Distributed Solar: The Democratizaton of Energy
Blogroll
- 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.
- Charlie Kufs' "Stats With Cats" blog “You took Statistics 101. Now what?”
- Leadership lessons from Lao Tzu
- 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
- distributed solar and matching location to need
- The Alliance for Securing Democracy dashboard
- London Review of Books
- WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION, reviews Reviews of Cathy O’Neil’s new book
- Higgs from AIR describing NAO and EA Stephanie Higgs from AIR Worldwide gives a nice description of NAO and EA in the context of discussing “The Geographic Impact of Climate Signals on European Winter Storms”
- Team Andrew Weinberg Walking September 8th for the Jimmy Fund!
- The Keeling Curve: its history History of the Keeling Curve and Charles David Keeling
- Awkward Botany
- Nadler Strategy, LLC, on sustainability Thinking about business, efficient and effective management, and business value
- Fear and Loathing in Data Science Cory Lesmeister’s savage journey to the heart of Big Data
- Dr James Spall's SPSA
- Professor David Draper
- Flettner Rotor Bruce Yeany introduces the Flettner Rotor and related science
- NCAR AtmosNews
- Mertonian norms
- Slice Sampling
- "Consider a Flat Pond" Invited talk introducing systems thinking, by Jan Galkowski, at First Parish in Needham, UU, via Zoom
- Thaddeus Stevens quotes As I get older, I admire this guy more and more
- Number Cruncher Politics
- Prediction vs Forecasting: Knaub “Unfortunately, ‘prediction,’ such as used in model-based survey estimation, is a term that is often subsumed under the term ‘forecasting,’ but here we show why it is important not to confuse these two terms.”
- Darren Wilkinson's introduction to ABC Darren Wilkinson’s introduction to approximate Bayesian computation (“ABC”). See also his post about summary statistics for ABC https://darrenjw.wordpress.com/2013/09/01/summary-stats-for-abc/
- 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.
- Gavin Simpson
- 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/.
- GeoEnergy Math Prof Paul Pukite’s Web site devoted to energy derived from geological and geophysical processes and categorized according to its originating source.
- 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.
- Dominic Cummings blog Chief advisor to the PM, United Kingdom
- Gabriel's staircase
- Earth Family Beta MIchael Osborne’s blog on Science and the like
- James' Empty Blog
- AP Statistics: Sampling, by Michael Porinchak Twin City Schools
- Giant vertical monopolies for energy have stopped making sense
- All about Sankey diagrams
- The Mermaid's Tale A conversation about biological complexity and evolution, and the societal aspects of science
- "Perpetual Ocean" from NASA GSFC
- Earle Wilson
- American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
- International Society for Bayesian Analysis (ISBA)
- Comprehensive Guide to Bayes Rule
- "Talking Politics" podcast David Runciman, Helen Thompson
- Los Alamos Center for Bayesian Methods
- All about models
- John Kruschke's "Dong Bayesian data analysis" blog Expanding and enhancing John’s book of same title (now in second edition!)
- OOI Data Nuggets OOI Ocean Data Lab: The Data Nuggets
- 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.
- 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.
climate change
- Ice and Snow
- Non-linear feedbacks in climate (discussion of Bloch-Johnson, Pierrehumbert, Abbot paper) Discussion of http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1002/2015GL064240/abstract
- ATTP summarizes all that stuff about Committed Warming from AND THEN THERE’S PHYSICS
- Agendaists Eli Rabett’s coining of a phrase
- Tell Utilities Solar Won't Be Killed Barry Goldwater, Jr’s campaign to push for solar expansion against monopolistic utilities, as a Republican
- SolarLove
- Eli on the spectroscopic basis of atmospheric radiation physical chemistry
- MIT's Climate Primer
- Thriving on Low Carbon
- James Powell on sampling the climate consensus
- Dessler's 6 minute Greenhouse Effect video
- “Ways to [try to] slow the Solar Century''
- The Scientific Case for Modern Human-caused Global Warming
- Transitioning to fully renewable energy Professor Saul Griffiths talks to transitioning the customer journey, from a dependency upon fossil fuels to an electrified future
- Grid parity map for Solar PV in United States
- Energy payback period for solar panels Considering everything, how long do solar panels have to operate to offset the energy used to produce them?
- Social Cost of Carbon
- RealClimate
- 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
- The HUMAN-caused greenhouse effect, in under 5 minutes, by Bill Nye
- Climate model projections versus observations
- Simple box models and climate forcing IMO one of Tamino’s best posts illustrating climate forcing using simple box models
- "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.)
- Climate Communication Hassol, Somerville, Melillo, and Hussin site communicating climate to the public
- Documenting the Climate Deniarati at work
- Climate at a glance Current state of the climate, from NOAA
- Équiterre Equiterre helps build a social movement by encouraging individuals, organizations and governments to make ecological and equitable choices, in a spirit of solidarity.
- 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
- 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%.
- Ray Pierrehumbert's site related to "Principles of Planetary Climate" THE book on climate science
- "Betting strategies on fluctuations in the transient response of greenhouse warming" By Risbey, Lewandowsky, Hunter, Monselesan: Betting against climate change on durations of 15+ years is no longer a rational proposition.
- "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 discovery of global warming'' (American Institute of Physics)
- Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature
- Solar Gardens Community Power
- Climate Change Denying Organizations
- The Sunlight Economy
- Climate impacts on retail and supply chains
- Ellenbogen: There is no Such Thing as Wind Turbine Syndrome
- "Mighty Microgrids" Webinar This is a Webinar on YouTube about Microgrids from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR), featuring New York State and Minnesota
- Jacobson WWS literature index
- Climate Change Reports By John and Mel Harte
- Mrooijer's Global Temperature Explorer
- Bloomberg interactive graph on “What's warming the world''
- 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 science is setttled enough"
- The net average effect of a warming climate is increased aridity (Professor Steven Sherwood)
- Klaus Lackner (ASU), Silicon Kingdom Holdings (SKH) Capturing CO2 from air at scale
- Interview with Wally Broecker Interview with Wally Broecker
Archives
Jan Galkowski
Category Archives: sustainable landscaping
Discordant harmonies in views of natural systems by The Sierra Club and others
This essay was first publish at the blog of the Green Congregation Committee, First Parish in Needham, on the Parish Realm Web site and communications board. The views obviously are those only of its author, not of First Parish or … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, Association to Preserve Cape Cod, biology, Buckminster Fuller, Carl Safina, civilization, coastal communities, conservation, Daniel B Botkin, discordant harmonies, ecological disruption, ecological services, Ecological Society of America, ecology, environment, field biology, field science, First Parish in Needham, forest fires, fragmentation of ecosystems, Gaylord Nelson, George Sugihara, invasive species, Lotka-Volterra systems, marine biology, Nature's Trust, Peter del Tredici, philosophy of science, population biology, population dynamics, quantitative biology, quantitative ecology, riverine flooding, shorelines, stream flow, sustainability, sustainable landscaping, unreason, water, wishful environmentalism
Tagged misunderstandings of ecology
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Opposing Canadian hydropower, an opposition which supports local renewables?
Ilana Cohen of the Pulitzer prize-winning Inside Climate News reports how some environmental activists in northern New England are concerned about the progress of tapping Canadian hydropower to feed the electrical needs of New England. Opposition is also voiced by … Continue reading
Posted in an ignorant American public, an uncaring American public, being carbon dioxide, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, cliamate mitigation, climate business, climate disruption, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Cult of Carbon, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, development as anti-ecology, distributed generation, ecocapitalism, Ecology Action, ecomodernism, electrical energy storage, electricity, electricity markets, emissions, energy utilities, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuel infrastructure, gas pipeline leaks, global warming, greenhouse gases, Hermann Scheer, indigenous peoples, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, liberal climate deniers, local generation, local self reliance, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, mitigating climate disruption, Nathan Phillips, natural gas, regulatory capture, rights of the inhabitants of the Commonwealth, science denier, solar democracy, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, solar revolution, sustainability, sustainable landscaping, the green century, the right to be and act stupid, the tragedy of our present civilization, utility company death spiral, zero carbon
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Alex Steffen on The Climate Strike
Excerpted from The Nearly Now at Medium, by Alex Steffen. “You’re right to strike; you’re right to march; you’re right to feel your fear and rage and longing for a better world. You are the victims of a terrible intergenerational … Continue reading
Posted in #climatestrike, #sunrise, #youthvgov, Alex Steffen, American Solar Energy Society, an ignorant American public, an uncaring American public, Arctic amplification, Boston Ethical Society, bridge to somewhere, carbon dioxide, climate disruption, climate justice, climate mitigation, ClimateAdam, Ecology Action, global blinding, global warming, global weirding, Greta Thunberg, insurance, Jennifer Francis, Juliana v United States, life cycle sustainability analysis, On being Carbon Dioxide, photovoltaics, science, solar democracy, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, solar revolution, sustainability, sustainable landscaping, wind energy, wind power, zero carbon
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Review of “No … increase of Carbon sequestration from the greening Earth”
(As promised.) Introduction and Abstract This is a review, re-presentation, and report on the August 2019 article, Y. Zhang, C. Song, L. E. Band, G. Sun, (2019), “No proportional increase of terrestrial gross Carbon sequestration from the greening Earth“, Journal … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, afforestation, agriculture, agroecology, algal blooms, American Statistical Association, argoecology, being carbon dioxide, biology, Botany, bridge to somewhere, carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide sequestration, chemistry, citizen science, clear air capture of carbon dioxide, climate, climate data, climate disruption, climate economics, climate mitigation, di-nitrogen oxide, ecocapitalism, ecological disruption, Ecological Society of America, ecomodernism, ecopragmatism, environment, evidence, food, forests, fossil fuels, geophysics, Glen Peters, Global Carbon Project, greenhouse gases, James Hansen, John Holdren, p-value, phytoplankton, pollution, population biology, quantitative biology, resource producitivity, scholarship, science education, significance test, statistics, Steven Chu, sustainability, sustainable landscaping, wishful environmentalism
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CBRA is awesome!
Hat tip to Professor Rob Young and Audubon for a great newsfilm.
Posted in Anthropocene, Association to Preserve Cape Cod, being carbon dioxide, bridge to somewhere, Cape Cod, carbon dioxide, Carbon Worshipers, catastrophe modeling, climate disruption, climate economics, coastal communities, coastal investment risks, coasts, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, destructive economic development, ecological disruption, ecomodernism, economic trade, ecopragmatism, flooding, floods, fossil fuels, global warming, greenhouse gases, home resale values, Humans have a lot to answer for, hurricanes, hydrology, Hyper Anthropocene, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, life cycle sustainability analysis, living shorelines, ocean warming, Robert Young, science, science education, stream flow, sustainable landscaping, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets, tragedy of the horizon, unreason, UU, UU Mass Action, UU Ministry for Earth, UU Needham, Wally Broecker, wishful environmentalism, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, zero carbon, ``The tide is risin'/And so are we''
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`Pesticide Perspective`
(This is in the main a reblog of an opinion piece by Andrew Gottlieb, APCC) May 7, 2019 Pesticide Perspective by Andrew Gottlieb, Executive Director, Association to Preserve Cape Cod Fresh off the taping of a Lower Cape TV segment … Continue reading
Posted in agroecology, Anthropocene, Association to Preserve Cape Cod, Cape Cod, conservation, development as anti-ecology, ecological disruption, ecological services, ecology, environment, environmental law, extended producer responsibility, fossil fuels, herbicides, Humans have a lot to answer for, Hyper Anthropocene, invasive species, life cycle sustainability analysis, lifestyle changes, pesticides, public health, public welfare, rights of the inhabitants of the Commonwealth, risk, sustainability, sustainable landscaping, the right to know
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Handel, 2018, “As the seas rise, can we restore our coastal habitats?”
Professor Steven Handel presents: Hint, hint: A subtle plug for allowing evolutionary dominance to advance, including permitting hearty invasive species to Do Their Thing. Indeed, it is my opinion, that the supposed plague of “invasive species” and associated regulations is … Continue reading
Posted in agroecology, Aldo Leopold, an ignorant American public, an uncaring American public, Anthropocene, argoecology, Botany, bridge to somewhere, Cape Cod, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, corporations, corruption, ecological disruption, Ecological Society of America, ecology, ecopragmatism, environment, environmental law, evolution, fragmentation of ecosystems, greenwashing, herbicides, Humans have a lot to answer for, Hyper Anthropocene, invasive species, living shorelines, Nature, pesticides, Peter del Tredici, population biology, population dynamics, quantitative biology, quantitative ecology, regulatory capture, shorelines, sustainability, sustainable landscaping, the green century, the tragedy of our present civilization, tragedy of the horizon, wishful environmentalism, yves tille
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Earth Day 2019: So how do people transition to the new energy economy?
I’ve been pretty hard on the Green New Deal. That’s partly because its proponents don’t seem to see that a transition to a new zero Carbon energy economy is inevitable. It’s opponents don’t see that either. It may not come … Continue reading
Posted in Amory Lovins, an ignorant American public, Ørsted, capitalism, climate business, climate change, climate disruption, climate economics, climate justice, compassion, corporate citizenship, corporate litigation on damage from fossil fuel emissions, corporate responsibility, corporate supply chains, corporations, ecomodernism, electric vehicles, engineering, ethics, extended producer responsibility, extended supply chains, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuel infrastructure, Gaylord Nelson, global warming, Green New Deal, Hermann Scheer, investment in wind and solar energy, investments, John Farrell, Joseph Schumpeter, LBNL, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, local generation, local self reliance, Mark Carney, Mark Jacobson, microgrids, New England, NIMBY, organizational failures, Orsted, percolation theory, planning, public education, public welfare, RevoluSun, Richard Branson, science, solar democracy, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, Sonnen community, SunPower, sustainability, sustainable landscaping, Talk Solar, technology, temporal myopia, Tesla, the energy of the people, the green century, the right to know, the value of financial assets, Tony Seba, tragedy of the horizon, utility company death spiral, UU, wind energy, wind power, zero carbon
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So, y’say you want a Green New Deal …
There isn’t a lot known about the Green New Deal or “GND”. Its proponents are certainly making the rounds, but it is light on specifics, heavy on urgency, heavily coupled with advancing jobs and justice, racial, climate, and environmental. As … Continue reading
Posted in American Solar Energy Society, Amory Lovins, Anthropocene, anti-intellectualism, Ørsted, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, bridge to somewhere, cement production, clean disruption, CleanTechnica, climate business, climate change, climate economics, corporate citizenship, corporate litigation on damage from fossil fuel emissions, corporate responsibility, corporate supply chains, decentralized electric power generation, demand-side solutions, destructive economic development, distributed generation, ecomodernism, ecopragmatism, ecopragmatist, education, electric vehicles, electrical energy storage, electricity, electricity markets, energy utilities, engineering, environment, extended producer responsibility, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, Gaylord Nelson, George Monbiot, global warming, Green Tech Media, Hermann Scheer, Hyper Anthropocene, ILSR, investment in wind and solar energy, John Farrell, Joseph Schumpeter, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, local generation, local self reliance, Mark Jacobson, Mary C Wood, Peter del Tredici, population biology, quantitative biology, quantitative ecology, rationality, rhetorical mathematics, rhetorical science, rhetorical statistics, solar democracy, solar domination, solar energy, Spaceship Earth, stranded assets, sustainability, sustainable landscaping, T'kun Olam, Talk Solar, Tesla, the energy of the people, the green century, the value of financial assets, wishful environmentalism
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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
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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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Winter composting: How to make friends with microbes and defy weather (podcast, too)
(Slightly updated 2019-04-08, although the podcast has not been updated to be consistent.) (This blog post is accompanied by an explanatory podcast. See below.) Many people compost. It can be easy or hard, depending upon your tolerance for turning and … Continue reading
Posted in agroecology, argoecology, Botany, Carbon Cycle, composting, ecological services, Ecological Society of America, ecology, engineering, environment, fermentation, First Parish Needham, karma, local self reliance, Nature, science, solid waste management, sustainability, sustainable landscaping, Unitarian Universalism, UU, UU Humanists, UU Needham, water as a resource
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“All of Monsanto’s problems just landed on Bayer” (by Chris Hughes at Bloomberg)
See Chris Hughes’ article. Monsanto has touted Roundup (also known as Glyphosate but more properly as ) as a safe remedy for weed control, often in the taming of so-called “invasive species”. It’s used on playfields where children are exposed … Continue reading
Posted in agroecology, an uncaring American public, business, corporate responsibility, ecology, Ecology Action, environment, environmental law, epidemiology, evidence, invasive species, open data, Peter del Tredici, quantitative biology, quantitative ecology, rights of the inhabitants of the Commonwealth, risk, statistics, sustainability, sustainable landscaping, the right to know, Uncategorized, unreason, Westwood
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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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ecoquant
