Category Archives: Boston

The fate of Antarctica

That’s from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at CalTech in Pasedena, CA. The source article is: A. S. Gardner, G. Moholdt, T. Scambos, M. Fahnstock, S. Ligtenberg, M. van den Broeke, J. Nilsson, “Increased West Antarctic and unchanged East Antarctic ice … Continue reading

Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Meteorological Association, Anthropocene, being carbon dioxide, Boston, carbon dioxide, climate disruption, Cult of Carbon, flooding, floods, Florida, global warming, sea level rise | Leave a comment

Climate Potpourri: Flooding and Solar (both from Ars)

And they who will not be ready, will suffer the economic consequences. Ready for flooding: Boston analyzes how to tackle climate change (That water is a foot deep, previously reported in a post here. Click on image to see larger … Continue reading

Posted in adaptation, American Meteorological Association, American Solar Energy Society, AMETSOC, Anthropocene, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, Boston, carbon dioxide, citizenship, civilization, CleanTechnica, climate, climate business, climate change, climate disruption, climate economics, coastal communities, environment, flooding, floods, fossil fuels, global warming, green tech, greenhouse gases, Hyper Anthropocene, ice sheet dynamics, investment in wind and solar energy, John Englander, Joseph Schumpeter, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, living shorelines, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, meteorology, oceanography, resiliency, shorelines, solar democracy, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, Spaceship Earth, sustainability, T'kun Olam, the energy of the people, the green century, the value of financial assets | Leave a comment

“Sharon’s Water Problem” (by Paul Lauenstein)

(Click on image to see a bigger version of this figure. Use your browser Back Button to return to this blog.) The town of Sharon, MA, has a water problem. Click on the link and see Paul’s presentation about it. … Continue reading

Posted in adaptation, agriculture, American Meteorological Association, AMETSOC, Anthropocene, Boston, citizen science, climate change, climate disruption, diffusion processes, drought, ecology, Ecology Action, environment, forecasting, global warming, hydrology, Hyper Anthropocene, MA, New England, Paul Lauenstein, precipitation, quantitative ecology, science, statistics, the tragedy of our present civilization, water, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution | Leave a comment

“Getting our heads out of the sand: The facts about sea level rise” (Robert Young)

If current luck holds, North Carolina may well escape the 2013 hurricane season without the widespread damage that has so frequently plagued the fragile coastal region in recent years. Unfortunately, this brief respite is almost certainly only that — a … Continue reading

Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Meteorological Association, American Statistical Association, AMETSOC, Anthropocene, Boston, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate economics, coastal communities, coasts, ecology, environment, evidence, global warming, hurricanes, Hyper Anthropocene, living shorelines, Massachusetts, National Park Service, New England, nor'easters, oceanography, quantitative ecology, risk, Robert Young, science, sea level rise, shorelines, spatial statistics, sustainability, the right to be and act stupid, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets | 1 Comment

Can the City of Boston adapt to and help mitigate climate disruption?

(See the major update at the bottom of this post as well.) (On “Less Science and More Social Science” at And Then There’s Physics) And Then There’s Physics is one of my favorite blogs discussing climate disruption and related policy … Continue reading

Posted in adaptation, anomaly detection, Anthropocene, Bill Nye, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, bollocks, Boston, bridge to somewhere, citizenship, civilization, clean disruption, climate business, climate change, climate disruption, climate economics, climate education, climate justice, Daniel Kahneman, destructive economic development, economics, engineering, environment, finance, floods, forecasting, Gaylord Nelson, global warming, Hermann Scheer, Hyper Anthropocene, insurance, investing, John Englander, Joseph Schumpeter, Kerry Emanuel, MA, Massachusetts, meteorology, Minsky moment, nor'easters, organizational failures, politics, risk, sea level rise, sociology, statistics, supply chains, sustainability, the right to be and act stupid, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets | 6 Comments

A model of an electrical grid: A vision

Many people seem to view the electrical grid of the future being much like the present one. I think a lot about networks, because of my job. And I especially think a lot about network topologies, although primarily concerning the … Continue reading

Posted in abstraction, American Meteorological Association, anomaly detection, Anthropocene, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, Boston, bridge to somewhere, Buckminster Fuller, Canettes Blues Band, clean disruption, climate business, climate economics, complex systems, corporate supply chains, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, differential equations, distributed generation, efficiency, EIA, electricity, electricity markets, energy, energy reduction, energy storage, energy utilities, engineering, extended supply chains, green tech, grid defection, Hermann Scheer, Hyper Anthropocene, investment in wind and solar energy, ISO-NE, Kalman filter, kriging, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, Lenny Smith, local generation, marginal energy sources, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, Mathematics and Climate Research Network, mesh models, meteorology, microgrids, networks, New England, New York State, open data, organizational failures, pipelines, planning, prediction markets, public utility commissions, PUCs, rate of return regulation, rationality, reason, reasonableness, regime shifts, regulatory capture, resiliency, risk, Sankey diagram, smart data, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, Spaceship Earth, spatial statistics, state-space models, statistical dependence, statistics, stochastic algorithms, stochastics, stranded assets, supply chains, sustainability, the energy of the people, the green century, the value of financial assets, thermodynamics, time series, Tony Seba, utility company death spiral, wave equations, wind energy, wind power, zero carbon | Leave a comment

Frum on Trump

Great interview, on On Point.

Posted in atheism, Boston, citizenship, civilization, corruption, cynicism, David Suzuki, denial, Donald Trump, economics, ethics, evidence, false advertising, fear uncertainty and doubt, ignorance, politics, risk, the right to know, the stack of lies | Leave a comment

Boston, are you ready?

Yeah, how about warming up the seas a bit more by building pipelines, buying into more explosive methane (*), and encouraging fracked gas people to export? What could it hurt? There are many alternatives, most sketched here on this blog. … Continue reading

Posted in adaptation, AMETSOC, Anthropocene, bollocks, Boston, bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, Carbon Worshipers, climate change, climate disruption, corporate litigation on damage from fossil fuel emissions, corruption, disingenuity, ecology, evidence, false advertising, floods, Florida, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, fracking, geophysics, global warming, greenwashing, Hyper Anthropocene, MA, Massachusetts, methane, mitigation, natural gas, NOAA, nor'easters, physics, pipelines, prediction, rate of return regulation, rationality, reasonableness, regulatory capture, science, sea level rise, sustainability, the right to be and act stupid, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, utility company death spiral | 1 Comment

Foul concerns (UPDATE: 14th September 2015)

Updated, 14th September 2015 I submitted a Letter to the Editor of The Westwood Press last week, one which was published in Friday’s paper edition. It did not/has not yet made it online. It was in response to an article … Continue reading

Posted in Anthropocene, bifurcations, Boston, bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, citizenship, civilization, clean disruption, climate disruption, conservation, consumption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, destructive economic development, economics, efficiency, EIA, energy, energy reduction, energy utilities, engineering, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, fracking, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, meteorology, methane, microgrids, mitigation, natural gas, pipelines, planning, politics, public utility commissions, PUCs, rationality, reasonableness, risk, solar energy, solar power, SolarPV.tv, sustainability, temporal myopia, Tony Seba, Westwood, wind power, zero carbon | Leave a comment

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 | 2 Comments

rappin’ the truth

(Hat tip to the Yale Climate Connections project.)

Posted in Bill Nye, biology, Boston, carbon dioxide, chemistry, citizen science, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate education, ecology, education, environment, evolution, geophysics, global warming, investment in wind and solar energy, Neill deGrasse Tyson, physics, population biology, rationality, reasonableness, science, science education | 1 Comment

What Boston will eventually look like under TWO DEGREES global warming

International efforts are under way to bring greenhouse gas emissions to zero in a manner fast enough to limit global warming to +2 degrees Celsius. That’s proving tough to do, and there are some expectations it won’t be achieved. Some … Continue reading

Posted in adaptation, Boston, bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate change, climate disruption, conservation, consumption, ecology, environment, floods, forecasting, fossil fuels, geophysics, global warming, IPCC, living shorelines, meteorology, NCAR, NOAA, nor'easters, oceanography, Principles of Planetary Climate, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, sea level rise, statistics, zero carbon | 1 Comment

Brian Swett discusses Boston’s climate future | NOAA Climate.gov

Brian Swett discusses Boston’s climate future | NOAA Climate.gov.

Posted in Boston, climate change, climate disruption, ecology, economics, environment, forecasting, geophysics, global warming, history, investment in wind and solar energy, living shorelines, mass transit, meteorology, NOAA, oceanography, physics, politics, population biology, Principles of Planetary Climate, public transport, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, sea level rise, sociology, statistics, temporal myopia, the right to know, time series, wind power, zero carbon | Leave a comment