
Distributed Solar: The Democratizaton of Energy

Blogroll
- Brian McGill's Dynamic Ecology blog Quantitative biology with pithy insights regarding applications of statistical methods
- Los Alamos Center for Bayesian Methods
- Musings on Quantitative Paleoecology Quantitative methods and palaeoenvironments.
- 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”
- Nadler Strategy, LLC, on sustainability Thinking about business, efficient and effective management, and business value
- "Consider a Flat Pond" Invited talk introducing systems thinking, by Jan Galkowski, at First Parish in Needham, UU, via Zoom
- Dollars per BBL: Energy in Transition
- 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.
- John Cook's reasons to use Bayesian inference
- Mike Bloomberg, 2020 He can get progress on climate done, has the means and experts to counter the Trump and Republican digital disinformation machine, and has the experience, knowledge, and depth of experience to achieve and unify.
- 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.
- "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.
- International Society for Bayesian Analysis (ISBA)
- Gavin Simpson
- 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
- Bob Altemeyer on authoritarianism (via Dan Satterfield) The science behind the GOP civil war
- Quotes by Nikola Tesla Quotes by Nikola Tesla, including some of others he greatly liked.
- Dominic Cummings blog Chief advisor to the PM, United Kingdom
- Awkward Botany
- Beautiful Weeds of New York City
- The Keeling Curve: its history History of the Keeling Curve and Charles David Keeling
- American Statistical Association
- American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
- Brendon Brewer on Overfitting Important and insightful presentation by Brendon Brewer on overfitting
- Mark Berliner's video lecture "Bayesian mechanistic-statistical modeling with examples in geophysical settings"
- John Kruschke's "Dong Bayesian data analysis" blog Expanding and enhancing John’s book of same title (now in second edition!)
- 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.
- Mertonian norms
- Fear and Loathing in Data Science Cory Lesmeister’s savage journey to the heart of Big Data
- Charlie Kufs' "Stats With Cats" blog “You took Statistics 101. Now what?”
- Healthy Home Healthy Planet
- 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/
- Number Cruncher Politics
- Giant vertical monopolies for energy have stopped making sense
- "Perpetual Ocean" from NASA GSFC
- Peter Congdon's Bayesian statistical modeling Peter Congdon’s collection of links pertaining to his several books on Bayesian modeling
- Risk and Well-Being
- 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
- 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.”
- AP Statistics: Sampling, by Michael Porinchak Twin City Schools
- James' Empty Blog
- Leadership lessons from Lao Tzu
- Dr James Spall's SPSA
- 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
- Rasmus Bååth's Research Blog Bayesian statistics and data analysis
- The Plastic Pick-Up: Discovering new sources of marine plastic pollution
- Leverhulme Centre for Climate Change Mitigation
- All about Sankey diagrams
- The Mermaid's Tale A conversation about biological complexity and evolution, and the societal aspects of science
- Tony Seba Solar energy, electric vehicle, energy storage, and business disruption professor and visionary
climate change
- The HUMAN-caused greenhouse effect, in under 5 minutes, by Bill Nye
- `Who to believe on climate change': Simple checks By Bart Verheggen
- The Carbon Cycle The Carbon Cycle, monitored by The Carbon Project
- Updating the Climate Science: What path is the real world following? From Professors Makiko Sato & James Hansen of Columbia University
- Non-linear feedbacks in climate (discussion of Bloch-Johnson, Pierrehumbert, Abbot paper) Discussion of http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1002/2015GL064240/abstract
- 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
- Jacobson WWS literature index
- Ricky Rood's “What would happen to climate if we (suddenly) stopped emitting GHGs today?
- Earth System Models
- Wally Broecker on climate realism
- Climate model projections versus observations
- Klaus Lackner (ASU), Silicon Kingdom Holdings (SKH) Capturing CO2 from air at scale
- 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.
- "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.)
- Agendaists Eli Rabett’s coining of a phrase
- 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
- Climate Change Reports By John and Mel Harte
- 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.
- "Mighty Microgrids" Webinar This is a Webinar on YouTube about Microgrids from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR), featuring New York State and Minnesota
- 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 Irrelevance of Saturation: Why Carbon Dioxide Matters'' (Bart Levenson)
- Bloomberg interactive graph on “What's warming the world''
- Nick Bower's "Scared Scientists"
- The net average effect of a warming climate is increased aridity (Professor Steven Sherwood)
- 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.
- Climate impacts on retail and supply chains
- Grid parity map for Solar PV in United States
- James Hansen and granddaughter Sophie on moving forward with progress on climate
- Ice and Snow
- Anti—Anti-#ClimateEmergency Whether to declare a climate emergency is debatable. But some critics have gone way overboard.
- 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%.
- James Powell on sampling the climate consensus
- "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.
- Andy Zucker's "Climate Change and Psychology"
- Spectra Energy exposed
- Risk and Well-Being
- Paul Beckwith Professor Beckwith is, in my book, one of the most insightful and analytical observers on climate I know. I highly recommend his blog, and his other informational products.
- ATTP summarizes all that stuff about Committed Warming from AND THEN THERE’S PHYSICS
- Rabett Run Incisive analysis of climate science versus deliberate distraction
- “Ways to [try to] slow the Solar Century''
- Eli on the spectroscopic basis of atmospheric radiation physical chemistry
- weather blocking patterns
- 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
- 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.
- 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
- History of discovering Global Warming From the American Institute of Physics.
- Energy payback period for solar panels Considering everything, how long do solar panels have to operate to offset the energy used to produce them?
- Sir David King David King’s perspective on climate, and the next thousands of years for humanity
- Wind sled Wind sled: A zero carbon way of exploring ice sheets
- Ray Pierrehumbert's site related to "Principles of Planetary Climate" THE book on climate science
Archives
Jan Galkowski
Category Archives: Botany
2026 March 14 [J 073.87] “Pi Day”
Geographic coordinates N42.227, W71.230, Westwood, MA, USA
Pohlia lescuriana
Posted in ABLS, blog, Botany, bryology, bryophyte, bryophytes, mosses, New England Botanical Society
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Climacium in Lawns
Posted in Botany, bryology, bryophytes, mosses
Tagged Botany, bryophytes, ecology, mosses
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a variety of bryophyte macrophotographs
Posted in ABLS, amateur science, American Bryological and Lichenological Society, biology, Botany, bryology, bryophytes, citizen data, citizen science, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, ecology, field biology, Hale Reservation, macrophotography, mosses, National Phenology Network, quantitative biology, quantitative ecology, sampling algorithms, statistical ecology
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Adobe Lightroom for scientific photos
As some readers may know, now I’m retired, I am deeply invested in a multiyear longitudinal study of (primarily) mosses (Bryophyta) at 25 plots near my home. This has been running since end of November 2020, with the first month … Continue reading
Photo of the week: Repeatedly distressed Mnium hornum
This Mnium hornum community is located near a brook which occasionally overflows its banks and at a relative elevation lower than the brook floor. Because of unusual big rains in Dover, Massachusetts in 2021, this hornum community has been inundated … Continue reading
Mosses of the Week, 4 June 2021
All photographs by Jan Galkowski, 2021.
Moss of the Week, 2021-05-31: Pohlia nutans
All photographs by Jan Galkowski, 2021.
Posted in American Bryological and Lichenological Society, Botany, bryology, bryophytes, mosses
Tagged Botany, bryophytes, mosses
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Cladonia chlorophaea
New Meetup: Massachusetts Mosses and Lichens
I have started a new Meetup group: Massachusetts Mosses and Lichens. I am inviting anyone with an interest in mosses and lichens to join in, particularly if you live in the “greater Massachusetts area”. Because of pandemic, there’ll be no … Continue reading
Posted in ABLS, American Bryological and Lichenological Society, American Statistical Association, biology, Botany, Brent Mishler, bryology, bryophytes, citizen data, citizen science, ecology, field biology, field research, field science, Hale Reservation, Janice Glime, Jerry Jenkins, lichenology, lichens, longitudinal survey of mosses, macrophotography, maths, mesh models, mosses, Nancy G Slack, National Phenology Network, population biology, population dynamics, Ralph Pope, science, spatial statistics, statistical ecology, Sue Williams, the right to know, Westwood
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Moss of the Week, 2021-02-19
Actually, mosses of the week. This pair of communities are part of my longitudinal study of mosses, some Cladonia chlorophaea lichens, and a few Lycopodium obscurum individuals. This is Site 3, community instances A and B. Instance A is Mnium … Continue reading
You want to know where we really are?
This is Professor William Moomaw, Tufts, really telling you like it is. Professor Moomaw also spoke on “Food & Climate” on 11th January 2021 at the Dedham-Walpole-Westwood League of Women Voters meeting of that day.
Posted in argoecology, being carbon dioxide, Botany, bridge to somewhere, Carbon Cycle, carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide sequestration, clear air capture of carbon dioxide, climate mitigation, ecocapitalism, ecology, Ecology Action, extended producer responsibility, fossil fuel infrastructure, global warming, greenhouse gases, zero carbon
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Introducing a long term longitudinal survey of some bryophytes, lichens, and Lycopodium individuals
Longitudinal Survey of Mosses and a Couple of Friends (LoSoMaaCoF) (Updated 2021-09-04) Updates after 26th February 2021 notifying new data availability will be each made in separate blog posts. These will all link back here. I will keep this page … Continue reading
Choices.
This is a retake of a presentation at the invitation of the Walpole Greens and made at their meeting of 9th November 2020. It is longer and more leisurely. I interleave some of the answers to questions that followed the … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, agriculture, agrivoltaics, agroecology, alternatives to the Green New Deal, American Solar Energy Society, argoecology, Ørsted, being carbon dioxide, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, Botany, carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide sequestration, Clausius-Clapeyron equation, clean disruption, CleanTechnica, climate business, climate change, climate disruption, climate economics, climate hawk, climate policy, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Conservation Action Coalition, Debbie Dooley, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, distributed generation, ecocapitalism, ecological services, ecomodernism, ecopragmatism, ecopragmatist, electric vehicles, electrical energy storage, electricity, emissions, energy, energy storage, energy utilities, engineering, environment, explosive methane, forests, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, fracking, fragmentation of ecosystems, gas pipeline leaks, global warming, Google Earth, Green Tea Coalition, greenhouse gases, grid defection, Hermann Scheer, investment in wind and solar energy, investments, Joseph Schumpeter, Karl Ragabo, Keeling curve, keep fossil fuels in ground, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, liberal climate deniers, local generation, local self reliance, meteorology, microgrids, mitigating climate disruption, natural gas, nuclear power, NuScale, ocean acidification, ocean warming, oceans, On being Carbon Dioxide, plankton, Principles of Planetary Climate, public utility commissions, RethinkX, solar democracy, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, solar revolution, Stewart Brand, the energy of the people, the green century, Tony Seba, utility company death spiral, wind energy, wind power, zero carbon
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Review of “No … increase of Carbon sequestration from the greening Earth”
(As promised.) Introduction and Abstract This is a review, re-presentation, and report on the August 2019 article, Y. Zhang, C. Song, L. E. Band, G. Sun, (2019), “No proportional increase of terrestrial gross Carbon sequestration from the greening Earth“, Journal … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, afforestation, agriculture, agroecology, algal blooms, American Statistical Association, argoecology, being carbon dioxide, biology, Botany, bridge to somewhere, carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide sequestration, chemistry, citizen science, clear air capture of carbon dioxide, climate, climate data, climate disruption, climate economics, climate mitigation, di-nitrogen oxide, ecocapitalism, ecological disruption, Ecological Society of America, ecomodernism, ecopragmatism, environment, evidence, food, forests, fossil fuels, geophysics, Glen Peters, Global Carbon Project, greenhouse gases, James Hansen, John Holdren, p-value, phytoplankton, pollution, population biology, quantitative biology, resource producitivity, scholarship, science education, significance test, statistics, Steven Chu, sustainability, sustainable landscaping, wishful environmentalism
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Handel, 2018, “As the seas rise, can we restore our coastal habitats?”
Professor Steven Handel presents: Hint, hint: A subtle plug for allowing evolutionary dominance to advance, including permitting hearty invasive species to Do Their Thing. Indeed, it is my opinion, that the supposed plague of “invasive species” and associated regulations is … Continue reading
Posted in agroecology, Aldo Leopold, an ignorant American public, an uncaring American public, Anthropocene, argoecology, Botany, bridge to somewhere, Cape Cod, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, corporations, corruption, ecological disruption, Ecological Society of America, ecology, ecopragmatism, environment, environmental law, evolution, fragmentation of ecosystems, greenwashing, herbicides, Humans have a lot to answer for, Hyper Anthropocene, invasive species, living shorelines, Nature, pesticides, Peter del Tredici, population biology, population dynamics, quantitative biology, quantitative ecology, regulatory capture, shorelines, sustainability, sustainable landscaping, the green century, the tragedy of our present civilization, tragedy of the horizon, wishful environmentalism, yves tille
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Weekend break: Theme for Earth Day
By John Williams:
Posted in agroecology, Aldo Leopold, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Statistical Association, an uncaring American public, argoecology, biology, Botany, Buckminster Fuller, climate, David Suzuki, dynamical systems, E. O. Wilson, earth, Earth Day, ecological disruption, ecological services, Ecological Society of America, ecology, Ecology Action, ecomodernism, ecopragmatism, ecopragmatist, Eli Rabett, environment, Equiterre, evolution, fragmentation of ecosystems, global warming, green tech, greenhouse gases, greenwashing, invasive species, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, investments, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Lotka-Volterra systems, marine biology, Mathematics and Climate Research Network, microbiomes, NOAA, oceans, Peter del Tredici, Peter Diggle, Pharyngula, physical materialism, quantitative biology, quantitative ecology, rate of return regulation, scientific publishing, Spaceship Earth, statistical dependence, Stefan Rahmstorf, Tamino
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Winter composting: How to make friends with microbes and defy weather (podcast, too)
(Slightly updated 2019-04-08, although the podcast has not been updated to be consistent.) (This blog post is accompanied by an explanatory podcast. See below.) Many people compost. It can be easy or hard, depending upon your tolerance for turning and … Continue reading
Posted in agroecology, argoecology, Botany, Carbon Cycle, composting, ecological services, Ecological Society of America, ecology, engineering, environment, fermentation, First Parish Needham, karma, local self reliance, Nature, science, solid waste management, sustainability, sustainable landscaping, Unitarian Universalism, UU, UU Humanists, UU Needham, water as a resource
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Today, now, and what of the future?
From Aldo Leopold in his A Sand County Almanac: One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, agroecology, Aldo Leopold, American Association for the Advancement of Science, argoecology, being carbon dioxide, biology, Boston Ethical Society, Botany, Buckminster Fuller, Charles Darwin, climate, climate change, David Suzuki, Earle Wilson, Ecological Society of America, Ecology Action, ethics, George Sughihara, Glen Peters, global warming, Grant Foster, Humans have a lot to answer for, Hyper Anthropocene, population biology, quantitative biology, quantitative ecology, Spaceship Earth, sustainability, The Demon Haunted World, the right to be and act stupid, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, tragedy of the horizon, unreason, UU Humanists
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Sustainable Landscaping
Update: 2018-05-26 It’s not about plants, not entirely. But it seems that, in one agricultural area, pollinators (bees) under stress have ceded their pollinating responsibility to a couple of species of exotic (read invasive) flies. See: J. R. Stavert, D. … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, American Association for the Advancement of Science, argoecology, biology, Botany, Carl Safina, complex systems, conservation, ecological services, Ecological Society of America, ecology, Ecology Action, environment, fragmentation of ecosystems, invasive species, land use to fight, living shorelines, New England, population biology, population dynamics, quantitative biology, quantitative ecology, sustainability, sustainable landscaping, water as a resource
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Crocus tommasinianus via Google Pixel 2
Crocus tommasinianus are out, and are glorious. Here are two photos of blooms in our yard taken with my new Google Pixel 2: Some reviews of the Pixel 2: from Digital Trends from c|net from GSM Arena: Technical specs!

