesting the great insights of the late Dr Larry Weed: Great lines, great quotes, a lot of humor: “… a tolerance of ambiguity …” “Y’know, Pavlov said you must teach a … Continue reading
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Statistical Association, anemic data, Bayesian, cardiovascular system, David Spiegelhalter, machine learning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, medicine, Paul Lauenstein, rationality, reason, reasonableness, risk, statistics
Leave a comment
“Bigger Isn’t Always Better When It Comes to Data”: Barry Nussbaum
The President’s Corner in the May 2017 issue of Amstat News, the monthly newsletter of the American Statistical Association (“ASA”), features the interesting exposition by environmental statistician and President of the ASA, Barry Nussbaum, called “Bigger isn’t always better when … Continue reading
March for Science, Boston, 22 April 2017
Cold and wet. A very typical Massachusetts day in Spring. But great …
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Meteorological Association, American Statistical Association, AMETSOC, being carbon dioxide, Buckminster Fuller, Earth Day, Environmental Protection Agency, Hyper Anthropocene, Minsky moment, National Center for Atmospheric Research, NCAR, Principles of Planetary Climate, science, science education, scientific publishing, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Spaceship Earth, Stephen Schneider, Svante Arrhenius, the right to be and act stupid, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, WHOI, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, XKCD
Leave a comment
“You don’t have that option.”
Dr Neil deGrasse Tyson. I think he’s awesome. Marvelous. I saw him in Boston. He and I did not get off well, at the start, because of my being awestruck, and feeling very awkward, and the short time we had … Continue reading
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Meteorological Association, American Statistical Association, AMETSOC, Bayesian, citizen data, citizen science, Climate Lab Book, Earth Day, ecological services, ecology, environment, Hyper Anthropocene, Neill deGrasse Tyson, Principles of Planetary Climate, rationality, Ray Pierrehumbert, reason, reasonableness, religion, science, science education, Science magazine, scientific publishing, secularism, Spaceship Earth, sustainability, the right to be and act stupid, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, United States, XKCD
Leave a comment
“Hadoop is NOT ‘Big Data’ is NOT Analytics”
Arun Krishnan, CEO & Founder at Analytical Sciences comments on this serious problem with the field. Short excerpt: … A person who is able to write code using Hadoop and the associated frameworks is not necessarily someone who can understand … Continue reading
Global blinding, or Nature’s revenge against meteorologists who deny climate disruption
Given climate disruption due to radiative forcing from excess atmospheric CO2, which is a premise of this blog, it is only reasonable to wonder about, speculate, hypothesize, and posit that eventually the amount of this forcing and the feedbacks in … Continue reading
Posted in Accuweather, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Meteorological Association, American Statistical Association, AMETSOC, Anthropocene, climate, climate business, climate change, climate disruption, climate economics, climate justice, dynamical systems, Eaarth, environment, evidence, forecasting, games of chance, geophysics, global blinding, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, Kerry Emanuel, meteorological models, meteorology, National Center for Atmospheric Research, NCAR, nonlinear systems, notes, oceanic eddies, oceanography, radiative forcing, Ricky Rood, science, the right to be and act stupid, the tragedy of our present civilization, theoretical physics
Leave a comment
Taking advantage of the natural skepticism and integrity of scientists and their co-workers, and their commitment to scientific process
I’ve seen this. One can seldom discuss or debate a science denier, whether at (my) presentations at UUAC Sherborn or in many places online, without their employing moving the goalposts or, when they fail to response to an explanation, trotting … Continue reading
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Meteorological Association, American Statistical Association, bridge to nowhere, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, climate disruption, climate economics, climate zombies, Daniel Kahneman, destructive economic development, engineering, ethics, evidence, force multiplier, George Sughihara, Humans have a lot to answer for, Hyper Anthropocene, ignorance, military inferiority, Minsky moment, organizational failures, Our Children's Trust, rationality, reasonableness, science, science denier, selfishness, the right to be and act stupid, the right to know, the stack of lies, the tragedy of our present civilization, United States
Leave a comment
Is the answer to the democratization of Science doing more Citizen Science?
I have been following, with keen interest, the post and comment thread pertaining to “Democratising science” at the blog I monitor daily, … and Then There’s Physics. I think the core subject being discussed is a little different from my … Continue reading
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Meteorological Association, American Statistical Association, AMETSOC, astronomy, astrophysics, biology, citizen data, citizen science, citizenship, data science, ecology, education, environment, evidence, life purpose, local self reliance, marine biology, mathematics, mathematics education, maths, moral leadership, new forms of scientific peer review, open source scientific software, science, science education, statistics, the green century, the right to know
Leave a comment
`Letter to Lamar Smith’
On Ed Hawkins’ blog. The Committee on Science, Space & Technology of the US House of Representatives conducts regular evidence hearings on various science topics. On Wednesday 29th March, there is a hearing on “Climate science: assumptions, policy implications, and … Continue reading
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Meteorological Association, American Statistical Association, AMETSOC, anemic data, anomaly detection, Anthropocene, Ben Santer, Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, BEST, carbon dioxide, changepoint detection, climate, climate change, climate data, climate disruption, Climate Lab Book, climate zombies, dependent data, environment, fossil fuel divestment, geophysics, global warming, greenhouse gases, Humans have a lot to answer for, Hyper Anthropocene, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, meteorology, MIchael Mann, Our Children's Trust, physics, science, smoothing, statistical dependence, the right to be and act stupid, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets, time series
Leave a comment
The first really scary really stupid anti-science prospect from the Trumpistas
They want to shut down and defund DSCOVR: DSCOVR’s cameras are intended to monitor changes in earth’s climate and weather patterns, from ozone and aerosols to temperature and deforestation. One of the scientists involved in developing the satellite told Air … Continue reading
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Meteorological Association, American Statistical Association, AMETSOC, Anthropocene, anti-science, astronomy, astrophysics, civilization, climate, climate change, climate data, climate disruption, energy flux, geophysics, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, ignorance, meteorology, National Center for Atmospheric Research, NCAR, obfuscating data, oceanography, radiative forcing, risk, science, science denier, Spaceship Earth, the problem of evil, the right to be and act stupid, the tragedy of our present civilization
Leave a comment
Papers of the day
From the Machine Learning and Computational Modeling Lab, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran: A. Ahmadian, K. Fouladi, B. N. Araabi, “Writer identification using a probabilistic model of handwritten digits and Approximate Bayesian Computation,” International … Continue reading
Yes, I will be marching for Science in Boston
Like many, including Eli Rabett, I will be marching for Science in April, on Earth Day. My march will be part of the Boston march. Why? Because Science has been and is my life, and it always has been, and … Continue reading
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Meteorological Association, American Statistical Association, AMETSOC, astronomy, astrophysics, Carl Sagan, climate, Climate Lab Book, ecology, Eli Rabett, engineering, fluid dynamics, geophysics, hydrology, marine biology, meteorology, physics, population biology, Principles of Planetary Climate, reason, science, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, theoretical physics, thermodynamics, WHOI, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, XKCD
Leave a comment
What I’m reading …
C. E. Rasmussen, C. K. I. Williams, Gaussian Processes for Machine Learning, MIT Press, 2006. J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. D. Ullman, Mining of Massive Datasets, 2nd edition, 2016. J. Schaeffer, Real Goods Solar Living Sourcebook, 14th edition, New Society … Continue reading
“Oh no, not again” (from ATTP)
Response to a paper by Hermann Harde, from Ken Rice at … And Then There’s Physics. Dr Rice cites two other responses as well: One by Gavin Schmidt at RealClimate. One from 2011 by Gavin Cawley from the University of … Continue reading
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Meteorological Association, American Statistical Association, AMETSOC, atmosphere, being carbon dioxide, Carbon Cycle, carbon dioxide, chemistry, climate, climate disruption, climate education, Climate Lab Book, David Archer, diffusion, diffusion processes, fossil fuels, geophysics, Global Carbon Project, greenhouse gases, ignorance, physics, Principles of Planetary Climate, Ray Pierrehumbert, science, science education
Leave a comment
Zeke Hausfather regarding Baselines and Buoys
Zeke Hausfather at And Then There’s Physics regarding Baselines and Buoys.
Posted in American Meteorological Association, American Statistical Association, AMETSOC, anomaly detection, Anthropocene, Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, BEST, climate, climate data, climate zombies, denial, geophysics, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, NOAA, oceanography
Leave a comment
Ductless Minisplits in Blizzard, 2017-02-09
(Updated, 11th February 2017, 16:15 EST) We heat and cool our home with Fujitsu `ductless minisplit` air source heat pumps. But this is New England, and it’s winter. A common question is how do they do under winter conditions? Well, … Continue reading
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Meteorological Association, American Statistical Association, AMETSOC, Anthropocene, atmosphere, attribution, being carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide, CleanTechnica, climate, climate change, climate disruption, demand-side solutions, efficiency, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, marginal energy sources, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, meteorological models, meteorology, National Center for Atmospheric Research, NCAR, New England, NOAA, nor'easters, oceanic eddies, oceanography, open data, open source scientific software, risk, the right to know, water vapor
Leave a comment
`Environmental science in a post-truth world’ (Lubchenco and Kammen)
Jane Lubchenco is a Professor at Oregon State University, and was administrator of the U.S. NOAA from 2009 through 2013, the U.S. Science Envoy for the Ocean at the State Department from 2014 to 2016, and the president of the … Continue reading
Posted in Akaike Information Criterion, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Statistical Association, being carbon dioxide, Buckminster Fuller, climate, climate change, coastal communities, coasts, ecological services, ecology, environment, environmental law, evidence, global warming, Humans have a lot to answer for, Hyper Anthropocene, ignorance, Jane Lubchenco, marine biology, mass extinctions, population biology, population dynamics, quantitative biology, quantitative ecology, risk, science, Spaceship Earth, sustainability, T'kun Olam, temporal myopia, the tragedy of our present civilization
Leave a comment
A letter to 45
I received a link to this letter regarding the 27th January 2017 White House Executive Order on visas and immigration from the American Meteorological Society. I am also a member of the American Statistical Association, the Ecological Society of America, … Continue reading
Posted in Adam Smith, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Meteorological Association, American Statistical Association, AMETSOC, citizenship, compassion, criminal justice, Donald Trump, economics, education, evidence, fear uncertainty and doubt, free flow of labor, Joseph Schumpeter, politics, the value of financial assets
Leave a comment
Why scientific measurements need to be adjusted
There is an excellent piece in Ars Technica about why scientific measurements need to be adjusted, and the implications of this for climate data. It is written by Scott K Johnson and is called “Thorough, not thoroughly fabricated: The truth … Continue reading
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Meteorological Association, American Statistical Association, AMETSOC, Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, Canettes Blues Band, citizen data, climate data, data science, environment, evidence, geophysics, GISTEMP, HadCRUT4, mathematics education, meteorological models, obfuscating data, open data, physics, science, spatial statistics, Tamino, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, Variable Variability
Leave a comment
Okay, Jan, so what’s your view on climate change?
It’s heading towards year’s end, so it’s natural to think about perspective. In a post from last July, Joseph Heath asks semi-rhetorically, “Why are [proposed] carbon taxes so low?” and, then, he and commenters go on and answer that, essentially, … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Meteorological Association, American Solar Energy Society, American Statistical Association, Anthropocene, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, Buckminster Fuller, carbon dioxide, clear air capture of carbon dioxide, climate change, climate disruption, decentralized electric power generation, distributed generation, ecological services, energy reduction, energy storage, environment, Equiterre, fossil fuel divestment, Gaylord Nelson, Glen Peters, greenhouse gases, Hermann Scheer, Hyper Anthropocene, investment in wind and solar energy, IPCC, James Hansen, Kevin Anderson, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, Mark Jacobson, Massachusetts, Minsky moment, Neill deGrasse Tyson, Our Children's Trust, population biology, quantitative ecology, solar democracy, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, Spaceship Earth, temporal myopia, the energy of the people, the green century, the right to be and act stupid, the tragedy of our present civilization, Walt Disney Company, wind energy, wind power, zero carbon
2 Comments
`Anecdotes don’t make reliable evidence’
From Katharine Hayhoe, who I deeply respect, and from John Cook (*), scientists and the quantitative community have been scolded that the reason they don’t make headway with the public and the science denier community is because their explanations are too … Continue reading
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Meteorological Association, American Statistical Association, AMETSOC, Antarctica, Anthropocene, Arctic, astrophysics, bridge to nowhere, changepoint detection, climate, climate change, climate disruption, disingenuity, ecology, Ecology Action, environment, flooding, floods, fossil fuel divestment, geophysics, glaciology, global warming, greenhouse gases, Hyper Anthropocene, ice sheet dynamics, ignorance, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, meteorology, Minsky moment, Neill deGrasse Tyson, NOAA, oceanography, planning, reason, reasonableness, science, shorelines, the right to be and act stupid, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets
Leave a comment
Sleeping Giant Awakening
Originally posted on Climate Denial Crock of the Week:
https://twitter.com/johnmyers/status/809097380456865792 Wikipedia: Isoroku Yamamoto’s sleeping giant quotation is a quote by the Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto regarding the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor by forces of Imperial Japan. The quotation is portrayed at the very end of…
Posted in adaptation, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Meteorological Association, American Solar Energy Society, American Statistical Association, AMETSOC, Anthropocene, California, Carbon Worshipers, citizen data, citizen science, climate, climate change, climate data, climate disruption, data science, Donald Trump, ecology, Ecology Action, geophysics, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, ignorance, Jerry Brown, science, sustainability, the right to be and act stupid, the right to know, the stack of lies, the tragedy of our present civilization
Leave a comment
Why smooth?
I’ve encountered a number of blog posts this week which seem not to understand the Bias-Variance Tradeoff in regard to Mean-Squared-Error. These arose in connection with smoothing splines, which I was studying in connection with multivariate adaptive regression splines, that … Continue reading
Posted in Akaike Information Criterion, American Statistical Association, Antarctica, carbon dioxide, climate change, denial, global warming, information theoretic statistics, likelihood-free, multivariate adaptive regression splines, non-parametric model, science denier, smoothing, splines, statistical dependence
1 Comment
USN Admiral David Titley (ret)
Posted in adaptation, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Meteorological Association, American Statistical Association, AMETSOC, Anthropocene, attribution, bridge to nowhere, Carl Sagan, citizenship, civilization, clean disruption, climate, climate change, climate disruption, Dan Satterfield, ecology, fossil fuels, geophysics, Hyper Anthropocene, NCAR, oceanography, science, science education, the tragedy of our present civilization, U.S. Navy, Wally Broecker
1 Comment
On the rise of the Trumpistas …
Just a couple of things to write about The Obvious. I have written a couple of longer thoughts as Comments, here and here, at … And Then There’s Physics. I reiterate that I don’t believe any voter was hoodwinked, that … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Meteorological Association, American Solar Energy Society, American Statistical Association, AMETSOC, Anthropocene, atheism, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, bridge to nowhere, Buckminster Fuller, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Carbon Worshipers, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate zombies, coastal communities, consumption, corporate supply chains, cynicism, Daniel Kahneman, denial, disingenuity, Donald Trump, dynamical systems, Equiterre, exponential growth, extended supply chains, Exxon, fear uncertainty and doubt, forecasting, fossil fuels, geophysics, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, ice sheet dynamics, ignorance, Joseph Schumpeter, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Interfaith Coalition for Climate Action, meteorology, Minsky moment, moral leadership, oceanography, organizational failures, physics, Principles of Planetary Climate, rationality, reason, reasonableness, risk, science, science denier, science education, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, solar democracy, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, Spaceship Earth, temporal myopia, the energy of the people, the right to be and act stupid, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets, Tony Seba, wind energy, wind power, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, ``The tide is risin'/And so are we''
2 Comments
On failing to learn important lessons
As previously posted here, people along coasts and their governments, are failing to learn the lessons of both climate-induced sea level rise, and storms like Extratropical Sandy. Now, it’s startlingly clear how ignorant people are of these necessary lessons. The … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, American Meteorological Association, American Statistical Association, bollocks, case law, citizenship, civilization, climate change, climate disruption, climate economics, coastal communities, coasts, corporate litigation on damage from fossil fuel emissions, ecological services, economics, environment, environmental law, evidence, flooding, forecasting, global warming, greenhouse gases, hydrology, Hyper Anthropocene, John Englander, liberal climate deniers, living shorelines, meteorological models, meteorology, nor'easters, oceanography, physics, planning, politics, rationality, reason, reasonableness, Robert Young, science, science denier, sea level rise, seawalls, shorelines, sustainability, the right to be and act stupid, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets, water, zero carbon
1 Comment
Polls, Political Forecasting, and the Plight of Five Thirty Eight
On 17th October 2016 AT 7:30 p.m., Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com wrote about how, as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s polling numbers got better, it was more difficult for FiveThirtyEight‘s models to justify increasing her probability of winning, although … Continue reading
Posted in abstraction, American Statistical Association, anemic data, citizen science, citizenship, civilization, economics, education, forecasting, information theoretic statistics, mathematics, maths, politics, prediction markets, sociology, the right to know, theoretical physics, thermodynamics
Leave a comment
