
Distributed Solar: The Democratizaton of Energy

Blogroll
- Leverhulme Centre for Climate Change Mitigation
- All about models
- Label Noise
- International Society for Bayesian Analysis (ISBA)
- Team Andrew Weinberg Walking September 8th for the Jimmy Fund!
- 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
- Thaddeus Stevens quotes As I get older, I admire this guy more and more
- Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI)
- Giant vertical monopolies for energy have stopped making sense
- Survey Methodology, Prof Ron Fricker http://faculty.nps.edu/rdfricke/
- NCAR AtmosNews
- London Review of Books
- Leadership lessons from Lao Tzu
- What If
- 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”
- Peter Congdon's Bayesian statistical modeling Peter Congdon’s collection of links pertaining to his several books on Bayesian modeling
- John Cook's reasons to use Bayesian inference
- Quotes by Nikola Tesla Quotes by Nikola Tesla, including some of others he greatly liked.
- American Statistical Association
- Carl Safina's blog One of the wisest on Earth
- "Perpetual Ocean" from NASA GSFC
- Professor David Draper
- 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
- 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.
- Dominic Cummings blog Chief advisor to the PM, United Kingdom
- Number Cruncher Politics
- "The Expert"
- Awkward Botany
- Beautiful Weeds of New York City
- Rasmus Bååth's Research Blog Bayesian statistics and data analysis
- distributed solar and matching location to need
- Nadler Strategy, LLC, on sustainability Thinking about business, efficient and effective management, and business value
- GeoEnergy Math Prof Paul Pukite’s Web site devoted to energy derived from geological and geophysical processes and categorized according to its originating source.
- "Consider a Flat Pond" Invited talk introducing systems thinking, by Jan Galkowski, at First Parish in Needham, UU, via Zoom
- 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/
- Healthy Home Healthy Planet
- 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
- Mark Berliner's video lecture "Bayesian mechanistic-statistical modeling with examples in geophysical settings"
- The Plastic Pick-Up: Discovering new sources of marine plastic pollution
- Gavin Simpson
- Brian McGill's Dynamic Ecology blog Quantitative biology with pithy insights regarding applications of statistical methods
- South Shore Recycling Cooperative Materials management, technical assistance and networking, town advocacy, public outreach
- 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.”
- Fear and Loathing in Data Science Cory Lesmeister’s savage journey to the heart of Big Data
- Earle Wilson
- SASB Sustainability Accounting Standards Board
- Charlie Kufs' "Stats With Cats" blog “You took Statistics 101. Now what?”
- Dr James Spall's SPSA
- Earth Family Beta MIchael Osborne’s blog on Science and the like
climate change
- 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
- Équiterre Equiterre helps build a social movement by encouraging individuals, organizations and governments to make ecological and equitable choices, in a spirit of solidarity.
- "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.
- Grid parity map for Solar PV in United States
- “The Irrelevance of Saturation: Why Carbon Dioxide Matters'' (Bart Levenson)
- Sea Change Boston
- Climate Communication Hassol, Somerville, Melillo, and Hussin site communicating climate to the public
- Tamino's Open Mind Open Mind: A statistical look at climate, its science, and at science denial
- Wally Broecker on climate realism
- Model state level energy policy for New Englad Bob Massie’s proposed energy policy for Massachusetts, an admirable model for energy policy anywhere in New England
- World Weather Attribution
- An open letter to Steve Levitt
- "Getting to the Energy Future We Want," Dr Steven Chu
- Exxon-Mobil statement on UNFCCC COP21
- Simple box models and climate forcing IMO one of Tamino’s best posts illustrating climate forcing using simple box models
- "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.
- Thriving on Low Carbon
- “The discovery of global warming'' (American Institute of Physics)
- Energy payback period for solar panels Considering everything, how long do solar panels have to operate to offset the energy used to produce them?
- James Hansen and granddaughter Sophie on moving forward with progress on climate
- All Models Are Wrong Dr Tamsin Edwards blog about uncertainty in science, and climate science
- Tuft's Professor Kenneth Lang on the physical chemistry of the Greenhouse Effect
- The net average effect of a warming climate is increased aridity (Professor Steven Sherwood)
- Climate Change Reports By John and Mel Harte
- “Ways to [try to] slow the Solar Century''
- Climate impacts on retail and supply chains
- Eli on the spectroscopic basis of atmospheric radiation physical chemistry
- Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature
- Andy Zucker's "Climate Change and Psychology"
- Tell Utilities Solar Won't Be Killed Barry Goldwater, Jr’s campaign to push for solar expansion against monopolistic utilities, as a Republican
- weather blocking patterns
- Simple models of climate change
- Non-linear feedbacks in climate (discussion of Bloch-Johnson, Pierrehumbert, Abbot paper) Discussion of http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1002/2015GL064240/abstract
- The Sunlight Economy
- 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
- Solar Gardens Community Power
- History of discovering Global Warming From the American Institute of Physics.
- 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.
- SolarLove
- Ellenbogen: There is no Such Thing as Wind Turbine Syndrome
- 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.
- 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.
- Sir David King David King’s perspective on climate, and the next thousands of years for humanity
- 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.
- Anti—Anti-#ClimateEmergency Whether to declare a climate emergency is debatable. But some critics have gone way overboard.
- Reanalyses.org
- Agendaists Eli Rabett’s coining of a phrase
- Nick Bower's "Scared Scientists"
- Professor Robert Strom's compendium of resources on climate change Truly excellent
Archives
Jan Galkowski
Category Archives: machine learning
A response to a post on RealClimate
(Updated 2342 EDT, 28 June 2019.) This is a response to a post on RealClimate which primarily concerned economist Ross McKitrick’s op-ed in the Financial Post condemning the geophysical community for disregarding Roger Pielke, Jr’s arguments. Pielke, in that link, … Continue reading
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Meteorological Association, American Statistical Association, AMETSOC, Bayesian, climate change, ecology, Ecology Action, environment, evidence, experimental design, Frequentist, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, machine learning, model comparison, model-free forecasting, multivariate statistics, science, science denier, statistical series, statistics, time series
Leave a comment
“Applications of Deep Learning to ocean data inference and subgrid parameterization”
This is another nail in the coffin of the claim I heard at last year’s Lorenz-Charney Symposium at MIT that machine learning methods would not make a serious contribution to advancements in the geophysical sciences. T. Bolton, L. Zanna, “Applications … Continue reading
Posted in American Meteorological Association, American Statistical Association, artificial intelligence, Azimuth Project, deep learning, deep recurrent neural networks, dynamical systems, geophysics, machine learning, Mathematics and Climate Research Network, National Center for Atmospheric Research, oceanography, oceans, science, stochastic algorithms
Leave a comment
Series, symmetrized Normalized Compressed Divergences and their logit transforms
(Major update on 11th January 2019. Minor update on 16th January 2019.) On comparing things The idea of a calculating a distance between series for various purposes has received scholarly attention for quite some time. The most common application is … Continue reading
Posted in Akaike Information Criterion, bridge to somewhere, computation, content-free inference, data science, descriptive statistics, divergence measures, engineering, George Sughihara, information theoretic statistics, likelihood-free, machine learning, mathematics, model comparison, model-free forecasting, multivariate statistics, non-mechanistic modeling, non-parametric statistics, numerical algorithms, statistics, theoretical physics, thermodynamics, time series
4 Comments
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
Leave a comment
A “capacity for sustained muddle-headedness”
Hat tip to Paul Lauenstein, and his physician brother, suggesting the great insights of the late Dr Larry Weed: Great lines, great quotes, a lot of humor: “… a tolerance of ambiguity …” “Y’know, Pavlov said you must teach a … Continue reading
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Statistical Association, anemic data, Bayesian, cardiovascular system, David Spiegelhalter, machine learning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, medicine, Paul Lauenstein, rationality, reason, reasonableness, risk, statistics
Leave a comment
“Hadoop is NOT ‘Big Data’ is NOT Analytics”
Arun Krishnan, CEO & Founder at Analytical Sciences comments on this serious problem with the field. Short excerpt: … A person who is able to write code using Hadoop and the associated frameworks is not necessarily someone who can understand … Continue reading
Cathy O’Neil’s WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION: A Review
(Revised and updated Monday, 24th October 2016.) Weapons of Math Destruction, Cathy O’Neil, published by Crown Random House, 2016. This is a thoughtful and very approachable introduction and review to the societal and personal consequences of data mining, data science, … Continue reading
Posted in citizen data, citizen science, citizenship, civilization, compassion, complex systems, criminal justice, Daniel Kahneman, data science, deep recurrent neural networks, destructive economic development, economics, education, engineering, ethics, Google, ignorance, Joseph Schumpeter, life purpose, machine learning, Mathbabe, mathematics, mathematics education, maths, model comparison, model-free forecasting, numerical analysis, numerical software, open data, optimization, organizational failures, planning, politics, prediction, prediction markets, privacy, rationality, reason, reasonableness, risk, silly tech devices, smart data, sociology, Techno Utopias, testing, the value of financial assets, transparency
Leave a comment
“Holy crap – an actual book!”
You’ll find links to Cathy O’Neil’s important book in the Blogroll here, as well as a link to reviews of it. I have not read it yet. While I have pre-ordered it, it’s not available. I have read the reviews, … Continue reading
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, Buckminster Fuller, business, citizen science, citizenship, civilization, complex systems, confirmation bias, data science, data streams, deep recurrent neural networks, denial, economics, education, engineering, ethics, evidence, Internet, investing, life purpose, machine learning, mathematical publishing, mathematics, mathematics education, maths, moral leadership, multivariate statistics, numerical software, numerics, obfuscating data, organizational failures, politics, population biology, prediction, prediction markets, privacy, quantitative biology, quantitative ecology, rationality, reason, reasonableness, rhetoric, risk, Schnabel census, smart data, sociology, statistical dependence, statistics, the right to be and act stupid, the right to know, the value of financial assets, transparency, UU Humanists
Leave a comment
On Smart Data
One of the things I find surprising, if not astonishing, is that in the rush to embrace Big Data, a lot of learning and statistical technique has been left apparently discarded along the way. I’m hardly the first to point … Continue reading
Posted in Akaike Information Criterion, Bayes, Bayesian, Bayesian inversion, big data, bigmemory package for R, changepoint detection, data science, data streams, dlm package, dynamic generalized linear models, dynamic linear models, dynamical systems, Generalize Additive Models, generalized linear models, information theoretic statistics, Kalman filter, linear algebra, logistic regression, machine learning, Markov Chain Monte Carlo, mathematics, mathematics education, maths, maximum likelihood, MCMC, Monte Carlo Statistical Methods, multivariate statistics, numerical analysis, numerical software, numerics, quantitative biology, quantitative ecology, rationality, reasonableness, sampling, smart data, state-space models, statistical dependence, statistics, the right to know, time series
Leave a comment
HadCRUT4 and GISTEMP series filtered and estimated with simple RTS model
Happy Vernal Equinox! This post has been updated today with some of the equations which correspond to the models. An assessment of whether or not there was a meaningful slowdown or “hiatus” in global warming, was recently discussed by Tamino … Continue reading
Posted in AMETSOC, anemic data, Bayesian, boosting, bridge to somewhere, cat1, changepoint detection, climate, climate change, climate data, climate disruption, climate models, complex systems, computation, data science, dynamical systems, geophysics, George Sughihara, global warming, hiatus, information theoretic statistics, machine learning, maths, meteorology, MIchael Mann, multivariate statistics, physics, prediction, Principles of Planetary Climate, rationality, reasonableness, regime shifts, sea level rise, time series
5 Comments
K-Nearest Neighbors: dangerously simple
Yeah, Mathbabe’s got it right: People who use kNN often don’t think about these things. For those who aren’t familiar with this technique, here’s a description from Zhi-Hua Zhou in Ensemble Methods: Foundations and Algorithms (section 1.2.5): “The -nearest neighbor … Continue reading
Posted in big data, data science, evidence, machine learning
Leave a comment
Google’s DeepMind consistently beats Fan Hui, the European GO grandmaster
This is pretty amazing news. DeepMind’s program AlphaGo beat Fan Hui, the European Go champion, five times out of five in tournament conditions, the firm reveals in research published in Nature on 27 January. It also defeated its silicon-based rivals, … Continue reading
Professor Marvin Minsky dies at 88: What a noble mind is here o’erthrown
As a prospective and actual graduate student in MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory during the years 1974-1976, it is difficult to convey the draw and the incisiveness of Minsky’s mind. As an undergraduate in Physics with a very keen interest in … Continue reading
Generating supports for classification rules in black box regression models
Inspired by the extensive and excellent work in approximate Bayesian computation (see also), especially that done by Professors Christian Robert and colleagues (see also), and Professor Simon Wood (see also), it occurred to me that the complaints regarding lack of … Continue reading
Posted in approximate Bayesian computation, Bayes, Bayesian, Bayesian inversion, generalized linear models, machine learning, numerical analysis, numerical software, probabilistic programming, rationality, reasonableness, state-space models, statistics, stochastic algorithms, stochastic search, stochastics, support of black boxes
Leave a comment

