
Distributed Solar: The Democratizaton of Energy

Blogroll
- 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.
- "The Expert"
- Healthy Home Healthy Planet
- Giant vertical monopolies for energy have stopped making sense
- Nadler Strategy, LLC, on sustainability Thinking about business, efficient and effective management, and business value
- Earth Family Beta MIchael Osborne’s blog on Science and the like
- NCAR AtmosNews
- Ted Dunning
- All about models
- Professor David Draper
- AP Statistics: Sampling, by Michael Porinchak Twin City Schools
- Bob Altemeyer on authoritarianism (via Dan Satterfield) The science behind the GOP civil war
- 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.”
- ggplot2 and ggfortify Plotting State Space Time Series with ggplot2 and ggfortify
- 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/.
- "Consider a Flat Pond" Invited talk introducing systems thinking, by Jan Galkowski, at First Parish in Needham, UU, via Zoom
- John Kruschke's "Dong Bayesian data analysis" blog Expanding and enhancing John’s book of same title (now in second edition!)
- Mark Berliner's video lecture "Bayesian mechanistic-statistical modeling with examples in geophysical settings"
- SASB Sustainability Accounting Standards Board
- The Mermaid's Tale A conversation about biological complexity and evolution, and the societal aspects of science
- What If
- Rasmus Bååth's Research Blog Bayesian statistics and data analysis
- London Review of Books
- 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.
- Quotes by Nikola Tesla Quotes by Nikola Tesla, including some of others he greatly liked.
- Team Andrew Weinberg Walking September 8th for the Jimmy Fund!
- Flettner Rotor Bruce Yeany introduces the Flettner Rotor and related science
- 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/
- Label Noise
- The Alliance for Securing Democracy dashboard
- 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
- Karl Broman
- James' Empty Blog
- Mertonian norms
- John Cook's reasons to use Bayesian inference
- Charlie Kufs' "Stats With Cats" blog “You took Statistics 101. Now what?”
- 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/
- American Statistical Association
- 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
- Survey Methodology, Prof Ron Fricker http://faculty.nps.edu/rdfricke/
- Earle Wilson
- Leadership lessons from Lao Tzu
- The Keeling Curve: its history History of the Keeling Curve and Charles David Keeling
- Leverhulme Centre for Climate Change Mitigation
- 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.
- Earth Family Alpha Michael Osborne’s blog (former Executive at Austin Energy, now Chairman of the Electric Utility Commission for Austin, Texas)
- 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
- WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION Cathy O’Neil’s WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION,
- Risk and Well-Being
climate change
- 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
- RealClimate
- Dessler's 6 minute Greenhouse Effect video
- Energy payback period for solar panels Considering everything, how long do solar panels have to operate to offset the energy used to produce them?
- Ellenbogen: There is no Such Thing as Wind Turbine Syndrome
- Agendaists Eli Rabett’s coining of a phrase
- 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.
- Sea Change Boston
- "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.
- "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.)
- Ray Pierrehumbert's site related to "Principles of Planetary Climate" THE book on climate science
- 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
- Earth System Models
- Solar Gardens Community Power
- 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
- "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
- Climate impacts on retail and supply chains
- And Then There's Physics
- Ice and Snow
- Climate Change Reports By John and Mel Harte
- 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.
- Mrooijer's Global Temperature Explorer
- Climate at a glance Current state of the climate, from NOAA
- Rabett Run Incisive analysis of climate science versus deliberate distraction
- 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%.
- 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
- “Ways to [try to] slow the Solar Century''
- Simple models of climate change
- Climate model projections versus observations
- History of discovering Global Warming From the American Institute of Physics.
- "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.
- MIT's Climate Primer
- The Carbon Cycle The Carbon Cycle, monitored by The Carbon Project
- Interview with Wally Broecker Interview with Wally Broecker
- Équiterre Equiterre helps build a social movement by encouraging individuals, organizations and governments to make ecological and equitable choices, in a spirit of solidarity.
- 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.
- The Green Plate Effect Eli Rabett’s “The Green Plate Effect”
- Wally Broecker on climate realism
- ATTP summarizes all that stuff about Committed Warming from AND THEN THERE’S PHYSICS
- Anti—Anti-#ClimateEmergency Whether to declare a climate emergency is debatable. But some critics have gone way overboard.
- Warming slowdown discussion
- Tell Utilities Solar Won't Be Killed Barry Goldwater, Jr’s campaign to push for solar expansion against monopolistic utilities, as a Republican
- “The Irrelevance of Saturation: Why Carbon Dioxide Matters'' (Bart Levenson)
- `Who to believe on climate change': Simple checks By Bart Verheggen
- Simple box models and climate forcing IMO one of Tamino’s best posts illustrating climate forcing using simple box models
- Grid parity map for Solar PV in United States
- David Appell's early climate science
- World Weather Attribution
- "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.
- "Getting to the Energy Future We Want," Dr Steven Chu
Archives
Jan Galkowski
Category Archives: hydrology
CBRA is awesome!
Hat tip to Professor Rob Young and Audubon for a great newsfilm.
Posted in Anthropocene, Association to Preserve Cape Cod, being carbon dioxide, bridge to somewhere, Cape Cod, carbon dioxide, Carbon Worshipers, catastrophe modeling, climate disruption, climate economics, coastal communities, coastal investment risks, coasts, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, destructive economic development, ecological disruption, ecomodernism, economic trade, ecopragmatism, flooding, floods, fossil fuels, global warming, greenhouse gases, home resale values, Humans have a lot to answer for, hurricanes, hydrology, Hyper Anthropocene, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, life cycle sustainability analysis, living shorelines, ocean warming, Robert Young, science, science education, stream flow, sustainable landscaping, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets, tragedy of the horizon, unreason, UU, UU Mass Action, UU Ministry for Earth, UU Needham, Wally Broecker, wishful environmentalism, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, zero carbon, ``The tide is risin'/And so are we''
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“Climate Science for Climate Activists” is a wrap
The class “Climate Science for Climate Activists” I have taught for the last 6 or so weeks is now completed. The slides are available here.
Posted in alternatives to the Green New Deal, Anthropocene, Association to Preserve Cape Cod, being carbon dioxide, Blackbody radiation, bridge to somewhere, Carbon Cycle, carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide capture, carbon dioxide sequestration, cement production, Clausius-Clapeyron equation, clean disruption, clear air capture of carbon dioxide, climate, Climate Adam, climate change, climate disruption, climate education, climate grief, climate models, ClimateAdam, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, ecomodernism, electric vehicles, electricity, Emily Shuckburgh, emissions, energy utilities, environment, evidence, EVs, flooding, floods, fluid dynamics, fluid eddies, food, food scarcity, forecasting, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuel infrastructure, fossil fuels, Gavin Schmidt, geoengineering, geophysics, glaciers, glaciology, Glen Peters, Global Carbon Project, global warming, Grant Foster, Green New Deal, Green Tech Media, greenhouse gases, greenwashing, grid defection, Hermann Scheer, Humans have a lot to answer for, hydrology, Hyper Anthropocene, ice sheet dynamics, icesheets, investment in wind and solar energy, investments, John Marshall, klaus lackner, lapse rate, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, life cycle sustainability analysis, Mark Jacobson, meteorological models, meteorology, Nathan Phillips, National Center for Atmospheric Research, negative emissions, nonlinear systems, nor'easters, ocean warming, oceanic eddies, oceanography, oceans, permafrost, personal purity, photovoltaics, precipitation, Principles of Planetary Climate, radiative forcing, Ray Pierrehumbert, Robert Young, science, sea level rise, seismology, shorelines, Sir David King, solar democracy, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, solar revolution, Stanford University, Stefan Rahmstorf, Steven Chu, Stewart Brand, sustainability, Svante Arrhenius, Tamino, the energy of the people, the green century, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets, utility company death spiral, Wally Broecker, water, water as a resource, WHOI, wild fires, wind power, wishful environmentalism, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, zero carbon
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Procrustes tangent distance is better than SNCD
I’ve written two posts here on using a Symmetrized Normalized Compression Divergence or SNCD for comparing time series. One introduced the SNCD and described its relationship to compression distance, and the other applied the SNCD to clustering days at a … Continue reading
Posted in data science, dependent data, descriptive statistics, divergence measures, hydrology, Ian Dryden, information theoretic statistics, J.T.Kent, Kanti Mardia, non-parametric statistics, normalized compression divergence, quantitative ecology, R statistical programming language, spatial statistics, statistical series, time series
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Stream flow and P-splines: Using built-in estimates for smoothing
Mother Brook in Dedham Massachusetts was the first man-made canal in the United States. Dug in 1639, it connects the Charles River at Dedham, to the Neponset River in the Hyde Park section of Boston. It was originally an important … Continue reading
Posted in American Statistical Association, citizen data, citizen science, Clausius-Clapeyron equation, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, cross-validation, data science, dependent data, descriptive statistics, dynamic linear models, empirical likelihood, environment, flooding, floods, Grant Foster, hydrology, likelihood-free, meteorological models, model-free forecasting, non-mechanistic modeling, non-parametric, non-parametric model, non-parametric statistics, numerical algorithms, precipitation, quantitative ecology, statistical dependence, statistical series, stream flow, Tamino, the bootstrap, time series, water vapor
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A look at an electricity consumption series using SNCDs for clustering
(Slightly amended with code and data link, 12th January 2019.) Prediction of electrical load demand or, in other words, electrical energy consumption is important for the proper operation of electrical grids, at all scales. RTOs and ISOs forecast demand based … Continue reading
Posted in American Statistical Association, consumption, data streams, decentralized electric power generation, dendrogram, divergence measures, efficiency, electricity, electricity markets, energy efficiency, energy utilities, ensembles, evidence, forecasting, grid defection, hierarchical clustering, hydrology, ILSR, information theoretic statistics, local self reliance, Massachusetts, microgrids, NCD, normalized compression divergence, numerical software, open data, prediction, rate of return regulation, Sankey diagram, SNCD, statistical dependence, statistical series, statistics, sustainability, symmetric normalized compression divergence, time series
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This flooding can’t be stopped. What about the rest?
Tamino is writing about this subject, too. That entirely makes complete sense as it is the biggest geophysical and environmental story out there right now. I’ve included an update at this post’s end discussing the possible economic impacts. It’s been … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, Antarctica, Anthropocene, bridge to nowhere, Carbon Worshipers, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate economics, climate justice, coastal communities, coastal investment risks, coasts, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, corporate litigation on damage from fossil fuel emissions, corporate responsibility, Cult of Carbon, environment, Eric Rignot, flooding, floods, glaciers, glaciology, global warming, greenhouse gases, hydrology, Hyper Anthropocene, ice sheet dynamics, icesheets, investing, investments, John Englander, living shorelines, Massachusetts, New England, real estate values, rights of the inhabitants of the Commonwealth, Robert M DeConto, Scituate, sea level rise, seawalls, shorelines, Stefan Rahmstorf, the right to be and act stupid, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, wishful environmentalism, ``The tide is risin'/And so are we''
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Sidney, NY: The lead example of how the USA will deal with future coastal and riverine flooding?
From Bloomberg, the story of Sidney, NY, not that far from where I used to live in Endicott, NY. More than 400 homes and businesses ended up underwater in Sidney, affecting more than 2,000 people. It was months before Spry … Continue reading
Boston, and nearby, 2nd March 2018
That’s Atlantic Avenue near the Aquarium. That’s Essex, in Cape Ann. That’s the Sargent’s Wharf parking lot. That’s is where General Electric wants to build their new headquarters (!). That’s Columbus Park, near the Aquarium. That’s Neponset Circle. That’s Plymouth … Continue reading
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Meteorological Association, American Statistical Association, Anthropocene, climate, climate change, climate economics, coastal communities, coasts, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, flooding, floods, global blinding, global warming, hydrology, Hyper Anthropocene, meteorological models, meteorology, sea level rise, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets, tragedy of the horizon
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Miami Beach
(Hat tip to Yale Climate Connections)
Disaster planning in a new climate, inland from the coasts
See Glynis Board’s “The New Normal: Super Storms Highlight Importance Of Disaster Planning”.
Posted in adaptation, American Meteorological Association, American Statistical Association, AMETSOC, Anthropocene, bridge to nowhere, climate disruption, flooding, floods, games of chance, hurricanes, hydrology, meteorology, National Center for Atmospheric Research, NCAR, New England, nor'easters, precipitation, resiliency, risk, statistics, sustainability, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets, tragedy of the horizon
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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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Dr James Hansen is great
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Meteorological Association, AMETSOC, Anthropocene, atmosphere, Carbon Tax, climate change, climate disruption, emissions, environment, floods, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, hurricanes, hydrology, Hyper Anthropocene, James Hansen, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, nonlinear systems, reasonableness, solar democracy, the tragedy of our present civilization, Unitarian Universalism
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Yes, I will be marching for Science in Boston
Like many, including Eli Rabett, I will be marching for Science in April, on Earth Day. My march will be part of the Boston march. Why? Because Science has been and is my life, and it always has been, and … Continue reading
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Meteorological Association, American Statistical Association, AMETSOC, astronomy, astrophysics, Carl Sagan, climate, Climate Lab Book, ecology, Eli Rabett, engineering, fluid dynamics, geophysics, hydrology, marine biology, meteorology, physics, population biology, Principles of Planetary Climate, reason, science, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, theoretical physics, thermodynamics, WHOI, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, XKCD
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NCAR reports on a teleconnection between the Pacific and continental USA
The National Center for Atmospheric Research (“NCAR”) reports on a newly substantiated teleconnection between positive sea surface temperature anomalies (“SSTA”) in the Pacific and the temperatures over the continental United States (“CONUS”) 50 days later. A teleconnection is: A linkage … Continue reading
Posted in American Meteorological Association, AMETSOC, Anthropocene, atmosphere, attribution, climate, climate data, coastal communities, coasts, dynamical systems, environment, fluid dynamics, fluid eddies, food, forecasting, geophysics, hydrology, Hyper Anthropocene, living shorelines, Mathematics and Climate Research Network, meteorological models, meteorology, National Center for Atmospheric Research, NCAR, NOAA, oceanic eddies, oceanography, open data, Principles of Planetary Climate, sea level rise, U.S. Navy, WHOI, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
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Obviously, sea level rise and climate change are a hoax …
(Click on image to see a larger picture, and use browser Back Button to return to blog.) The seawater in that parking lot is a foot deep. People can deny what’s happening in any of several varied ways. They can … Continue reading
On failing to learn important lessons
As previously posted here, people along coasts and their governments, are failing to learn the lessons of both climate-induced sea level rise, and storms like Extratropical Sandy. Now, it’s startlingly clear how ignorant people are of these necessary lessons. The … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, American Meteorological Association, American Statistical Association, bollocks, case law, citizenship, civilization, climate change, climate disruption, climate economics, coastal communities, coasts, corporate litigation on damage from fossil fuel emissions, ecological services, economics, environment, environmental law, evidence, flooding, forecasting, global warming, greenhouse gases, hydrology, Hyper Anthropocene, John Englander, liberal climate deniers, living shorelines, meteorological models, meteorology, nor'easters, oceanography, physics, planning, politics, rationality, reason, reasonableness, Robert Young, science, science denier, sea level rise, seawalls, shorelines, sustainability, the right to be and act stupid, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets, water, zero carbon
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Just a lil’ bit o’ a drought … Nothing to be alarmed about … (!)
Posted in adaptation, American Meteorological Association, AMETSOC, Anthropocene, atmosphere, climate change, climate data, climate disruption, drought, environment, fluid dynamics, global warming, greenhouse gases, hydrology, Hyper Anthropocene, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, meteorology, quantitative ecology, Spaceship Earth, statistics, time series, water, water vapor, WHOI, zero carbon
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“Sharon’s Water Problem” (by Paul Lauenstein)
(Click on image to see a bigger version of this figure. Use your browser Back Button to return to this blog.) The town of Sharon, MA, has a water problem. Click on the link and see Paul’s presentation about it. … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, agriculture, American Meteorological Association, AMETSOC, Anthropocene, Boston, citizen science, climate change, climate disruption, diffusion processes, drought, ecology, Ecology Action, environment, forecasting, global warming, hydrology, Hyper Anthropocene, MA, New England, Paul Lauenstein, precipitation, quantitative ecology, science, statistics, the tragedy of our present civilization, water, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
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