
Distributed Solar: The Democratizaton of Energy

Blogroll
- All about Sankey diagrams
- "Consider a Flat Pond" Invited talk introducing systems thinking, by Jan Galkowski, at First Parish in Needham, UU, via Zoom
- Team Andrew Weinberg Walking September 8th for the Jimmy Fund!
- 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”
- Dr James Spall's SPSA
- 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/
- Brian McGill's Dynamic Ecology blog Quantitative biology with pithy insights regarding applications of statistical methods
- Bob Altemeyer on authoritarianism (via Dan Satterfield) The science behind the GOP civil war
- Mertonian norms
- Harvard's Project Implicit
- John Kruschke's "Dong Bayesian data analysis" blog Expanding and enhancing John’s book of same title (now in second edition!)
- Number Cruncher Politics
- American Statistical Association
- Ted Dunning
- NCAR AtmosNews
- Musings on Quantitative Paleoecology Quantitative methods and palaeoenvironments.
- Fear and Loathing in Data Science Cory Lesmeister’s savage journey to the heart of Big Data
- Tony Seba Solar energy, electric vehicle, energy storage, and business disruption professor and visionary
- WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION Cathy O’Neil’s WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION,
- Label Noise
- The Mermaid's Tale A conversation about biological complexity and evolution, and the societal aspects of science
- Comprehensive Guide to Bayes Rule
- The Alliance for Securing Democracy dashboard
- 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
- Mrooijer's Numbers R 4Us
- Why It’s So Freaking Hard To Make A Good COVID-19 Model Five Thirty Eight’s take on why pandemic modeling is so difficult
- Ives and Dakos techniques for regime changes in series
- Gavin Simpson
- Thaddeus Stevens quotes As I get older, I admire this guy more and more
- Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI)
- Slice Sampling
- ggplot2 and ggfortify Plotting State Space Time Series with ggplot2 and ggfortify
- "The Expert"
- All about models
- London Review of Books
- Leadership lessons from Lao Tzu
- Rasmus Bååth's Research Blog Bayesian statistics and data analysis
- "Perpetual Ocean" from NASA GSFC
- Earth Family Alpha Michael Osborne’s blog (former Executive at Austin Energy, now Chairman of the Electric Utility Commission for Austin, Texas)
- Subsidies for wind and solar versus subsidies for fossil fuels
- AP Statistics: Sampling, by Michael Porinchak Twin City Schools
- James' Empty Blog
- Pat's blog While it is described as “The mathematical (and other) thoughts of a (now retired) math teacher”, this is false humility, as it chronicles the present and past life and times of mathematicians in their context. Recommended.
- 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.”
- Flettner Rotor Bruce Yeany introduces the Flettner Rotor and related science
- South Shore Recycling Cooperative Materials management, technical assistance and networking, town advocacy, public outreach
- International Society for Bayesian Analysis (ISBA)
- The Keeling Curve: its history History of the Keeling Curve and Charles David Keeling
- 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.
- Karl Broman
climate change
- Sea Change Boston
- RealClimate
- "A field guide to the climate clowns"
- The Carbon Cycle The Carbon Cycle, monitored by The Carbon Project
- Isaac Held's blog In the spirit of Ray Pierrehumbert’s “big ideas come from small models” in his textbook, PRINCIPLES OF PLANETARY CLIMATE, Dr Held presents quantitative essays regarding one feature or another of the Earth’s climate and weather system.
- `Who to believe on climate change': Simple checks By Bart Verheggen
- Eli on the spectroscopic basis of atmospheric radiation physical chemistry
- Exxon-Mobil statement on UNFCCC COP21
- Anti—Anti-#ClimateEmergency Whether to declare a climate emergency is debatable. But some critics have gone way overboard.
- "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.
- The HUMAN-caused greenhouse effect, in under 5 minutes, by Bill Nye
- Rabett Run Incisive analysis of climate science versus deliberate distraction
- "Impacts of Green New Deal energy plans on grid stability, costs, jobs, health, and climate in 143 countries" (Jacobson, Delucchi, Cameron, et al) Global warming, air pollution, and energy insecurity are three of the greatest problems facing humanity. To address these problems, we develop Green New Deal energy roadmaps for 143 countries.
- Non-linear feedbacks in climate (discussion of Bloch-Johnson, Pierrehumbert, Abbot paper) Discussion of http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1002/2015GL064240/abstract
- Energy payback period for solar panels Considering everything, how long do solar panels have to operate to offset the energy used to produce them?
- “Ways to [try to] slow the Solar Century''
- Ricky Rood's “What would happen to climate if we (suddenly) stopped emitting GHGs today?
- The net average effect of a warming climate is increased aridity (Professor Steven Sherwood)
- Andy Zucker's "Climate Change and Psychology"
- SOLAR PRODUCTION at Westwood Statistical Studios Generation charts for our home in Westwood, MA
- Warming slowdown discussion
- Solar Gardens Community Power
- Équiterre Equiterre helps build a social movement by encouraging individuals, organizations and governments to make ecological and equitable choices, in a spirit of solidarity.
- Thriving on Low Carbon
- 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 discovery of global warming'' (American Institute of Physics)
- Ice and Snow
- James Powell on sampling the climate consensus
- MIT's Climate Primer
- An open letter to Steve Levitt
- 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.
- "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.)
- Reanalyses.org
- 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.
- Climate Communication Hassol, Somerville, Melillo, and Hussin site communicating climate to the public
- Documenting the Climate Deniarati at work
- Tell Utilities Solar Won't Be Killed Barry Goldwater, Jr’s campaign to push for solar expansion against monopolistic utilities, as a Republican
- "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
- James Hansen and granddaughter Sophie on moving forward with progress on climate
- Climate impacts on retail and supply chains
- Mrooijer's Global Temperature Explorer
- Risk and Well-Being
- Dessler's 6 minute Greenhouse Effect video
- weather blocking patterns
- 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
- Simple models of climate change
- Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature
- Nick Bower's "Scared Scientists"
- "Getting to the Energy Future We Want," Dr Steven Chu
- SolarLove
Archives
Jan Galkowski
Category Archives: The Demon Haunted World
Losing sight of the big picture
When chasing political solutions to mitigating climate disruption, it’s long been tempting to go after relatively easy quick wins in the short term rather than facing up to the real problem: Emissions of Carbon Dioxide. So, in a world where … Continue reading
Posted in #youthvgov, air source heat pump, alternatives to the Green New Deal, American Solar Energy Society, an ignorant American public, an uncaring American public, Blackbody radiation, Bloomberg Green, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, bridge to somewhere, Buckminster Fuller, carbon dioxide, children as political casualties, climate economics, climate emergency, climate hawk, corporate litigation on damage from fossil fuel emissions, Cult of Carbon, decentralized electric power generation, development as anti-ecology, ecopragmatism, electric vehicles, electrical energy engineering, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuel infrastructure, fossil fuels, Glen Peters, grid defection, heat pump, Hermann Scheer, Humans have a lot to answer for, investment in wind and solar energy, James Hansen, Juliana v United States, keep fossil fuels in ground, Ken Caldeira, Mark Jacobson, mitigating climate disruption, On being Carbon Dioxide, organizational failures, Our Children's Trust, photovoltaics, Ray Pierrehumbert, solar democracy, solar domination, solar power, solar revolution, stranded assets, Susan Solomon, The Demon Haunted World, the green century, the tragedy of our present civilization, utility company death spiral, wind energy, wind power, wishful environmentalism
Tagged climate disruption, lack of climate ambition, short-lived climate pollutants
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Climate Resilience
Posted in adaptation, Anthropocene, being carbon dioxide, bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, children as political casualties, climate disruption, climate nightmares, climate science, climate sensitivity, distributed generation, ecological disruption, ecopragmatism, engineering, First Parish in Needham, Glen Peters, Global Carbon Project, global warming, global weirding, Greta Thunberg, investment in wind and solar energy, Juliana v United States, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, liberal climate deniers, local generation, local self reliance, Mark Jacobson, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, Mathematics and Climate Research Network, mitigating climate disruption, Nature's Trust, ocean acidification, ocean warming, Our Children's Trust, Principles of Planetary Climate, quantitative ecology, Ray Pierrehumbert, Reverend Catie Scudera, Robert Young, sea level rise, Steven Chu, sustainability, The Demon Haunted World, the energy of the people, the green century, the right to know, the value of financial assets, tragedy of the horizon, Unitarian Universalism, UU, UU Needham, Wally Broecker, zero carbon
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Natural Gas Companies are Doing Themselves In
As I wrote before, there will be no Golden Age of Natural Gas. The climate periodical DeSmog Blog now reports on its outright dissolution. But the surprise is that natural gas miners, particularly shale gas miners, are apparently destroying themselves. … Continue reading
Posted in American Chemical Society, American Petroleum Institute, an uncaring American public, Anthropocene, being carbon dioxide, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, Carbon Worshipers, children as political casualties, clean disruption, climate disruption, corporate litigation on damage from fossil fuel emissions, Desmog Blog, destructive economic development, ecological disruption, explosive methane, false advertising, fossil fuel infrastructure, fossil fuels, gas pipeline leaks, global warming, greenhouse gases, greenwashing, Hyper Anthropocene, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, natural gas, panic, public welfare, regulatory capture, solar domination, stranded assets, The Demon Haunted World, the right to be and act stupid, the tragedy of our present civilization, tragedy of the horizon, utility company death spiral
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Happy Earth Day: Doubt climate change? Just be patient and watch
And know that, because of our collective inaction, even if we were to fix everything immediately, now, because of the built-up momentum in the climate system, things will get steadily worse for two-to-four decades after we stop. Don’t like those … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, American Association for the Advancement of Science, an ignorant American public, an uncaring American public, climate change, fossil fuel divestment, global warming, Humans have a lot to answer for, Hyper Anthropocene, science, 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
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Eli, who offers a clever and consistent consumption-based accounting scheme. Consumption-based Carbon accounting: Does it have a future? Consumption-based accounting of CO2 emissions
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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Dr Glen Peters on “Stylised pathways to `well below 2°C”’, and some solutions from Dr Steven Chu (but it’s late!)
Stylized pathways to “well below 2°C” Dr Peters has also written about “Can we really limit global warming to `well below’ two degrees centigrade?” An excerpt and abstract: Commentary: Yes, but only in a model. We have essentially emitted too … Continue reading
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, an ignorant American public, an uncaring American public, Anthropocene, atmosphere, being carbon dioxide, bridge to somewhere, carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide capture, carbon dioxide sequestration, clear air capture of carbon dioxide, climate, climate disruption, climate economics, emissions, Glen Peters, Global Carbon Project, global warming, greenhouse gases, Hyper Anthropocene, Kevin Anderson, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, Science magazine, Stephen Chu, sustainability, The Demon Haunted World, the tragedy of our present civilization, zero carbon
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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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Censorship of Science by the administration of President Donald Trump
See work by the Columbia Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. … President Trump has directed EPA and DOI to reconsider regulations adopted to control greenhouse gas emissions, despite the wealth of data showing that those emissions are the key … Continue reading
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, an ignorant American public, an uncaring American public, anti-intellectualism, anti-science, Azimuth Backup Project, citizen data, Climate Science Legal Defense Fund, Donald Trump, dump Trump, Ecological Society of America, environmental law, epidemiology, global blinding, Neill deGrasse Tyson, open data, rationality, reason, reasonableness, science, secularism, 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
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These are ethical “AI Principles” from Google, but they might as well be `technological principles’
This is entirely adapted from this link, courtesy of Google and Alphabet. Objectives Be socially beneficial. Avoid creating or reinforcing unfair bias. Be built and tested for safety. Be accountable to people. Incorporate privacy design principles. Uphold high standards of … Continue reading
Posted in American Statistical Association, artificial intelligence, basic research, Bayesian, Boston Ethical Society, complex systems, computation, corporate citizenship, corporate responsibility, deep recurrent neural networks, emergent organization, ethical ideals, ethics, extended producer responsibility, friends and colleagues, Google, Google Pixel 2, humanism, investments, machine learning, mathematics, moral leadership, natural philosophy, politics, risk, science, secularism, technology, The Demon Haunted World, the right to know, Unitarian Universalism, UU, UU Humanists
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On trying to fix Earth without technology and engineering
(Updated 2017-11-30, 00:12 EST) I had my first serious encounter with the stuff of Joanna Macy tonight, via a certain YouTube video. I must say, it was anything but a pleasant experience, filled with claims which were not justified historically, … Continue reading

