Category Archives: maths

Thank You

And thanks, Tamino!

Posted in astrophysics, citizen science, climate change, climate data, climate disruption, climate education, climate models, differential equations, dynamical systems, ecology, ensembles, forecasting, games of chance, geophysics, global warming, hiatus, Hyper Anthropocene, IPCC, mathematics, mathematics education, maths, meteorology, model comparison, new forms of scientific peer review, open data, open source scientific software, physics, probabilistic programming, probability, rationality, reasonableness, reproducible research, risk, science, science education, spatial statistics, statistics, Tamino, the right to know, time series, transparency | Leave a comment

Professor James Hansen responds and explains:

The recent paper by Hansen, Soto, and others has caused a stir, as I suspect it was intended to do so. I posted about this paper earlier. Now Professor Hansen has responded to the critics of his team’s work and … Continue reading

Posted in Anthropocene, arXiv, astrophysics, bifurcations, biology, bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, Carbon Tax, citizenship, civilization, clean disruption, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate models, COP21, denial, disingenuity, dynamical systems, ecology, education, environment, ethics, forecasting, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, geophysics, global warming, investment in wind and solar energy, IPCC, James Hansen, maths, meteorology, NASA, NCAR, new forms of scientific peer review, NOAA, oceanography, open source scientific software, physics, Principles of Planetary Climate, probability, rationality, reasonableness, science, science education, sea level rise, temporal myopia, the right to know, time series, WAIS, zero carbon | 1 Comment

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 | Leave a comment

Links explaining climate change Kevin Jones liked

Kevin Jones asked me if I could put the links in a Comment on a post I made at Google+ in a collection or something for reference. I am therefore repeating the Comment with these details below. No one simple … Continue reading

Posted in Anthropocene, astrophysics, bifurcations, biology, bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, chance, citizen science, citizenship, civilization, clean disruption, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate education, climate models, climate zombies, conservation, consumption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, dynamical systems, ecology, economics, efficiency, energy, energy reduction, environment, exponential growth, forecasting, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, geophysics, global warming, history, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, IPCC, living shorelines, mass extinctions, mass transit, mathematics, maths, meteorology, methane, microgrids, model comparison, NASA, natural gas, NCAR, NOAA, oceanography, physics, politics, population biology, Principles of Planetary Climate, rationality, Ray Pierrehumbert, reasonableness, science, science education, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, sea level rise, sociology, solar power, statistics, temporal myopia, the right to know, Tony Seba, WHOI, wind power, zero carbon | Leave a comment

disruption to global electricity production during the next 25 years

I am a huge fan of Tony Seba’s writings and work, primarily because I am an engineer, and I simply cannot accept that the situation with the impending climate catastrophe is hopeless. Engineers are eternal optimists. Not everyone will be … Continue reading

Posted in adaptation, bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, Carbon Tax, citizenship, clean disruption, climate, climate change, climate disruption, consumption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, dynamical systems, economics, energy, engineering, environment, ethics, exponential growth, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, fracking, global warming, history, investment in wind and solar energy, mathematics, maths, methane, microgrids, natural gas, politics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, sociology, solar power, statistics, stochastics, sustainability, taxes, the right to know, Tony Seba, transparency, wind power, zero carbon | 6 Comments

‘Weather by Icon’ Is A Bad Way To Get an Accurate Forecast – Dan’s Wild Wild Science Journal – AGU Blogosphere

'Weather by Icon' Is A Bad Way To Get an Accurate Forecast – Dan's Wild Wild Science Journal – AGU Blogosphere.

Posted in dynamical systems, ensembles, environment, forecasting, geophysics, history, hurricanes, maths, meteorology, NCAR, NOAA, nor'easters, physics, probability, rationality, science, science education, statistics, temporal myopia | Leave a comment

Desperate for a “Pause”

About more Denier cherry-picking.

Posted in climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate education, climate models, climate zombies, environment, geophysics, global warming, hiatus, mathematics, mathematics education, maths, meteorology, obfuscating data, open data, physics, rationality, reasonableness, reproducible research, science, science education, statistics, time series, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Why decentralized electrical power has to win, no matter what Elon Musk says, and utilities are doomed

Posted in bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, Carbon Tax, citizenship, clean disruption, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate education, compassion, conservation, consumption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, diffusion processes, dynamical systems, ecology, economics, efficiency, energy, energy reduction, engineering, environment, ethics, exponential growth, forecasting, fossil fuel divestment, geophysics, global warming, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, living shorelines, mass transit, mathematics education, maths, meteorology, microgrids, natural gas, NCAR, NOAA, nor'easters, obfuscating data, oceanography, open data, optimization, physics, politics, population biology, Principles of Planetary Climate, rationality, Ray Pierrehumbert, reasonableness, reproducible research, risk, science, science education, scientific publishing, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, solar power, state-space models, statistics, temporal myopia, testing, the right to know, time series, wind power, zero carbon | 3 Comments

“NOAA temperature record updates and the ‘hiatus’” (from Gavin at REALCLIMATE)

NOAA temperature record updates and the ‘hiatus’. No doubt there’ll be, as Dr Schmidt says, a howl of protests that the data are “being manipulated”. There’s more discussion by Professor Mann. But, more to the point, it looks like we’re … Continue reading

Posted in chance, citizen science, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate education, climate models, diffusion processes, dynamical systems, energy, ensembles, forecasting, geophysics, global warming, hiatus, maths, meteorology, model comparison, NASA, NCAR, NOAA, oceanography, physics, rationality, spatial statistics, statistics, stochastics, temporal myopia, time series | 2 Comments

“Storm-proven forecasting gets yearlong trial”

Storm-studying scientists have made their next-generation forecasting system available online so the wider weather community can put it to the test. After using the real-time system during short-lived field research campaigns, developers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) … Continue reading

Posted in citizen science, ensembles, ENSO, environment, forecasting, geophysics, maths, meteorology, NCAR, open data, physics, precipitation, science, science education, scientific publishing, spatial statistics, statistics | Leave a comment

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 | 2 Comments

The CWSLab workflow tool: an experiment in community code development

Posted in climate, climate education, climate models, computation, differential equations, dynamical systems, environment, forecasting, geophysics, global warming, IPCC, mathematics, mathematics education, maths, meteorology, model comparison, NCAR, oceanography, open source scientific software, physics, Principles of Planetary Climate, Python 3, rationality, reasonableness, science, science education, state-space models, statistics, time series, transparency | Leave a comment

“Feedback temperature dependence determines the risk of high warming”

Jonah Bloch-Johnson, Ray Pierrehumbert, and Dorian Abbot have a new paper out in Geophysical Research Letters which is pretty exciting, at least for me, having to do with both climate and dynamical systems. They are far from the only ones … Continue reading

Posted in bifurcations, Cauchy distribution, chance, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate education, differential equations, dynamical systems, ecology, environment, forecasting, geophysics, global warming, mathematics, maths, meteorology, physics, Principles of Planetary Climate, rationality, Ray Pierrehumbert, science | Leave a comment

“Response” (to “…I would be interested to see how one can prove from such varying data that the warming has accelerated over time”), by Tamino

Denialist tripe, swatted by Tamino. Now, I know I am learning via the Denial101x course by John Cook (and many others) that the reason why Deniers are Deniers is because the notion of global warming itself challenges their values or … Continue reading

Posted in anemic data, Anthropocene, carbon dioxide, chance, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate education, denial, ecology, education, forecasting, geophysics, global warming, maths, obfuscating data, open data, physics, politics, rationality, science, science education, sea level rise, statistics, sustainability, time series | 1 Comment

“Cauchy Distribution: Evil or Angel?” (from Xian)

Cauchy Distribution: Evil or Angel?. From Professor Christian Robert.

Posted in arXiv, Bayes, Bayesian, Cauchy distribution, information theoretic statistics, mathematics, maths, optimization, probabilistic programming, probability, rationality, reasonableness, statistics, stochastic algorithms, stochastics, Student t distribution | Leave a comment

Jeff’s lecture in Banff (update)

Updated, 2015-09-29 Jeff is now an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow in the Mathematics Department at Stanford University. My son, Jeff, is graduating this month from the University of California, Berkeley, with a doctorate in Mathematics. His thesis title is “Distribution of … Continue reading

Posted in mathematics, maths, physics, proud dad, Stanford University | Tagged | 3 Comments

Stone STOCHASTICITY Project

(Click on image for a larger one.) See the write-up for details.

Posted in ales, capricious gods, chance, chemistry, games of chance, maths, probability, risk, statistics, stochastics, the right to know, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

“… the most patronizing start to an answer I have ever received …”

Professor Christian Robert tries to help out a student of MCMC on Cross Validated and earns the comment that his help had “the most patronizing start to an answer I have ever received“. I learned a new term: primitivus petitor.

Posted in Bayes, Bayesian, mathematics, mathematics education, maths, MCMC, optimization, reasonableness, statistics, stochastic algorithms | Leave a comment

Oklahoma: Not OK

Funny how convenient it is to paint over inconvenient truths. Yo Tamino!

Posted in bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, citizen science, citizenship, clean disruption, climate, climate change, climate education, education, environment, ethics, forecasting, fossil fuel divestment, fracking, geophysics, maths, natural gas, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, statistics, time series | Leave a comment

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 | Leave a comment

Scary Stuff; a Potential Nasty Surprise

If it were to come true, Wally Broecker would earn yet another, deserved scientific accolade: The Great Ocean Conveyor. More from WHOI here. “The climate system is an angry beast and we are poking it with sticks,” said Dr. Wallace … Continue reading

Posted in Anthropocene, bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, Carbon Tax, Carl Sagan, citizen science, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate change, climate education, ecology, education, engineering, environment, forecasting, games of chance, mathematics, maths, meteorology, NOAA, oceanography, physics, Principles of Planetary Climate, rationality, Ray Pierrehumbert, reasonableness, science, science education, sea level rise, sociology, statistics | Leave a comment

“Unbiased Bayes for Big Data: Path of partial posteriors” (Christian Robert)

Unbiased Bayes for Big Data: Path of partial posteriors.

Posted in approximate Bayesian computation, Bayes, Bayesian, mathematics, maths, MCMC, optimization, probabilistic programming, statistics, stochastic algorithms | Leave a comment

Dynamic Linear Models package, dlmodeler

I’m checking out the dlmodeler package in R for a work project. It is accompanied by textbooks, G. Petris, S. Petrone, P. Campagnoli, Dynamic Linear Models with R, Springer, 2009 and J. Durbin, S. J. Koopman, Time Series Analysis by … Continue reading

Posted in Bayesian, geophysics, mathematics, maths, oceanography, open source scientific software, Python 3, R, science, sea level rise, state-space models, statistics, stochastic algorithms, time series | Leave a comment

“Big Data is the new Phrenology”

From mathbabe: Big Data is the new phrenology. Excerpt: Here’s the thing. What we’ve got is a new kind of awful pseudo-science, which replaces measurements of skulls with big data. There’s no reason to think this stuff is any less … Continue reading

Posted in anemic data, Bayes, Bayesian, bridge to nowhere, mathematics, maths, rationality, reasonableness, statistics | Leave a comment

Christian Robert on the amazing Gibbs sampler

Professor Christian Robert remarks on the amazing Gibbs sampler. Implicitly he’s also underscoring the power of properly done Bayesian computational analysis. For here we have a problem with a posterior distribution having two strong modes, so a point estimate, like … Continue reading

Posted in Bayes, Bayesian, BUGS, Gibbs Sampling, JAGS, mathematics, maths, MCMC, probabilistic programming, rationality, statistics, stochastic algorithms, stochastic search | Leave a comment

Warming is proportional to CUMULATIVE CARBON EMISSIONS, not emission intensity

Highlighting the key parts of the Abstract of this very important paper below: The global temperature response to increasing atmospheric CO2 is often quantified by metrics such as equilibrium climate sensitivity and transient climate response1. These approaches, however, do not … Continue reading

Posted in astrophysics, carbon dioxide, climate, climate change, climate education, consumption, differential equations, ecology, engineering, environment, forecasting, geophysics, IPCC, mathematics, maths, meteorology, oceanography, physics, Principles of Planetary Climate, reasonableness, risk, science | 1 Comment

Christian Robert on Alan Turing

Alan Turing Institute. See Professor Robert’s earlier post on Turing, too.

Posted in Bayes, Bayesian, citizenship, education, ethics, history, humanism, mathematics, maths, politics, rationality, reasonableness, statistics, stochastic algorithms, stochastic search, the right to know, Wordpress | Tagged | Leave a comment

Richard Muller: “I Was Wrong On Global Warming, But It Didn’t Convince The ‘Sceptics'”

Update. 26th February 2015 This is not directly related to the BEST project described in the YouTube video above, but the Berkeley National Laboratory has experimentally linked increases in radiative forcing with increases in atmospheric concentrations of CO2 due to … Continue reading

Posted in astrophysics, Bayes, carbon dioxide, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate change, climate education, differential equations, ecology, environment, geoengineering, geophysics, IPCC, mathematics, maths, meteorology, model comparison, NASA, NCAR, NOAA, oceanography, physics, population biology, rationality, Ray Pierrehumbert, reasonableness, reproducible research, risk, science, science education, sea level rise, the right to know | Leave a comment

engineering and understanding with stable models

Stable distributions or Lévy -stable models is a class of probability distributions which contains the Gaussian, the Cauchy (or Lorentz), and the Lévy distribution. They are parameterized by an which is . Values of of 1 or less give distributions … Continue reading

Posted in approximate Bayesian computation, Bayesian, citizen science, climate, climate change, climate education, differential equations, diffusion processes, ecology, economics, forecasting, geophysics, information theoretic statistics, IPCC, mathematics, mathematics education, maths, meteorology, model comparison, NOAA, oceanography, physics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, stochastic search, the right to know | Leave a comment

David Suzuki on the 59th minute and exponential growth

Posted in astronomy, astrophysics, biology, bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide capture, Carl Sagan, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate change, climate education, demand-side solutions, ecology, economics, engineering, environment, ethics, forecasting, geophysics, IPCC, mathematics, maths, meteorology, physics, population biology, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, sociology, statistics | 3 Comments