
Distributed Solar: The Democratizaton of Energy

Blogroll
- Giant vertical monopolies for energy have stopped making sense
- What If
- Carl Safina's blog One of the wisest on Earth
- Label Noise
- Thaddeus Stevens quotes As I get older, I admire this guy more and more
- 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/
- Earth Family Alpha Michael Osborne’s blog (former Executive at Austin Energy, now Chairman of the Electric Utility Commission for Austin, Texas)
- "Talking Politics" podcast David Runciman, Helen Thompson
- 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.”
- Gavin Simpson
- Dominic Cummings blog Chief advisor to the PM, United Kingdom
- 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.
- Professor David Draper
- 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/.
- Earle Wilson
- Dr James Spall's SPSA
- International Society for Bayesian Analysis (ISBA)
- 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/
- Rasmus Bååth's Research Blog Bayesian statistics and data analysis
- Subsidies for wind and solar versus subsidies for fossil fuels
- 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
- Ives and Dakos techniques for regime changes in series
- Slice Sampling
- James' Empty Blog
- The Alliance for Securing Democracy dashboard
- Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI)
- Flettner Rotor Bruce Yeany introduces the Flettner Rotor and related science
- Dollars per BBL: Energy in Transition
- Peter Congdon's Bayesian statistical modeling Peter Congdon’s collection of links pertaining to his several books on Bayesian modeling
- Musings on Quantitative Paleoecology Quantitative methods and palaeoenvironments.
- Leverhulme Centre for Climate Change Mitigation
- "Consider a Flat Pond" Invited talk introducing systems thinking, by Jan Galkowski, at First Parish in Needham, UU, via Zoom
- Ted Dunning
- American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
- 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.
- Earth Family Beta MIchael Osborne’s blog on Science and the like
- 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
- Gabriel's staircase
- distributed solar and matching location to need
- 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
- Karl Broman
- John Kruschke's "Dong Bayesian data analysis" blog Expanding and enhancing John’s book of same title (now in second edition!)
- Quotes by Nikola Tesla Quotes by Nikola Tesla, including some of others he greatly liked.
- 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
- All about Sankey diagrams
- Mark Berliner's video lecture "Bayesian mechanistic-statistical modeling with examples in geophysical settings"
- Nadler Strategy, LLC, on sustainability Thinking about business, efficient and effective management, and business value
- BioPython A collection of Python tools for quantitative Biology
- Charlie Kufs' "Stats With Cats" blog “You took Statistics 101. Now what?”
- 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.
climate change
- HotWhopper: It's excellent. Global warming and climate change. Eavesdropping on the deniosphere, its weird pseudo-science and crazy conspiracy whoppers.
- Jacobson WWS literature index
- The Scientific Case for Modern Human-caused Global Warming
- The Sunlight Economy
- “The Irrelevance of Saturation: Why Carbon Dioxide Matters'' (Bart Levenson)
- David Appell's early climate science
- Bloomberg interactive graph on “What's warming the world''
- Interview with Wally Broecker Interview with Wally Broecker
- Ice and Snow
- Climate change: Evidence and causes A project of the UK Royal Society: (1) Answers to key questions, (2) evidence and causes, and (3) a short guide to climate science
- Documenting the Climate Deniarati at work
- Solar Gardens Community Power
- Ricky Rood's “What would happen to climate if we (suddenly) stopped emitting GHGs today?
- Reanalyses.org
- Sir David King David King’s perspective on climate, and the next thousands of years for humanity
- James Hansen and granddaughter Sophie on moving forward with progress on climate
- SolarLove
- Earth System Models
- 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.
- 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
- "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.
- 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.
- The Green Plate Effect Eli Rabett’s “The Green Plate Effect”
- Ray Pierrehumbert's site related to "Principles of Planetary Climate" THE book on climate science
- The net average effect of a warming climate is increased aridity (Professor Steven Sherwood)
- "Climate science is setttled enough"
- 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.
- "Getting to the Energy Future We Want," Dr Steven Chu
- Climate model projections versus observations
- Tell Utilities Solar Won't Be Killed Barry Goldwater, Jr’s campaign to push for solar expansion against monopolistic utilities, as a Republican
- Ellenbogen: There is no Such Thing as Wind Turbine Syndrome
- “Ways to [try to] slow the Solar Century''
- And Then There's Physics
- Anti—Anti-#ClimateEmergency Whether to declare a climate emergency is debatable. But some critics have gone way overboard.
- `Who to believe on climate change': Simple checks By Bart Verheggen
- James Powell on sampling the climate consensus
- Rabett Run Incisive analysis of climate science versus deliberate distraction
- "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.
- MIT's Climate Primer
- Updating the Climate Science: What path is the real world following? From Professors Makiko Sato & James Hansen of Columbia University
- Professor Robert Strom's compendium of resources on climate change Truly excellent
- Équiterre Equiterre helps build a social movement by encouraging individuals, organizations and governments to make ecological and equitable choices, in a spirit of solidarity.
- Simple box models and climate forcing IMO one of Tamino’s best posts illustrating climate forcing using simple box models
- Climate Change Denying Organizations
- All Models Are Wrong Dr Tamsin Edwards blog about uncertainty in science, and climate science
- World Weather Attribution
- Nick Bower's "Scared Scientists"
- Risk and Well-Being
- Social Cost of Carbon
- An open letter to Steve Levitt
Archives
Jan Galkowski
Category Archives: capitalism
“The U.S. should lead the world on climate change”
This excerpt is from Bloomberg Opinion, written by its Editorial Board. I recommend the entire op-ed. Climate change is a global threat requiring global action, so it’s essential that the U.S. join, and preferably guide, worldwide cooperative efforts. Among Biden’s … Continue reading
Posted in alternatives to the Green New Deal, American Solar Energy Society, Amory Lovins, Arnold Schwarzennegger, Benji Backer, Bloomberg, Bloomberg Green, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, bridge to somewhere, Buckminster Fuller, capitalism, Carbon Cycle, carbon dioxide, Carbon Tax, clean disruption, CleanTechnica, climate business, climate change, climate disruption, climate economics, climate hawk, climate justice, climate policy, climate science, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, ecocapitalism, ecomodernism, ecopragmatism, electrical energy engineering, electricity markets, engineering, fossil fuel divestment, global warming, Hermann Scheer, investment in wind and solar energy, ISO-NE, Joseph Schumpeter, Karl Ragabo, keep fossil fuels in ground, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, liberal climate deniers, local generation, making money, marginal energy sources, Mark Carney, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, Mathematics and Climate Research Network, Michael Bloomberg, Michael Osborne, ocean warming, On being Carbon Dioxide, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, solar revolution, Stewart Brand, stranded assets, the green century, Tony Seba, wind energy, wind power, zero carbon
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What’s wrong with Massachusetts? Land wind turbines!
For groups of people who seriously embrace land wind turbines, there is no downside.
Posted in American Conservation Coalition, American Solar Energy Society, Ørsted, being carbon dioxide, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, bridge to somewhere, Cape Wind, capitalism, CleanTechnica, climate activism, climate disruption, climate policy, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, distributed generation, ecocapitalism, ecomodernism, ecopragmatism, education, fossil fuel divestment, global warming, global weirding, Green Tea Coalition, Hermann Scheer, Karl Ragabo, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, local generation, local self reliance, microgrids, mitigating climate disruption, On being Carbon Dioxide, solar democracy, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, solar revolution, Sonnen community, statistical ecology, Talk Solar, the energy of the people, the green century, the tragedy of our present civilization, Tony Seba, tragedy of the horizon, unreason, utility company death spiral, wind energy, wind power, zero carbon
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‘Biden voting counties equal 70% of America’s economy’
From Mark Muro, Eli Byerly Duke, Yang You, and Robert Maxim at the Brookings Institution: (h/t Martin Sandbu of The Financial Times.)
Posted in Brookings Institution, capitalism, CleanTechnica, U.S. GDP
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Ted Rall’s “Left, Center and Right: We’re All in Denial About Climate Change”
(Friend, fellow congregant, and committee chair Will Rico of First Parish in Needham sent me this highly appropriate link.) Ted Rall argues at Counterpunch that: Those who deny that climate change is real are engaging in what psychologists call “simple … Continue reading
Posted in #climatestrike, #sunrise, #youthvgov, adaptation, agroecology, an uncaring American public, being carbon dioxide, Bill Maher, bridge to somewhere, Buckminster Fuller, capitalism, carbon dioxide, Carbon Worshipers, civilization, clean disruption, climate activism, climate business, climate change, climate disruption, climate economics, climate education, climate grief, climate mitigation, climate policy, consumption, Cult of Carbon, development as anti-ecology, distributed generation, ecological disruption, ecological services, Ecology Action, ecomodernism, ecopragmatism, energy efficiency, First Parish in Needham, FiveThirtyEight, fossil fuel divestment, global blinding, Global Carbon Project, global warming, global weirding, greenhouse gases, greenwashing, Greta Thunberg, investment in wind and solar energy, IPCC, keep fossil fuels in ground, life cycle sustainability analysis, solar democracy, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, solar revolution, zero carbon
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`Investors’ Guide to the End of the World`
David Snowball, at Mutual Fund Observer: Part 1. Part 2. Thoughts from BlackRock. “I amar prestar aen, the world is changed Han mathon ne nen, I feel it in the water Han mathon ne chae, I feel it in the … Continue reading
Earth Day 2019: So how do people transition to the new energy economy?
I’ve been pretty hard on the Green New Deal. That’s partly because its proponents don’t seem to see that a transition to a new zero Carbon energy economy is inevitable. It’s opponents don’t see that either. It may not come … Continue reading
Posted in Amory Lovins, an ignorant American public, Ørsted, capitalism, climate business, climate change, climate disruption, climate economics, climate justice, compassion, corporate citizenship, corporate litigation on damage from fossil fuel emissions, corporate responsibility, corporate supply chains, corporations, ecomodernism, electric vehicles, engineering, ethics, extended producer responsibility, extended supply chains, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuel infrastructure, Gaylord Nelson, global warming, Green New Deal, Hermann Scheer, investment in wind and solar energy, investments, John Farrell, Joseph Schumpeter, LBNL, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, local generation, local self reliance, Mark Carney, Mark Jacobson, microgrids, New England, NIMBY, organizational failures, Orsted, percolation theory, planning, public education, public welfare, RevoluSun, Richard Branson, science, solar democracy, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, Sonnen community, SunPower, sustainability, sustainable landscaping, Talk Solar, technology, temporal myopia, Tesla, the energy of the people, the green century, the right to know, the value of financial assets, Tony Seba, tragedy of the horizon, utility company death spiral, UU, wind energy, wind power, zero carbon
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Mark Carney is aligned with the geo-biological-physical everything
Bank of England Governor Mark Carney might not be popular on all his pronouncements, but he’s the most comprehensively educated on the matter of climate risk of any in the international discussion groups of the OECD. Some people will be … Continue reading
Seven degrees, whaddya get, a century older and deeper in Carbon debt …
In an amazing report, the Trump administration forecasts +7F rise in global temperatures by 2100, insisting nothing can be done to prevent it happening. In the associated report, the administration claimed that the deep cuts in emissions needed to prevent … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Anthropocene, anti-intellectualism, anti-science, being carbon dioxide, bridge to nowhere, capitalism, carbon dioxide, climate change, climate disruption, climate economics, corruption, Cult of Carbon, dump Trump, global warming
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Professor Kevin Anderson, from November 2017, on Democracy Now!
I have featured interviews with Professor Kevin Anderson before, one of the most direct and clear-minded authorities on the implications of continuing to drive climate change through fossil fuel emissions and a consumption-oriented Western lifestyle. In November 2017, around the … Continue reading
`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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Amory Lovins, 2008: `Natural Capitalism: The Next Industrial Revolution with Amory Lovins`
An excellent presentation from über successful dropout from Harvard University and Oxford University, Dr Amory Lovins, at University of California at Berkeley:
Posted in Adam Smith, affordable mass goods, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Amory Lovins, Anthropocene, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, bridge to somewhere, capitalism, climate economics, destructive economic development, ecological services, ecology, Ecology Action, economic trade, economics, environment, ILSR, internal inconsistency, Joseph Schumpeter, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, population biology, population dynamics, quantitative biology, resource producitivity, solid waste management, stranded assets, supply chains, sustainability, the green century, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets, transparency
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The Myth of Baseload Power (Amory Lovins)
Posted in Amory Lovins, Anthropocene, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, Buckminster Fuller, capitalism, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, design science, distributed generation, economics, energy efficiency, energy reduction, environment, Hermann Scheer, Hyper Anthropocene, ILSR, integrative design, John Farrell, Joseph Schumpeter, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, local generation, local self reliance, microgrids, petroleum, reasonableness, solar democracy, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, Spaceship Earth, sustainability, the energy of the people, the green century, the right to know, utility company death spiral, wind energy, wind power, 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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“The [transport-as-a-service] disruption will crater the value chain of the oil industry” (RethinkX)
… By 2030, the report predicts that oil demand will drop to 70 million barrels per day. The resulting collapse in prices will be catastrophic for the industry, and these effects are likely to be felt as early as 2021. … Continue reading
Posted in American Petroleum Institute, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, bridge to somewhere, Buckminster Fuller, capitalism, clean disruption, CleanTechnica, climate business, decentralized energy, destructive economic development, economics, efficiency, fossil fuel divestment, green tech, ILSR, investments, John Farrell, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, local self reliance, making money, Mark Jacobson, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, public transport, public utility commissions, rationality, reason, stranded assets, sustainability, the energy of the people, the green century, the value of financial assets, Tony Seba, zero carbon
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Should choice belong to those who contribute the most?
When running a corporation there are various kinds of productivity measures that can be used. There are bizzare ones like return on controllable assets (ROCA), and typical ones like overall revenue, or overall profit. When judging productivity of employees and … Continue reading
Posted in capitalism, corporations, elitism, politics, United States
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