Distributed Solar: The Democratizaton of Energy
Blogroll
- Brendon Brewer on Overfitting Important and insightful presentation by Brendon Brewer on overfitting
- Awkward Botany
- 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
- 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 Expert"
- Mrooijer's Numbers R 4Us
- "Talking Politics" podcast David Runciman, Helen Thompson
- All about models
- Earth Family Beta MIchael Osborne’s blog on Science and the like
- 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.
- John Cook's reasons to use Bayesian inference
- Mertonian norms
- South Shore Recycling Cooperative Materials management, technical assistance and networking, town advocacy, public outreach
- 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
- Earth Family Alpha Michael Osborne’s blog (former Executive at Austin Energy, now Chairman of the Electric Utility Commission for Austin, Texas)
- 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.
- The Plastic Pick-Up: Discovering new sources of marine plastic pollution
- Dominic Cummings blog Chief advisor to the PM, United Kingdom
- Giant vertical monopolies for energy have stopped making sense
- Musings on Quantitative Paleoecology Quantitative methods and palaeoenvironments.
- Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI)
- American Statistical Association
- WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION Cathy O’Neil’s WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION,
- The Mermaid's Tale A conversation about biological complexity and evolution, and the societal aspects of science
- Dollars per BBL: Energy in Transition
- Gabriel's staircase
- Comprehensive Guide to Bayes Rule
- Slice Sampling
- AP Statistics: Sampling, by Michael Porinchak Twin City Schools
- Higgs from AIR describing NAO and EA Stephanie Higgs from AIR Worldwide gives a nice description of NAO and EA in the context of discussing “The Geographic Impact of Climate Signals on European Winter Storms”
- 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.”
- International Society for Bayesian Analysis (ISBA)
- Beautiful Weeds of New York City
- Karl Broman
- 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/.
- Flettner Rotor Bruce Yeany introduces the Flettner Rotor and related science
- Healthy Home Healthy Planet
- Label Noise
- Team Andrew Weinberg Walking September 8th for the Jimmy Fund!
- Number Cruncher Politics
- "Consider a Flat Pond" Invited talk introducing systems thinking, by Jan Galkowski, at First Parish in Needham, UU, via Zoom
- Tony Seba Solar energy, electric vehicle, energy storage, and business disruption professor and visionary
- Brian McGill's Dynamic Ecology blog Quantitative biology with pithy insights regarding applications of statistical methods
- Earle Wilson
- Peter Congdon's Bayesian statistical modeling Peter Congdon’s collection of links pertaining to his several books on Bayesian modeling
- GeoEnergy Math Prof Paul Pukite’s Web site devoted to energy derived from geological and geophysical processes and categorized according to its originating source.
- American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
- Survey Methodology, Prof Ron Fricker http://faculty.nps.edu/rdfricke/
- 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
- The Alliance for Securing Democracy dashboard
climate change
- SOLAR PRODUCTION at Westwood Statistical Studios Generation charts for our home in Westwood, MA
- History of discovering Global Warming From the American Institute of Physics.
- Updating the Climate Science: What path is the real world following? From Professors Makiko Sato & James Hansen of Columbia University
- The HUMAN-caused greenhouse effect, in under 5 minutes, by Bill Nye
- The Scientific Case for Modern Human-caused Global Warming
- On Thomas Edison and Solar Electric Power
- All Models Are Wrong Dr Tamsin Edwards blog about uncertainty in science, and climate science
- Climate Communication Hassol, Somerville, Melillo, and Hussin site communicating climate to the public
- "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
- Grid parity map for Solar PV in United States
- 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.
- 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 impacts on retail and supply chains
- Exxon-Mobil statement on UNFCCC COP21
- ATTP summarizes all that stuff about Committed Warming from AND THEN THERE’S PHYSICS
- James Powell on sampling the climate consensus
- Mrooijer's Global Temperature Explorer
- World Weather Attribution
- Warming slowdown discussion
- 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
- Sir David King David King’s perspective on climate, and the next thousands of years for humanity
- Non-linear feedbacks in climate (discussion of Bloch-Johnson, Pierrehumbert, Abbot paper) Discussion of http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1002/2015GL064240/abstract
- 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 discovery of global warming'' (American Institute of Physics)
- MIT's Climate Primer
- HotWhopper: It's excellent. Global warming and climate change. Eavesdropping on the deniosphere, its weird pseudo-science and crazy conspiracy whoppers.
- James Hansen and granddaughter Sophie on moving forward with progress on climate
- Wally Broecker on climate realism
- Climate Change Denying Organizations
- Spectra Energy exposed
- Wind sled Wind sled: A zero carbon way of exploring ice sheets
- "Climate science is setttled enough"
- David Appell's early climate science
- 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.
- Andy Zucker's "Climate Change and Psychology"
- Earth System Models
- 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.
- “Ways to [try to] slow the Solar Century''
- "Lessons of the Little Ice Age" (Farber) From Dan Farber, at LEGAL PLANET
- Documenting the Climate Deniarati at work
- Bloomberg interactive graph on “What's warming the world''
- Climate Change Reports By John and Mel Harte
- “The Irrelevance of Saturation: Why Carbon Dioxide Matters'' (Bart Levenson)
- Agendaists Eli Rabett’s coining of a phrase
- Rabett Run Incisive analysis of climate science versus deliberate distraction
- And Then There's Physics
- Eli on the spectroscopic basis of atmospheric radiation physical chemistry
- Sea Change Boston
- Dessler's 6 minute Greenhouse Effect video
- 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%.
Archives
Jan Galkowski
Category Archives: humanism
These are ethical “AI Principles” from Google, but they might as well be `technological principles’
This is entirely adapted from this link, courtesy of Google and Alphabet. Objectives Be socially beneficial. Avoid creating or reinforcing unfair bias. Be built and tested for safety. Be accountable to people. Incorporate privacy design principles. Uphold high standards of … Continue reading
Posted in American Statistical Association, artificial intelligence, basic research, Bayesian, Boston Ethical Society, complex systems, computation, corporate citizenship, corporate responsibility, deep recurrent neural networks, emergent organization, ethical ideals, ethics, extended producer responsibility, friends and colleagues, Google, Google Pixel 2, humanism, investments, machine learning, mathematics, moral leadership, natural philosophy, politics, risk, science, secularism, technology, The Demon Haunted World, the right to know, Unitarian Universalism, UU, UU Humanists
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National Academies Statement on Harmful Consequences of Separating Families at the U.S. Border
(Updated.) “We urge the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to immediately stop separating migrant children from their families, based on the body of scientific evidence that underscores the potential for lifelong, harmful consequences for these children and based on human … Continue reading
Posted in an ignorant American public, an uncaring American public, anti-intellectualism, anti-science, children as political casualties, compassion, Donald Trump, humanism, Humans have a lot to answer for, immigration, military inferiority, moral leadership, sadism, the right to be and act stupid, the right to know, torture, Unitarian Universalism, United States Government
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`How old is today?` (Carl Safina)
How old is today? light comes from everywhere and from nowhere. The ocean, glittering then vanishing in gauzy vapors, handles us more gently than anyone could have hoped. Snow flurries in and hurries out. Mists veil coasts so raw, so … Continue reading
What I’m reading …
C. E. Rasmussen, C. K. I. Williams, Gaussian Processes for Machine Learning, MIT Press, 2006. J. Leskovec, A. Rajaraman, J. D. Ullman, Mining of Massive Datasets, 2nd edition, 2016. J. Schaeffer, Real Goods Solar Living Sourcebook, 14th edition, New Society … Continue reading
Newt Gingrich and Van Jones. Right on.
It’s the thing. And it addresses how media and people forget about the actual statistics, and focus on the White Hot Bright Light. A study by Gelman, Fagan, and Kiss A study by Freyer A counterpoint to the Freyer study … Continue reading
Posted in American Statistical Association, Bayes, Bayesian, citizen science, criminal justice, Daniel Kahneman, ethics, evidence, fear uncertainty and doubt, humanism, Lives Matter, logistic regression, Markov Chain Monte Carlo, MCMC, organizational failures, population biology, rationality, reasonableness, risk, statistics, Susan Jacoby, the right to know
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patents disincentivize progress
Very interesting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEAGdwHXfLQ
Pale Blue Dot
Compassion, yes. Love, no.
Posted in astronomy, astrophysics, atheism, Bill Maher, Bill Nye, bollocks, Boston Ethical Society, Carl Sagan, citizenship, civilization, compassion, ecology, geophysics, humanism, NASA, physical materialism, physics, population biology, Sankey diagram, Spaceship Earth, statistics, stochastics
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Exxon-Mobil digging its own grave
Climate Denial Crock of the Week features the latest revelation from Inside Climate News. It features former federal chief scientist for global warming research, Michael MacCracken, and physicist and climate scientist Gilbert Plass. Also featured is an open 2002 letter … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, bridge to nowhere, capricious gods, Carbon Cycle, carbon dioxide, Carbon Worshipers, citizenship, civilization, climate change, climate disruption, denial, ecology, energy, energy utilities, environment, Exxon, forecasting, fossil fuels, games of chance, geophysics, global warming, humanism, Hyper Anthropocene, ignorance, meteorology, methane, natural gas, obfuscating data, rationality, reasonableness, science, sustainability, UU Humanists
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The Art and Science of Stefan Rahmstorf
Updated, 21st September 2015 I particularly like the last scene from TDAT. James Hansen and Makiko Sato have an update titled “Predictions Implicit in ‘Ice Melt’ Paper and Global Implications”. WHOI has studied the Irminger Sea and continues the study … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, art, bifurcations, carbon dioxide, Cauchy distribution, civilization, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate education, destructive economic development, disingenuity, ecology, economics, education, environment, ethics, Exxon, games of chance, geophysics, global warming, humanism, Hyper Anthropocene, icesheets, IPCC, James Hansen, mathematics, maths, physical materialism, physics, rationality, reasonableness, science, sea level rise, statistics, sustainability, the right to know
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Ahmed: arrested for having electronics in his possession simpler than a smart phone
I have made my comments at The Times news article on the subject. If I, as a youngster, brought my Newtonian telescope lens-in-progress into school, and because it looked like it was wrapped in putty, would I, in this day, … Continue reading
Posted in astronomy, astrophysics, atheism, Bill Nye, Boston Ethical Society, Carl Sagan, citizenship, civilization, Dan Satterfield, disingenuity, education, engineering, ethics, humanism, ignorance, physical materialism, physics, politics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, Susan Jacoby, the right to know, Unitarian Universalism, UU Humanists
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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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“Ignorance is not a cultural identity to celebrate. “
From meteorologist Dr Dan Satterfield, from his blog post, “The Real Reason U.S. SAT Test Scores Keep Dropping“: Far too many Americans just don’t think education is important. They may claim they do, but when a state gives 250 million … Continue reading
Yep, power to developing countries as simple as that
No tanker trucks needed, no pipelines, no roads, no utilities, no security forces to defend them, and no government back-room-deals with oil and gas companies. Hat tip to Eco inventos for the original inspiration.
Posted in Anthropocene, civilization, clean disruption, climate education, compassion, conservation, consumption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, destructive economic development, economics, education, efficiency, energy, energy reduction, environment, ethics, fossil fuel divestment, humanism, Hyper Anthropocene, investment in wind and solar energy
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“Does Local Climate Information Stimulate Action?” | Tyndall°Centre for Climate Change Research ®
Does Local Climate Information Stimulate Action? | Tyndall°Centre for Climate Change Research ®. In an experiment, we asked people, who live in the U.S. state of Vermont, to what extent they care about other communities/people (self-transcendent values), or their own … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, Boston Ethical Society, carbon dioxide, Carbon Tax, citizenship, civilization, clean disruption, climate, climate change, climate disruption, compassion, demand-side solutions, economics, environment, ethics, games of chance, geophysics, global warming, humanism, Hyper Anthropocene, ignorance, meteorology, sociology, temporal myopia, UU Humanists
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What’s Beef?
Posted in Anthropocene, bridge to nowhere, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate change, climate disruption, denial, disingenuity, education, exponential growth, fossil fuel divestment, global warming, humanism, Hyper Anthropocene, ignorance, obfuscating data, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, sociology, sustainability, Uncategorized, zero carbon
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“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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Draft elements of COP21 agreement for Paris
There is a revised text now available which provides elements of a draft for the COP21 agreement in Paris. The context of this document and what it contains is provided by a news story at RTCC (“Responding To Climate Change”), … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate justice, compassion, consumption, COP21, environment, ethics, fossil fuel divestment, global warming, history, humanism, Hyper Anthropocene, investing, IPCC, politics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, UNFCCC, zero carbon
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Purity in Disney: Tangled’s Take on Premarital Sex
Many people don’t understand Disney, thinking “It’s a kids thing.” Sure, it was sold as that, beginning in the 1960s, maybe even not until the 1970s. But people also forget the cinematic and business history of cartoons. The first and … Continue reading
Science Deniers
A good term, science denier, by Dan Satterfield. And assuredly the WUWT crowd is part of them.
Posted in Bill Nye, Boston Ethical Society, Carl Sagan, citizen science, citizenship, civilization, climate change, climate zombies, disingenuity, education, environment, geophysics, global warming, history, humanism, ignorance, investing, meteorology, natural philosophy, obfuscating data, rationality, reasonableness, reproducible research, risk, science, science education, sociology, temporal myopia, the right to know
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Excellent. With musings on religion and mass extinctions.
And sometimes, just sometimes, I can feel the same way about some religions. Now, it’s not that many aren’t doing good, and many aren’t getting people to realize that we have painted ourselves deeply into a climate corner, but it … Continue reading
Posted in art, atheism, Bill Nye, Boston Ethical Society, bridge to nowhere, Carl Sagan, citizenship, climate, climate change, climate education, climate justice, climate zombies, Darwin Day, denial, ecology, environment, ethics, fossil fuels, games of chance, geophysics, global warming, history, humanism, mass extinctions, Neill deGrasse Tyson, physical materialism, politics, population biology, rationality, reasonableness, science, science education, sociology, temporal myopia, the right to know, UU Humanists
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Climate Justice
December 2015 will see the definitive meeting of the UNFCCC COP 21 intended to set targets and commitments under the UN treaty establishing UNFCCC and the IPCC, one approved and ratified by the United States (*). Before then, a good … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, Anthropocene, bifurcations, carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide capture, carbon dioxide sequestration, Carbon Tax, citizenship, civilization, clean disruption, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate education, climate justice, compassion, conservation, consumption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, dynamical systems, economics, education, energy, energy reduction, environment, ethics, fossil fuel divestment, games of chance, geophysics, global warming, history, humanism, investment in wind and solar energy, IPCC, NOAA, oceanography, physics, politics, population biology, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, sociology, temporal myopia, Unitarian Universalism, UU Humanists, zero carbon
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“Can we avert the post-antibiotic world?”
(Hat tip to Dan Satterfield.) A TED talk. Bacteria develop resistence so quickly that pharmaceutical companies have decided developing new ones is not in their best interest. From the speaker, Maryn McKenna.
“Laudato Si”
Those who possess more resources and economic or political power seem mostly to be concerned with masking the problems or concealing their symptoms … Clearly, the Bible has no place for a tyrannical anthropocentrism unconcerned for other creatures … The … Continue reading
Posted in citizenship, civilization, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate education, compassion, ecology, economics, education, environment, ethics, geophysics, global warming, humanism, IPCC, meteorology, physics, politics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, sociology, temporal myopia, Unitarian Universalism, UU Humanists, zero carbon
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“Time to take out the trash”
Posted in carbon dioxide, Carbon Tax, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate education, compassion, conservation, decentralized energy, denial, ecology, economics, education, energy, environment, ethics, exponential growth, fossil fuel divestment, geophysics, global warming, humanism, investment in wind and solar energy, IPCC, living shorelines, meteorology, physics, politics, population biology, public transport, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, sea level rise, sociology, zero carbon
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On the Climate Club
But if the other advanced nations had a stick — a tariff of 4 percent on the imports from countries not in the “climate club” — the cost-benefit calculation for the United States would flip. Not participating in the club … Continue reading
Posted in citizenship, civilization, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate education, ecology, economics, education, environment, ethics, geophysics, global warming, humanism, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, IPCC, mathematics, mathematics education, maths, meteorology, NASA, NCAR, NOAA, open data, open source scientific software, politics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, sociology, state-space models, statistics, stochastic search, stochastics, sustainability, temporal myopia, time series, transparency, Unitarian Universalism, UU Humanists, wind power, zero carbon
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“I’m sorry.”
“It is up to us to take care of this planet.”
Posted in carbon dioxide, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate change, climate education, compassion, ecology, economics, education, environment, ethics, fossil fuel divestment, humanism, meteorology, politics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, the right to know, Unitarian Universalism, UU Humanists
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The ShoutROC action on the climate rally, Concord, MA, 19th April 2015.
Album available. Y’think this is play stuff? These start slow, but, in the end, they are overwhelming. Go ahead, try to say “No, we’re gonna consume all we want, and what’s left is YOUR problem” to this citizen:
Earth Day, my hope
Posted in carbon dioxide, Carl Sagan, Charles Darwin, citizen science, citizenship, civilization, clean disruption, climate, climate change, climate education, compassion, conservation, Darwin Day, demand-side solutions, ecology, economics, education, efficiency, energy reduction, environment, ethics, forecasting, fossil fuel divestment, geophysics, history, humanism, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, IPCC, mathematics, maths, meteorology, NCAR, NOAA, oceanography, open data, open source scientific software, physics, politics, population biology, Principles of Planetary Climate, privacy, probit regression, R, rationality, Ray Pierrehumbert, reasonableness, reproducible research, risk, science, science education, scientific publishing, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, sociology, the right to know, Unitarian Universalism, UU Humanists, WHOI, wind power
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“This planet comes with limits”
Carl Safina elaborates on the limits of exploitation. It’s consistent with what David Suzuki conveys in his succinct presentation, linked below: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15mJEwcdrIA As Suzuki says, this isn’t politics or opinion, or even biology, it’s just math.
ecoquant
