Distributed Solar: The Democratizaton of Energy
Category Archives: population biology
What if Juliana v United States fails?
This is a replica of a comment I made at another site. As of 23:55 EST on 21st January, it hasn’t been release from moderation. Perhaps the moderator is busy. I do not know. I am proceeding as if it … Continue reading
Posted in an ignorant American public, an uncaring American public, Anthropocene, being carbon dioxide, Boston Ethical Society, carbon dioxide capture, clear air capture of carbon dioxide, climate, climate business, climate change, climate disruption, climate economics, corporate litigation on damage from fossil fuel emissions, corporate supply chains, corporations, ecological disruption, ecomodernism, economics, ecopragmatism, environment, environmental law, extended producer responsibility, extended supply chains, First Parish Needham, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, global warming, greenhouse gases, Hyper Anthropocene, investment in wind and solar energy, Juliana v United States, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, Mary C Wood, optimization, Our Children's Trust, pollution, population biology, population dynamics, Principles of Planetary Climate, quantitative biology, quantitative ecology, radiative forcing, rationality, reasonableness, sea level rise, sustainability, the tragedy of our present civilization, tragedy of the horizon, United States Constitution, United States Government, UU, UU Needham, zero carbon
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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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Today, now, and what of the future?
From Aldo Leopold in his A Sand County Almanac: One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, agroecology, Aldo Leopold, American Association for the Advancement of Science, argoecology, being carbon dioxide, biology, Boston Ethical Society, Botany, Buckminster Fuller, Charles Darwin, climate, climate change, David Suzuki, Earle Wilson, Ecological Society of America, Ecology Action, ethics, George Sughihara, Glen Peters, global warming, Grant Foster, Humans have a lot to answer for, Hyper Anthropocene, population biology, quantitative biology, quantitative ecology, Spaceship Earth, sustainability, 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, UU Humanists
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Aldo Leopold
We end, I think, at what might be called the standard paradox of the twentieth century: our tools are better than we are, and grow better faster than we do. They suffice to crack the atom, to command the tides. … Continue reading
Sustainable Landscaping
Update: 2018-05-26 It’s not about plants, not entirely. But it seems that, in one agricultural area, pollinators (bees) under stress have ceded their pollinating responsibility to a couple of species of exotic (read invasive) flies. See: J. R. Stavert, D. … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, American Association for the Advancement of Science, argoecology, biology, Botany, Carl Safina, complex systems, conservation, ecological services, Ecological Society of America, ecology, Ecology Action, environment, fragmentation of ecosystems, invasive species, land use to fight, living shorelines, New England, population biology, population dynamics, quantitative biology, quantitative ecology, sustainability, sustainable landscaping, water as a resource
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The global vegetative biosphere
(Click on figure to see a larger image, and use browser Back Button to return to blog) Data derived in part from SeaWIFS and image is from the NASA Earth Observatory here. Related links: Global Biosphere Global Biosphere over time … Continue reading
“Carbon emissions and climate: Where do we stand, and what can be done if it all goes wrong?”
On Sunday, 11th February 2018, I presented an Abstract of a 3 hour talk on the subject, “Carbon emissions and climate: Where do we stand, and what can be done if it all goes wrong?” at the Needham Lyceum, hosted … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, being carbon dioxide, Carbon Cycle, carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide capture, carbon dioxide sequestration, Carbon Tax, civilization, clear air capture of carbon dioxide, climate, climate change, climate disruption, COP21, Cult of Carbon, differential equations, dynamical systems, ecology, emissions, environment, exponential growth, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuel infrastructure, fossil fuels, geoengineering, geophysics, Glen Peters, Global Carbon Project, global warming, greenhouse gases, Humans have a lot to answer for, Hyper Anthropocene, investments, James Hansen, Kerry Emanuel, liberal climate deniers, Mark Carney, Michael Bloomberg, Minsky moment, mitigation, nonlinear, nonlinear systems, oceanography, phytoplankton, population biology, population dynamics, precipitation, Principles of Planetary Climate, quantitative biology, quantitative ecology, radiative forcing, rationality, Ray Pierrehumbert, risk, sea level rise, sociology, stranded assets, supply chains, sustainability, T'kun Olam, the right to be and act stupid, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets, thermohaline circulation, tragedy of the horizon, unreason, UU, UU Needham, Wally Broecker, zero carbon
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on nonlinear dynamics of hordes of people
I spent a bit of last week at a symposium honoring the work of Charney and Lorenz in fluid dynamics. I am no serious student of fluid dynamics. I have a friend, Klaus, an engineer, who is, and makes a … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, bifurcations, biology, Carl Safina, causation, complex systems, dynamic generalized linear models, dynamic linear models, dynamical systems, ecological services, ecology, Emily Shuckburgh, finance, Floris Takens, fluid dynamics, fluid eddies, games of chance, Hyper Anthropocene, investments, Lenny Smith, Lorenz, nonlinear, numerical algorithms, numerical analysis, politics, population biology, population dynamics, prediction markets, Principles of Planetary Climate, public transport, Ray Pierrehumbert, risk, sampling networks, sustainability, Timothy Lenton, Yale University Statistics Department, zero carbon, ``The tide is risin'/And so are we''
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`How old is today?` (Carl Safina)
How old is today? light comes from everywhere and from nowhere. The ocean, glittering then vanishing in gauzy vapors, handles us more gently than anyone could have hoped. Snow flurries in and hurries out. Mists veil coasts so raw, so … Continue reading
Results of short literature search on impacts of climate change upon ecosystems and bird or animal migration patterns, from the journals of the Ecological Society of America
I decided to do a quick literature search on the impacts of climate change upon ecosystems and migration patterns. I could have kept the list private, but why not make it public? Not all these articles are purely about the … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, American Statistical Association, Anthropocene, biology, climate change, climate education, climate models, complex systems, differential equations, dynamic generalized linear models, dynamical systems, ecological services, Ecological Society of America, ecology, Ecology Action, environment, evidence, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, marine biology, mass extinctions, nonlinear systems, population biology, population dynamics, quantitative biology, quantitative ecology, tragedy of the horizon
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Amory Lovins, 2008: `Natural Capitalism: The Next Industrial Revolution with Amory Lovins`
An excellent presentation from über successful dropout from Harvard University and Oxford University, Dr Amory Lovins, at University of California at Berkeley:
Posted in Adam Smith, affordable mass goods, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Amory Lovins, Anthropocene, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, bridge to somewhere, capitalism, climate economics, destructive economic development, ecological services, ecology, Ecology Action, economic trade, economics, environment, ILSR, internal inconsistency, Joseph Schumpeter, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, population biology, population dynamics, quantitative biology, resource producitivity, solid waste management, stranded assets, supply chains, sustainability, the green century, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets, transparency
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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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`Environmental science in a post-truth world’ (Lubchenco and Kammen)
Jane Lubchenco is a Professor at Oregon State University, and was administrator of the U.S. NOAA from 2009 through 2013, the U.S. Science Envoy for the Ocean at the State Department from 2014 to 2016, and the president of the … Continue reading
Posted in Akaike Information Criterion, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Statistical Association, being carbon dioxide, Buckminster Fuller, climate, climate change, coastal communities, coasts, ecological services, ecology, environment, environmental law, evidence, global warming, Humans have a lot to answer for, Hyper Anthropocene, ignorance, Jane Lubchenco, marine biology, mass extinctions, population biology, population dynamics, quantitative biology, quantitative ecology, risk, science, Spaceship Earth, sustainability, T'kun Olam, temporal myopia, the tragedy of our present civilization
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Okay, Jan, so what’s your view on climate change?
It’s heading towards year’s end, so it’s natural to think about perspective. In a post from last July, Joseph Heath asks semi-rhetorically, “Why are [proposed] carbon taxes so low?” and, then, he and commenters go on and answer that, essentially, … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Meteorological Association, American Solar Energy Society, American Statistical Association, Anthropocene, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, Buckminster Fuller, carbon dioxide, clear air capture of carbon dioxide, climate change, climate disruption, decentralized electric power generation, distributed generation, ecological services, energy reduction, energy storage, environment, Equiterre, fossil fuel divestment, Gaylord Nelson, Glen Peters, greenhouse gases, Hermann Scheer, Hyper Anthropocene, investment in wind and solar energy, IPCC, James Hansen, Kevin Anderson, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, Mark Jacobson, Massachusetts, Minsky moment, Neill deGrasse Tyson, Our Children's Trust, population biology, quantitative ecology, solar democracy, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, Spaceship Earth, temporal myopia, the energy of the people, the green century, the right to be and act stupid, the tragedy of our present civilization, Walt Disney Company, wind energy, wind power, zero carbon
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The Budget
Certain claims regarding contributions of health programs to the United States federal budget in a debate last night made me curious, and so I checked the figures on this from the Office of Management and Budget. Of special importance to … Continue reading
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Meteorological Association, American Statistical Association, AMETSOC, Buckminster Fuller, citizen data, citizenship, climate, climate change, climate economics, climate justice, conservation, consumption, Daniel Kahneman, David Suzuki, destructive economic development, ecological services, ecology, economics, environment, environmental law, Equiterre, George Monbiot, Hyper Anthropocene, Minsky moment, mitigation, population biology, quantitative ecology, Sankey diagram, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Spaceship Earth, sustainability, the right to be and act stupid, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
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Enough Already
“If you’re in a hole, stop digging.” “The Sky’s Limit: Why the Paris Climate Goals Require a Managed Decline of Fossil Fuel Production”
Posted in Anthropocene, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, bridge to nowhere, climate change, climate disruption, corporate litigation on damage from fossil fuel emissions, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, games of chance, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, investing, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, Mathematics and Climate Research Network, natural gas, population biology, population dynamics, Principles of Planetary Climate, quantitative ecology, science, the energy of the people, the green century, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets, wind energy, wind power, Yale University Statistics Department, zero carbon
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Carbon Sinks in Crisis — It Looks Like the World’s Largest Rainforest is Starting to Bleed Greenhouse Gasses
Originally posted on robertscribbler:
Back in 2005, and again in 2010, the vast Amazon rainforest, which has been aptly described as the world’s lungs, briefly lost its ability to take in atmospheric carbon dioxide. Its drought-stressed trees were not growing…
Posted in bifurcations, carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide sequestration, changepoint detection, climate, climate change, climate disruption, disruption, dynamical systems, environment, exponential growth, fossil fuels, geophysics, global warming, IPCC, Lévy flights, Lorenz, Minsky moment, model-free forecasting, physics, population biology, population dynamics, Principles of Planetary Climate, quantitative biology, quantitative ecology, random walk processes, Ray Pierrehumbert, reason, reasonableness, regime shifts, risk, Stefan Rahmstorf, the right to be and act stupid, the tragedy of our present civilization, UU Humanists
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“Holy crap – an actual book!”
Originally posted on mathbabe:
Yo, everyone! The final version of my book now exists, and I have exactly one copy! Here’s my editor, Amanda Cook, holding it yesterday when we met for beers: Here’s my son holding it: He’s offered…
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
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Bayesian blocks via PELT in R
The Bayesian blocks algorithm of Scargle, Jackson, Norris, and Chiang has an enthusiastic user community in astrostatistics, in data mining, and among some in machine learning. It is a dynamic programming algorithm (see VanderPlas referenced below) and, so, exhibits optimality … Continue reading
Posted in American Statistical Association, AMETSOC, anomaly detection, astrophysics, Cauchy distribution, changepoint detection, engineering, geophysics, multivariate statistics, numerical analysis, numerical software, numerics, oceanography, population biology, population dynamics, Python 3, quantitative biology, quantitative ecology, R, Scargle, spatial statistics, square wave approximation, statistics, stepwise approximation, time series, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
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Newt Gingrich and Van Jones. Right on.
It’s the thing. And it addresses how media and people forget about the actual statistics, and focus on the White Hot Bright Light. A study by Gelman, Fagan, and Kiss A study by Freyer A counterpoint to the Freyer study … Continue reading
Posted in American Statistical Association, Bayes, Bayesian, citizen science, criminal justice, Daniel Kahneman, ethics, evidence, fear uncertainty and doubt, humanism, Lives Matter, logistic regression, Markov Chain Monte Carlo, MCMC, organizational failures, population biology, rationality, reasonableness, risk, statistics, Susan Jacoby, the right to know
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“Catching long tail distribution” (Ted Dunning)
One of the best presentations on what can happen if someone takes a naive approach to network data. It also highlights what is, to my mind, the greatly underappreciated t-distribution, which is typically only used in connection with frequentist Student … Continue reading
Of my favorite things …
(Clarifying language added 4 Apr 2016, 12:26 EDT.) I just watched an episode from the last season of Star Trek: The Next Generation entitled “Force of Nature.” As anyone who pays the least attention to this blog knows, opposing human … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, bridge to somewhere, bucket list, Buckminster Fuller, Carl Sagan, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate education, compassion, data science, Earle Wilson, ecology, Ecology Action, environment, evolution, geophysics, George Sughihara, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, life purpose, mathematics, mathematics education, maths, numerical analysis, optimization, philosophy, physical materialism, physics, population biology, population dynamics, proud dad, quantitative biology, quantitative ecology, rationality, reasonableness, science, sociology, statistics, stochastic algorithms
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p-values and hypothesis tests: the Bayesian(s) rule
The American Statistical Association of which I am a longtime member issued an important statement today which will hopefully move statistical practice in engineering and especially in the sciences away from the misleading practice of using p-values and hypothesis tests. … Continue reading
Posted in approximate Bayesian computation, arXiv, Bayes, Bayesian, Bayesian inversion, bollocks, Christian Robert, climate, complex systems, data science, Frequentist, information theoretic statistics, likelihood-free, Markov Chain Monte Carlo, MCMC, Monte Carlo Statistical Methods, population biology, rationality, reasonableness, science, scientific publishing, statistical dependence, statistics, stochastics, Student t distribution
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Techno Utopias
Professor Kevin Anderson on Techno Utopias. The Paris “COP21” agreement is/was not only expecting miracles, it was counting on them. Y’think climate disruption causes ecosystem disruption: Try geoengineering. Well the answer was simple. If we choose to continue our love … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, Anthropocene, bollocks, bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide capture, carbon dioxide sequestration, civilization, climate, climate change, climate disruption, coastal communities, complex systems, consumption, COP21, corporate supply chains, denial, disingenuity, economics, environment, ethics, evidence, exponential growth, extended supply chains, FEMA, finance, fossil fuels, games of chance, geophysics, glaciers, global warming, greenhouse gases, greenwashing, Hyper Anthropocene, icesheets, ignorance, IPCC, James Hansen, Kevin Anderson, Lenny Smith, liberal climate deniers, living shorelines, MA, meteorology, Neill deGrasse Tyson, oceanography, physics, planning, population biology, rationality, Ray Pierrehumbert, reasonableness, regime shifts, Sankey diagram, science, sea level rise, selfishness, silly tech devices, Techno Utopias, the right to know, the value of financial assets
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“Finding Dory”
From the scientific journal Nature, a preview: “Finding Dory”, movie Director: Andrew Stanton Opens 17 June 2016 Digital-animation giant Pixar releases the much-anticipated follow-up to its 2003 “Finding Nemo”, a film so successful that clownfish are now often referred to … Continue reading
Pale Blue Dot
Compassion, yes. Love, no.
Posted in astronomy, astrophysics, atheism, Bill Maher, Bill Nye, bollocks, Boston Ethical Society, Carl Sagan, citizenship, civilization, compassion, ecology, geophysics, humanism, NASA, physical materialism, physics, population biology, Sankey diagram, Spaceship Earth, statistics, stochastics
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Thoughts on “Regime Shift?”
John Baez at The Azimuth Project opened a discussion on the recent paper by Reid, et al Philip C. Reid et al, Global impacts of the 1980s regime shift on the Earth’s climate and systems, Global Change Biology, 2015. I … 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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