Category Archives: rationality

Who paved the roads?

Professor Tony Seba of Stanford University is a great leader, visionary, speaker, and business expert. He often starts his talks with two successive public domain images to illustrate technological and business disruption. These are shown below. One is a photograph … Continue reading

Posted in adaptation, Anthropocene, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, Carbon Worshipers, clean disruption, CleanTechnica, climate business, climate disruption, climate economics, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, destructive economic development, disruption, distributed generation, economics, electricity markets, energy, energy reduction, energy storage, energy utilities, feed-in tariff, fossil fuel divestment, Gaylord Nelson, global warming, green tech, grid defection, Hyper Anthropocene, ILSR, investment in wind and solar energy, ISO-NE, Joseph Schumpeter, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, local generation, marginal energy sources, Mark Jacobson, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, meteorology, microgrids, Minsky moment, planning, public utility commissions, PUCs, rate of return regulation, rationality, reason, reasonableness, regime shifts, regulatory capture, resiliency, risk, Sankey diagram, solar democracy, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, Stanford University, stranded assets, supply chains, sustainability, the energy of the people, the green century, the right to know, the value of financial assets, Tony Seba, wind energy, wind power, zero carbon | Leave a comment

Republican Governor Charles D. Baker, The Commonwealth of Massachusetts: On CLIMATE

An Executive Order, No. 569 ESTABLISHING AN INTEGRATED CLIMATE CHANGE STRATEGY FOR THE COMMONWEALTH WHEREAS, climate change presents a serious threat to the environment and the Commonwealth’s residents, communities, and economy; WHEREAS, extreme weather events associated with climate change present … Continue reading

Posted in adaptation, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Meteorological Association, AMETSOC, Anthropocene, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, climate business, climate change, climate disruption, climate economics, climate education, climate justice, coastal communities, engineering, environment, environmental law, evidence, forecasting, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, gas pipeline leaks, Gaylord Nelson, geophysics, global warming, green tech, hurricanes, Hyper Anthropocene, insurance, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, Massachusetts Interfaith Coalition for Climate Action, meteorology, Minsky moment, mitigation, moral leadership, rate of return regulation, rationality, reason, reasonableness, risk, shorelines, stranded assets, sustainability, the right to know, transparency, zero carbon | Leave a comment

“Naïve empiricism and what theory suggests about errors in observed global warming”

A post from one of my favorite statistics-oriented bloggers, Variable Variability, dealing with a subject too casually passed over. See Naïve empiricism and what theory suggests about errors in observed global warming.

Posted in Anthropocene, climate, climate change, climate data, climate disruption, confirmation bias, geophysics, rationality, statistics, time series, Variable Variability, Victor Venema | Leave a comment

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 | 1 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

TOO LATE: “There will be no golden age of [natural] gas”

Last month, Tom Randall at Bloomberg New Energy Finance (“BNEF”) profiled a new forecast which shows costs for zero Carbon energy and energy are plummetting so fast that coal, oil, and natural gas will begin their terminal decline within a … Continue reading

Posted in adaptation, American Petroleum Institute, Anthropocene, Bloomberg, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, bridge to nowhere, Buckminster Fuller, Chevron, citizenship, clean disruption, climate change, climate disruption, climate economics, climate justice, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, disruption, distributed generation, Ecology Action, economics, efficiency, electricity, electricity markets, energy, energy storage, energy utilities, engineering, explosive methane, Exxon, false advertising, forecasting, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, fracking, geoengineering, global warming, green tech, greenhouse gases, grid defection, Gulf Oil, Hermann Scheer, Hyper Anthropocene, investment in wind and solar energy, ISO-NE, Joseph Schumpeter, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, Mathematics and Climate Research Network, methane, microgrids, natural gas, petroleum, pipelines, rate of return regulation, rationality, reason, reasonableness, regime shifts, risk, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, Standard Oil of California, stranded assets, supply chains, sustainability, the energy of the people, the green century, the right to be and act stupid, the right to know, the stack of lies, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets, utility company death spiral, wind energy, wind power, zero carbon | 5 Comments

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 | Leave a comment

Natural gas: The Zaphod Beeblebrox of energy

Amber Lin at The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists describes the two-headed character of natural gas plants needed to implement “natural gas as a bridge fuel”, and sketches the stark reality proponents of that argument are embracing if they are … Continue reading

Posted in adaptation, Anthropocene, atmosphere, Bloomberg, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, bridge to nowhere, bridge to somewhere, carbon dioxide, Carbon Tax, Carbon Worshipers, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate economics, consumption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, distributed generation, electricity, electricity markets, energy, energy utilities, explosive methane, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, fracking, gas pipeline leaks, global warming, greenhouse gases, greenwashing, Hyper Anthropocene, investment in wind and solar energy, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, methane, natural gas, networks, petroleum, pipelines, planning, politics, public utility commissions, PUCs, rate of return regulation, rationality, reason, reasonableness, regulatory capture, Sankey diagram, solar domination, stranded assets, supply chains, the energy of the people, the green century, the right to be and act stupid, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets, zero carbon | 2 Comments

The Presidential betting markets

Someone blatantly misrepresented the U.S. Presidential election betting markets in a Google+ comment thread tonight, and I wanted to bring these forward, here. See the latest odds and assessments from the prediction markets. Done. No doubt some supporters of Trump … Continue reading

Posted in forecasting, investing, politics, prediction markets, rationality, reasonableness, statistics | Leave a comment

Now, if we could only say the same thing about Massachusetts …

Massachusetts is supposed to be a Blue State. Massachusetts is supposed to be concerned about the environment, full of tree-hugging eco-weenies (like myself!), and sprouting solar panels from every other rooftop. Massachusetts is supposed to have aggressive support for zero … Continue reading

Posted in Anthropocene, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, bridge to nowhere, bridge to somewhere, Buckminster Fuller, Cape Wind, Carbon Worshipers, citizenship, clean disruption, climate business, corruption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, destructive economic development, distributed generation, economics, electricity, electricity markets, energy, energy utilities, explosive methane, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, gas pipeline leaks, Green Tea Coalition, greenhouse gases, Hyper Anthropocene, investment in wind and solar energy, ISO-NE, Joseph Schumpeter, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, local generation, MA, Mark Jacobson, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, Massachusetts Interfaith Coalition for Climate Action, Michael Osborne, natural gas, New England, Nikola Tesla, pipelines, politics, public utility commissions, PUCs, rate of return regulation, rationality, reason, reasonableness, regulatory capture, risk, Sankey diagram, solar energy, solar power, Spaceship Earth, supply chains, Texas, the energy of the people, the green century, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets, Tony Seba, wind energy, wind power, zero carbon | 1 Comment

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 | Leave a comment

BOYCOTT natural gas, American or otherwise

It’s one thing to oppose pipelines and continued use of fossil fuels, but there is little as effective as a boycott of the key product. This is certainly not a new idea. (I don’t do Facebook. See this 2001 article … Continue reading

Posted in Anthropocene, atmosphere, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, bridge to nowhere, Carbon Worshipers, citizenship, civilization, climate change, climate disruption, climate economics, climate justice, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, denial, destructive economic development, distributed generation, ecology, economics, electricity, electricity markets, energy, environment, explosive methane, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, fracking, gas pipeline leaks, global warming, greenhouse gases, greenwashing, Hyper Anthropocene, ignorance, ISO-NE, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, methane, natural gas, New England, politics, public utility commissions, rationality, regulatory capture, Sankey diagram, the energy of the people, the problem of evil, the right to be and act stupid, the stack of lies, the tragedy of our present civilization, zero carbon, ``The tide is risin'/And so are we'' | Leave a comment

Mark Carney: Why are financial regulators and central bank governors looking at climate?

http://www.cbc.ca/i/caffeine/syndicate/?mediaId=725874755644 “We don’t want a Minsky moment about climate.” Update, 2016-07-19 Interesting that Carney talks about “stabilizing at a temperature” when emissions are stabilized using a Carbon tax. He agrees with a Carbon tax, but he seems to have his … Continue reading

Posted in adaptation, Anthropocene, Bloomberg, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BLUE, central banks, civilization, climate, climate business, climate change, climate disruption, climate economics, climate education, climate justice, corporate litigation on damage from fossil fuel emissions, corporate supply chains, demand-side solutions, ecology, economics, education, environment, false advertising, finance, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, global warming, greenwashing, grid defection, insurance, investing, Joseph Schumpeter, liberal climate deniers, local generation, organizational failures, rate of return regulation, rationality, reasonableness, solar domination, Spaceship Earth, stranded assets, sustainability, the right to know, the value of financial assets, zero carbon | Leave a comment

JASA demands code and data be supplied as a condition of publication

The Journal of the American Statistical Association (“JASA”) has announced in this month’s Amstat News that effective 1st September 2016 “… will require code and data as a minimum standard for reproducibility of statistical scientific research.” Trends were heading this … Continue reading

Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Statistical Association, citizen science, engineering, ethics, evidence, new forms of scientific peer review, numerical software, planning, rationality, reasonableness, resiliency, science, statistics, stochastic algorithms, testing, the right to know | Leave a comment

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 | Leave a comment

Three stories of solar energy domination: Which outcome would YOU prefer?

(Updated, 2016-07-14) See Shayle Kann’s great piece at GreenTech media. The choices: “Version one: Aimless transformation” “Version two: The balkanized grid” “Version three: Embracing the transformation” In addition to solar PV, wind energy of all forms (especially underutilized local wind … Continue reading

Posted in adaptation, Anthropocene, biofuels, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, bridge to somewhere, Buckminster Fuller, business, Chris Goodall, citizenship, civilization, clean disruption, conservation, consumption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, destructive economic development, disruption, distributed generation, ecology, Ecology Action, economics, efficiency, electricity, electricity markets, energy, energy reduction, energy storage, energy utilities, engineering, environment, fossil fuel divestment, green tech, grid defection, Hermann Scheer, Hyper Anthropocene, Internet, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, ISO-NE, Joseph Schumpeter, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, local generation, microgrids, public utility commissions, PUCs, rationality, reasonableness, regime shifts, Sankey diagram, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, Spaceship Earth, stranded assets, the energy of the people, the green century, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets, Tony Seba, utility company death spiral, wind energy, wind power, zero carbon | 2 Comments

Want your democracy back? Take back control of your energy supply

Some progressives lament the loss of Bernie Sanders’ run for President, arguing “we need to get our democracy back.” A necessary step in order to get your democracy back is to take back control of your energy supply. Centralized energy … Continue reading

Posted in adaptation, Anthropocene, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, bridge to somewhere, Buckminster Fuller, citizenship, civilization, clean disruption, climate disruption, conservation, consumption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, distributed generation, ecology, economics, efficiency, electricity, electricity markets, energy, energy storage, energy utilities, environment, Epcot, extended supply chains, fossil fuel divestment, global warming, green tech, grid defection, Hermann Scheer, Hyper Anthropocene, investment in wind and solar energy, ISO-NE, Joseph Schumpeter, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, liberal climate deniers, local generation, microgrids, public utility commissions, PUCs, rate of return regulation, rationality, reasonableness, Sankey diagram, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, SolarPV.tv, Spaceship Earth, the energy of the people, the green century, the right to know, zero carbon | 6 Comments

Massachusetts Bill S.2372 (“An Act to promote energy diversity”), Amendment 1

Ms. Jehlen, Messrs. Keenan, Montigny, Timilty and Joyce, Ms. Creem, Mr. Brady, Ms. L’Italien, Ms. Gobi, Ms. O’Connor Ives, Ms. Chang-Diaz, Messrs. Lewis, Pacheco, Moore and Ross moved that the bill be amended by inserting the following section:- SECTION X. … Continue reading

Posted in Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, bridge to nowhere, bridge to somewhere, citizenship, clean disruption, decentralized electric power generation, destructive economic development, disruption, electricity, electricity markets, energy utilities, explosive methane, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, gas pipeline leaks, greenhouse gases, investment in wind and solar energy, Joseph Schumpeter, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Interfaith Coalition for Climate Action, methane, microgrids, moral leadership, natural gas, pipelines, public utility commissions, PUCs, rate of return regulation, rationality, reasonableness, regulatory capture, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, SolarPV.tv, Spaceship Earth, stranded assets, sustainability, the energy of the people, the green century, the value of financial assets, wind energy, wind power, zero carbon, ``The tide is risin'/And so are we'' | Leave a comment

“The climate talks [in Paris] were a fraud”

Dr James Hansen on The Open Mind. “Signatures won’t save the climate”, writes Danielle Ola at PVTech. And, despite the good news below, Bloomberg New Energy Finance warns: The 2⁰C scenario would require much more money. On top of the … Continue reading

Posted in adaptation, Anthropocene, Carbon Worshipers, citizenship, climate change, climate disruption, Daniel Kahneman, Eaarth, ecology, Ecology Action, environment, environmental law, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, geophysics, global warming, greenhouse gases, Hyper Anthropocene, James Hansen, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, liberal climate deniers, meteorology, mitigation, natural gas, Neill deGrasse Tyson, oceanography, Our Children's Trust, petroleum, pipelines, rationality, reasonableness, science, Spaceship Earth, sustainability, the energy of the people, the green century, the right to be and act stupid, UU Humanists, Warren Buffett, zero carbon | 4 Comments

Still think exponential growth in global Solar adoption is mere extrapolation?

Story here. Graphic: (Click on image to see a larger figure, and use browser Back Button to return to blog.) Update, 2016-06-28 Bloomberg: “Solar Power to Grow Sixfold as Sun Becoming Cheapest Resource”. Excerpt: The amount of electricity generated using … Continue reading

Posted in adaptation, Anthropocene, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, Buckminster Fuller, clean disruption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, destructive economic development, disruption, distributed generation, efficiency, electricity, electricity markets, exponential growth, fossil fuel divestment, green tech, grid defection, Hermann Scheer, Hyper Anthropocene, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, Joseph Schumpeter, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, local generation, microgrids, rate of return regulation, rationality, Ray Kurzweil, reasonableness, resiliency, RevoluSun, Sankey diagram, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, SolarPV.tv, Spaceship Earth, SunPower, the energy of the people, the green century, the value of financial assets, Tony Seba, zero carbon | 5 Comments

“I need to wake up”

Now, more than ever. (The above was published in September 2015.)

Posted in adaptation, Antarctica, Anthropocene, Arctic, carbon dioxide, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate change, climate disruption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, denial, destructive economic development, disruption, distributed generation, ecology, Ecology Action, economics, environment, evidence, feed-in tariff, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, gas pipeline leaks, geophysics, global warming, greenhouse gases, grid defection, Hyper Anthropocene, investment in wind and solar energy, James Hansen, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, meteorology, oceanography, physics, pipelines, politics, Principles of Planetary Climate, rationality, reasonableness, science, sea level rise, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, SolarPV.tv, Spaceship Earth, Stefan Rahmstorf, Tamino, temporal myopia, the energy of the people, the green century, the problem of evil, the right to be and act stupid, the right to know, the stack of lies, the tragedy of our present civilization, Unitarian Universalism, utility company death spiral, UU Humanists, WAIS, Wally Broecker, wind energy, wind power, zero carbon | 1 Comment

Plunging costs for Solar PV

Offered without comment. Hat tip to Bloomberg and to the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center. (Click on image to see a larger figure. Use your browser Back Button to return to blog.)

Posted in adaptation, Bloomberg, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, Buckminster Fuller, clean disruption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, destructive economic development, distributed generation, electricity markets, energy, energy utilities, fossil fuel divestment, green tech, grid defection, Hermann Scheer, Hyper Anthropocene, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, rate of return regulation, rationality, reasonableness, regime shifts, regulatory capture, Sankey diagram, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, SolarPV.tv, Spaceship Earth, stranded assets, the value of financial assets, Tony Seba, utility company death spiral, wind energy, wind power, zero carbon | Leave a comment

Stephen Chu: `Put a global price on Carbon’

In the Spring 2016 edition of Catalyst, a periodical of the Union of Concerned Scientists, Nobel laureate and former U.S. DOE head Professor Stephen Chu offers a suggestion on what the world should do after the COP21 meeting in Paris. … Continue reading

Posted in adaptation, Anthropocene, carbon dioxide, Carbon Tax, Carbon Worshipers, citizenship, civilization, climate disruption, consumption, ecology, economics, energy, environment, environmental law, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, global warming, greenhouse gases, Hyper Anthropocene, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, politics, rationality, reasonableness, the green century, zero carbon | Leave a comment

France, and Mathematics

Cédric Villani, does Mathematics. “Problems worthy of attack, prove their worth by hitting back.” — Piet Hein

Posted in abstraction, Google, mathematics, mathematics education, maths, networks, Pagerank, percolation theory, point pattern analysis, probability, rationality, reasonableness, stochastic algorithms | 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

UnScientific Americans: Congress Aims to Cut Climate Science

YOU can make a difference! Support measuring the Keeling Curve. Click on the image of the coffee cup to the right. The emergence of Willful Solipsists in the leadership of the United States will harm it more than any terrorist … Continue reading

Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, atmosphere, carbon dioxide, citizen science, citizenship, climate data, denial, ecology, Ecology Action, environment, ignorance, rationality, reasonableness, science, science denier, the problem of evil, the right to be and act stupid, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, zero carbon | Leave a comment

Absorption of long wave, or thermal radiation by CO2 at 667 per cm

From time to time, I engage with science deniers on the Web, typically in Comment sections, and primarily regarding aspects of climate science or physics. Some think this to be a waste of time, but, as I enjoy debating (have … Continue reading

Posted in Anthropocene, astrophysics, atmosphere, Bill Nye, carbon dioxide, chemistry, citizen science, climate, climate change, climate data, climate disruption, climate education, denial, evidence, geophysics, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, ignorance, physics, rationality, reasonableness, science, science denier, science education, spectra, SuperCorrector1, Svante Arrhenius | Leave a comment

Hermann Scheer in California, at Google, hosted by MIT and GABA

I am increasingly thinking of myself as a solar revolutionary or, at least, a solar evangelist in the spirit of Hermann Scheer, whose advocacy for solar and renewable energy is as much a social revolution as it is a technological … Continue reading

Posted in adaptation, Anthropocene, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, Buckminster Fuller, clean disruption, Debbie Dooley, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, destructive economic development, disruption, distributed generation, ecology, economics, electricity markets, energy, energy reduction, energy utilities, exponential growth, feed-in tariff, fossil fuel divestment, green tech, grid defection, Hermann Scheer, Hyper Anthropocene, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, local generation, microgrids, planning, public utility commissions, PUCs, rate of return regulation, rationality, reasonableness, regime shifts, regulatory capture, RevoluSun, Sankey diagram, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, SolarPV.tv, Spaceship Earth, sustainability, the energy of the people, the green century, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets, Tony Seba, wind energy, wind power, zero carbon | 4 Comments

Where’s NY-REV today?

This is a video and link from The Rocky Mountain Institute about New York State’s Reforming the Energy Visions or “REV”. I have written about REV before.

Posted in adaptation, Anthropocene, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, bridge to somewhere, Buckminster Fuller, citizenship, civilization, clean disruption, climate change, climate disruption, conservation, consumption, corporate litigation on damage from fossil fuel emissions, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, distributed generation, Ecology Action, efficiency, EIA, electricity, electricity markets, energy, energy reduction, energy storage, energy utilities, feed-in tariff, fossil fuel divestment, global warming, Green Tea Coalition, greenhouse gases, grid defection, Hermann Scheer, Hyper Anthropocene, investment in wind and solar energy, ISO-NE, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, Life Cycle Assessment, local generation, long-term contract for differences, marginal energy sources, Mark Jacobson, microgrids, mitigation, optimization, planning, prediction, public utility commissions, PUCs, rate of return regulation, rationality, reasonableness, regulatory capture, RevoluSun, risk, Sankey diagram, solar domination, solar energy, Solar Freakin' Roadways, solar power, SolarPV.tv, Spaceship Earth, stranded assets, sustainability, the energy of the people, the green century, the value of financial assets, Tony Seba, utility company death spiral, wind energy, wind power, zero carbon | Leave a comment

Climate Denial Fails Pepsi Challenge

Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Statistical Association, card draws, card games, chance, climate, climate change, climate data, climate education, confirmation bias, data science, denial, disingenuity, education, false advertising, fear uncertainty and doubt, fossil fuels, games of chance, geophysics, global warming, ignorance, mathematics, mathematics education, maths, obfuscating data, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, sociology, the right to know | Leave a comment