
Distributed Solar: The Democratizaton of Energy

Blogroll
- Awkward Botany
- Comprehensive Guide to Bayes Rule
- Team Andrew Weinberg Walking September 8th for the Jimmy Fund!
- Gavin Simpson
- 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
- Ives and Dakos techniques for regime changes in series
- "Talking Politics" podcast David Runciman, Helen Thompson
- The Keeling Curve: its history History of the Keeling Curve and Charles David Keeling
- Leadership lessons from Lao Tzu
- 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/.
- AP Statistics: Sampling, by Michael Porinchak Twin City Schools
- What If
- ggplot2 and ggfortify Plotting State Space Time Series with ggplot2 and ggfortify
- London Review of Books
- International Society for Bayesian Analysis (ISBA)
- 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.
- Thaddeus Stevens quotes As I get older, I admire this guy more and more
- Mrooijer's Numbers R 4Us
- Mike Bloomberg, 2020 He can get progress on climate done, has the means and experts to counter the Trump and Republican digital disinformation machine, and has the experience, knowledge, and depth of experience to achieve and unify.
- Slice Sampling
- WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION Cathy O’Neil’s WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION,
- Dr James Spall's SPSA
- OOI Data Nuggets OOI Ocean Data Lab: The Data Nuggets
- Los Alamos Center for Bayesian Methods
- Tim Harford's “More or Less'' Tim Harford explains – and sometimes debunks – the numbers and statistics used in political debate, the news and everyday life
- All about models
- Bob Altemeyer on authoritarianism (via Dan Satterfield) The science behind the GOP civil war
- Dominic Cummings blog Chief advisor to the PM, United Kingdom
- Brendon Brewer on Overfitting Important and insightful presentation by Brendon Brewer on overfitting
- WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION, reviews Reviews of Cathy O’Neil’s new book
- Label Noise
- Mark Berliner's video lecture "Bayesian mechanistic-statistical modeling with examples in geophysical settings"
- Quotes by Nikola Tesla Quotes by Nikola Tesla, including some of others he greatly liked.
- SASB Sustainability Accounting Standards Board
- 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
- James' Empty Blog
- Pat's blog While it is described as “The mathematical (and other) thoughts of a (now retired) math teacher”, this is false humility, as it chronicles the present and past life and times of mathematicians in their context. Recommended.
- Brian McGill's Dynamic Ecology blog Quantitative biology with pithy insights regarding applications of statistical methods
- Earth Family Beta MIchael Osborne’s blog on Science and the like
- American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
- Healthy Home Healthy Planet
- Harvard's Project Implicit
- Earle Wilson
- "The Expert"
- Charlie Kufs' "Stats With Cats" blog “You took Statistics 101. Now what?”
- 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/
- The Plastic Pick-Up: Discovering new sources of marine plastic pollution
- 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.
- Carl Safina's blog One of the wisest on Earth
- Flettner Rotor Bruce Yeany introduces the Flettner Rotor and related science
climate change
- Dessler's 6 minute Greenhouse Effect video
- `The unchained goddess' 1958 Bell Telephone Science Hour broadcast regarding, among other things, climate change.
- Sea Change Boston
- ATTP summarizes all that stuff about Committed Warming from AND THEN THERE’S PHYSICS
- 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.
- Skeptical Science
- An open letter to Steve Levitt
- 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
- Klaus Lackner (ASU), Silicon Kingdom Holdings (SKH) Capturing CO2 from air at scale
- All Models Are Wrong Dr Tamsin Edwards blog about uncertainty in science, and climate science
- "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.
- Rabett Run Incisive analysis of climate science versus deliberate distraction
- Anti—Anti-#ClimateEmergency Whether to declare a climate emergency is debatable. But some critics have gone way overboard.
- SolarLove
- "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.)
- History of discovering Global Warming From the American Institute of Physics.
- Updating the Climate Science: What path is the real world following? From Professors Makiko Sato & James Hansen of Columbia University
- James Hansen and granddaughter Sophie on moving forward with progress on climate
- Wind sled Wind sled: A zero carbon way of exploring ice sheets
- Climate at a glance Current state of the climate, from NOAA
- Jacobson WWS literature index
- Transitioning to fully renewable energy Professor Saul Griffiths talks to transitioning the customer journey, from a dependency upon fossil fuels to an electrified future
- Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature
- Reanalyses.org
- Eli on the spectroscopic basis of atmospheric radiation physical chemistry
- 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.
- weather blocking patterns
- Risk and Well-Being
- "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.
- 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
- 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.
- “Ways to [try to] slow the Solar Century''
- Solar Gardens Community Power
- "Lessons of the Little Ice Age" (Farber) From Dan Farber, at LEGAL PLANET
- SOLAR PRODUCTION at Westwood Statistical Studios Generation charts for our home in Westwood, MA
- Mathematics and Climate Research Network The Mathematics and Climate Research Network (MCRN) engages mathematicians to collaborating on the cryosphere, conceptual model validation, data assimilation, the electric grid, food systems, nonsmooth systems, paleoclimate, resilience, tipping points.
- Energy payback period for solar panels Considering everything, how long do solar panels have to operate to offset the energy used to produce them?
- Grid parity map for Solar PV in United States
- "A field guide to the climate clowns"
- Non-linear feedbacks in climate (discussion of Bloch-Johnson, Pierrehumbert, Abbot paper) Discussion of http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1002/2015GL064240/abstract
- Tuft's Professor Kenneth Lang on the physical chemistry of the Greenhouse Effect
- "Getting to the Energy Future We Want," Dr Steven Chu
- 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
- Mrooijer's Global Temperature Explorer
- MIT's Climate Primer
- Social Cost of Carbon
- Spectra Energy exposed
- James Powell on sampling the climate consensus
- 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.
Archives
Jan Galkowski
Category Archives: plastics
“Microplastics in the Ocean: Emergency or Exaggeration?” (Morss Colloquium, WHOI)
Update, 2019-10-28 00:34 ET I have compiled notes from the talks above, and from the audience Q&A and documented these in a Google Jam here.
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, bag bans, Claire Galkowski, coastal communities, coasts, diffusion processes, microbiomes, microplastics, NOAA, oceanic eddies, oceanography, oceans, perceptions, phytoplankton, plastics, pollution, quantitative biology, quantitative ecology, science, science education, statistical ecology, WHOI, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
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Marine microbes are eating plastics
The news item was reported in Science. I wrote about the possibility earlier, but, there, WHOI scientists had not confirmed that microbes were actually consuming plastics. This has been suspected since 2011, due to the work of WHOI scientist Dr … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Anthropocene, basic research, ecological services, ecomodernism, ecopragmatism, environment, marine biology, marine debris, materials science, microbiomes, microplastics, oceans, plastics, quantitative biology, quantitative ecology, WHOI, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
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plastic-hating environmentalists as pawns and collaborative distractors of the Trump administration
Andrew Wheeler, 45‘s head of the Environmental Protection Administration and former coal industry attorney and legal advisor to Senator Imhofe, famed climate denier of the U.S. Senate, has stated it quite simply: Clean drinking water is a higher priority for … Continue reading
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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“What’s new with recycling”
South Shore Recycling Cooperative Director Claire Galkowski, spoke in Norwell, at the South Shore Natural Science Center, a couple of weeks ago:
Posted in Amory Lovins, Anthropocene, biofuels, Carbon Cycle, Claire Galkowski, coastal communities, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, EBC-NE, ecomodernism, ecopragmatist, education, extended producer responsibility, extended supply chains, green tech, greenhouse gases, local self reliance, Massachusetts, microplastics, paper, plastics, public health, quantitative ecology, recycling, science, solid waste, South Shore Recycling Cooperative, sustainability
Tagged plastic bag bans
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50,000+ golf balls, along a coast
KQED carried a story about free diver and 16 y.o. Alex Weber who discovered not only a new source of plastic pollution, but another testament to the casual, careless sloppiness of people. And Ms Weber has converted it into a … Continue reading
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, an uncaring American public, coastal communities, coasts, consumption, ecological disruption, Ecological Society of America, ethics, field research, Florida, Humans have a lot to answer for, marine debris, oceans, plastics, pollution, science, sustainability, sustainable landscaping
Tagged updated
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On plastic bag bans, and the failure to realize economic growth cannot be green
(Updated 2019-01-12.) Despite the surge of interest in plastic bag bans, the environmental sustainability numbers haven’t been run. For example, it makes no sense to trade using paper bags instead of plastic ones, even if the paper is recycled, because … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, an ignorant American public, an uncaring American public, Anthropocene, development as anti-ecology, E. O. Wilson, environment, evidence, evolution, exponential growth, fragmentation of ecosystems, global warming, greenwashing, Humans have a lot to answer for, Hyper Anthropocene, local self reliance, plastics, population biology, quantitative biology, quantitative ecology, supply chains, sustainability, sustainable landscaping, The Demon Haunted World, the right to be and act stupid, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets, tragedy of the horizon
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Plastics in the oceans!
From Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution: (Click on image to see a larger figure, and use browser Back Button to return to blog.) “Tracking a snow globe of microplastics“ “WHOI Marine Microplastics Initiative“ “Sweat the small stuff“ “A hitchhiker’s guide to … Continue reading

