Distributed Solar: The Democratizaton of Energy
Category Archives: open data
On bag bans and sampling plans
Plastic bag bans are all the rage. It’s not the purpose of this post to take a position on the matter. Before you do, however, I’d recommend checking out this: and especially this: (Note: My lovely wife, Claire, presents this … Continue reading
Posted in bag bans, citizen data, citizen science, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Ecology Action, evidence, Google, Google Earth, Google Maps, goverance, lifestyle changes, microplastics, municipal solid waste, oceans, open data, planning, plastics, politics, pollution, public health, quantitative ecology, R, R statistical programming language, reasonableness, recycling, rhetorical statistics, sampling, sampling networks, statistics, surveys, sustainability
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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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Censorship of Science by the administration of President Donald Trump
See work by the Columbia Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. … President Trump has directed EPA and DOI to reconsider regulations adopted to control greenhouse gas emissions, despite the wealth of data showing that those emissions are the key … Continue reading
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, an ignorant American public, an uncaring American public, anti-intellectualism, anti-science, Azimuth Backup Project, citizen data, Climate Science Legal Defense Fund, Donald Trump, dump Trump, Ecological Society of America, environmental law, epidemiology, global blinding, Neill deGrasse Tyson, open data, rationality, reason, reasonableness, science, secularism, The Demon Haunted World, the right to be and act stupid, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, tragedy of the horizon, unreason
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“All of Monsanto’s problems just landed on Bayer” (by Chris Hughes at Bloomberg)
See Chris Hughes’ article. Monsanto has touted Roundup (also known as Glyphosate but more properly as ) as a safe remedy for weed control, often in the taming of so-called “invasive species”. It’s used on playfields where children are exposed … Continue reading
Posted in agroecology, an uncaring American public, business, corporate responsibility, ecology, Ecology Action, environment, environmental law, epidemiology, evidence, invasive species, open data, Peter del Tredici, quantitative biology, quantitative ecology, rights of the inhabitants of the Commonwealth, risk, statistics, sustainability, sustainable landscaping, the right to know, Uncategorized, unreason, Westwood
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Ductless Minisplits in Blizzard, 2017-02-09
(Updated, 11th February 2017, 16:15 EST) We heat and cool our home with Fujitsu `ductless minisplit` air source heat pumps. But this is New England, and it’s winter. A common question is how do they do under winter conditions? Well, … Continue reading
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Meteorological Association, American Statistical Association, AMETSOC, Anthropocene, atmosphere, attribution, being carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide, CleanTechnica, climate, climate change, climate disruption, demand-side solutions, efficiency, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, marginal energy sources, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, meteorological models, meteorology, National Center for Atmospheric Research, NCAR, New England, NOAA, nor'easters, oceanic eddies, oceanography, open data, open source scientific software, risk, the right to know, water vapor
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The Azimuth Climate Data Backup Project, in association with ClimateMirror
(Updated the afternoon of 31st May 2017.) The Azimuth Climate Data Backup Project, operating in association with ClimateMirror, is being funded via the Kickstarter available at this link. Give what you can. Thanks! See our goal statement. This is all … Continue reading
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, citizen science, civilization, climate, climate change, climate data, climate disruption, climate education, climate justice, Climate Lab Book, cynicism, denial, Donald Trump, education, EIA, ethics, evidence, fear uncertainty and doubt, forecasting, fossil fuels, Global Carbon Project, global warming, greenhouse gases, Hyper Anthropocene, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, NASA, NOAA, open data, open source scientific software, rationality, reason, reasonableness, risk, science, science denier, science education, smart data, statistics, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, UU, ``The tide is risin'/And so are we''
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Why scientific measurements need to be adjusted
There is an excellent piece in Ars Technica about why scientific measurements need to be adjusted, and the implications of this for climate data. It is written by Scott K Johnson and is called “Thorough, not thoroughly fabricated: The truth … Continue reading
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Meteorological Association, American Statistical Association, AMETSOC, Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, Canettes Blues Band, citizen data, climate data, data science, environment, evidence, geophysics, GISTEMP, HadCRUT4, mathematics education, meteorological models, obfuscating data, open data, physics, science, spatial statistics, Tamino, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, Variable Variability
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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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“Hurricanes, Sea Level, and Baloney” (from Tamino)
Originally posted on Open Mind:
WUWT has a post in which Neil Frank proclaims that Hillary Clinton is no hurricane expert but he is. (Frank’s post was originally published on The Daily Caller, but was reprinted on WUWT with permission.)…
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
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Repaired R code for Markov spatial simulation of hurricane tracks from historical trajectories
I’m currently studying random walk and diffusion processes and their connections with random fields. I’m interested in this because at the core of dynamic linear models, Kalman filters, and state-space methods there is a random walk in a parameter space. … Continue reading
Posted in American Meteorological Association, American Statistical Association, AMETSOC, Arthur Charpentier, atmosphere, diffusion, diffusion processes, dynamic linear models, dynamical systems, environment, geophysics, hurricanes, Kalman filter, Kerry Emanuel, Lévy flights, Lorenz, Markov chain random fields, mathematics, mathematics education, maths, MCMC, mesh models, meteorological models, meteorology, model-free forecasting, Monte Carlo Statistical Methods, numerical analysis, numerical software, oceanography, open data, open source scientific software, physics, random walk processes, random walks, science, spatial statistics, state-space models, statistical dependence, statistics, stochastic algorithms, stochastics, time series
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Energy Democracy
I’ve actually written about this before, but John Farrell of the ILSR (“Institute for Local Self-Reliance” a famous Emerson essay, by the way) presents an up-to-date synthesis of developments, incorporating policy as well as Tony Seba-like, Hermann Scheer-like, and Michael … Continue reading
Posted in abstraction, Anthropocene, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, bridge to somewhere, Buckminster Fuller, citizenship, clean disruption, CleanTechnica, climate economics, corporate litigation on damage from fossil fuel emissions, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, destructive economic development, distributed generation, economics, efficiency, electricity, electricity markets, energy, energy reduction, energy storage, energy utilities, engineering, evidence, extended supply chains, feed-in tariff, forecasting, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, green tech, grid defection, Hermann Scheer, Hyper Anthropocene, ILSR, investment in wind and solar energy, John Farrell, Joseph Schumpeter, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, liberal climate deniers, life purpose, local generation, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, Michael Osborne, microgrids, open data, public utility commissions, PUCs, rate of return regulation, rationality, reason, reasonableness, regime shifts, regulatory capture, risk, Sankey diagram, solar democracy, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, SolarPV.tv, Spaceship Earth, spatial statistics, statistics, stranded assets, sustainability, temporal myopia, the energy of the people, the green century, Tony Seba, utility company death spiral, wind energy, wind power, zero carbon
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Dramatis personæ: How to do zero Carbon emissions at a residence (Westwood, MA)
Updated, 1st October 2019 (To see a larger picture for this and all images, click on image and then use browser Back Button to return to blog.) Our external meter is now reading negative. Peak was 2850 in April 2016. … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, bridge to somewhere, Buckminster Fuller, citizenship, clean disruption, climate business, climate disruption, climate economics, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, electricity, electricity markets, energy, energy reduction, energy utilities, fossil fuel divestment, global warming, green tech, grid defection, Hyper Anthropocene, investment in wind and solar energy, local generation, Mark Jacobson, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, Michael Osborne, microgrids, New England, open data, regime shifts, RevoluSun, Sankey diagram, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, Spaceship Earth, SunPower, sustainability, the energy of the people, the green century, the value of financial assets, Tony Seba, wind energy, wind power, zero carbon
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A model of an electrical grid: A vision
Many people seem to view the electrical grid of the future being much like the present one. I think a lot about networks, because of my job. And I especially think a lot about network topologies, although primarily concerning the … Continue reading
Posted in abstraction, American Meteorological Association, anomaly detection, Anthropocene, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, Boston, bridge to somewhere, Buckminster Fuller, Canettes Blues Band, clean disruption, climate business, climate economics, complex systems, corporate supply chains, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, differential equations, distributed generation, efficiency, EIA, electricity, electricity markets, energy, energy reduction, energy storage, energy utilities, engineering, extended supply chains, green tech, grid defection, Hermann Scheer, Hyper Anthropocene, investment in wind and solar energy, ISO-NE, Kalman filter, kriging, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, Lenny Smith, local generation, marginal energy sources, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, Mathematics and Climate Research Network, mesh models, meteorology, microgrids, networks, New England, New York State, open data, organizational failures, pipelines, planning, prediction markets, public utility commissions, PUCs, rate of return regulation, rationality, reason, reasonableness, regime shifts, regulatory capture, resiliency, risk, Sankey diagram, smart data, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, Spaceship Earth, spatial statistics, state-space models, statistical dependence, statistics, stochastic algorithms, stochastics, stranded assets, supply chains, sustainability, the energy of the people, the green century, the value of financial assets, thermodynamics, time series, Tony Seba, utility company death spiral, wave equations, wind energy, wind power, zero carbon
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David Spiegelhalter on `how to spot a dodgy statistic’
In this political season, it’s useful to brush up on rhetorical skills, particularly ones involving numbers and statistics, or what John Allen Paulos called numeracy. Professor David Spiegelhalter has written a guide to some of these tricks. Read the whole … Continue reading
Posted in abstraction, anemic data, Bayes, Bayesian, chance, citizenship, civilization, corruption, Daniel Kahneman, disingenuity, Donald Trump, education, games of chance, ignorance, maths, moral leadership, obfuscating data, open data, perceptions, politics, rationality, reason, reasonableness, rhetoric, risk, sampling, science, sociology, statistics, the right to know
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This Earth Day: The Data
(Amendments on 25the April 2016.) Sorry, folks, it’s It’s not just El Niño. El Niño’s have gotten bigger over the years. (Click on image for a larger picture. Use your browser Back Button to return to blog.) (Click on image … Continue reading
Posted in American Petroleum Institute, Antarctica, Anthropocene, Arctic, Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, BEST, Bill Nye, carbon dioxide, Carbon Worshipers, Chevron, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate education, climate justice, corporate litigation on damage from fossil fuel emissions, corruption, Dan Satterfield, ecology, El Nina, El Nino, ENSO, environment, evidence, Exxon, false advertising, fear uncertainty and doubt, fossil fuels, fracking, geophysics, glaciers, glaciology, global warming, greenhouse gases, Gulf Oil, Hyper Anthropocene, ice sheet dynamics, icesheets, ignorance, James Hansen, John Cook, La Nina, meteorology, NASA, NCAR, NOAA, oceanography, open data, organizational failures, physics, rationality, reasonableness, regulatory capture, science, science education, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, sea level rise, selfishness, Spaceship Earth, statistics, sustainability, Texaco, the problem of evil, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, UU Humanists, WAIS, WHOI, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, zero carbon
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Going down to the Southern Ocean, by Earle Wilson (on the Scripps R/V Roger Revelle)
(Click on picture to see a larger image, and use your browser Back button to return to reading.) Getting steady data from the Earth’s oceans demands commitment and not a little courage. I could never do what these oceanographers do, … Continue reading
Posted in Alison M Macdonald, anemic data, Antarctica, climate data, complex systems, Earle Wilson, Emily Shuckburgh, engineering, environment, fluid dynamics, geophysics, marine biology, NOAA, oceanic eddies, oceanography, open data, Principles of Planetary Climate, sampling, science, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, thermohaline circulation, waves, WHOI, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
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Climate Conclusions: The American Petroleum Institute (1980)
The following are excerpted from a memorandum quoted by the Inside Climate News team, documenting the minutes of a 29th February 1980 of a task force on climate change at the American Petroleum Institute. Hat tip to Climate Denial Crock … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, American Petroleum Institute, AMETSOC, Anthropocene, bridge to nowhere, Carbon Cycle, carbon dioxide, Carbon Worshipers, Chevron, climate, climate change, climate data, climate disruption, climate models, corporate litigation on damage from fossil fuel emissions, denial, ecology, economics, environment, ethics, evidence, Exxon, fear uncertainty and doubt, forecasting, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, geophysics, global warming, greenhouse gases, Gulf Oil, Hyper Anthropocene, meteorology, natural gas, open data, physics, pipelines, Principles of Planetary Climate, rationality, reasonableness, science, selfishness, Standard Oil of California, sustainability, Texaco, the right to know, the value of financial assets
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Wind and Solar are Cheaper than Fossil Fuels and Nuclear Right Now
… and that’s based upon levelized cost of energy, without subsidies! See a summary of Lazard’s report, the key chart below: (Click on image to see a larger version. Click on your browser’s Back button to return to blog.) the … Continue reading
Posted in bifurcations, Cape Wind, Carbon Worshipers, clean disruption, conservation, consumption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, destructive economic development, economics, efficiency, EIA, energy, energy reduction, energy utilities, engineering, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, methane, microgrids, natural gas, nuclear power, open data, pipelines, politics, prediction, public utility commissions, PUCs, Sankey diagram, solar energy, solar power, SolarPV.tv, sustainability, temporal myopia, the value of financial assets, Tony Seba, wind energy, wind power
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dynamic linear model applied to sea-level-rise anomalies
I spent much of the data working up a function for level+trend dynamic linear modeling based upon the dlm package by Petris, Petrone, and Campagnoli, while trying some calculations and code for regime shift detection. One of the test cases … Continue reading
Posted in Bayesian, citizen science, climate change, climate data, climate disruption, dynamic linear models, floods, forecasting, Frequentist, global warming, icesheets, information theoretic statistics, Kalman filter, meteorology, open data, sea level rise, state-space models, statistics, time series
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December 2015 Temperature Anomalies
(Click on image for a larger picture. Use your browser return button to come back.) From Dan Satterfield’s blog and analysis. And, if you want to see what we’re in for, and where the dark corners are, check out this … Continue reading
Southern Oscillation (SOI) correlated with Outgoing Longwave Radiation (OLR)
To the climate community this is nothing at all new, but I spotted these time series today and thought they would make a nice exhibit on how something people have direct control over, greenhouse gas emissions, affect a “teleconnection mechanism” … Continue reading
Posted in AMETSOC, bifurcations, carbon dioxide, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate models, Dan Satterfield, differential equations, dynamic linear models, dynamical systems, ENSO, environment, forecasting, generalized linear models, geophysics, global warming, greenhouse gases, IPCC, Mathematica, mathematics, maths, meteorology, NCAR, NOAA, numerical software, oceanography, open data, physics, population biology, Principles of Planetary Climate, rationality, reasonableness, science, Spaceship Earth, state-space models, thermodynamics, time series
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Leaks in Westwood: Natural Gas — a bridge to nowhere
These are ongoing leaks of natural gas in the Westwood area. They are reported, as required by law, by Eversource, the local utility, to Massachusetts government authorities, along with an indication of Eversource’s estimate of the severity of the leak. … Continue reading
Posted in bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, climate, climate change, climate data, climate disruption, conservation, consumption, ecology, energy reduction, energy utilities, environment, fossil fuels, fracking, global warming, investment in wind and solar energy, meteorology, methane, natural gas, open data, pipelines, politics, public utility commissions, PUCs, rationality, reasonableness, risk, spatial statistics, sustainability, the right to know, zero carbon
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Solar installation progress, courtesy of MacSolarIndex.com
The MAC Solar Index tracks a set of solar manufacturing and installation companies. It is also the basis for the Guggenheim Investments “TAN” Exchange-Traded Fund (“ETF”, *). They recently published a progress report on global solar installations, which I wanted … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, Anthropocene, carbon dioxide, citizen science, citizenship, civilization, clean disruption, climate, climate change, climate data, climate disruption, conservation, consumption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, destructive economic development, dynamic linear models, dynamical systems, ecology, economics, efficiency, energy, energy reduction, environment, exponential growth, forecasting, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, geophysics, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, mathematics, mathematics education, maths, meteorology, microgrids, open data, optimization, physics, politics, prediction, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, solar power, sustainability, the right to know, time series, Tony Seba, wind power, zero carbon
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Atmospheric concentration of CO2 as a function of altitude
Note that water vapor is essentially at zero concentration above the tropopause, which is at most 16 km high (it varies with latitude and season) because it is too cold for water to survive as gas, or even as liquid. … Continue reading
Posted in carbon dioxide, climate, climate change, climate data, climate disruption, environment, fossil fuels, geophysics, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, IPCC, meteorology, open data, physics, Principles of Planetary Climate, science, science education, the right to know, time series
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SCIENCE OF DOOM takes on assessing zero Carbon power and a zero Carbon grid
Updated, 2127 EDT, 10th August 2015 The blog, Science of Doom, has taken on a new thread discussing the technical feasibilities and problems associated with building out zero Carbon energy in the context of an electric grid. As such, it … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, Anthropocene, clean disruption, climate data, climate disruption, conservation, consumption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, destructive economic development, dynamic linear models, dynamical systems, economics, efficiency, energy, energy reduction, engineering, environment, exponential growth, forecasting, fossil fuel divestment, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, microgrids, open data, optimization, prediction, rationality, reasonableness, risk, solar power, state-space models, stochastics, sustainability, the right to know, time series, wind power, Wordpress, zero carbon
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New Paper Shows Global Climate Model Errors are Significantly Less Than Thought (Dan’s Wild Wild Science Journal)
New Paper Shows Global Climate Model Errors are Significantly Less Than Thought – Dan's Wild Wild Science Journal – AGU Blogosphere. The paper is here, unfortunately behind a paywall. I wonder if they looked at the temperature distributions’ second moments? … Continue reading
Posted in Arctic, carbon dioxide, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate models, differential equations, diffusion processes, ensembles, environment, forecasting, geophysics, global warming, HadCRUT4, meteorology, model comparison, NASA, NCAR, NOAA, oceanography, open data, physics, prediction, rationality, reasonableness, science, statistics, Tamino, time series
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“Where most of us live (with apologies to southern-hemisphere readers)” [reblog of Tamino]
Originally posted on Open Mind:
Almost all of us live on land, not the ocean. And, most of us live in the northern hemisphere, not the southern. For the benefit of most of us, let’s take a closer look at…
Posted in Anthropocene, carbon dioxide, citizen science, climate, climate change, climate data, climate disruption, denial, ecology, education, environment, forecasting, fossil fuels, geophysics, hiatus, Hyper Anthropocene, IPCC, mathematics, maths, meteorology, NOAA, open data, physics, prediction, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, statistics, Tamino, time series, Uncategorized, Wordpress
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Thank You
Originally posted on Open Mind:
To all the readers who make this blog worth writing: Thank you. Thank you for sharing my work. One of the things that makes me proud is that often my blog posts are used as…
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
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Sea Surface Anomalies
(Hat tip to Susan Stone.) The graphic below shows sea surface temperature anomalies relative to the 1971-2000 baseline First data are courtesy of the Climate Reanalyzer, a joint project of the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine, and … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, carbon dioxide, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate education, differential equations, diffusion processes, dynamical systems, ecology, ENSO, environment, forecasting, geophysics, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, IPCC, mathematics, MCMC, NASA, NCAR, NOAA, oceanography, open data, physics, Principles of Planetary Climate, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, sea level rise, statistics, sustainability, the right to know, time series, transparency
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