
Distributed Solar: The Democratizaton of Energy

Blogroll
- 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
- Label Noise
- The Plastic Pick-Up: Discovering new sources of marine plastic pollution
- Dr James Spall's SPSA
- Number Cruncher Politics
- Nadler Strategy, LLC, on sustainability Thinking about business, efficient and effective management, and business value
- "Consider a Flat Pond" Invited talk introducing systems thinking, by Jan Galkowski, at First Parish in Needham, UU, via Zoom
- "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.
- 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
- SASB Sustainability Accounting Standards Board
- Survey Methodology, Prof Ron Fricker http://faculty.nps.edu/rdfricke/
- 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.
- Professor David Draper
- 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/
- Los Alamos Center for Bayesian Methods
- American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
- distributed solar and matching location to need
- Bob Altemeyer on authoritarianism (via Dan Satterfield) The science behind the GOP civil war
- 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
- The Keeling Curve: its history History of the Keeling Curve and Charles David Keeling
- Carl Safina's blog One of the wisest on Earth
- Quotes by Nikola Tesla Quotes by Nikola Tesla, including some of others he greatly liked.
- 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/.
- Rasmus Bååth's Research Blog Bayesian statistics and data analysis
- John Kruschke's "Dong Bayesian data analysis" blog Expanding and enhancing John’s book of same title (now in second edition!)
- Awkward Botany
- American Statistical Association
- Giant vertical monopolies for energy have stopped making sense
- What If
- Beautiful Weeds of New York City
- Dominic Cummings blog Chief advisor to the PM, United Kingdom
- Dollars per BBL: Energy in Transition
- Fear and Loathing in Data Science Cory Lesmeister’s savage journey to the heart of Big Data
- 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.
- 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
- GeoEnergy Math Prof Paul Pukite’s Web site devoted to energy derived from geological and geophysical processes and categorized according to its originating source.
- Brian McGill's Dynamic Ecology blog Quantitative biology with pithy insights regarding applications of statistical methods
- Brendon Brewer on Overfitting Important and insightful presentation by Brendon Brewer on overfitting
- OOI Data Nuggets OOI Ocean Data Lab: The Data Nuggets
- 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.
- Slice Sampling
- South Shore Recycling Cooperative Materials management, technical assistance and networking, town advocacy, public outreach
- Tony Seba Solar energy, electric vehicle, energy storage, and business disruption professor and visionary
- Leverhulme Centre for Climate Change Mitigation
- Earth Family Beta MIchael Osborne’s blog on Science and the like
- Leadership lessons from Lao Tzu
- 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
- Peter Congdon's Bayesian statistical modeling Peter Congdon’s collection of links pertaining to his several books on Bayesian modeling
- 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.
- Harvard's Project Implicit
climate change
- Exxon-Mobil statement on UNFCCC COP21
- 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
- All Models Are Wrong Dr Tamsin Edwards blog about uncertainty in science, and climate science
- Sir David King David King’s perspective on climate, and the next thousands of years for humanity
- Ellenbogen: There is no Such Thing as Wind Turbine Syndrome
- Jacobson WWS literature index
- "Climate science is setttled enough"
- 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.
- Risk and Well-Being
- Rabett Run Incisive analysis of climate science versus deliberate distraction
- James Hansen and granddaughter Sophie on moving forward with progress on climate
- "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.
- 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.
- Jacobson WWS literature index
- Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature
- Ray Pierrehumbert's site related to "Principles of Planetary Climate" THE book on climate science
- The Carbon Cycle The Carbon Cycle, monitored by The Carbon Project
- Spectra Energy exposed
- On Thomas Edison and Solar Electric Power
- And Then There's Physics
- Nick Bower's "Scared Scientists"
- 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%.
- Climate Change Reports By John and Mel Harte
- Thriving on Low Carbon
- “The Irrelevance of Saturation: Why Carbon Dioxide Matters'' (Bart Levenson)
- Équiterre Equiterre helps build a social movement by encouraging individuals, organizations and governments to make ecological and equitable choices, in a spirit of solidarity.
- Transitioning to fully renewable energy Professor Saul Griffiths talks to transitioning the customer journey, from a dependency upon fossil fuels to an electrified future
- Documenting the Climate Deniarati at work
- Simple models of climate change
- Bloomberg interactive graph on “What's warming the world''
- Sea Change Boston
- HotWhopper: It's excellent. Global warming and climate change. Eavesdropping on the deniosphere, its weird pseudo-science and crazy conspiracy whoppers.
- MIT's Climate Primer
- Grid parity map for Solar PV in United States
- Climate model projections versus observations
- 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
- Earth System Models
- Tamino's Open Mind Open Mind: A statistical look at climate, its science, and at science denial
- Agendaists Eli Rabett’s coining of a phrase
- 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.
- Social Cost of Carbon
- "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.
- Warming slowdown discussion
- “The discovery of global warming'' (American Institute of Physics)
- Eli on the spectroscopic basis of atmospheric radiation physical chemistry
- David Appell's early climate science
- Updating the Climate Science: What path is the real world following? From Professors Makiko Sato & James Hansen of Columbia University
- "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.
- James Powell on sampling the climate consensus
- History of discovering Global Warming From the American Institute of Physics.
Archives
Jan Galkowski
Category Archives: finance
banks aren’t interested …
From The Hill: The Trump administration auctioned off oil and gas rights in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) for the first time ever Wednesday, selling off 1.6 million acres along the coast to primarily one major buyer: the state … Continue reading
What you need to do
Yes, I know, this is from Orsted, a public company which, primarily, builds offshore wind farms. And, as a result, you out there (which is, frankly, an infinitesimal fraction of the world, because, basically, no one follows me), will critique … Continue reading
Posted in #climatestrike, American Solar Energy Society, an uncaring American public, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, bridge to somewhere, clean disruption, climate disruption, climate policy, decentralized electric power generation, destructive economic development, distributed generation, ecological disruption, ecological services, ecomodernism, economics, ecopragmatism, electrical energy storage, emissions, exponential growth, extended producer responsibility, finance, Friedman, South Shore Recycling Cooperative
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on nonlinear dynamics of hordes of people
I spent a bit of last week at a symposium honoring the work of Charney and Lorenz in fluid dynamics. I am no serious student of fluid dynamics. I have a friend, Klaus, an engineer, who is, and makes a … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, bifurcations, biology, Carl Safina, causation, complex systems, dynamic generalized linear models, dynamic linear models, dynamical systems, ecological services, ecology, Emily Shuckburgh, finance, Floris Takens, fluid dynamics, fluid eddies, games of chance, Hyper Anthropocene, investments, Lenny Smith, Lorenz, nonlinear, numerical algorithms, numerical analysis, politics, population biology, population dynamics, prediction markets, Principles of Planetary Climate, public transport, Ray Pierrehumbert, risk, sampling networks, sustainability, Timothy Lenton, Yale University Statistics Department, zero carbon, ``The tide is risin'/And so are we''
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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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Deloitte: The drumbeats for the extinction of utilities have begun
Deloitte Resources 2017 Study — Energy management: Sustainability and progress. From The Economist, 25th February 2017: FROM his office window, Philipp Schröder points out over the Bavarian countryside and issues a Bond villain’s laugh: “In front of you, you can … Continue reading
Posted in Bloomberg, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, bridge to somewhere, Buckminster Fuller, clean disruption, CleanTechnica, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, destructive economic development, disruption, distributed generation, economics, EIA, electrical energy storage, energy utilities, engineering, finance, fossil fuel divestment, green tech, grid defection, investment in wind and solar energy, John Farrell, Joseph Schumpeter, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, local generation, local self reliance, Mark Jacobson, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, microgrids, public utility commissions, PUCs, rate of return regulation, reason, reasonableness, solar democracy, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, Techno Utopias, the energy of the people, the green century, the value of financial assets, Tony Seba, wind energy, wind power, zero carbon
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Can the City of Boston adapt to and help mitigate climate disruption?
(See the major update at the bottom of this post as well.) (On “Less Science and More Social Science” at And Then There’s Physics) And Then There’s Physics is one of my favorite blogs discussing climate disruption and related policy … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, anomaly detection, Anthropocene, Bill Nye, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, bollocks, Boston, bridge to somewhere, citizenship, civilization, clean disruption, climate business, climate change, climate disruption, climate economics, climate education, climate justice, Daniel Kahneman, destructive economic development, economics, engineering, environment, finance, floods, forecasting, Gaylord Nelson, global warming, Hermann Scheer, Hyper Anthropocene, insurance, investing, John Englander, Joseph Schumpeter, Kerry Emanuel, MA, Massachusetts, meteorology, Minsky moment, nor'easters, organizational failures, politics, risk, sea level rise, sociology, statistics, supply chains, sustainability, the right to be and act stupid, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets
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Mark Carney: Why are financial regulators and central bank governors looking at climate?
http://www.cbc.ca/i/caffeine/syndicate/?mediaId=725874755644 “We don’t want a Minsky moment about climate.” Update, 2016-07-19 Interesting that Carney talks about “stabilizing at a temperature” when emissions are stabilized using a Carbon tax. He agrees with a Carbon tax, but he seems to have his … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, Anthropocene, Bloomberg, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BLUE, central banks, civilization, climate, climate business, climate change, climate disruption, climate economics, climate education, climate justice, corporate litigation on damage from fossil fuel emissions, corporate supply chains, demand-side solutions, ecology, economics, education, environment, false advertising, finance, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, global warming, greenwashing, grid defection, insurance, investing, Joseph Schumpeter, liberal climate deniers, local generation, organizational failures, rate of return regulation, rationality, reasonableness, solar domination, Spaceship Earth, stranded assets, sustainability, the right to know, the value of financial assets, zero carbon
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Techno Utopias
Professor Kevin Anderson on Techno Utopias. The Paris “COP21” agreement is/was not only expecting miracles, it was counting on them. Y’think climate disruption causes ecosystem disruption: Try geoengineering. Well the answer was simple. If we choose to continue our love … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, Anthropocene, bollocks, bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide capture, carbon dioxide sequestration, civilization, climate, climate change, climate disruption, coastal communities, complex systems, consumption, COP21, corporate supply chains, denial, disingenuity, economics, environment, ethics, evidence, exponential growth, extended supply chains, FEMA, finance, fossil fuels, games of chance, geophysics, glaciers, global warming, greenhouse gases, greenwashing, Hyper Anthropocene, icesheets, ignorance, IPCC, James Hansen, Kevin Anderson, Lenny Smith, liberal climate deniers, living shorelines, MA, meteorology, Neill deGrasse Tyson, oceanography, physics, planning, population biology, rationality, Ray Pierrehumbert, reasonableness, regime shifts, Sankey diagram, science, sea level rise, selfishness, silly tech devices, Techno Utopias, the right to know, the value of financial assets
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Bob Inglis: “Energy optimists. Climate realists.”
Kudos. http://climateeye.republicen.org/ http://blog.republicen.org/ http://republicen.org/areyouen/ http://republicen.org/the-solution-element/ http://republicen.org/the-solution-element/realist-guide/ I’m not, by their definition anyway, a conservative. In fact, I’m pretty apolitical these days although I will do things like demonstrate. But it’s completely clear to me this problem isn’t going to get … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, atheism, bifurcations, Bill Nye, bridge to nowhere, capricious gods, carbon dioxide, Carbon Tax, citizenship, civilization, clean disruption, climate change, climate disruption, compassion, conservation, consumption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, destructive economic development, ecology, economics, education, energy reduction, energy utilities, environment, ethics, finance, fossil fuel divestment, global warming, humanism, Hyper Anthropocene, ignorance, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, meteorology, new forms of scientific peer review, NOAA, oceanography, physical materialism, physics, politics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, sociology, statistics, sustainability, Tea Party, UU Humanists
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Utilities for dummies: How they work and why that needs to change (from grist.org)
“Utilities are shielded by a force field of tedium.” “Solar panels could destroy U.S. utilities, according to U.S. utilities.” Utilities for dummies: How they work and why that needs to change“, a compact introduction, from grist.org. And there’s an additional … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, bifurcations, bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, citizenship, civilization, clean disruption, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate education, conservation, consumption, corruption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, destructive economic development, disingenuity, dynamic linear models, dynamical systems, ecology, economics, education, efficiency, energy, energy reduction, energy utilities, engineering, environment, ethics, exponential growth, finance, forecasting, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, fracking, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, ignorance, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, mathematics, maths, meteorology, methane, microgrids, natural gas, optimization, physics, pipelines, politics, prediction, public utility commissions, PUCs, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, solar power, statistics, sustainability, taxes, temporal myopia, the right to know, time series, Tony Seba, wind power, zero carbon
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California solar users already affecting per-residence rates of non-solar utility customers
Lead article in the San Francisco Chronicle today addresses how non-solar customers of Pacific Gas & Electric are already carrying a larger burden of the network costs for that utility, costs which are reflected in their rates. This is the … Continue reading
Posted in bifurcations, clean disruption, climate, climate change, climate disruption, conservation, consumption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, destructive economic development, differential equations, dynamical systems, economics, efficiency, energy, energy reduction, environment, exponential growth, finance, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, global warming, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, maths, microgrids, natural gas, pipelines, politics, rationality, reasonableness, solar power, statistics, temporal myopia, Tony Seba, wind power, zero carbon
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Tea Party member Debbie Dooley on solar power (from The Guardian)
I support solar energy because of my Tea Party beliefs — not despite them (From Debbie Dooley, in an article at The Guardian, one of the 22 founding members of the Tea Party.) I am a lifelong conservative and, also, … Continue reading
Posted in bifurcations, carbon dioxide, citizenship, clean disruption, climate, climate change, climate disruption, conservation, consumption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, economics, efficiency, energy, ethics, finance, fossil fuels, global warming, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, maths, microgrids, politics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, solar power, statistics, Tea Party, time series, Tony Seba, wind power, zero carbon
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Welcome to the Hyper-Anthropocene
The anticipated paper by J. Hansen, M. Sato, P. Hearty, R. Ruedy, M. Kelley, V. Masson-Delmotte, G. Russell, G. Tselioudis, J. Cao, E. Rignot, I. Velicogna, E. Kandiano, K. von Schuckmann, P. Kharecha, A. N. Legrande, M. Bauer, and K.-W. … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, Antarctica, Anthropocene, Arctic, astrophysics, bifurcations, Boston, carbon dioxide, Carbon Tax, Cauchy distribution, chance, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate change, climate disruption, dynamical systems, ecology, economics, engineering, environment, exponential growth, finance, floods, forecasting, games of chance, geophysics, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, ignorance, investing, IPCC, living shorelines, meteorology, oceanography, physics, Principles of Planetary Climate, rationality, Ray Pierrehumbert, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, sea level rise, seawalls, temporal myopia, the right to know
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Spectra Energy (and others) Plan to Expand Pipeline to Feed Gas to DownEast LNG (Maine) for Export! – Natural Gas Watch.org
Spectra Energy (and others) Plan to Expand Pipeline to Feed Gas to DownEast LNG (Maine) for Export! – Natural Gas Watch.org. This would not occur if the natural gas had been assigned a stiff Carbon Tax.
Posted in bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, Carbon Tax, climate, climate change, climate disruption, consumption, denial, economics, environment, ethics, finance, geophysics, global warming, methane, natural gas, physics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, statistics, temporal myopia, the right to know
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“Regulating Government”, from Overcoming Bias
Regulating Government. This post is about governments — with the advice of big banks — gaming pension accounts so they appear more solvent than they are.

