
Distributed Solar: The Democratizaton of Energy

Blogroll
- Carl Safina's blog One of the wisest on Earth
- Ted Dunning
- Flettner Rotor Bruce Yeany introduces the Flettner Rotor and related science
- Earth Family Beta MIchael Osborne’s blog on Science and the like
- 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.”
- American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
- Peter Congdon's Bayesian statistical modeling Peter Congdon’s collection of links pertaining to his several books on Bayesian modeling
- Mrooijer's Numbers R 4Us
- Comprehensive Guide to Bayes Rule
- 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
- All about Sankey diagrams
- Charlie Kufs' "Stats With Cats" blog “You took Statistics 101. Now what?”
- OOI Data Nuggets OOI Ocean Data Lab: The Data Nuggets
- Gabriel's staircase
- Survey Methodology, Prof Ron Fricker http://faculty.nps.edu/rdfricke/
- Nadler Strategy, LLC, on sustainability Thinking about business, efficient and effective management, and business value
- AP Statistics: Sampling, by Michael Porinchak Twin City Schools
- Mark Berliner's video lecture "Bayesian mechanistic-statistical modeling with examples in geophysical settings"
- London Review of Books
- Label Noise
- 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.
- Leadership lessons from Lao Tzu
- "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.
- Beautiful Weeds of New York City
- 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
- Harvard's Project Implicit
- "Talking Politics" podcast David Runciman, Helen Thompson
- James' Empty Blog
- Dr James Spall's SPSA
- Thaddeus Stevens quotes As I get older, I admire this guy more and more
- Giant vertical monopolies for energy have stopped making sense
- Mertonian norms
- Earle Wilson
- "The Expert"
- SASB Sustainability Accounting Standards Board
- Rasmus Bååth's Research Blog Bayesian statistics and data analysis
- What If
- 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.
- 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/
- Ives and Dakos techniques for regime changes in series
- Dollars per BBL: Energy in Transition
- Leverhulme Centre for Climate Change Mitigation
- 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.
- 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/.
- 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
- WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION, reviews Reviews of Cathy O’Neil’s new book
- The Alliance for Securing Democracy dashboard
- Awkward Botany
- 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
- distributed solar and matching location to need
climate change
- Ice and Snow
- RealClimate
- Interview with Wally Broecker Interview with Wally Broecker
- 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
- "Climate science is setttled enough"
- "Warming Slowdown?" (part 2 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. The second part.
- SOLAR PRODUCTION at Westwood Statistical Studios Generation charts for our home in Westwood, MA
- Simple box models and climate forcing IMO one of Tamino’s best posts illustrating climate forcing using simple box models
- Social Cost of Carbon
- Anti—Anti-#ClimateEmergency Whether to declare a climate emergency is debatable. But some critics have gone way overboard.
- Energy payback period for solar panels Considering everything, how long do solar panels have to operate to offset the energy used to produce them?
- Climate at a glance Current state of the climate, from NOAA
- And Then There's Physics
- Tamino's Open Mind Open Mind: A statistical look at climate, its science, and at science denial
- Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature
- Dessler's 6 minute Greenhouse Effect video
- Agendaists Eli Rabett’s coining of a phrase
- The Scientific Case for Modern Human-caused Global Warming
- Climate model projections versus observations
- 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.
- "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.
- Climate Communication Hassol, Somerville, Melillo, and Hussin site communicating climate to the public
- SolarLove
- Klaus Lackner (ASU), Silicon Kingdom Holdings (SKH) Capturing CO2 from air at scale
- “The Irrelevance of Saturation: Why Carbon Dioxide Matters'' (Bart Levenson)
- "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
- The net average effect of a warming climate is increased aridity (Professor Steven Sherwood)
- Mrooijer's Global Temperature Explorer
- 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%.
- An open letter to Steve Levitt
- 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
- Sea Change Boston
- 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
- Tell Utilities Solar Won't Be Killed Barry Goldwater, Jr’s campaign to push for solar expansion against monopolistic utilities, as a Republican
- “Ways to [try to] slow the Solar Century''
- On Thomas Edison and Solar Electric Power
- "Lessons of the Little Ice Age" (Farber) From Dan Farber, at LEGAL PLANET
- The Green Plate Effect Eli Rabett’s “The Green Plate Effect”
- Climate impacts on retail and supply chains
- 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.)
- 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.
- "Getting to the Energy Future We Want," Dr Steven Chu
- Tuft's Professor Kenneth Lang on the physical chemistry of the Greenhouse Effect
- 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
- Non-linear feedbacks in climate (discussion of Bloch-Johnson, Pierrehumbert, Abbot paper) Discussion of http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1002/2015GL064240/abstract
- weather blocking patterns
- History of discovering Global Warming From the American Institute of Physics.
- World Weather Attribution
- Bloomberg interactive graph on “What's warming the world''
Archives
Jan Galkowski
Category Archives: chemistry
Cloud brightening hits a salty snag
The proposal known as solar radiation management is complicated. It just got moreso. Released Wednesday: Fossum, K.N., Ovadnevaite, J., Ceburnis, D. et al. “Sea-spray regulates sulfate cloud droplet activation over oceans“, Climate and Atmospheric Science, 3(14): (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41612-020-0116-2 [open access] … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Meteorological Association, atmosphere, being carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide, chemistry, climate disruption, climate mitigation, climate nightmares, climate policy, cloud brightening, ecomodernism, emissions, geoengineering, global warming, Ken Caldeira, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, meteorological models, meteorology, mitigating climate disruption, NASA, National Center for Atmospheric Research, oceanography, Principles of Planetary Climate, Ray Pierrehumbert, risk, solar radiation management, sustainability, Wally Broecker, water vapor, wishful environmentalism, 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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Heat has no hair (from Eli Rabett)
See Eli’s post. Excerpt: We can summarize the data in the figure above adding that ~40 W/m2 go directly from the surface to space as IR radiation of the 398 W/m2 leaving the surface. In and out in the table … Continue reading
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Meteorological Association, an ignorant American public, an uncaring American public, atmosphere, Blackbody radiation, carbon dioxide, chemistry, climate change, climate education, Eli Rabett, global warming, physics, science
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The elephant in the room: a case for producer responsibility
This is a guest post by Claire Galkowski, Executive Director, South Shore Recycling Cooperative. With so much focus on the recycling crisis, we tend to overlook the root cause of the problem: The glut of short lived consumer products and … Continue reading
Posted in affordable mass goods, Anthropocene, chemistry, citizenship, civilization, Claire Galkowski, CleanTechnica, climate economics, consumption, corporate citizenship, corporate responsibility, corporate supply chains, demand-side solutions, design science, ecological services, ecology, Ecology Action, economics, environment, ethics, extended producer responsibility, extended supply chains, greenwashing, Hyper Anthropocene, local self reliance, materials science, municipal solid waste, rebound effect, resource producitivity, shop, solid waste management, sustainability, temporal myopia, the green century, the tragedy of our present civilization, tragedy of the horizon, wishful environmentalism
Tagged reycling, Sankey diagrams, solid waste management, SSRC, waste minimisation
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On the responsibilities of scientists
On 4 September 2017, I added a blog post here titled “On the responsibilities of engineers”. Scientists have responsibilities, too. And I am delighted to say that the National Academies have just demonstrated a proud example of how such responsibilities … Continue reading
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Statistical Association, anti-science, attribution, Boston Ethical Society, chemistry, citizenship, compassion, Donald Trump, dump Trump, ecology, Ecology Action, economics, environment, environmental law, Environmental Protection Agency, ethics, evidence, fossil fuels, justice, land use to fight, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, pollution, rationality, reason, reasonableness, risk, science, science denier, secularism, sustainability, the right to be and act stupid, the right to know, the stack of lies, the value of financial assets, tragedy of the horizon
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“Oh no, not again” (from ATTP)
Response to a paper by Hermann Harde, from Ken Rice at … And Then There’s Physics. Dr Rice cites two other responses as well: One by Gavin Schmidt at RealClimate. One from 2011 by Gavin Cawley from the University of … Continue reading
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Meteorological Association, American Statistical Association, AMETSOC, atmosphere, being carbon dioxide, Carbon Cycle, carbon dioxide, chemistry, climate, climate disruption, climate education, Climate Lab Book, David Archer, diffusion, diffusion processes, fossil fuels, geophysics, Global Carbon Project, greenhouse gases, ignorance, physics, Principles of Planetary Climate, Ray Pierrehumbert, science, science education
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Getting back to 350 ppm CO2: You can’t go home again
(Update of this piece, included below.) (Major update of this piece included below.) You can’t. It’ll cost much more than 23 times 40 times the Gross World Product to do it. And, in any case, you need to go to … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Anthropocene, atmosphere, bollocks, bridge to nowhere, Carbon Cycle, carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide capture, carbon dioxide sequestration, Carbon Worshipers, chemistry, clear air capture of carbon dioxide, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate economics, corporate litigation on damage from fossil fuel emissions, David Archer, diffusion, diffusion processes, ecological services, ecology, economics, engineering, environment, environmental law, fossil fuels, geoengineering, global warming, greenhouse gases, Hyper Anthropocene, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, methane, Our Children's Trust, physics, rationality, reason, reasonableness, science, Spaceship Earth, the right to be and act stupid, Wally Broecker, zero carbon
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Absorption of long wave, or thermal radiation by CO2 at 667 per cm
From time to time, I engage with science deniers on the Web, typically in Comment sections, and primarily regarding aspects of climate science or physics. Some think this to be a waste of time, but, as I enjoy debating (have … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, astrophysics, atmosphere, Bill Nye, carbon dioxide, chemistry, citizen science, climate, climate change, climate data, climate disruption, climate education, denial, evidence, geophysics, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, ignorance, physics, rationality, reasonableness, science, science denier, science education, spectra, SuperCorrector1, Svante Arrhenius
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reblog: “The Big 3: CO2, CH4, N2O”, from Tamino
Greenhouse gases seen from the perspective of their marginal radiative forcings. This is a nice normalization of how much we should care about each. Note the context in the figure below (found on Mr Smiths Physics at Weebly.com): (Click on … Continue reading
“Number density, not mixing ratio”, from Eli
From this post: There is a cute little number called Loschmidt, the number of molecules in a cubic meter of air at 1 atm and 0° C, 2.6867774(47) x 1025 molecules/m3 … Eli Rabett provides a neat way to see … Continue reading
Posted in astrophysics, Boltzmann, carbon dioxide, chemistry, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate education, Eli Rabett, environment, evidence, geophysics, global warming, Loschmidt, meteorology, methane, physics, Principles of Planetary Climate, science, theoretical physics, thermodynamics
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Carbon Worshipers and Worship
There’s agitation and angst in some circles regarding the proper term to dub individuals who, however technical their training, reject the conclusions of climate science, physics, and even Exxon from the 1970s. (Graphs are from Greg Laden’s blog.) There’s denial, … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, atheism, bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, chemistry, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate change, climate data, climate models, Cult of Carbon, denial, energy, environment, Exxon, fossil fuels, geophysics, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, ignorance, IPCC, meteorology, oceanography, physical materialism, physics, rationality, reasonableness, science, UNFCCC, UU Humanists, zero carbon
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Super Hydrophobic Materials
Hat tip to Jeff Galkowski, my son, post-doc in Mathematics at McGill University and at Stanford University, a University of Rochester grad, who recently received a doctorate in Mathematics from University of California, Berkeley.
“Allocating a 2° C cumulative carbon budget to countries”: Gignac and Matthews
Abstract Recent estimates of the global carbon budget, or allowable cumulative CO2 emissions consistent with a given level of climate warming, have the potential to inform climate mitigation policy discussions aimed at maintaining global temperatures below 2° C. This raises … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, Anthropocene, Boston Ethical Society, bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, Carbon Tax, chance, chemistry, citizen science, citizenship, civilization, clean disruption, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate education, climate justice, compassion, conservation, consumption, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, destructive economic development, ecology, education, energy, energy reduction, environment, ethics, forecasting, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, geophysics, global warming, humanism, Hyper Anthropocene, ignorance, investment in wind and solar energy, IPCC, meteorology, mitigation, open source scientific software, physical materialism, physics, population biology, prediction, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, scientific publishing, sociology, solar power, sustainability, temporal myopia, the right to know, time series, UNFCCC, UU Humanists, wind power
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rappin’ the truth
(Hat tip to the Yale Climate Connections project.)
Posted in Bill Nye, biology, Boston, carbon dioxide, chemistry, citizen science, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate education, ecology, education, environment, evolution, geophysics, global warming, investment in wind and solar energy, Neill deGrasse Tyson, physics, population biology, rationality, reasonableness, science, science education
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carbon dioxide and saturation
One of the “climate zombies” that get’s trotted out from time to time and at places on the Internet is the argument of Knut Ångström, trying to rebut the calculations of Svante Arrhenius regarding the impact a doubling of carbon … Continue reading
Stone STOCHASTICITY Project
(Click on image for a larger one.) See the write-up for details.
Eli Rabett on the APS “Draft Statement on Earth’s Changing Climate”
This is from Rabett Run. The American Physical Society (“APS”) is working on a draft statement on climate change. Compared to other scientific organizations (and my own primary society, the American Statistical Association), it’s sure taking them a long time. … Continue reading
Posted in carbon dioxide, Carbon Tax, chemistry, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate change, climate education, diffusion processes, ecology, environment, fossil fuel divestment, geophysics, meteorology, methane, NCAR, NOAA, oceanography, open data, politics, Principles of Planetary Climate, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, sea level rise, solar power, testing, the right to know, time series, WHOI, wind power
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We are trying. And the bitterest result is to have so-called colleagues align themselves with the Koch brothers
I attended a 350.org meeting tonight. One group A group presenting there called “Fighting Against Natural Gas” applauded themselves for assailing Senator Whitehouse of Rhode Island for his supportive position on natural gas pipelines. Now, I am no friend of … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, astrophysics, Boston Ethical Society, bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide sequestration, Carbon Tax, chemistry, citizenship, climate, climate change, climate education, consumption, decentralized electric power generation, demand-side solutions, ecology, economics, energy reduction, engineering, forecasting, fossil fuel divestment, investment in wind and solar energy, IPCC, JAGS, meteorology, methane, model comparison, NASA, natural gas, NCAR, Neill deGrasse Tyson, oceanography, open data, physics, politics, population biology, Principles of Planetary Climate, Python 3, R, rationality, reasonableness, reproducible research, risk, science, science education, Scripps Institution of Oceanography
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Models don’t over-estimate warming?
At the reblogged article, I made reference to both a recommendation by Judith Curry for an article in Physics Today by Ray Pierrehumbert on infrared radiation and the original article. That article is available online. More is available in Professor … Continue reading
Posted in astrophysics, carbon dioxide, chemistry, citizen science, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate change, climate education, differential equations, diffusion processes, ecology, education, energy, forecasting, geophysics, IPCC, mathematics, meteorology, model comparison, NASA, NCAR, NOAA, oceanography, physics, Principles of Planetary Climate, rationality, Ray Pierrehumbert, reasonableness, science, statistics, the right to know
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Codium fragile, for Saturday, 17th January 2015
With today’s post, I’m beginning a new tradition at 667 per cm, posting a potpourri of short observations collected during the week, not necessarily having dense citations to work which inspired them. (Although if interested, please do ask and I’ll … Continue reading
Posted in art, arXiv, astronomy, astrophysics, atheism, carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide capture, Carbon Tax, Carl Sagan, chemistry, citizen science, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate change, climate education, conservation, consumption, decentralized electric power generation, demand-side solutions, ecology, economics, energy, engineering, environment, forecasting, fossil fuel divestment, geoengineering, history, humanism, investment in wind and solar energy, IPCC, meteorology, methane, microgrids, NASA, Neill deGrasse Tyson, new forms of scientific peer review, NOAA, notes, nuclear power, oceanography, open data, open source scientific software, physics, politics, Principles of Planetary Climate, rationality, reasonableness, reproducible research, science, science education, scientific publishing, sociology, the right to know
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“Atmospheric lifetime of fossil fuel carbon dioxide” (2009)
These basic facts do not appear to be widely known, so it’s a good thing this classic paper is now available in a new, easily accessible form. David Archer, Michael Eby, Victor Brovkin, Andy Ridgwell, Long Cao, Uwe Mikolajewicz, Ken … Continue reading
Posted in astrophysics, carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide capture, carbon dioxide sequestration, Carbon Tax, chemistry, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate education, conservation, consumption, demand-side solutions, differential equations, ecology, economics, education, energy, energy reduction, engineering, environment, fossil fuel divestment, geoengineering, geophysics, IPCC, meteorology, methane, natural gas, NCAR, NOAA, oceanography, physics, Principles of Planetary Climate, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, science education
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Climate Science: What You Need To Know
From Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy blog.
Posted in astronomy, astrophysics, carbon dioxide, chemistry, citizen science, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate education, consumption, ecology, economics, education, energy, engineering, environment, forecasting, fossil fuel divestment, geophysics, humanism, investment in wind and solar energy, meteorology, methane, NOAA, oceanography, physics, politics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, scientific publishing, solar power, the right to know, wind power
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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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“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
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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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
Are we making the argument harder than we have to?
Sure, correlation is not causation, but it is causation if there’s independent physical evidence that there is a link. And we have plenty of that. Much of the doubt and discussion these days is about attribution of surface warming to … Continue reading
The Alternative to Divestment from Fossil Fuels …
From the great XKCD … (Click image to enlarge.)
Posted in chemistry, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate education, conservation, consumption, demand-side solutions, ecology, economics, education, engineering, environment, geoengineering, geophysics, investing, optimization, physics, politics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science
Tagged soda
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“Without even thinking very hard …”: My favorite post from RealClimate
Professor Ray Pierrehumbert’s “Open Letter to Steve Levitt” has to be my favorite post on RealClimate. Not only does it do “Consider a spherical cow” kinds of quick calculation, in a Socratic manner it exposes the manipulation which climate deniers or, if … Continue reading
Posted in chemistry, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate education, ecology, economics, education, efficiency, energy, engineering, environment, geoengineering, geophysics, history, meteorology, notes, oceanography, physics, politics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science
Tagged freakonomics
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“On the Lyapunov function for complex-balanced mass-action systems”
“On the Lyapunov function for complex-balanced mass-action systems” Hat tip to the Azimuth Project and thanks to Manoj Gopalkrishnan for this interesting article.

