
Distributed Solar: The Democratizaton of Energy

Blogroll
- Thaddeus Stevens quotes As I get older, I admire this guy more and more
- "Consider a Flat Pond" Invited talk introducing systems thinking, by Jan Galkowski, at First Parish in Needham, UU, via Zoom
- The Plastic Pick-Up: Discovering new sources of marine plastic pollution
- Survey Methodology, Prof Ron Fricker http://faculty.nps.edu/rdfricke/
- Quotes by Nikola Tesla Quotes by Nikola Tesla, including some of others he greatly liked.
- Mertonian norms
- Team Andrew Weinberg Walking September 8th for the Jimmy Fund!
- Awkward Botany
- Label Noise
- The Mermaid's Tale A conversation about biological complexity and evolution, and the societal aspects of science
- Professor David Draper
- Bob Altemeyer on authoritarianism (via Dan Satterfield) The science behind the GOP civil war
- "Perpetual Ocean" from NASA GSFC
- Mark Berliner's video lecture "Bayesian mechanistic-statistical modeling with examples in geophysical settings"
- Leverhulme Centre for Climate Change Mitigation
- What If
- Dominic Cummings blog Chief advisor to the PM, United Kingdom
- The Alliance for Securing Democracy dashboard
- WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION Cathy O’Neil’s WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION,
- South Shore Recycling Cooperative Materials management, technical assistance and networking, town advocacy, public outreach
- James' Empty Blog
- Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI)
- Ives and Dakos techniques for regime changes in series
- Rasmus Bååth's Research Blog Bayesian statistics and data analysis
- Karl Broman
- Dollars per BBL: Energy in Transition
- distributed solar and matching location to need
- NCAR AtmosNews
- Healthy Home Healthy Planet
- Slice Sampling
- Gavin Simpson
- London Review of Books
- Tony Seba Solar energy, electric vehicle, energy storage, and business disruption professor and visionary
- 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.
- AP Statistics: Sampling, by Michael Porinchak Twin City Schools
- 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.
- John Cook's reasons to use Bayesian inference
- Gabriel's staircase
- "The Expert"
- 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.
- 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/
- 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
- Brendon Brewer on Overfitting Important and insightful presentation by Brendon Brewer on overfitting
- Number Cruncher Politics
- 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
- Comprehensive Guide to Bayes Rule
- American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
- Charlie Kufs' "Stats With Cats" blog “You took Statistics 101. Now what?”
- OOI Data Nuggets OOI Ocean Data Lab: The Data Nuggets
- Ted Dunning
climate change
- Isaac Held's blog In the spirit of Ray Pierrehumbert’s “big ideas come from small models” in his textbook, PRINCIPLES OF PLANETARY CLIMATE, Dr Held presents quantitative essays regarding one feature or another of the Earth’s climate and weather system.
- 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.
- “The Irrelevance of Saturation: Why Carbon Dioxide Matters'' (Bart Levenson)
- The HUMAN-caused greenhouse effect, in under 5 minutes, by Bill Nye
- Tell Utilities Solar Won't Be Killed Barry Goldwater, Jr’s campaign to push for solar expansion against monopolistic utilities, as a Republican
- Climate at a glance Current state of the climate, from NOAA
- Wally Broecker on climate realism
- Sea Change Boston
- 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
- Climate Change Denying Organizations
- `The unchained goddess' 1958 Bell Telephone Science Hour broadcast regarding, among other things, climate change.
- "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
- "A field guide to the climate clowns"
- Interview with Wally Broecker Interview with Wally Broecker
- Eli on the spectroscopic basis of atmospheric radiation physical chemistry
- Agendaists Eli Rabett’s coining of a phrase
- "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.
- History of discovering Global Warming From the American Institute of Physics.
- Simple models of climate change
- Solar Gardens Community Power
- Mrooijer's Global Temperature Explorer
- Updating the Climate Science: What path is the real world following? From Professors Makiko Sato & James Hansen of Columbia University
- Climate Change Reports By John and Mel Harte
- Tuft's Professor Kenneth Lang on the physical chemistry of the Greenhouse Effect
- 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.
- HotWhopper: It's excellent. Global warming and climate change. Eavesdropping on the deniosphere, its weird pseudo-science and crazy conspiracy whoppers.
- 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.
- "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.
- An open letter to Steve Levitt
- 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.
- "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.
- Climate impacts on retail and supply chains
- 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
- Andy Zucker's "Climate Change and Psychology"
- Climate Communication Hassol, Somerville, Melillo, and Hussin site communicating climate to the public
- "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.)
- Exxon-Mobil statement on UNFCCC COP21
- ATTP summarizes all that stuff about Committed Warming from AND THEN THERE’S PHYSICS
- Risk and Well-Being
- Climate model projections versus observations
- James Powell on sampling the climate consensus
- Dessler's 6 minute Greenhouse Effect video
- Professor Robert Strom's compendium of resources on climate change Truly excellent
- "Getting to the Energy Future We Want," Dr Steven Chu
- Ice and Snow
- All Models Are Wrong Dr Tamsin Edwards blog about uncertainty in science, and climate science
- Simple box models and climate forcing IMO one of Tamino’s best posts illustrating climate forcing using simple box models
- Klaus Lackner (ASU), Silicon Kingdom Holdings (SKH) Capturing CO2 from air at scale
- Ricky Rood's “What would happen to climate if we (suddenly) stopped emitting GHGs today?
- And Then There's Physics
Archives
Jan Galkowski
Category Archives: Florida
“The financial crash and the climate crisis” (The New Yorker Radio Hour)
A great podcast episode. Check out the thoughts of the late Professor Martin Weitzman as well, in “The man who got economists to take climate nightmares seriously“.
Posted in American Statistical Association, an uncaring American public, Anthropocene, being carbon dioxide, bifurcations, bridge to nowhere, Buckminster Fuller, Carbon Cycle, carbon dioxide, Carbon Worshipers, catastrophe modeling, climate change, climate disruption, climate economics, climate grief, climate justice, climate mitigation, climate nightmares, climate policy, climate zombies, coastal investment risks, flooding, floods, Florida, global warming, global weirding, home resale values, Hyper Anthropocene, objective reality, oceans, Robert Young, Scituate, shorelines, Sir David King, temporal myopia, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets, unreason
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50,000+ golf balls, along a coast
KQED carried a story about free diver and 16 y.o. Alex Weber who discovered not only a new source of plastic pollution, but another testament to the casual, careless sloppiness of people. And Ms Weber has converted it into a … Continue reading
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, an uncaring American public, coastal communities, coasts, consumption, ecological disruption, Ecological Society of America, ethics, field research, Florida, Humans have a lot to answer for, marine debris, oceans, plastics, pollution, science, sustainability, sustainable landscaping
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The fate of Antarctica
That’s from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at CalTech in Pasedena, CA. The source article is: A. S. Gardner, G. Moholdt, T. Scambos, M. Fahnstock, S. Ligtenberg, M. van den Broeke, J. Nilsson, “Increased West Antarctic and unchanged East Antarctic ice … Continue reading
Miami Beach
(Hat tip to Yale Climate Connections)
POWER MOVE: Brought to you by Siemens and The Atlantic
HOW ON-SITE ENERGY SOLUTIONS CAN HELP SAVE THE GRID RE:THINK ORIGINAL SIEMENS The traditional power grid is under tremendous pressure. In many places, infrastructure needs to be upgraded. Extreme weather and cybersecurity are constant concerns. These challenges threaten entire communities … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, American Solar Energy Society, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, bridge to somewhere, Buckminster Fuller, clean disruption, CleanTechnica, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, distributed generation, energy utilities, Florida, games of chance, grid defection, investment in wind and solar energy, ISO-NE, Joseph Schumpeter, local generation, local self reliance, microgrids, prediction markets, public utility commissions, PUCs, rate of return regulation, regulatory capture, reworking infrastructure, risk, Sankey diagram, solar democracy, solar energy, stranded assets, the value of financial assets, tragedy of the horizon, utility company death spiral, wind energy, wind power, zero carbon
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A lesson for Boston
And, from the Harvard Business Review: There was a time a decade or two ago when society could have made a choice to write off our massive investment in a fossil fuel-based economy and begin a policy driven shift towards … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, bollocks, bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, Carbon Worshipers, climate change, climate disruption, climate economics, coastal communities, coasts, Cult of Carbon, Daniel Kahneman, environment, flooding, floods, Florida, global blinding, global warming, greenhouse gases, hydrology, Hyper Anthropocene, John Englander, living shorelines, Mark Carney, nor'easters, oceanic eddies, oceanography, Our Children's Trust, rate of return regulation, rationality, reasonableness, sea level rise, seawalls, selfishness, shorelines, solar energy, the right to be and act stupid, water
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Disney’s Robert Iger resigns from Trump advisory panel over the Trumpistas’ decision to quit COP
“Protecting our planet and driving economic growth are critical to our future, and they aren’t mutually exclusive,” he said in a statement. “I deeply disagree with the decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement and, as a matter of principle, … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, Buckminster Fuller, carbon dioxide, citizenship, climate business, climate change, climate disruption, climate economics, COP21, destructive economic development, Disney, Donald Trump, environment, Florida, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, Robert Iger, Walt Disney Company
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Why we sold our Disney Vacation Club timeshares
Hat tip to Climate Denial Crock of the Week, in their “Florida slowly confronting sea level nightmare.”
Posted in Anthropocene, being carbon dioxide, Bloomberg, carbon dioxide, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate economics, coastal communities, coasts, Disney, Disney Vacation Club, environmental law, flooding, Florida, global warming, greenhouse gases, Hyper Anthropocene, Joe Romm, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, living shorelines, science education, shorelines, sustainability, the right to be and act stupid, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets
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Boston, are you ready?
Yeah, how about warming up the seas a bit more by building pipelines, buying into more explosive methane (*), and encouraging fracked gas people to export? What could it hurt? There are many alternatives, most sketched here on this blog. … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, AMETSOC, Anthropocene, bollocks, Boston, bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, Carbon Worshipers, climate change, climate disruption, corporate litigation on damage from fossil fuel emissions, corruption, disingenuity, ecology, evidence, false advertising, floods, Florida, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, fracking, geophysics, global warming, greenwashing, Hyper Anthropocene, MA, Massachusetts, methane, mitigation, natural gas, NOAA, nor'easters, physics, pipelines, prediction, rate of return regulation, rationality, reasonableness, regulatory capture, science, sea level rise, sustainability, the right to be and act stupid, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, utility company death spiral
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Bill Nye’s “Global Meltdown”: Climate grief in 5 steps
Postscript, 2nd April 2016 I’ve been asked offline whether I buy McPherson’s catastrophic warming scenario. I don’t, or at least I wouldn’t bet on it. Each of the components of Professor McPherson’s scenario are based upon solid science. But in … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, AMETSOC, Anthropocene, Arnold Schwarzennegger, Bill Nye, bridge to nowhere, Carbon Cycle, Carbon Worshipers, climate, climate change, climate disruption, denial, Eaarth, Earle Wilson, energy, environment, Florida, fossil fuels, geophysics, global warming, greenhouse gases, Hyper Anthropocene, physics, planning, rationality, reasonableness, science, selfishness, zero carbon
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Underestimated Rates of Sea Level Rise
Posted in adaptation, Antarctica, Anthropocene, Arctic, bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, civilization, climate, climate change, climate disruption, coastal communities, ecology, floods, Florida, fossil fuels, geophysics, glaciers, global warming, greenhouse gases, Hyper Anthropocene, icesheets, IPCC, James Hansen, John Englander, Richard Alley, Scituate, sea level rise, Stefan Rahmstorf, temporal myopia, the right to know, Wally Broecker, zero carbon
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Walt Disney World holiday, November 2015
Link to photos and other information available at Google+: https://plus.google.com/110148824733929465219/posts/UzzEQ1azUPe If you are just interested in the photos and videos: https://goo.gl/2s5EQ0 The Epcot Food & Wine Festival was a bust: Too many people, walking in uncoordinated directions, and too little … Continue reading
Posted in biofuels, Carbon Cycle, carbon dioxide, clean disruption, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate education, compassion, conservation, consumption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, Disney, ecology, energy, energy reduction, energy utilities, engineering, environment, Florida, fossil fuels, global warming, microgrids, rationality, reasonableness, recycling, solar energy, solar power, SolarPV.tv, Spaceship Earth, Walt Disney Company
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Miami — Why Worry?
“They’re not scientists!”

