
Distributed Solar: The Democratizaton of Energy

Blogroll
- 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
- International Society for Bayesian Analysis (ISBA)
- Earle Wilson
- Dollars per BBL: Energy in Transition
- The Plastic Pick-Up: Discovering new sources of marine plastic pollution
- Mrooijer's Numbers R 4Us
- 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.
- Leverhulme Centre for Climate Change Mitigation
- All about models
- Label Noise
- Mark Berliner's video lecture "Bayesian mechanistic-statistical modeling with examples in geophysical settings"
- Mertonian norms
- Los Alamos Center for Bayesian Methods
- What If
- Earth Family Alpha Michael Osborne’s blog (former Executive at Austin Energy, now Chairman of the Electric Utility Commission for Austin, Texas)
- WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION, reviews Reviews of Cathy O’Neil’s new book
- All about Sankey diagrams
- Ives and Dakos techniques for regime changes in series
- 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.
- In Monte Carlo We Trust The statistics blog of Matt Asher, actually called the “Probability and Statistics Blog”, but his subtitle is much more appealing. Asher has a Manifesto at http://www.statisticsblog.com/manifesto/.
- 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
- Risk and Well-Being
- Brian McGill's Dynamic Ecology blog Quantitative biology with pithy insights regarding applications of statistical methods
- GeoEnergy Math Prof Paul Pukite’s Web site devoted to energy derived from geological and geophysical processes and categorized according to its originating source.
- Team Andrew Weinberg Walking September 8th for the Jimmy Fund!
- Flettner Rotor Bruce Yeany introduces the Flettner Rotor and related science
- 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.
- London Review of Books
- Earth Family Beta MIchael Osborne’s blog on Science and the like
- Karl Broman
- Slice Sampling
- Tony Seba Solar energy, electric vehicle, energy storage, and business disruption professor and visionary
- South Shore Recycling Cooperative Materials management, technical assistance and networking, town advocacy, public outreach
- Giant vertical monopolies for energy have stopped making sense
- distributed solar and matching location to need
- Rasmus Bååth's Research Blog Bayesian statistics and data analysis
- "Talking Politics" podcast David Runciman, Helen Thompson
- BioPython A collection of Python tools for quantitative Biology
- Dr James Spall's SPSA
- Awkward Botany
- John Cook's reasons to use Bayesian inference
- All about ENSO, and lunar tides (Paul Pukite) Historically, ENSO has been explained in terms of winds. But recently — and Dr Paul Pukite has insisted upon this for a long time — the oscillation of ENSO has been explained as a large-scale slosh due to lunar tidal forcing.
- 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.”
- Ted Dunning
- Dominic Cummings blog Chief advisor to the PM, United Kingdom
- Leadership lessons from Lao Tzu
- Subsidies for wind and solar versus subsidies for fossil fuels
- Number Cruncher Politics
- Harvard's Project Implicit
climate change
- Warming slowdown discussion
- "Lessons of the Little Ice Age" (Farber) From Dan Farber, at LEGAL PLANET
- Ellenbogen: There is no Such Thing as Wind Turbine Syndrome
- Rabett Run Incisive analysis of climate science versus deliberate distraction
- James Hansen and granddaughter Sophie on moving forward with progress on climate
- Tuft's Professor Kenneth Lang on the physical chemistry of the Greenhouse Effect
- 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.
- "Impacts of Green New Deal energy plans on grid stability, costs, jobs, health, and climate in 143 countries" (Jacobson, Delucchi, Cameron, et al) Global warming, air pollution, and energy insecurity are three of the greatest problems facing humanity. To address these problems, we develop Green New Deal energy roadmaps for 143 countries.
- "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.
- Nick Bower's "Scared Scientists"
- Social Cost of Carbon
- Wind sled Wind sled: A zero carbon way of exploring ice sheets
- Documenting the Climate Deniarati at work
- On Thomas Edison and Solar Electric Power
- Model state level energy policy for New Englad Bob Massie’s proposed energy policy for Massachusetts, an admirable model for energy policy anywhere in New England
- All Models Are Wrong Dr Tamsin Edwards blog about uncertainty in science, and climate science
- Non-linear feedbacks in climate (discussion of Bloch-Johnson, Pierrehumbert, Abbot paper) Discussion of http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1002/2015GL064240/abstract
- “Ways to [try to] slow the Solar Century''
- RealClimate
- Climate Communication Hassol, Somerville, Melillo, and Hussin site communicating climate to the public
- Bloomberg interactive graph on “What's warming the world''
- Sea Change Boston
- Ricky Rood's “What would happen to climate if we (suddenly) stopped emitting GHGs today?
- Climate at a glance Current state of the climate, from NOAA
- Earth System Models
- Agendaists Eli Rabett’s coining of a phrase
- `Who to believe on climate change': Simple checks By Bart Verheggen
- Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature
- Simple models of climate change
- Ice and Snow
- Climate impacts on retail and supply chains
- 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
- HotWhopper: It's excellent. Global warming and climate change. Eavesdropping on the deniosphere, its weird pseudo-science and crazy conspiracy whoppers.
- Climate Change Reports By John and Mel Harte
- SOLAR PRODUCTION at Westwood Statistical Studios Generation charts for our home in Westwood, MA
- Simple box models and climate forcing IMO one of Tamino’s best posts illustrating climate forcing using simple box models
- Climate Change Denying Organizations
- Anti—Anti-#ClimateEmergency Whether to declare a climate emergency is debatable. But some critics have gone way overboard.
- The Green Plate Effect Eli Rabett’s “The Green Plate Effect”
- "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.
- History of discovering Global Warming From the American Institute of Physics.
- Professor Robert Strom's compendium of resources on climate change Truly excellent
- Jacobson WWS literature index
- 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.
- 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.
- Dessler's 6 minute Greenhouse Effect video
- Thriving on Low Carbon
- The Sunlight Economy
- Energy payback period for solar panels Considering everything, how long do solar panels have to operate to offset the energy used to produce them?
Archives
Jan Galkowski
Category Archives: atheism
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.
“The Unchained Goddess”, Bell Science Hour, 1958
A tad nostalgic, for the day where humanity could have stopped a bunch of harm from climate change. Also, although from a STEM perspective, the entire show is worthwhile, only the last seven minutes are pertinent to climate change. Moreover, … Continue reading
Posted in atheism, climate change, Cosmos, global warming
Leave a comment
On the dominance of the `Demon Haunted World` in the United States
Trump is a symptom. Science … is after the way the Universe really is, and not about what makes us feel good. — Carl Sagan
I’m afraid, dear progressive friends, Mr Maher is 110% correct
I see nearly every week in the comedy called progressive plans for energy sources in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Progressives, it seems, eschew cooperation with business and attorneys and, as a result, never get anything respectable done. They are, as … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, atheism, Bill Maher, Buckminster Fuller, Canettes Blues Band, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate economics, Daniel Kahneman, decentralized energy, destructive economic development, electricity markets, engineering, environmental law, fossil fuel divestment, free flow of labor, global warming, green tech, greenwashing, Hermann Scheer, Humans have a lot to answer for, Hyper Anthropocene, Kevin Anderson, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, liberal climate deniers, local self reliance, Michael Osborne, politics, rationality, the right to be and act stupid, the tragedy of our present civilization, zero carbon
5 Comments
`Message from Sally Yates to Justice Department lawyers before she was fired’
The story. On January 27, 2017, the President signed an Executive Order regarding immigrants and refugees from certain Muslim-majority countries. The order has now been challenged in a number of jurisdictions. As the Acting Attorney General, it is my ultimate … Continue reading
Posted in atheism, Donald Trump, dump Trump, ethical ideals, justice, secularism, UU, UU Humanists
Leave a comment
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.
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
Frum on Trump
Great interview, on On Point.
It’s hotter than you think
Posted in adaptation, Anthropocene, atheism, Bill Nye, bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, Carbon Worshipers, civilization, climate change, climate disruption, environment, fossil fuels, geophysics, global warming, greenhouse gases, greenwashing, Guy McPherson, Hyper Anthropocene, ignorance, James Hansen, Kevin Anderson, meteorology, methane, mitigation, physics, rationality, reasonableness, science, sustainability, zero carbon
Leave a comment
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
1 Comment
Carbon Worshipers and Worship
There’s agitation and angst in some circles regarding the proper term to dub individuals who, however technical their training, reject the conclusions of climate science, physics, and even Exxon from the 1970s. (Graphs are from Greg Laden’s blog.) There’s denial, … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, atheism, bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, chemistry, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate change, climate data, climate models, Cult of Carbon, denial, energy, environment, Exxon, fossil fuels, geophysics, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, ignorance, IPCC, meteorology, oceanography, physical materialism, physics, rationality, reasonableness, science, UNFCCC, UU Humanists, zero carbon
3 Comments
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
Leave a comment
Bob Inglis: “Energy optimists. Climate realists.”
Kudos. http://climateeye.republicen.org/ http://blog.republicen.org/ http://republicen.org/areyouen/ http://republicen.org/the-solution-element/ http://republicen.org/the-solution-element/realist-guide/ I’m not, by their definition anyway, a conservative. In fact, I’m pretty apolitical these days although I will do things like demonstrate. But it’s completely clear to me this problem isn’t going to get … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, atheism, bifurcations, Bill Nye, bridge to nowhere, capricious gods, carbon dioxide, Carbon Tax, citizenship, civilization, clean disruption, climate change, climate disruption, compassion, conservation, consumption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, destructive economic development, ecology, economics, education, energy reduction, energy utilities, environment, ethics, finance, fossil fuel divestment, global warming, humanism, Hyper Anthropocene, ignorance, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, meteorology, new forms of scientific peer review, NOAA, oceanography, physical materialism, physics, politics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, sociology, statistics, sustainability, Tea Party, UU Humanists
1 Comment
“Mother Nature is not sitting idle”
This is an extension of Eli Rabett’s earlier piece. Eli Rabett offers a sobering post. (Click image for larger picture.) That’s from Solomon, Plattner, Knutti, and Friedlingstein, PNAS, 2009, “Irreversible climate change due to carbon dioxide emissions”.
Excellent. With musings on religion and mass extinctions.
And sometimes, just sometimes, I can feel the same way about some religions. Now, it’s not that many aren’t doing good, and many aren’t getting people to realize that we have painted ourselves deeply into a climate corner, but it … Continue reading
Posted in art, atheism, Bill Nye, Boston Ethical Society, bridge to nowhere, Carl Sagan, citizenship, climate, climate change, climate education, climate justice, climate zombies, Darwin Day, denial, ecology, environment, ethics, fossil fuels, games of chance, geophysics, global warming, history, humanism, mass extinctions, Neill deGrasse Tyson, physical materialism, politics, population biology, rationality, reasonableness, science, science education, sociology, temporal myopia, the right to know, UU Humanists
1 Comment
George Carlin on religion; Ricky Gervais on the Bible
Yeah. Ogden and Sleep, “Explosive eruption of coal and basalt and the end-Permian mass extinction“.
“Gray matters [not much, truly]” (Christian Robert)
Gray matters [not much, truly].
Stephen Fry: “God … Bone cancer in children? … Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid god …?”
A God as a monster.
Posted in atheism, capricious gods
Leave a comment
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
Leave a comment
Je Suis Charlie Hebdo
That’s my comment. More reason for atheism, I’d say. Sam Harris may be overly tough on religion, but in this case, he’s spot on. The Economist has a tabular graphic describing the perceived fraction of Muslims in various countries, principally … Continue reading
Posted in atheism, citizen science, civilization
Leave a comment
“Stochasticity!”
RadioLab’s show/podcast this week was a tour of the world of probability, and its interface with people. I judge it great, but, then, I would. Their description? Stochasticity (a wonderfully slippery and smarty-pants word for randomness), may be at the … Continue reading
Why I don’t eat commercially caught fish
And, of course, I don’t eat land animals either. I will sometimes have scallops and clams.
Defeating “The Index” in Gilbert, Arizona
“Home rule” means a lot of things. But, as the Catholic hierarchy in Rome once did, the educational authorities of Gilbert, Arizona, USA, are apparently taking it one step too far. Dan Satterfield reports that certain pages in a biology … Continue reading
“I very much enjoy taking those people on, but, meanwhile, it breaks my heart”
Amen, brother Bill. I very much know what you mean. It really hurts.
Posted in astrophysics, atheism, carbon dioxide, Carbon Tax, Carl Sagan, citizen science, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate education, compassion, ecology, economics, education, engineering, environment, forecasting, geophysics, history, humanism, mathematics, maths, meteorology, methane, Neill deGrasse Tyson, oceanography, physics, politics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, solar power, wind power
Leave a comment
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
Leave a comment
“Laughin’ Fool Blues”
It’s midsummer, and time to hear from Doc Snow, and some “Laughin’ Fool Blues”.
AGU Chapman Conference — Climate Science: Michael Mann
Time to get angry, with Imhofe, Barton, and the origins of fossil fuel disinformation.
On Stenger’s narcissistic America, and picking and choosing what science to believe
People may criticize the view as unfair to religious scientists and something which fans the flames, making Science appear more incompatible with religion than it is, but I think atheist leader Dr Victor Stenger has a point. Interviewed by the … Continue reading
Posted in atheism, history, humanism, politics, rationality, reasonableness, science, Unitarian Universalism
1 Comment

