
Distributed Solar: The Democratizaton of Energy

Blogroll
- Mrooijer's Numbers R 4Us
- Team Andrew Weinberg Walking September 8th for the Jimmy Fund!
- American Statistical Association
- SASB Sustainability Accounting Standards Board
- Earth Family Alpha Michael Osborne’s blog (former Executive at Austin Energy, now Chairman of the Electric Utility Commission for Austin, Texas)
- Bob Altemeyer on authoritarianism (via Dan Satterfield) The science behind the GOP civil war
- Thaddeus Stevens quotes As I get older, I admire this guy more and more
- What If
- Tony Seba Solar energy, electric vehicle, energy storage, and business disruption professor and visionary
- Healthy Home Healthy Planet
- Dominic Cummings blog Chief advisor to the PM, United Kingdom
- Why "naive Bayes" is not Bayesian Explains why the so-called “naive Bayes” classifier is not Bayesian. The setup is okay, but estimating probabilities by doing relative frequencies instead of using Dirichlet conjugate priors or integration strays from The Path.
- Busting Myths About Heat Pumps Heat pumps are perhaps the most efficient heating and cooling systems available. Recent literature distributed by utilities hawking natural gas and other sources use performance figures from heat pumps as they were available 15 years ago. See today’s.
- The Mermaid's Tale A conversation about biological complexity and evolution, and the societal aspects of science
- Brendon Brewer on Overfitting Important and insightful presentation by Brendon Brewer on overfitting
- Subsidies for wind and solar versus subsidies for fossil fuels
- Slice Sampling
- Why It’s So Freaking Hard To Make A Good COVID-19 Model Five Thirty Eight’s take on why pandemic modeling is so difficult
- Nadler Strategy, LLC, on sustainability Thinking about business, efficient and effective management, and business value
- London Review of Books
- Beautiful Weeds of New York City
- Mertonian norms
- Harvard's Project Implicit
- Earth Family Beta MIchael Osborne’s blog on Science and the like
- ggplot2 and ggfortify Plotting State Space Time Series with ggplot2 and ggfortify
- Peter Congdon's Bayesian statistical modeling Peter Congdon’s collection of links pertaining to his several books on Bayesian modeling
- Musings on Quantitative Paleoecology Quantitative methods and palaeoenvironments.
- John Kruschke's "Dong Bayesian data analysis" blog Expanding and enhancing John’s book of same title (now in second edition!)
- Tim Harford's “More or Less'' Tim Harford explains – and sometimes debunks – the numbers and statistics used in political debate, the news and everyday life
- WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION, reviews Reviews of Cathy O’Neil’s new book
- The Keeling Curve: its history History of the Keeling Curve and Charles David Keeling
- The Plastic Pick-Up: Discovering new sources of marine plastic pollution
- Darren Wilkinson's introduction to ABC Darren Wilkinson’s introduction to approximate Bayesian computation (“ABC”). See also his post about summary statistics for ABC https://darrenjw.wordpress.com/2013/09/01/summary-stats-for-abc/
- Survey Methodology, Prof Ron Fricker http://faculty.nps.edu/rdfricke/
- Rasmus Bååth's Research Blog Bayesian statistics and data analysis
- Leadership lessons from Lao Tzu
- BioPython A collection of Python tools for quantitative Biology
- Professor David Draper
- Risk and Well-Being
- NCAR AtmosNews
- Lenny Smith's CHAOS: A VERY SHORT INTRODUCTION This is a PDF version of Lenny Smith’s book of the same title, also available from Amazon.com
- Mark Berliner's video lecture "Bayesian mechanistic-statistical modeling with examples in geophysical settings"
- All about models
- Karl Broman
- Ives and Dakos techniques for regime changes in series
- Prediction vs Forecasting: Knaub “Unfortunately, ‘prediction,’ such as used in model-based survey estimation, is a term that is often subsumed under the term ‘forecasting,’ but here we show why it is important not to confuse these two terms.”
- Leverhulme Centre for Climate Change Mitigation
- "Talking Politics" podcast David Runciman, Helen Thompson
- Pat's blog While it is described as “The mathematical (and other) thoughts of a (now retired) math teacher”, this is false humility, as it chronicles the present and past life and times of mathematicians in their context. Recommended.
- Ted Dunning
climate change
- The beach boondoggle Prof Rob Young on how owners of beach property are socializing their risks at costs to all of us, not the least being it seems coastal damage is less than it actually is
- Steve Easterbrook's excellent climate blog: See his "The Internet: Saving Civilization or Trashing the Planet?" for example Heavy on data and computation, Easterbrook is a CS prof at UToronto, but is clearly familiar with climate science. I like his “The Internet: Saving Civilization or Trashing the Planet” very much.
- “The discovery of global warming'' (American Institute of Physics)
- Rabett Run Incisive analysis of climate science versus deliberate distraction
- US$165/tonne CO2: Sweden Sweden has a Carbon Dioxide tax of US$165 per tonne at present. CO2 tax was imposed in 1991. GDP has grown 60%.
- "Betting strategies on fluctuations in the transient response of greenhouse warming" By Risbey, Lewandowsky, Hunter, Monselesan: Betting against climate change on durations of 15+ years is no longer a rational proposition.
- All Models Are Wrong Dr Tamsin Edwards blog about uncertainty in science, and climate science
- Jacobson WWS literature index
- MIT's Climate Primer
- Eli on the spectroscopic basis of atmospheric radiation physical chemistry
- Sir David King David King’s perspective on climate, and the next thousands of years for humanity
- Skeptical Science
- "Climate science is setttled enough"
- Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature
- Thriving on Low Carbon
- Climate impacts on retail and supply chains
- Tamino's Open Mind Open Mind: A statistical look at climate, its science, and at science denial
- Tell Utilities Solar Won't Be Killed Barry Goldwater, Jr’s campaign to push for solar expansion against monopolistic utilities, as a Republican
- Jacobson WWS literature index
- `Who to believe on climate change': Simple checks By Bart Verheggen
- AIP's history of global warming science: impacts The American Institute of Physics has a fine history of the science of climate change. This link summarizes the history of impacts of climate change.
- RealClimate
- Ice and Snow
- Energy payback period for solar panels Considering everything, how long do solar panels have to operate to offset the energy used to produce them?
- Ricky Rood's “What would happen to climate if we (suddenly) stopped emitting GHGs today?
- The Sunlight Economy
- Ray Pierrehumbert's site related to "Principles of Planetary Climate" THE book on climate science
- weather blocking patterns
- Spectra Energy exposed
- The Green Plate Effect Eli Rabett’s “The Green Plate Effect”
- Isaac Held's blog In the spirit of Ray Pierrehumbert’s “big ideas come from small models” in his textbook, PRINCIPLES OF PLANETARY CLIMATE, Dr Held presents quantitative essays regarding one feature or another of the Earth’s climate and weather system.
- "When Did Global Warming Stop" Doc Snow’s treatment of the denier claim that there’s been no warming for the most recent N years. (See http://hubpages.com/@doc-snow for more on him.)
- Grid parity map for Solar PV in United States
- NOAA Annual Greenhouse Gas Index report The annual assessment by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the radiative forcing from constituent atmospheric greenhouse gases
- Wind sled Wind sled: A zero carbon way of exploring ice sheets
- HotWhopper: It's excellent. Global warming and climate change. Eavesdropping on the deniosphere, its weird pseudo-science and crazy conspiracy whoppers.
- Simple box models and climate forcing IMO one of Tamino’s best posts illustrating climate forcing using simple box models
- “Ways to [try to] slow the Solar Century''
- Professor Robert Strom's compendium of resources on climate change Truly excellent
- Mathematics and Climate Research Network The Mathematics and Climate Research Network (MCRN) engages mathematicians to collaborating on the cryosphere, conceptual model validation, data assimilation, the electric grid, food systems, nonsmooth systems, paleoclimate, resilience, tipping points.
- Climate model projections versus observations
- Earth System Models
- Wally Broecker on climate realism
- Bloomberg interactive graph on “What's warming the world''
- Nick Bower's "Scared Scientists"
- The Keeling Curve The first, and one of the best programs for creating a spatially significant long term time series of atmospheric concentrations of CO2. Started amongst great obstacles by one, smart determined guy, Charles David Keeling.
- The Carbon Cycle The Carbon Cycle, monitored by The Carbon Project
- And Then There's Physics
- Risk and Well-Being
- The great Michael Osborne's latest opinions Michael Osborne is a genius operative and champion of solar energy. I have learned never to disregard ANYTHING he says. He is mentor of Karl Ragabo, and the genius instigator of the Texas renewable energy miracle.
Archives
Jan Galkowski
Category Archives: Antarctica
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
This flooding can’t be stopped. What about the rest?
Tamino is writing about this subject, too. That entirely makes complete sense as it is the biggest geophysical and environmental story out there right now. I’ve included an update at this post’s end discussing the possible economic impacts. It’s been … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, Antarctica, Anthropocene, bridge to nowhere, Carbon Worshipers, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate economics, climate justice, coastal communities, coastal investment risks, coasts, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, corporate litigation on damage from fossil fuel emissions, corporate responsibility, Cult of Carbon, environment, Eric Rignot, flooding, floods, glaciers, glaciology, global warming, greenhouse gases, hydrology, Hyper Anthropocene, ice sheet dynamics, icesheets, investing, investments, John Englander, living shorelines, Massachusetts, New England, real estate values, rights of the inhabitants of the Commonwealth, Robert M DeConto, Scituate, sea level rise, seawalls, shorelines, Stefan Rahmstorf, the right to be and act stupid, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, wishful environmentalism, ``The tide is risin'/And so are we''
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`How old is today?` (Carl Safina)
How old is today? light comes from everywhere and from nowhere. The ocean, glittering then vanishing in gauzy vapors, handles us more gently than anyone could have hoped. Snow flurries in and hurries out. Mists veil coasts so raw, so … Continue reading
`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
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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
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“I need to wake up”
Now, more than ever. (The above was published in September 2015.)
Posted in adaptation, Antarctica, Anthropocene, Arctic, carbon dioxide, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate change, climate disruption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, denial, destructive economic development, disruption, distributed generation, ecology, Ecology Action, economics, environment, evidence, feed-in tariff, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, gas pipeline leaks, geophysics, global warming, greenhouse gases, grid defection, Hyper Anthropocene, investment in wind and solar energy, James Hansen, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, meteorology, oceanography, physics, pipelines, politics, Principles of Planetary Climate, rationality, reasonableness, science, sea level rise, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, SolarPV.tv, Spaceship Earth, Stefan Rahmstorf, Tamino, temporal myopia, the energy of the people, the green century, the problem of evil, the right to be and act stupid, the right to know, the stack of lies, the tragedy of our present civilization, Unitarian Universalism, utility company death spiral, UU Humanists, WAIS, Wally Broecker, wind energy, wind power, zero carbon
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Elegy for the Arctic
And for the Antarctic … Hat tip to Climate Denial Crock of the Week.
This Earth Day: The Data
(Amendments on 25the April 2016.) Sorry, folks, it’s It’s not just El Niño. El Niño’s have gotten bigger over the years. (Click on image for a larger picture. Use your browser Back Button to return to blog.) (Click on image … Continue reading
Posted in American Petroleum Institute, Antarctica, Anthropocene, Arctic, Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, BEST, Bill Nye, carbon dioxide, Carbon Worshipers, Chevron, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate education, climate justice, corporate litigation on damage from fossil fuel emissions, corruption, Dan Satterfield, ecology, El Nina, El Nino, ENSO, environment, evidence, Exxon, false advertising, fear uncertainty and doubt, fossil fuels, fracking, geophysics, glaciers, glaciology, global warming, greenhouse gases, Gulf Oil, Hyper Anthropocene, ice sheet dynamics, icesheets, ignorance, James Hansen, John Cook, La Nina, meteorology, NASA, NCAR, NOAA, oceanography, open data, organizational failures, physics, rationality, reasonableness, regulatory capture, science, science education, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, sea level rise, selfishness, Spaceship Earth, statistics, sustainability, Texaco, the problem of evil, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, UU Humanists, WAIS, WHOI, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, zero carbon
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“Things going fast”: Summary of a class on climate disruption taught by Professor Ricky Rood
Dr Ricky Rood is a professor at the University of Michigan, both a meteorologist and climate scientist, and a regular contributor to the climate and weather blogs at Weather Underground. In a post from April 6th (titled “No Way to … Continue reading
Posted in AMETSOC, Antarctica, Arctic, bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, Carbon Worshipers, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate justice, corporate litigation on damage from fossil fuel emissions, environment, evidence, fossil fuels, geophysics, glaciers, glaciology, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, James Hansen, liberal climate deniers, MA, marine biology, Massachusetts, meteorology, methane, MIchael Mann, natural gas, New England, physics, quantitative biology, quantitative ecology, rationality, reasonableness, Ricky Rood, science, sea level rise, sustainability, the right to be and act stupid, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, zero carbon
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“What’s the deal with sea level rise?”
Update: 20th June 2016 “Rising seas: Should I say or should I go?“, by Delavane Diaz WunderBlog.
Posted in adaptation, AMOC, Antarctica, Anthropocene, Arctic, Carbon Worshipers, civilization, dynamical systems, Eaarth, geophysics, glaciers, glaciology, global warming, Guy McPherson, Hyper Anthropocene, ice sheet dynamics, James Hansen, oceanography, physics, planning, prediction, Principles of Planetary Climate, regime shifts, risk, science, sea level rise, the tragedy of our present civilization, thermohaline circulation, Wally Broecker
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Going down to the Southern Ocean, by Earle Wilson (on the Scripps R/V Roger Revelle)
(Click on picture to see a larger image, and use your browser Back button to return to reading.) Getting steady data from the Earth’s oceans demands commitment and not a little courage. I could never do what these oceanographers do, … Continue reading
Posted in Alison M Macdonald, anemic data, Antarctica, climate data, complex systems, Earle Wilson, Emily Shuckburgh, engineering, environment, fluid dynamics, geophysics, marine biology, NOAA, oceanic eddies, oceanography, open data, Principles of Planetary Climate, sampling, science, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, thermohaline circulation, waves, WHOI, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
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Phytoplankton-delineated oceanic eddies near Antarctica
Excerpt, from NASA: Phytoplankton are the grass of the sea. They are floating, drifting, plant-like organisms that harness the energy of the Sun, mix it with carbon dioxide that they take from the atmosphere, and turn it into carbohydrates and … Continue reading
Posted in AMETSOC, Antarctica, Arctic, bacteria, Carbon Cycle, complex systems, differential equations, diffusion, diffusion processes, dynamic linear models, dynamical systems, Emily Shuckburgh, environment, fluid dynamics, geophysics, GLMs, John Marshall, marine biology, Mathematics and Climate Research Network, NASA, numerical analysis, numerical software, oceanic eddies, oceanography, physics, phytoplankton, science, thermohaline circulation, WHOI, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
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Underestimated Rates of Sea Level Rise
Posted in adaptation, Antarctica, Anthropocene, Arctic, bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, civilization, climate, climate change, climate disruption, coastal communities, ecology, floods, Florida, fossil fuels, geophysics, glaciers, global warming, greenhouse gases, Hyper Anthropocene, icesheets, IPCC, James Hansen, John Englander, Richard Alley, Scituate, sea level rise, Stefan Rahmstorf, temporal myopia, the right to know, Wally Broecker, zero carbon
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Antarctic Ice Sheet Mass Balance (from SCAR report)
This is from the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (“SCAR”) Annual Report 2014-2015, Bulletin No. 191, August 2015. Ice Sheet Mass Balance The floating ice shelves surrounding the Antarctic Ice Sheet restrain the grounded icesheet flow. Thinning of an ice … Continue reading
Posted in Antarctica, Anthropocene, bifurcations, carbon dioxide, Cauchy distribution, climate, climate change, climate disruption, environment, games of chance, geophysics, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, James Hansen, oceanography, physics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, sea level rise, sustainability, WHOI
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+1 I.A.U.
Of course, from XKCD. (Click image to see bigger picture. Hat tip to Carl Safina for the joke.)
Posted in adaptation, Antarctica, Anthropocene, Arctic, astrophysics, carbon dioxide, civilization, climate, climate change, climate disruption, ecology, environment, geophysics, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, maths, meteorology, physics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, sea level rise
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Your future: Antarctica, in detail
Climate and geophysical accuracy demands fine modeling grids, and very large supercomputers. The best and biggest supercomputers have not been available for climate work, until recently. Watch how results differ if fine meshes and big supercomputers are used. Why haven’t … Continue reading
Posted in Antarctica, Anthropocene, bridge to nowhere, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate zombies, disingenuity, ecology, ensembles, forecasting, geophysics, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, ignorance, IPCC, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, LBNL, living shorelines, mathematics, mathematics education, maths, mesh models, meteorology, multivariate statistics, numerical software, optimization, physics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, sea level rise, spatial statistics, state-space models, statistics, stochastic algorithms, stochastics, supercomputers, temporal myopia, the right to know, thermodynamics, time series, University of California Berkeley, WAIS
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Hansen et al.
Tamino weighs in on the Hyper-Anthropocene paper by Hansen, Sato, et al, references in my postings here as https://667-per-cm.net/2015/07/23/welcome-to-the-hyper-anthropocene/ and https://667-per-cm.net/2015/07/27/professor-james-hansen-responds-and-explains/ Update, 18th October 2015 To quote Eli Rabett of Rabett Run, EliRabett said… Evidently today the editor has decided … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, Antarctica, Anthropocene, Arctic, astrophysics, bifurcations, bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide capture, Cauchy distribution, chance, civilization, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate zombies, COP21, denial, differential equations, dynamical systems, ecology, economics, environment, ethics, floods, forecasting, games of chance, geophysics, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, IPCC, James Hansen, mathematics, maths, meteorology, nor'easters, oceanography, physics, politics, probability, rationality, reasonableness, science, sea level rise, statistics, Student t distribution, Tamino, temporal myopia, the right to know, transparency, UNFCCC, zero carbon
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Welcome to the Hyper-Anthropocene
The anticipated paper by J. Hansen, M. Sato, P. Hearty, R. Ruedy, M. Kelley, V. Masson-Delmotte, G. Russell, G. Tselioudis, J. Cao, E. Rignot, I. Velicogna, E. Kandiano, K. von Schuckmann, P. Kharecha, A. N. Legrande, M. Bauer, and K.-W. … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, Antarctica, Anthropocene, Arctic, astrophysics, bifurcations, Boston, carbon dioxide, Carbon Tax, Cauchy distribution, chance, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate change, climate disruption, dynamical systems, ecology, economics, engineering, environment, exponential growth, finance, floods, forecasting, games of chance, geophysics, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, ignorance, investing, IPCC, living shorelines, meteorology, oceanography, physics, Principles of Planetary Climate, rationality, Ray Pierrehumbert, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, sea level rise, seawalls, temporal myopia, the right to know
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References Regarding the 450 ppm CO2 Ceiling
Updated 23rd July 2015 J. Hansen, M. Sato, P. Hearty, R. Ruedy, M. Kelley, V. Masson-Delmotte, G. Russell, G. Tselioudis, J. Cao, E. Rignot, I. Velicogna, E. Kandiano, K. von Schuckmann, P. Kharecha, A. N. Legrande, M. Bauer, and K.-W. … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, Antarctica, Anthropocene, Arctic, arXiv, carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide capture, carbon dioxide sequestration, Carbon Tax, citizenship, civilization, clean disruption, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate education, climate models, compassion, conservation, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, ecology, economics, efficiency, energy, energy reduction, engineering, environment, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, geophysics, investment in wind and solar energy, meteorology, oceanography, physics, Principles of Planetary Climate, rationality, Ray Pierrehumbert, reasonableness, risk, science, sea level rise, solar power, statistics, sustainability, the right to know, WAIS, wind power, zero carbon
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The pending disintegration of the Larsen B Ice Shelf, Antarctica
Estimates place the disintegration of the remainder of this shelf within 10 years, after losing a chunk the size of the State of Rhode Island in 2002.
“Climate Change, the Elevator Pitch”
Richard Alley: Katharine Hayhoe: Eric Rignot: Simon Donner: Mauri Pelto: Ken Caldeira:
Posted in Antarctica, Arctic, astrophysics, carbon dioxide, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate change, climate education, consumption, geophysics, IPCC, meteorology, NCAR, physics, Principles of Planetary Climate, rationality, Ray Pierrehumbert, risk, science, science education, statistics
Tagged morality
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“Women in Oceanography”, on WHOI’s R/V Knorr; “Ice, Eddies, and Climate Change” by Scripps’ Pinkel
The research vessel Knorr is a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) vessel. Here’s more from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, speaking on “Ice, Eddies and Climate Change”:
Twelvefold acceleration in Antarctic shelf ice loss over two decades
The story of Antarctic ice shelf melt continues to develop. A new report measures ice loss over the entire two Antarctic continents, finding a twelvefold acceleration in ice loss comparing the interval 2003-2012 to the interval 1994-2003. This is from … Continue reading

