
Distributed Solar: The Democratizaton of Energy

Blogroll
- London Review of Books
- Carl Safina's blog One of the wisest on Earth
- Ives and Dakos techniques for regime changes in series
- Slice Sampling
- Bob Altemeyer on authoritarianism (via Dan Satterfield) The science behind the GOP civil war
- "Talking Politics" podcast David Runciman, Helen Thompson
- WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION Cathy O’Neil’s WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION,
- "The Expert"
- 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.”
- Survey Methodology, Prof Ron Fricker http://faculty.nps.edu/rdfricke/
- ggplot2 and ggfortify Plotting State Space Time Series with ggplot2 and ggfortify
- John Kruschke's "Dong Bayesian data analysis" blog Expanding and enhancing John’s book of same title (now in second edition!)
- GeoEnergy Math Prof Paul Pukite’s Web site devoted to energy derived from geological and geophysical processes and categorized according to its originating source.
- WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION, reviews Reviews of Cathy O’Neil’s new book
- Comprehensive Guide to Bayes Rule
- 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
- Label Noise
- The Alliance for Securing Democracy dashboard
- Earth Family Beta MIchael Osborne’s blog on Science and the like
- 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.
- International Society for Bayesian Analysis (ISBA)
- Hermann Scheer Hermann Scheer was a visionary, a major guy, who thought deep thoughts about energy, and its implications for humanity’s relationship with physical reality
- 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.
- Mrooijer's Numbers R 4Us
- Musings on Quantitative Paleoecology Quantitative methods and palaeoenvironments.
- Quotes by Nikola Tesla Quotes by Nikola Tesla, including some of others he greatly liked.
- Simon Wood's must-read paper on dynamic modeling of complex systems I highlighted Professor Wood’s paper in https://hypergeometric.wordpress.com/2014/12/26/struggling-with-problems-already-attacked/
- South Shore Recycling Cooperative Materials management, technical assistance and networking, town advocacy, public outreach
- "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.
- Subsidies for wind and solar versus subsidies for fossil fuels
- What If
- Leverhulme Centre for Climate Change Mitigation
- Dominic Cummings blog Chief advisor to the PM, United Kingdom
- NCAR AtmosNews
- Thaddeus Stevens quotes As I get older, I admire this guy more and more
- "Consider a Flat Pond" Invited talk introducing systems thinking, by Jan Galkowski, at First Parish in Needham, UU, via Zoom
- Earle Wilson
- American Statistical Association
- 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.
- Charlie Kufs' "Stats With Cats" blog “You took Statistics 101. Now what?”
- 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.
- Mertonian norms
- 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/
- American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
- Leadership lessons from Lao Tzu
- 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.
- 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
- AP Statistics: Sampling, by Michael Porinchak Twin City Schools
- 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
- Ted Dunning
climate change
- Climate Change Denying Organizations
- Tell Utilities Solar Won't Be Killed Barry Goldwater, Jr’s campaign to push for solar expansion against monopolistic utilities, as a Republican
- Simple models of climate change
- Ray Pierrehumbert's site related to "Principles of Planetary Climate" THE book on climate science
- 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.
- Dessler's 6 minute Greenhouse Effect video
- Warming slowdown discussion
- History of discovering Global Warming From the American Institute of Physics.
- 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
- Sir David King David King’s perspective on climate, and the next thousands of years for humanity
- Interview with Wally Broecker Interview with Wally Broecker
- Wind sled Wind sled: A zero carbon way of exploring ice sheets
- James Powell on sampling the climate consensus
- Reanalyses.org
- David Appell's early climate science
- Thriving on Low Carbon
- 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
- Jacobson WWS literature index
- Eli on the spectroscopic basis of atmospheric radiation physical chemistry
- “Ways to [try to] slow the Solar Century''
- And Then There's Physics
- On Thomas Edison and Solar Electric Power
- 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%.
- Updating the Climate Science: What path is the real world following? From Professors Makiko Sato & James Hansen of Columbia University
- `The unchained goddess' 1958 Bell Telephone Science Hour broadcast regarding, among other things, climate change.
- 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.
- weather blocking patterns
- Tamino's Open Mind Open Mind: A statistical look at climate, its science, and at science denial
- Klaus Lackner (ASU), Silicon Kingdom Holdings (SKH) Capturing CO2 from air at scale
- Non-linear feedbacks in climate (discussion of Bloch-Johnson, Pierrehumbert, Abbot paper) Discussion of http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1002/2015GL064240/abstract
- Social Cost of Carbon
- Professor Robert Strom's compendium of resources on climate change Truly excellent
- 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.
- Skeptical Science
- The Sunlight Economy
- SOLAR PRODUCTION at Westwood Statistical Studios Generation charts for our home in Westwood, MA
- The net average effect of a warming climate is increased aridity (Professor Steven Sherwood)
- RealClimate
- Exxon-Mobil statement on UNFCCC COP21
- Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature
- James Hansen and granddaughter Sophie on moving forward with progress on climate
- "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
- Climate Communication Hassol, Somerville, Melillo, and Hussin site communicating climate to the public
- Anti—Anti-#ClimateEmergency Whether to declare a climate emergency is debatable. But some critics have gone way overboard.
- Sea Change Boston
- 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.
- Transitioning to fully renewable energy Professor Saul Griffiths talks to transitioning the customer journey, from a dependency upon fossil fuels to an electrified future
- "Climate science is setttled enough"
- CLIMATE ADAM Previously from the Science news staff at the podcast of Nature (“Nature Podcast”), the journal, now on YouTube, encouraging climate action through climate comedy.
- The Scientific Case for Modern Human-caused Global Warming
Archives
Jan Galkowski
Category Archives: business
Why Americans and Britons work such long hours
Why Americans and Britons work such long hours.
Posted in business, economics, labor, statistics
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“All of Monsanto’s problems just landed on Bayer” (by Chris Hughes at Bloomberg)
See Chris Hughes’ article. Monsanto has touted Roundup (also known as Glyphosate but more properly as ) as a safe remedy for weed control, often in the taming of so-called “invasive species”. It’s used on playfields where children are exposed … Continue reading
Posted in agroecology, an uncaring American public, business, corporate responsibility, ecology, Ecology Action, environment, environmental law, epidemiology, evidence, invasive species, open data, Peter del Tredici, quantitative biology, quantitative ecology, rights of the inhabitants of the Commonwealth, risk, statistics, sustainability, sustainable landscaping, the right to know, Uncategorized, unreason, Westwood
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“Eon and RWE just killed the utility as we know it”
The story’s at Bloomberg.
Posted in Bloomberg, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, bridge to somewhere, Buckminster Fuller, business, CleanTechnica, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, economics, EIA, electricity, electricity markets, energy utilities, grid defection, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, investments, Joseph Schumpeter, local generation, local self reliance, marginal energy sources, microgrids, nonlinear systems, regulatory capture, risk, Sankey diagram, solar democracy, solar domination, solar power, stranded assets, supply chains, sustainability, the energy of the people, the green century, the value of financial assets, tragedy of the horizon, unreason, utility company death spiral, wind energy, wind power
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`Insurance companies should collect a carbon levy`
From Anthony J Webster and Richard H Clarke in Nature, “Insurance companies should collect a carbon levy”: Governments juggle too many interests to drive global action on climate change. But the insurance industry is ideally placed. With annual premiums amounting … Continue reading
Posted in American Statistical Association, Anthropocene, attribution, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, bridge to somewhere, business, capitalism, Carbon Tax, climate business, climate economics, corporate litigation on damage from fossil fuel emissions, corporations, Cult of Carbon, economics, energy levy, finance, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, insurance, investments, Joseph Schumpeter, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, moral leadership, statistics, stranded assets, sustainability, the right to know, the value of financial assets, tragedy of the horizon, transparency, zero carbon
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`Exxon Shareholders Approve Climate Resolution: 62% Vote for Disclosure’
Flash from InsideClimate News: ExxonMobil shareholders voted Wednesday to require the world’s largest oil and gas company to report on the impacts of climate change to its business—defying management, and marking a milestone in a 28-year effort by activist investors. … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, Bloomberg, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, bridge to nowhere, business, capitalism, Carbon Worshipers, clean disruption, climate, climate business, climate change, climate disruption, climate economics, corporations, destructive economic development, environmental law, extended supply chains, Exxon, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuel infrastructure, fossil fuels, Global Carbon Project, global warming, greenhouse gases, Hyper Anthropocene, investing, investments, Joseph Schumpeter, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, making money, Our Children's Trust, petroleum, pollution, rationality, reason, reasonableness, statistics, stranded assets, sustainability, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets, tragedy of the horizon, zero carbon
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“Climate Change and the Post-Election Blues” (a reblog of a post by Meredith Fowlie at The Energy Institute, BerkeleyHAAS)
Re: Meredith Fowlie, “Climate change and the post-election blues”, from The Energy Institute, BerkeleyHAAS Some direction. My only comments regard Dr Fowlie’s LCoE analysis. While correct from its perspective, LCoE depends upon the viewpoint of the cost efficiency. For example, … Continue reading
Posted in American Solar Energy Society, Anthropocene, Berkeley, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, bridge to somewhere, business, clean disruption, CleanTechnica, climate economics, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, distributed generation, electricity markets, energy, energy utilities, engineering, Hyper Anthropocene, investment in wind and solar energy, Joseph Schumpeter, local generation, local self reliance, solar democracy, solar energy, solar power, the energy of the people, the green century, wind energy, wind power
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Westwood Solar & Energy Fair
Today. Flyer. Position yourself to ride the Energy Revolution. Adapt to warming due to human-caused climate change in the Northeast U.S. by changing over your heating and cooling sources. Make Money. Increase the value of your home. Move towards your … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, bridge to somewhere, Buckminster Fuller, business, citizenship, civilization, clean disruption, CleanTechnica, climate business, climate economics, consumption, Debbie Dooley, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, destructive economic development, disruption, distributed generation, economics, education, efficiency, EIA, electricity, electricity markets, energy, energy reduction, energy storage, engineering, environment, Epcot, Equiterre, exponential growth, feed-in tariff, fossil fuel divestment, global warming, Green Tea Coalition, green tech, grid defection, Hermann Scheer, Hyper Anthropocene, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, Joseph Schumpeter, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, local generation, local self reliance, making money, marginal energy sources, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, Massachusetts Interfaith Coalition for Climate Action, New England, public utility commissions, PUCs, rate of return regulation, rationality, reason, reasonableness, regime shifts, RevoluSun, Sankey diagram, solar democracy, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, Solpad, Spaceship Earth, stranded assets, SunPower, supply chains, sustainability, Tea Party, the energy of the people, the green century, the value of financial assets, Tony Seba, wind energy, zero carbon
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An example of technology the future will bring … Solpad.
In a recent interview, Professor Tony Seba of Stanford University predicted that solar+storage was going to achieve parity with average grid transmission costs by 2022. This is what he called “god parity”, because even if utilities generated at zero cents … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, Buckminster Fuller, business, clean disruption, CleanTechnica, climate business, conservation, consumption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, destructive economic development, disruption, distributed generation, economics, efficiency, electricity, electricity markets, energy reduction, energy storage, energy utilities, engineering, exponential growth, fossil fuel divestment, green tech, grid defection, Hermann Scheer, Hyper Anthropocene, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, Joseph Schumpeter, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, marginal energy sources, microgrids, networks, public utility commissions, PUCs, rate of return regulation, regulatory capture, Sankey diagram, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, Solpad, Spaceship Earth, sustainability, the energy of the people, the green century, the value of financial assets, Tony Seba, utility company death spiral, zero carbon
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“BlackRock Investment Fund will include climate change as risk factor for portfolio”
BlackRock, the world’s largest private investment fund, has announced that it will include climate change as an important factor in how it assigns risks to its investment portfolio … BlackRock is not your average investment fund. With $4.9 trillion in … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Meteorological Association, American Solar Energy Society, American Statistical Association, AMETSOC, Anthropocene, Bloomberg, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, Buckminster Fuller, business, Carbon Worshipers, central banks, clean disruption, CleanTechnica, climate business, climate change, climate disruption, consumption, corporate litigation on damage from fossil fuel emissions, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, destructive economic development, distributed generation, Ecology Action, economics, electricity markets, environment, Equiterre, extended supply chains, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, geophysics, global warming, green tech, greenhouse gases, grid defection, Hyper Anthropocene, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, Joseph Schumpeter, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, liberal climate deniers, Mark Jacobson, meteorology, Our Children's Trust, Principles of Planetary Climate, quantitative ecology, Sankey diagram, science, science denier, Science magazine, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, sea level rise, shorelines, solar democracy, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, Spaceship Earth, Stanford University, stranded assets, supply chains, sustainability, the energy of the people, the green century, the right to be and act stupid, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets, Tony Seba, transparency, UNFCCC, utility company death spiral, wind energy, wind power, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, zero carbon
Tagged climate choices, investing
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“Holy crap – an actual book!”
You’ll find links to Cathy O’Neil’s important book in the Blogroll here, as well as a link to reviews of it. I have not read it yet. While I have pre-ordered it, it’s not available. I have read the reviews, … Continue reading
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, Buckminster Fuller, business, citizen science, citizenship, civilization, complex systems, confirmation bias, data science, data streams, deep recurrent neural networks, denial, economics, education, engineering, ethics, evidence, Internet, investing, life purpose, machine learning, mathematical publishing, mathematics, mathematics education, maths, moral leadership, multivariate statistics, numerical software, numerics, obfuscating data, organizational failures, politics, population biology, prediction, prediction markets, privacy, quantitative biology, quantitative ecology, rationality, reason, reasonableness, rhetoric, risk, Schnabel census, smart data, sociology, statistical dependence, statistics, the right to be and act stupid, the right to know, the value of financial assets, transparency, UU Humanists
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Three stories of solar energy domination: Which outcome would YOU prefer?
(Updated, 2016-07-14) See Shayle Kann’s great piece at GreenTech media. The choices: “Version one: Aimless transformation” “Version two: The balkanized grid” “Version three: Embracing the transformation” In addition to solar PV, wind energy of all forms (especially underutilized local wind … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, Anthropocene, biofuels, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, bridge to somewhere, Buckminster Fuller, business, Chris Goodall, citizenship, civilization, clean disruption, conservation, consumption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, destructive economic development, disruption, distributed generation, ecology, Ecology Action, economics, efficiency, electricity, electricity markets, energy, energy reduction, energy storage, energy utilities, engineering, environment, fossil fuel divestment, green tech, grid defection, Hermann Scheer, Hyper Anthropocene, Internet, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, ISO-NE, Joseph Schumpeter, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, local generation, microgrids, public utility commissions, PUCs, rationality, reasonableness, regime shifts, Sankey diagram, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, Spaceship Earth, stranded assets, the energy of the people, the green century, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets, Tony Seba, utility company death spiral, wind energy, wind power, zero carbon
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synopsis of NY-REV
What New York State is doing, and Massachusetts, apparently not. Cheap supplies of domestic natural gas have driven the New England power plant market toward that fuel and away from the more expensive coal, oil and nuclear material. Limited capacity … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, Anthropocene, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, bridge to somewhere, Buckminster Fuller, business, causal diagrams, clean disruption, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate justice, coastal communities, conservation, consumption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, disruption, distributed generation, ecology, economics, efficiency, electricity markets, energy, energy storage, energy utilities, engineering, environment, extended supply chains, feed-in tariff, fossil fuel divestment, global warming, greenhouse gases, grid defection, Hyper Anthropocene, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, Joseph Schumpeter, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, marginal energy sources, meteorology, microgrids, rate of return regulation, rationality, reasonableness, regime shifts, regulatory capture, risk, Sankey diagram, solar domination, solar energy, Solar Freakin' Roadways, solar power, SolarPV.tv, Spaceship Earth, stranded assets, sustainability, temporal myopia, the energy of the people, the green century, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets, Tony Seba, utility company death spiral, wind energy, wind power, zero carbon
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“Solar power is contagious. These maps show how it spreads.” (from Vox)
Brad Plumer at Vox writes on take-up patterns of rooftop solar based upon a large dataset from SolarCity. The full article is available at the SolarCity site. Mr Plumer combines it with a report on other studies of solar adoption … Continue reading
Posted in Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, business, clean disruption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, destructive economic development, diffusion, diffusion processes, disruption, distributed generation, economics, electricity markets, energy, energy utilities, exponential growth, grid defection, investment in wind and solar energy, local generation, Peter Diggle, point pattern analysis, public utility commissions, PUCs, rate of return regulation, regulatory capture, sociology, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, SolarPV.tv, spatial statistics, statistics, stochastics, the energy of the people, the green century, utility company death spiral, zero carbon
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This is what the future looks like, for towns and villages — and utilities
Welcome to Minster, Ohio. (Hat tip to Clean Technica.) Check One: A 4.3 MW solar array. Check Two: A history of being supportive to local residents, and a plan for making them more efficient and reducing their electrical energy needs. … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, bridge to somewhere, Buckminster Fuller, business, clean disruption, conservation, consumption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, destructive economic development, distributed generation, economics, electricity markets, energy, energy reduction, energy storage, energy utilities, engineering, grid defection, Hyper Anthropocene, investment in wind and solar energy, local generation, microgrids, politics, public utility commissions, PUCs, rate of return regulation, rationality, reasonableness, regime shifts, regulatory capture, risk, Sankey diagram, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, SolarPV.tv, Spaceship Earth, sustainability, the energy of the people, the green century, the value of financial assets, Tony Seba, wind energy, zero carbon
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Tony Seba’s latest. Yes, there’s new stuff.
Posted in Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, business, decentralized electric power generation, disruption, distributed generation, economics, energy storage, exponential growth, grid defection, Hermann Scheer, investing, Mark Jacobson, Sankey diagram, solar energy, Solar Freakin' Roadways, solar power, SolarPV.tv, Stanford University, supply chains, Tony Seba
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patents disincentivize progress
Very interesting.
Not too shabby: “What’s warming the world” (Bloomberg Business), and “The siege of Miami” (The New Yorker)
What’s warming the world Infographic allowing the visitor to overlay time series of candidate causes for global warming, and thereby permitting them to draw their own conclusions. And Elizabeth Kolbert’s piece in The New Yorker, brings home the contradictions and … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, business, climate change, climate data, climate zombies, complex systems, critical slowing down, denial, disingenuity, economics, environment, evidence, fossil fuels, global warming, greenhouse gases, Hyper Anthropocene, mitigation, model comparison, time series
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