
Distributed Solar: The Democratizaton of Energy

Blogroll
- 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.
- Karl Broman
- 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
- Team Andrew Weinberg Walking September 8th for the Jimmy Fund!
- Earth Family Alpha Michael Osborne’s blog (former Executive at Austin Energy, now Chairman of the Electric Utility Commission for Austin, Texas)
- What If
- 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/
- The Alliance for Securing Democracy dashboard
- Fear and Loathing in Data Science Cory Lesmeister’s savage journey to the heart of Big Data
- James' Empty Blog
- Brendon Brewer on Overfitting Important and insightful presentation by Brendon Brewer on overfitting
- "The Expert"
- "Consider a Flat Pond" Invited talk introducing systems thinking, by Jan Galkowski, at First Parish in Needham, UU, via Zoom
- Bob Altemeyer on authoritarianism (via Dan Satterfield) The science behind the GOP civil war
- 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.”
- Beautiful Weeds of New York City
- American Statistical Association
- Comprehensive Guide to Bayes Rule
- Subsidies for wind and solar versus subsidies for fossil fuels
- Peter Congdon's Bayesian statistical modeling Peter Congdon’s collection of links pertaining to his several books on Bayesian modeling
- Label Noise
- Musings on Quantitative Paleoecology Quantitative methods and palaeoenvironments.
- Rasmus Bååth's Research Blog Bayesian statistics and data analysis
- OOI Data Nuggets OOI Ocean Data Lab: The Data Nuggets
- WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION Cathy O’Neil’s WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION,
- All about models
- Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard on how businesses can help our collective environmental mess Patagonia’s Yvon Chouinard set the standard for how a business can mitigate the ravages of capitalism on earth’s environment. At 81 years old, he’s just getting started.
- Quotes by Nikola Tesla Quotes by Nikola Tesla, including some of others he greatly liked.
- Healthy Home Healthy Planet
- Nadler Strategy, LLC, on sustainability Thinking about business, efficient and effective management, and business value
- All about Sankey diagrams
- Thaddeus Stevens quotes As I get older, I admire this guy more and more
- John Cook's reasons to use Bayesian inference
- John Kruschke's "Dong Bayesian data analysis" blog Expanding and enhancing John’s book of same title (now in second edition!)
- Logistic curves in market disruption From DollarsPerBBL, about logistic or S-curves as models of product take-up rather than exponentials, with notes on EVs
- London Review of Books
- Dr James Spall's SPSA
- NCAR AtmosNews
- Harvard's Project Implicit
- Professor David Draper
- SASB Sustainability Accounting Standards Board
- International Society for Bayesian Analysis (ISBA)
- "Talking Politics" podcast David Runciman, Helen Thompson
- Charlie Kufs' "Stats With Cats" blog “You took Statistics 101. Now what?”
- Leverhulme Centre for Climate Change Mitigation
- Gavin Simpson
- Leadership lessons from Lao Tzu
- Higgs from AIR describing NAO and EA Stephanie Higgs from AIR Worldwide gives a nice description of NAO and EA in the context of discussing “The Geographic Impact of Climate Signals on European Winter Storms”
- Ted Dunning
- 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.
climate change
- Tuft's Professor Kenneth Lang on the physical chemistry of the Greenhouse Effect
- Ray Pierrehumbert's site related to "Principles of Planetary Climate" THE book on climate science
- Wally Broecker on climate realism
- Climate model projections versus observations
- Transitioning to fully renewable energy Professor Saul Griffiths talks to transitioning the customer journey, from a dependency upon fossil fuels to an electrified future
- `The unchained goddess' 1958 Bell Telephone Science Hour broadcast regarding, among other things, climate change.
- ATTP summarizes all that stuff about Committed Warming from AND THEN THERE’S PHYSICS
- Dessler's 6 minute Greenhouse Effect video
- 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
- On Thomas Edison and Solar Electric Power
- 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
- SolarLove
- "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.)
- Skeptical Science
- 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.
- Earth System Models
- RealClimate
- 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%.
- Climate Change Reports By John and Mel Harte
- 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 net average effect of a warming climate is increased aridity (Professor Steven Sherwood)
- Climate Communication Hassol, Somerville, Melillo, and Hussin site communicating climate to the public
- "Lessons of the Little Ice Age" (Farber) From Dan Farber, at LEGAL PLANET
- World Weather Attribution
- Risk and Well-Being
- "Climate science is setttled enough"
- Équiterre Equiterre helps build a social movement by encouraging individuals, organizations and governments to make ecological and equitable choices, in a spirit of solidarity.
- Sea Change Boston
- Simple box models and climate forcing IMO one of Tamino’s best posts illustrating climate forcing using simple box models
- Ricky Rood's “What would happen to climate if we (suddenly) stopped emitting GHGs today?
- SOLAR PRODUCTION at Westwood Statistical Studios Generation charts for our home in Westwood, MA
- 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.
- Solar Gardens Community Power
- weather blocking patterns
- "Warming Slowdown?" (part 1 of 2) The idea of a global warming slowdown or hiatus is critically examined, emphasizing the literature, the datasets, and means and methods for telling such. In two parts.
- Climate Change: A health emergency … New England Journal of Medicine Caren G. Solomon, M.D., M.P.H., and Regina C. LaRocque, M.D., M.P.H., January 17, 2019 N Engl J Med 2019; 380:209-211 DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp1817067
- Wind sled Wind sled: A zero carbon way of exploring ice sheets
- An open letter to Steve Levitt
- Climate impacts on retail and supply chains
- Documenting the Climate Deniarati at work
- "Warming Slowdown?" (part 2 of 2) The idea of a global warming slowdown or hiatus is critically examined, emphasizing the literature, the datasets, and means and methods for telling such. The second part.
- Jacobson WWS literature index
- James Hansen and granddaughter Sophie on moving forward with progress on climate
- Social Cost of Carbon
- Interview with Wally Broecker Interview with Wally Broecker
- Tell Utilities Solar Won't Be Killed Barry Goldwater, Jr’s campaign to push for solar expansion against monopolistic utilities, as a Republican
- Tamino's Open Mind Open Mind: A statistical look at climate, its science, and at science denial
- `Who to believe on climate change': Simple checks By Bart Verheggen
- Thriving on Low Carbon
- Grid parity map for Solar PV in United States
Archives
Jan Galkowski
Category Archives: astronomy
Happy Newtonmas, 2020
Among other projects I support this year, post-retirement is Einstein@Home Why? Because with all the emphasis upon SARS-CoV-2, biopharmaceuticals, and mitigating climate disruption, which are all important, observational astronomy doesn’t get enough love. And this is an astronomy which isn’t … Continue reading
Posted in astronomy, astrostatistics, BOINC, Einstein@Home, physics
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Congratulations China!
No practice runs. Designed. Built. Worked first time out. That’s impressive.
Posted in astronomy, astrophysics, basic research, China, engineering, Moon
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“Code for causal inference: Interested in astronomical applications”
via Code for causal inference: Interested in astronomical applications From Professor Ewan Cameron at his Another Astrostatistics Blog.
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Statistical Association, astronomy, astrostatistics, causal inference, causation, counterfactuals, epidemiology, experimental design, experimental science, multivariate statistics, prediction, propensity scoring, quantitative biology, quantitative ecology, reproducible research, rhetorical mathematics, rhetorical science, rhetorical statistics, science, statistical ecology, statistical models, statistical regression, statistics
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cdetools package for R: Dalmasso, et al [updated]
Just hit the “arXiv streets”: N. Dalmasso, T. Pospisil, A. B. Lee, R. Izbicki, P. E. Freeman, A. I. Malz, “Conditional Density Estimation Tools in Python and R with applications to photometric redshifts and likelihood-free cosmological inference”, arXiv.org > astro-ph … Continue reading
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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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
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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
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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
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Happy Newtonmas!
When knowledge conquered fear … And, what better way to celebrate than watching the National Geographic Cosmos episode, When knowledge conquered fear, hosted by the great Dr Neil deGrasse Tyson, Director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City.
Prescience and Response
I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers … Continue reading
“All models are wrong. Some models are useful.” — George Box
(Image courtesy of the Damien Garcia.) As a statistician and quant, I’ve thought hard about that oft-cited Boxism. I’m not sure I agree. It’s not that there is such a thing as a perfect model, or correct model, whatever in … Continue reading
Posted in abstraction, American Association for the Advancement of Science, astronomy, astrophysics, mathematics, model-free forecasting, numerics, perceptions, physical materialism, physics, rationality, reason, reasonableness, science, spatial statistics, splines, statistics, the right to know, theoretical physics, time series
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on the exquisitely fragile, blue ball, with all the life we know everywhere, and ever was
(Click image for an astonishingly wonderful large photo. Use browser Back button to return.) It’s just Earth. And Earth will be okay, completely fine, with or without us. As will the biosphere, our companions. It cannot be worse than the … Continue reading
“No – no words. No words to describe it.”
Some celestial event. No – no words. No words to describe it. Poetry! They should’ve sent a poet. So beautiful. So beautiful… I had no idea. (From Carl Sagan’s Contact, the movie version.) Hat tip to Climate Denial Crock of … Continue reading
Posted in AMETSOC, Anthropocene, astronomy, astrophysics, Bill Nye, carbon dioxide, Carbon Worshipers, Carl Sagan, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate change, climate disruption, conservation, consumption, COP21, Disney, ecology, education, energy, environment, ethics, forecasting, fossil fuel divestment, geophysics, global warming, greenhouse gases, Hyper Anthropocene, investment in wind and solar energy, IPCC, James Hansen, meteorology, NASA, NCAR, NOAA, oceanography, physics, Principles of Planetary Climate, rationality, reasonableness, science, science education, Spaceship Earth, sustainability, Walt Disney Company, zero carbon
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Pale Blue Dot
Compassion, yes. Love, no.
Posted in astronomy, astrophysics, atheism, Bill Maher, Bill Nye, bollocks, Boston Ethical Society, Carl Sagan, citizenship, civilization, compassion, ecology, geophysics, humanism, NASA, physical materialism, physics, population biology, Sankey diagram, Spaceship Earth, statistics, stochastics
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“Climate Science, 50 years later”
Hat tip to Peter Sinclair who let us all know about this symposium on his blog. The link is supposed to start at Dr John Holdren’s talk, but in case it does not, his talk begins at 35:00 into the … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, astronomy, astrophysics, carbon dioxide, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate models, environment, forecasting, fossil fuels, geophysics, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, meteorology, oceanography, physics, Principles of Planetary Climate, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, Svante Arrhenius, zero carbon
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Ahmed: arrested for having electronics in his possession simpler than a smart phone
I have made my comments at The Times news article on the subject. If I, as a youngster, brought my Newtonian telescope lens-in-progress into school, and because it looked like it was wrapped in putty, would I, in this day, … Continue reading
Posted in astronomy, astrophysics, atheism, Bill Nye, Boston Ethical Society, Carl Sagan, citizenship, civilization, Dan Satterfield, disingenuity, education, engineering, ethics, humanism, ignorance, physical materialism, physics, politics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, Susan Jacoby, the right to know, Unitarian Universalism, UU Humanists
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Alice Bell’s “A very short history of climate change research”
“A very short history of climate change research“, by Alice Bell. The story of scientists discovering climate change is longer than many of us tend to imagine. We’ve had a sense that what humans do might effect the climate since … Continue reading
Posted in astronomy, astrophysics, biology, carbon dioxide, civilization, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate education, climate models, dynamical systems, ecology, environment, forecasting, fossil fuels, geophysics, global warming, IPCC, James Hansen, meteorology, Neill deGrasse Tyson, NOAA, oceanography, physics, population biology, Principles of Planetary Climate, rationality, Ray Pierrehumbert, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, sea level rise, spatial statistics, statistics, sustainability, temporal myopia, UNFCCC, WHOI
Tagged U.S. Clean Power Plan, U.S. Constitution
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Neil deGrasse Tyson on “60 Minutes”
http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/astrophysicist-neil-degrasse-tysons-one-man-mission Hat tip to Dan Satterfield.
“I don’t want Earth to look like Venus”
Posted in astronomy, astrophysics, Carl Sagan, civilization, climate, climate change, climate education, education, geophysics, meteorology, Neill deGrasse Tyson, oceanography, physics, Principles of Planetary Climate, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, sea level rise
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David Suzuki on the 59th minute and exponential growth
Posted in astronomy, astrophysics, biology, bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide capture, Carl Sagan, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate change, climate education, demand-side solutions, ecology, economics, engineering, environment, ethics, forecasting, geophysics, IPCC, mathematics, maths, meteorology, physics, population biology, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, sociology, statistics
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Codium fragile, for Saturday, 17th January 2015
With today’s post, I’m beginning a new tradition at 667 per cm, posting a potpourri of short observations collected during the week, not necessarily having dense citations to work which inspired them. (Although if interested, please do ask and I’ll … Continue reading
Posted in art, arXiv, astronomy, astrophysics, atheism, carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide capture, Carbon Tax, Carl Sagan, chemistry, citizen science, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate change, climate education, conservation, consumption, decentralized electric power generation, demand-side solutions, ecology, economics, energy, engineering, environment, forecasting, fossil fuel divestment, geoengineering, history, humanism, investment in wind and solar energy, IPCC, meteorology, methane, microgrids, NASA, Neill deGrasse Tyson, new forms of scientific peer review, NOAA, notes, nuclear power, oceanography, open data, open source scientific software, physics, politics, Principles of Planetary Climate, rationality, reasonableness, reproducible research, science, science education, scientific publishing, sociology, the right to know
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Where are sea levels? Why? And things which affect measurements
New post by Stefan Rahmstorf, at RealClimate: “A new sea level curve“.
AIP’s surprisingly good summary of climate change, in detail
The American Institute of Physics has a surprisingly good summary of climate change science and its history, including current issues and how we understand what we do about it. This is something an organization like the American Meteorological Society should … Continue reading
Posted in astronomy, astrophysics, bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, Carl Sagan, civilization, climate, climate change, climate education, environment, forecasting, geophysics, IPCC, meteorology, NASA, NOAA, oceanography, physics, Principles of Planetary Climate, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, science education
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Climate Science: What You Need To Know
From Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy blog.
Posted in astronomy, astrophysics, carbon dioxide, chemistry, citizen science, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate education, consumption, ecology, economics, education, energy, engineering, environment, forecasting, fossil fuel divestment, geophysics, humanism, investment in wind and solar energy, meteorology, methane, NOAA, oceanography, physics, politics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, scientific publishing, solar power, the right to know, wind power
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Ray Pierrehumbert on the new U.S.-China climate deal
Professor Pierrehumbert offers his thoughts in Slate. He’s the author of Principles of Planetary Climate which is, as far as I’m concerned, the definitive climate book.
Posted in astronomy, astrophysics, carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide capture, Carbon Tax, chemistry, citizen science, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate education, conservation, consumption, demand-side solutions, differential equations, ecology, economics, education, efficiency, energy, energy reduction, engineering, environment, forecasting, geoengineering, geophysics, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, IPCC, mathematics, maths, meteorology, methane, NCA, NOAA, oceanography, physics, politics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, scientific publishing, solar power, statistics, wind power
Tagged climate book
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The Sun as Borexino Sees It in Real Time: “the energy released today at the centre of the Sun is exactly the same as that produced 100,000 years ago”
The neutrino experiment in the INFN Gran Sasso Laboratories has managed to measure the energy of our star in real time: the energy released today at the centre of the Sun is exactly the same as that produced 100,000 years … Continue reading
Posted in astronomy, astrophysics, Carl Sagan, climate, energy, geophysics, physics, science, solar power
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Hope. This is why, in part, I am an atheist.
Carl Sagan’s last interview on Charlie Rose: The point is, how can any world view which is based upon either ignorance of, apathy towards, or misconception about the physical universe offer any realistic promise or hope or optimism, any more … Continue reading
Posted in astronomy, astrophysics, atheism, biology, Boston Ethical Society, Carl Sagan, citizenship, civilization, ecology, education, engineering, environment, geophysics, history, humanism, mathematics, maths, meteorology, NASA, Neill deGrasse Tyson, oceanography, physics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science
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Celebrate Aphelion!
This happened about a half hour ago. It’s all downhill from here! Well, until periheilion any way. We are at the farthest point from the Sun we’ll be for about a year.
Posted in astronomy, astrophysics, Neill deGrasse Tyson, physics, rationality, science
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