Distributed Solar: The Democratizaton of Energy
Blogroll
- Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI)
- Musings on Quantitative Paleoecology Quantitative methods and palaeoenvironments.
- 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.
- Survey Methodology, Prof Ron Fricker http://faculty.nps.edu/rdfricke/
- All about Sankey diagrams
- John Kruschke's "Dong Bayesian data analysis" blog Expanding and enhancing John’s book of same title (now in second edition!)
- Flettner Rotor Bruce Yeany introduces the Flettner Rotor and related science
- South Shore Recycling Cooperative Materials management, technical assistance and networking, town advocacy, public outreach
- Gavin Simpson
- Subsidies for wind and solar versus subsidies for fossil fuels
- 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.
- James' Empty Blog
- 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
- Earth Family Alpha Michael Osborne’s blog (former Executive at Austin Energy, now Chairman of the Electric Utility Commission for Austin, Texas)
- 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.
- The Alliance for Securing Democracy dashboard
- Gabriel's staircase
- Karl Broman
- Team Andrew Weinberg Walking September 8th for the Jimmy Fund!
- "Consider a Flat Pond" Invited talk introducing systems thinking, by Jan Galkowski, at First Parish in Needham, UU, via Zoom
- 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
- Giant vertical monopolies for energy have stopped making sense
- Mrooijer's Numbers R 4Us
- 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
- SASB Sustainability Accounting Standards Board
- The Mermaid's Tale A conversation about biological complexity and evolution, and the societal aspects of science
- distributed solar and matching location to need
- WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION Cathy O’Neil’s WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION,
- Mark Berliner's video lecture "Bayesian mechanistic-statistical modeling with examples in geophysical settings"
- Charlie Kufs' "Stats With Cats" blog “You took Statistics 101. Now what?”
- American Statistical Association
- Leadership lessons from Lao Tzu
- London Review of Books
- BioPython A collection of Python tools for quantitative Biology
- Ted Dunning
- Earle Wilson
- Rasmus Bååth's Research Blog Bayesian statistics and data analysis
- Brendon Brewer on Overfitting Important and insightful presentation by Brendon Brewer on overfitting
- Quotes by Nikola Tesla Quotes by Nikola Tesla, including some of others he greatly liked.
- Leverhulme Centre for Climate Change Mitigation
- Risk and Well-Being
- Ives and Dakos techniques for regime changes in series
- Professor David Draper
- All about models
- Comprehensive Guide to Bayes Rule
- 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.”
- Carl Safina's blog One of the wisest on Earth
- Earth Family Beta MIchael Osborne’s blog on Science and the like
- Dominic Cummings blog Chief advisor to the PM, United Kingdom
- Nadler Strategy, LLC, on sustainability Thinking about business, efficient and effective management, and business value
climate change
- 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.
- Ellenbogen: There is no Such Thing as Wind Turbine Syndrome
- Climate Communication Hassol, Somerville, Melillo, and Hussin site communicating climate to the public
- Nick Bower's "Scared Scientists"
- Professor Robert Strom's compendium of resources on climate change Truly excellent
- 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
- Transitioning to fully renewable energy Professor Saul Griffiths talks to transitioning the customer journey, from a dependency upon fossil fuels to an electrified future
- RealClimate
- SolarLove
- Bloomberg interactive graph on “What's warming the world''
- Eli on the spectroscopic basis of atmospheric radiation physical chemistry
- Skeptical Science
- 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.
- Solar Gardens Community Power
- Simple models of climate change
- Warming slowdown discussion
- And Then There's Physics
- Social Cost of Carbon
- The HUMAN-caused greenhouse effect, in under 5 minutes, by Bill Nye
- 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.
- 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
- Reanalyses.org
- MIT's Climate Primer
- 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.
- "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.
- “The Irrelevance of Saturation: Why Carbon Dioxide Matters'' (Bart Levenson)
- ATTP summarizes all that stuff about Committed Warming from AND THEN THERE’S PHYSICS
- Interview with Wally Broecker Interview with Wally Broecker
- 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.
- Rabett Run Incisive analysis of climate science versus deliberate distraction
- Équiterre Equiterre helps build a social movement by encouraging individuals, organizations and governments to make ecological and equitable choices, in a spirit of solidarity.
- Ricky Rood's “What would happen to climate if we (suddenly) stopped emitting GHGs today?
- Dessler's 6 minute Greenhouse Effect video
- `Who to believe on climate change': Simple checks By Bart Verheggen
- Sea Change Boston
- "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.
- Tamino's Open Mind Open Mind: A statistical look at climate, its science, and at science denial
- Tuft's Professor Kenneth Lang on the physical chemistry of the Greenhouse Effect
- HotWhopper: It's excellent. Global warming and climate change. Eavesdropping on the deniosphere, its weird pseudo-science and crazy conspiracy whoppers.
- Climate at a glance Current state of the climate, from NOAA
- Wind sled Wind sled: A zero carbon way of exploring ice sheets
- 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
- Wally Broecker on climate realism
- David Appell's early climate science
- The Scientific Case for Modern Human-caused Global Warming
- An open letter to Steve Levitt
- The net average effect of a warming climate is increased aridity (Professor Steven Sherwood)
- Documenting the Climate Deniarati at work
- SOLAR PRODUCTION at Westwood Statistical Studios Generation charts for our home in Westwood, MA
- Climate model projections versus observations
Archives
Jan Galkowski
Category Archives: Carbon Tax
Exciting if improbable news
There’s a report in the Financial Times today that UN negotiators are considering a proposal to phase out oil, coal, and gas by 2050. There’s a second permitting fossil fuels to be used, but only in countries which ensured “net … Continue reading
Posted in biology, Boston Ethical Society, carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide capture, carbon dioxide sequestration, Carbon Tax, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate education, consumption, ecology, economics, energy, energy reduction, environment, fossil fuel divestment, geophysics, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, IPCC, meteorology, methane, nuclear power, oceanography, physics, politics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, solar power, wind power
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“A Bill — To provide for carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emission fees”
Senators Whitehouse and Schatz introduced legislation to put a fee on Carbon (via the “American Opportunity Carbon Fee Act”), imposed on all sources, including imports, with fees distributed to the general public. Senator Whitehouse gave a lengthy introduction to the … Continue reading
Posted in carbon dioxide, Carbon Tax, citizenship, climate, climate education, consumption, demand-side solutions, economics, efficiency, energy, energy reduction, forecasting, fossil fuel divestment, humanism, investment in wind and solar energy, meteorology, methane, municipal solid waste, politics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science
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Ray Pierrehumbert on the new U.S.-China climate deal
Professor Pierrehumbert offers his thoughts in Slate. He’s the author of Principles of Planetary Climate which is, as far as I’m concerned, the definitive climate book.
Posted in astronomy, astrophysics, carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide capture, Carbon Tax, chemistry, citizen science, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate education, conservation, consumption, demand-side solutions, differential equations, ecology, economics, education, efficiency, energy, energy reduction, engineering, environment, forecasting, geoengineering, geophysics, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, IPCC, mathematics, maths, meteorology, methane, NCA, NOAA, oceanography, physics, politics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, scientific publishing, solar power, statistics, wind power
Tagged climate book
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Christiana Figueres, the climate chief for the United Nations
Christiana Figueres, the climate chief for the United Nations
Posted in carbon dioxide, Carbon Tax, citizenship, civilization, climate, conservation, consumption, ecology, economics, energy, energy reduction, engineering, environment, forecasting, fossil fuel divestment, geoengineering, geophysics, investment in wind and solar energy, IPCC, meteorology, oceanography, physics, politics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, wind power
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IPCC WG3 overview video, and Synthesis Report news conference
Posted in carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide capture, carbon dioxide sequestration, Carbon Tax, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate education, conservation, consumption, ecology, economics, efficiency, energy, energy reduction, engineering, environment, forecasting, fossil fuel divestment, geoengineering, geophysics, humanism, investment in wind and solar energy, IPCC, meteorology, methane, nuclear power, oceanography, physics, politics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, solar power, wind power
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“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
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University of Chicago economist Steve Cicala: Free dumping of carbon dioxide into atmosphere is nothing less than “theft”
A conservative economic policy model for taxing carbon is making progress! There’s an article about it in Forbes, along with predictable blowback. Free dumping of CO2 pollution into the atmosphere is nothing less than “theft” from future generations who stand … Continue reading
Posted in carbon dioxide, Carbon Tax, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate education, ecology, economics, education, energy, engineering, environment, forecasting, fossil fuel divestment, geophysics, meteorology, oceanography, physics, politics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science
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“Frequency-comb-based remote sensing of greenhouse gases over kilometer air paths”
G. B. Rieker, F. R. Giorgetta, W. C. Swann, J. Kofler, A. M. Zolot, L. C. Sinclair, E. Baumann, C. Cromer, G. Petron, C. Sweeney, P. P. Tans, I. Coddington, And N. R. Newbury, “Frequency-comb-based remote sensing of greenhouse gases … Continue reading
Who Does It, and How Much
“A multiyear, global gridded fossil fuel CO2 emission data product: Evaluation and analysis of results”, S. Asefi-Najafabady, P. J. Rayner, K. R. Gurney, A. McRobert, Y. Song, K. Coltin1, J. Huang, C. Elvidge, and K. Baugh, Journal of Geophysical Research: … Continue reading
Posted in Bayesian, carbon dioxide, Carbon Tax, citizenship, climate, climate education, conservation, consumption, demand-side solutions, ecology, efficiency, energy, energy reduction, environment, forecasting, fossil fuel divestment, geophysics, investment in wind and solar energy, meteorology, NASA, oceanography, physics, rationality, reasonableness, science, solar power, wind power
Tagged fossil fuel emissions
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Price Waterhouse Coopers estimates 20 years until the global blows the danger point of climate change if emissions continue
Good article at Citylab and an even better report from pwc.
“It’ll be okay: Trust me”, redux
Professor Steven Koonin offers up another dollop of vague, specious criticism of climate science in his editorial in The Wall Street Journal. He is credentialed, no doubt authoritative. But compelling arguments for a position should be judged as if the … Continue reading
Posted in art, Boston Ethical Society, carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide capture, Carbon Tax, citizenship, climate, climate education, conservation, ecology, economics, education, energy, engineering, environment, forecasting, geophysics, mathematics, maths, meteorology, oceanography, physics, politics, rationality, reasonableness, science
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Germany’s energy revolution and its effect upon the world, in The New York Times. Details here. Video on offshore wind. The roots of the energiewende.
“Expectations for a new climate agreement” (Jacoby, Chen, MIT, 2014)
Professors Jacoby and Chen have issued a report as part of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change which handicaps the outcomes of the negotiations which, by international agreement, need to take place in 2015 … Continue reading
Posted in carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide capture, carbon dioxide sequestration, Carbon Tax, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate education, consumption, demand-side solutions, ecology, efficiency, energy, energy reduction, environment, forecasting, geophysics, history, investing, meteorology, oceanography, physics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, solar power, wind power
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Wally Broecker, 2015, “What Should We Do About Fossil Fuel CO2?”
Postscript, 19:03 EDT, 1st September 2014 See Wally Broecker’s article in Science where he proposed and coined both the terms “climatic change” and “global warming”. That was in August of 1975.
Emission reductions since 1990
It is popular to gage progress towards greenhouse gas emissions reductions by how much they have been reduced since 1990. This is done by the federal government, and it is done by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It is the wrong … Continue reading
Posted in astrophysics, carbon dioxide, Carbon Tax, chemistry, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate education, conservation, consumption, demand-side solutions, ecology, economics, energy reduction, engineering, environment, forecasting, geoengineering, geophysics, history, investing, mathematics, maths, meteorology, methane, NASA, nuclear power, oceanography, optimization, physics, politics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, solar power, WHOI, wind power, Wordpress
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“Fossil fuels’ future”
Science 15 August 2014: Vol. 345 no. 6198 pp. 739-740 DOI: 10.1126/science.345.6198.739-d LETTERS Fossil fuels’ future The 27 June special section on The Great Gas Boom (“The gas surge,” D. Malakoff, p. 1464) about natural gas from hydraulic fracturing provided … Continue reading
Woo hoo! OCO-2 on station!
See the story, from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Added 12th August 2014. More from NASA JPL.
Steven Colbert: Splashin’ alkanes, cycloalkanes, asphaltenes, and aromatic hydrocarbons at “Nature ‘Nuffies”
My only improvement is to suggest all practitioners be required to remain behind the belching tailpipes for at least an hour. It would be good for the gene pool.
Posted in Carbon Tax, civilization, politics
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President Obama speaking to the League of Conservation Voters: He’s tryin’, but …
… I don’t know if we can get to where we need to go without significant, economy-impacting demand side reductions, as mentioned in the speech. And President Obama’s administration seems to be choosing economy over danger. And natural gas is … Continue reading
Natural gas as fuel: Thumbs down!
I never liked the idea of using natural gas as a “bridge energy fuel”. It seems to me unrealistic to invest substantially in additional CO2 producing infrastructure which will simply need to be stopped and teared down a lot sooner … Continue reading
Shepherd skewers “climate zombie theories” …
(Updated 2016 to fix title misspelling, and updated 30 December 2018 to fix video link.) You know ’em: There’s been no warming for 15 years The Sun’s responsible CO2 is a trace gas in atmosphere and therefore can’t have anything … Continue reading
Posted in Carbon Tax, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate education, ecology, economics, education, engineering, environment, forecasting, geophysics, history, meteorology, oceanography, physics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science
Tagged climate zombies
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True motives revealed: ‘The climate models are bad and don’t work; but let’s not try to improve them’
In a wholly cynical response on a tiny bit of the U.S. government’s budget, the Republican-dominated Congress has revealed the true motives of their financial backers: To hobble, delay, confuse, and force mismanagement of any government or academic or independent … Continue reading
Posted in carbon dioxide, Carbon Tax, citizenship, climate, climate education, economics, education, environment, forecasting, geophysics, mathematics, maths, meteorology, oceanography, physics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science
Tagged Congress; representative democracy; U.S. government; climate deniers; fossil fuel interests
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CO2 now
Where atmospheric concentration of CO2 is about now. What matters is less the absolute amount (which is bad enough, with preindustrial being 288 ppm), but the change. These data come with the following qualifying statement: Data shown may be measurements … Continue reading
Pine Island, Thwaites, Haynes, Pope, Smith, and Kohler glaciers on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS)
Posted in carbon dioxide, Carbon Tax, climate, climate education, environment, forecasting, geophysics, meteorology, oceanography, physics, rationality, risk, science
Tagged NASA JPL
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Balance. (And Bill Nye the Science Guy!)
Posted in carbon dioxide, Carbon Tax, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate education, conservation, ecology, education, energy, energy reduction, environment, forecasting, geophysics, meteorology, oceanography, physics, politics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science
Tagged Bill Nye
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Climate Disruption: “Happy talk” and “a slap in the face”
These are excerpts from an interview with philosopher Dale Jamieson in Salon by Lindsay Abrams. My favorite part is highlighted. Q: (Abrams) So far as our ethical responsibilities go, is it that people don’t want to feel personally responsible for … Continue reading
Posted in atheism, carbon dioxide, Carbon Tax, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate education, compassion, conservation, consumption, demand-side solutions, economics, education, efficiency, energy reduction, environment, forecasting, geophysics, history, humanism, meteorology, oceanography, physics, politics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, statistics
Tagged optimism, United States
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1991-2012, United States, Earth: Surface Temperatures
From the just released 2014 National Climate Assessment.
“To stay below 2 °C of warming, the world must become carbon negative.”
Sobering degree of global ambition needed to keep warming below 2 degrees Celsius. This is why I am quite pessimistic regarding natural gas as a “bridge fuel”. Every new fossil fuel-powered utility station being built today, every new piece of … Continue reading
Posted in carbon dioxide, Carbon Tax, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate education, conservation, consumption, ecology, economics, efficiency, energy reduction, engineering, environment, forecasting, geoengineering, geophysics, meteorology, nuclear power, physics, politics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, solar power, wind power
Tagged IPCC
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A comment on RealClimate’s review of Part 3 of the AR5 IPCC Report, regarding “Mitigation of Climate Change”
(Corrected text below thanks to Jim Stuttard. Also added a postscript.) The review at RealClimate is quite good, and I recommend it. Nothing to add here. But I simply must quote from and underscore my agreement with the sentiment of … Continue reading
Posted in carbon dioxide, Carbon Tax, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate education, consumption, demand-side solutions, ecology, economics, education, energy reduction, engineering, environment, geophysics, history, meteorology, nuclear power, oceanography, physics, politics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, Unitarian Universalism
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ecoquant
