
Distributed Solar: The Democratizaton of Energy

Blogroll
- NCAR AtmosNews
- Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI)
- Comprehensive Guide to Bayes Rule
- Label Noise
- Tony Seba Solar energy, electric vehicle, energy storage, and business disruption professor and visionary
- 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/
- Survey Methodology, Prof Ron Fricker http://faculty.nps.edu/rdfricke/
- Mark Berliner's video lecture "Bayesian mechanistic-statistical modeling with examples in geophysical settings"
- The Mermaid's Tale A conversation about biological complexity and evolution, and the societal aspects of science
- All about Sankey diagrams
- Brendon Brewer on Overfitting Important and insightful presentation by Brendon Brewer on overfitting
- Harvard's Project Implicit
- AP Statistics: Sampling, by Michael Porinchak Twin City Schools
- Gavin Simpson
- American Statistical Association
- Risk and Well-Being
- Leverhulme Centre for Climate Change Mitigation
- Healthy Home Healthy Planet
- Brian McGill's Dynamic Ecology blog Quantitative biology with pithy insights regarding applications of statistical methods
- BioPython A collection of Python tools for quantitative Biology
- Earth Family Beta MIchael Osborne’s blog on Science and the like
- Professor David Draper
- Lenny Smith's CHAOS: A VERY SHORT INTRODUCTION This is a PDF version of Lenny Smith’s book of the same title, also available from Amazon.com
- Ted Dunning
- Slice Sampling
- Awkward Botany
- ggplot2 and ggfortify Plotting State Space Time Series with ggplot2 and ggfortify
- Carl Safina's blog One of the wisest on Earth
- Mrooijer's Numbers R 4Us
- Dollars per BBL: Energy in Transition
- "Consider a Flat Pond" Invited talk introducing systems thinking, by Jan Galkowski, at First Parish in Needham, UU, via Zoom
- Dominic Cummings blog Chief advisor to the PM, United Kingdom
- All about models
- Rasmus Bååth's Research Blog Bayesian statistics and data analysis
- Giant vertical monopolies for energy have stopped making sense
- Flettner Rotor Bruce Yeany introduces the Flettner Rotor and related science
- James' Empty Blog
- London Review of Books
- Gabriel's staircase
- 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.
- Beautiful Weeds of New York City
- distributed solar and matching location to need
- John Cook's reasons to use Bayesian inference
- Why "naive Bayes" is not Bayesian Explains why the so-called “naive Bayes” classifier is not Bayesian. The setup is okay, but estimating probabilities by doing relative frequencies instead of using Dirichlet conjugate priors or integration strays from The Path.
- OOI Data Nuggets OOI Ocean Data Lab: The Data Nuggets
- 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.
- SASB Sustainability Accounting Standards Board
- All about ENSO, and lunar tides (Paul Pukite) Historically, ENSO has been explained in terms of winds. But recently — and Dr Paul Pukite has insisted upon this for a long time — the oscillation of ENSO has been explained as a large-scale slosh due to lunar tidal forcing.
- Earle Wilson
- Thaddeus Stevens quotes As I get older, I admire this guy more and more
climate change
- `The unchained goddess' 1958 Bell Telephone Science Hour broadcast regarding, among other things, climate change.
- Climate Change Denying Organizations
- All Models Are Wrong Dr Tamsin Edwards blog about uncertainty in science, and climate science
- Climate at a glance Current state of the climate, from NOAA
- Anti—Anti-#ClimateEmergency Whether to declare a climate emergency is debatable. But some critics have gone way overboard.
- “Ways to [try to] slow the Solar Century''
- Professor Robert Strom's compendium of resources on climate change Truly excellent
- Rabett Run Incisive analysis of climate science versus deliberate distraction
- Climate change: Evidence and causes A project of the UK Royal Society: (1) Answers to key questions, (2) evidence and causes, and (3) a short guide to climate science
- CLIMATE ADAM Previously from the Science news staff at the podcast of Nature (“Nature Podcast”), the journal, now on YouTube, encouraging climate action through climate comedy.
- Ricky Rood's “What would happen to climate if we (suddenly) stopped emitting GHGs today?
- Warming slowdown discussion
- HotWhopper: It's excellent. Global warming and climate change. Eavesdropping on the deniosphere, its weird pseudo-science and crazy conspiracy whoppers.
- The Green Plate Effect Eli Rabett’s “The Green Plate Effect”
- “The Irrelevance of Saturation: Why Carbon Dioxide Matters'' (Bart Levenson)
- Solar Gardens Community Power
- 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
- Bloomberg interactive graph on “What's warming the world''
- "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.
- The HUMAN-caused greenhouse effect, in under 5 minutes, by Bill Nye
- "Climate science is setttled enough"
- Climate Communication Hassol, Somerville, Melillo, and Hussin site communicating climate to the public
- An open letter to Steve Levitt
- Jacobson WWS literature index
- Energy payback period for solar panels Considering everything, how long do solar panels have to operate to offset the energy used to produce them?
- "A field guide to the climate clowns"
- Updating the Climate Science: What path is the real world following? From Professors Makiko Sato & James Hansen of Columbia University
- The great Michael Osborne's latest opinions Michael Osborne is a genius operative and champion of solar energy. I have learned never to disregard ANYTHING he says. He is mentor of Karl Ragabo, and the genius instigator of the Texas renewable energy miracle.
- The Carbon Cycle The Carbon Cycle, monitored by The Carbon Project
- James Powell on sampling the climate consensus
- “The discovery of global warming'' (American Institute of Physics)
- Eli on the spectroscopic basis of atmospheric radiation physical chemistry
- World Weather Attribution
- US$165/tonne CO2: Sweden Sweden has a Carbon Dioxide tax of US$165 per tonne at present. CO2 tax was imposed in 1991. GDP has grown 60%.
- Agendaists Eli Rabett’s coining of a phrase
- Sir David King David King’s perspective on climate, and the next thousands of years for humanity
- 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.
- `Who to believe on climate change': Simple checks By Bart Verheggen
- weather blocking patterns
- Simple box models and climate forcing IMO one of Tamino’s best posts illustrating climate forcing using simple box models
- History of discovering Global Warming From the American Institute of Physics.
- Reanalyses.org
- 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.
- Spectra Energy exposed
- Dessler's 6 minute Greenhouse Effect video
- Climate impacts on retail and supply chains
- Transitioning to fully renewable energy Professor Saul Griffiths talks to transitioning the customer journey, from a dependency upon fossil fuels to an electrified future
- Ray Pierrehumbert's site related to "Principles of Planetary Climate" THE book on climate science
- "Lessons of the Little Ice Age" (Farber) From Dan Farber, at LEGAL PLANET
- James Hansen and granddaughter Sophie on moving forward with progress on climate
Archives
Jan Galkowski
Category Archives: science education
One year, and ten years of carbon dioxide concentration readings, Mauna Loa
From NOAA.
Posted in carbon dioxide, Carbon Tax, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate education, consumption, diffusion processes, dynamical systems, ecology, environment, ethics, exponential growth, forecasting, fossil fuel divestment, geophysics, investment in wind and solar energy, IPCC, meteorology, NOAA, open data, Principles of Planetary Climate, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, statistics, sustainability, temporal myopia, the right to know, time series, zero carbon
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‘The Solutions Project’
Mark Ruffalo on the Daily Show, mentioning, among other things, his keen interest in the 100% campaign, a program, begun by people at Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley, to switch 100% of all 50 states in … Continue reading
Posted in bifurcations, civilization, clean disruption, climate change, climate disruption, compassion, conservation, consumption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, ecology, economics, efficiency, environment, ethics, forecasting, fossil fuel divestment, geophysics, global warming, investment in wind and solar energy, meteorology, microgrids, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science education, sea level rise, solar power, sustainability, wind power, zero carbon
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“Ecological impacts”
I could not get through this video with dry eyes. It is as bad as the (great) Cosmos episode on the Permian mass extinction. This is from a couse I am taking, “Denial 101x: The Science of Climate Denial“, from … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate education, ecology, environment, forecasting, global warming, mass extinctions, Neill deGrasse Tyson, population biology, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, sustainability, UU Humanists
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“How mankind blew the fight against climate change” (Bill McKibben)
Worth a read. More pessimistic than usual from Mr McKibben. If historians someday need to explain how mankind managed to blow the fight against climate change, they need only point to last month’s shareholder meeting at Exxon Mobil headquarters in … Continue reading
Posted in bifurcations, bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, Carbon Tax, civilization, clean disruption, climate, climate change, climate disruption, conservation, consumption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, ecology, economics, environment, exponential growth, fossil fuel divestment, geophysics, global warming, investment in wind and solar energy, meteorology, microgrids, physics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, solar power, statistics, temporal myopia, UU Humanists, wind power, zero carbon
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“Storm-proven forecasting gets yearlong trial”
Storm-studying scientists have made their next-generation forecasting system available online so the wider weather community can put it to the test. After using the real-time system during short-lived field research campaigns, developers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) … Continue reading
On the Climate Club
But if the other advanced nations had a stick — a tariff of 4 percent on the imports from countries not in the “climate club” — the cost-benefit calculation for the United States would flip. Not participating in the club … Continue reading
Posted in citizenship, civilization, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate education, ecology, economics, education, environment, ethics, geophysics, global warming, humanism, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, IPCC, mathematics, mathematics education, maths, meteorology, NASA, NCAR, NOAA, open data, open source scientific software, politics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, sociology, state-space models, statistics, stochastic search, stochastics, sustainability, temporal myopia, time series, transparency, Unitarian Universalism, UU Humanists, wind power, zero carbon
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The CWSLab workflow tool: an experiment in community code development
Posted in climate, climate education, climate models, computation, differential equations, dynamical systems, environment, forecasting, geophysics, global warming, IPCC, mathematics, mathematics education, maths, meteorology, model comparison, NCAR, oceanography, open source scientific software, physics, Principles of Planetary Climate, Python 3, rationality, reasonableness, science, science education, state-space models, statistics, time series, transparency
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“All large oil companies now use a shadow price of carbon”
Posted in carbon dioxide, Carbon Tax, citizenship, clean disruption, climate, climate change, climate disruption, decentralized energy, economics, energy, environment, exponential growth, forecasting, fossil fuel divestment, geophysics, global warming, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, meteorology, natural gas, physics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, temporal myopia, zero carbon
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on the state of New England wind power
Cape Wind suffers more setbacks, as one commentator said, being “litigated to death”. See the details. And on the good side, the Block Island project proceeds, even if that is a much smaller project. New England, I hope you enjoy … Continue reading
carbon dioxide and saturation
One of the “climate zombies” that get’s trotted out from time to time and at places on the Internet is the argument of Knut Ångström, trying to rebut the calculations of Svante Arrhenius regarding the impact a doubling of carbon … Continue reading
“Clean burnin’ natural gas …”
The carbon dioxide emissions of the United States are increasing again, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration in their Monthly Energy Review. Guess what fuel is heavily contributing to the rise: Of course, clean burnin’ natural gas: A bridge … Continue reading
Posted in bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, Carbon Tax, climate, climate change, climate disruption, conservation, consumption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, ecology, economics, education, environment, exponential growth, fossil fuel divestment, fracking, global warming, investment in wind and solar energy, meteorology, methane, microgrids, natural gas, politics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, statistics, sustainability, temporal myopia, zero carbon
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“Response” (to “…I would be interested to see how one can prove from such varying data that the warming has accelerated over time”), by Tamino
Denialist tripe, swatted by Tamino. Now, I know I am learning via the Denial101x course by John Cook (and many others) that the reason why Deniers are Deniers is because the notion of global warming itself challenges their values or … Continue reading
Posted in anemic data, Anthropocene, carbon dioxide, chance, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate education, denial, ecology, education, forecasting, geophysics, global warming, maths, obfuscating data, open data, physics, politics, rationality, science, science education, sea level rise, statistics, sustainability, time series
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The pending disintegration of the Larsen B Ice Shelf, Antarctica
Estimates place the disintegration of the remainder of this shelf within 10 years, after losing a chunk the size of the State of Rhode Island in 2002.
“el Niño and the Non-Spherical Cow”
With the emergence of an el Niño, this post by Tamino about ENSO from 2013 is good to review, as an antidote to the rubbish that will be and is coming from the shills paid by the fossil fuel obfuscation … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, Carbon Tax, civilization, clean disruption, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate education, ecology, economics, ENSO, ethics, forecasting, global warming, meteorology, NCAR, NOAA, oceanography, open data, open source scientific software, physics, politics, rationality, Ray Pierrehumbert, reasonableness, reproducible research, risk, science, science education, sea level rise, statistics, stochastics, temporal myopia, time series, transparency
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Brian Swett discusses Boston’s climate future | NOAA Climate.gov
Brian Swett discusses Boston’s climate future | NOAA Climate.gov.
Posted in Boston, climate change, climate disruption, ecology, economics, environment, forecasting, geophysics, global warming, history, investment in wind and solar energy, living shorelines, mass transit, meteorology, NOAA, oceanography, physics, politics, population biology, Principles of Planetary Climate, public transport, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, sea level rise, sociology, statistics, temporal myopia, the right to know, time series, wind power, zero carbon
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“Hot Water”, from Tamino
“‘Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.’” — The “Humbug” from the Wizard of Oz And as Tamino points out, that might as well be the words of Florida governor Rick Scott.
“I’m sorry.”
“It is up to us to take care of this planet.”
Posted in carbon dioxide, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate change, climate education, compassion, ecology, economics, education, environment, ethics, fossil fuel divestment, humanism, meteorology, politics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, the right to know, Unitarian Universalism, UU Humanists
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Eli Rabett on the APS “Draft Statement on Earth’s Changing Climate”
This is from Rabett Run. The American Physical Society (“APS”) is working on a draft statement on climate change. Compared to other scientific organizations (and my own primary society, the American Statistical Association), it’s sure taking them a long time. … Continue reading
Posted in carbon dioxide, Carbon Tax, chemistry, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate change, climate education, diffusion processes, ecology, environment, fossil fuel divestment, geophysics, meteorology, methane, NCAR, NOAA, oceanography, open data, politics, Principles of Planetary Climate, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, sea level rise, solar power, testing, the right to know, time series, WHOI, wind power
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“Climate Change, the Elevator Pitch”
Richard Alley: Katharine Hayhoe: Eric Rignot: Simon Donner: Mauri Pelto: Ken Caldeira:
Posted in Antarctica, Arctic, astrophysics, carbon dioxide, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate change, climate education, consumption, geophysics, IPCC, meteorology, NCAR, physics, Principles of Planetary Climate, rationality, Ray Pierrehumbert, risk, science, science education, statistics
Tagged morality
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Earth Day, my hope
Posted in carbon dioxide, Carl Sagan, Charles Darwin, citizen science, citizenship, civilization, clean disruption, climate, climate change, climate education, compassion, conservation, Darwin Day, demand-side solutions, ecology, economics, education, efficiency, energy reduction, environment, ethics, forecasting, fossil fuel divestment, geophysics, history, humanism, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, IPCC, mathematics, maths, meteorology, NCAR, NOAA, oceanography, open data, open source scientific software, physics, politics, population biology, Principles of Planetary Climate, privacy, probit regression, R, rationality, Ray Pierrehumbert, reasonableness, reproducible research, risk, science, science education, scientific publishing, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, sociology, the right to know, Unitarian Universalism, UU Humanists, WHOI, wind power
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Climate week at Harvard, 6th-10th April 2015
See the Gazette for a summary, and their Web page for more. Events are open to the public. Some highlights: April 7th, 1630, “Reinventing Fire: Profitable Low-Carbon Futures for the U.S. and China” with Amory Lovins, Chairman/Chief Scientist of the … Continue reading
We are trying. And the bitterest result is to have so-called colleagues align themselves with the Koch brothers
I attended a 350.org meeting tonight. One group A group presenting there called “Fighting Against Natural Gas” applauded themselves for assailing Senator Whitehouse of Rhode Island for his supportive position on natural gas pipelines. Now, I am no friend of … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, astrophysics, Boston Ethical Society, bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide sequestration, Carbon Tax, chemistry, citizenship, climate, climate change, climate education, consumption, decentralized electric power generation, demand-side solutions, ecology, economics, energy reduction, engineering, forecasting, fossil fuel divestment, investment in wind and solar energy, IPCC, JAGS, meteorology, methane, model comparison, NASA, natural gas, NCAR, Neill deGrasse Tyson, oceanography, open data, physics, politics, population biology, Principles of Planetary Climate, Python 3, R, rationality, reasonableness, reproducible research, risk, science, science education, Scripps Institution of Oceanography
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2014
(These excellent figures are from Robbie Andrew, Oslo.)
Posted in Anthropocene, carbon dioxide, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate change, climate education, consumption, ecology, economics, environment, forecasting, fossil fuel divestment, geophysics, IPCC, meteorology, NOAA, oceanography, physics, population biology, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, sea level rise, statistics, time series
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Scary Stuff; a Potential Nasty Surprise
If it were to come true, Wally Broecker would earn yet another, deserved scientific accolade: The Great Ocean Conveyor. More from WHOI here. “The climate system is an angry beast and we are poking it with sticks,” said Dr. Wallace … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, Carbon Tax, Carl Sagan, citizen science, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate change, climate education, ecology, education, engineering, environment, forecasting, games of chance, mathematics, maths, meteorology, NOAA, oceanography, physics, Principles of Planetary Climate, rationality, Ray Pierrehumbert, reasonableness, science, science education, sea level rise, sociology, statistics
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Neil deGrasse Tyson on “60 Minutes”
http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/astrophysicist-neil-degrasse-tysons-one-man-mission Hat tip to Dan Satterfield.
“Human activity has nothing big enough to affect Earth”
“Human activity has nothing big enough to affect Earth.” That’s disingenuous and, usually, the speaker knows better but is trying to dissuade an audience from thinking human activity does. Or they parrot someone who is trying to do that. But … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, biology, bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, Carbon Tax, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate change, climate education, consumption, ecology, economics, energy, energy reduction, engineering, environment, ethics, fossil fuel divestment, geophysics, history, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, IPCC, meteorology, methane, natural gas, notes, open data, physics, politics, population biology, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, solar power, statistics, the right to know, time series, wind power
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“Merchants of Doubt: What Climate Deniers Learned from Big Tobacco”
Posted in carbon dioxide, climate, climate change, climate education, ecology, economics, education, environment, ethics, fossil fuel divestment, geophysics, history, humanism, investing, IPCC, meteorology, new forms of scientific peer review, obfuscating data, physics, politics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, scientific publishing, sociology
Tagged advertising, doubt is our product
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“I don’t want Earth to look like Venus”
Posted in astronomy, astrophysics, Carl Sagan, civilization, climate, climate change, climate education, education, geophysics, meteorology, Neill deGrasse Tyson, oceanography, physics, Principles of Planetary Climate, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, sea level rise
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“Barking mad”
Today was a big day at the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (“NAS”). The Academy released two important climate reports, each dealing with one of two categories of global countermeasures for the effects of dumping unprecedented amounts of carbon dioxide … Continue reading
Posted in astrophysics, bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide capture, carbon dioxide sequestration, Carbon Tax, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate change, climate education, demand-side solutions, diffusion processes, ecology, economics, engineering, environment, ethics, forecasting, games of chance, geoengineering, geophysics, history, humanism, IPCC, meteorology, NCAR, NOAA, oceanography, physics, Principles of Planetary Climate, rationality, Ray Pierrehumbert, reasonableness, science, science education, sea level rise, the right to know
Tagged albedo modification
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