
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.
- Label Noise
- The Keeling Curve: its history History of the Keeling Curve and Charles David Keeling
- ggplot2 and ggfortify Plotting State Space Time Series with ggplot2 and ggfortify
- John Cook's reasons to use Bayesian inference
- WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION Cathy O’Neil’s WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION,
- American Statistical Association
- All about Sankey diagrams
- 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/
- Carl Safina's blog One of the wisest on Earth
- Healthy Home Healthy Planet
- "Perpetual Ocean" from NASA GSFC
- AP Statistics: Sampling, by Michael Porinchak Twin City Schools
- Flettner Rotor Bruce Yeany introduces the Flettner Rotor and related science
- 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
- 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.
- WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION, reviews Reviews of Cathy O’Neil’s new book
- Quotes by Nikola Tesla Quotes by Nikola Tesla, including some of others he greatly liked.
- 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
- Ted Dunning
- "Talking Politics" podcast David Runciman, Helen Thompson
- Hermann Scheer Hermann Scheer was a visionary, a major guy, who thought deep thoughts about energy, and its implications for humanity’s relationship with physical reality
- Team Andrew Weinberg Walking September 8th for the Jimmy Fund!
- International Society for Bayesian Analysis (ISBA)
- 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”
- Mertonian norms
- SASB Sustainability Accounting Standards Board
- Dr James Spall's SPSA
- NCAR AtmosNews
- 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/
- What If
- Leadership lessons from Lao Tzu
- Nadler Strategy, LLC, on sustainability Thinking about business, efficient and effective management, and business value
- OOI Data Nuggets OOI Ocean Data Lab: The Data Nuggets
- Survey Methodology, Prof Ron Fricker http://faculty.nps.edu/rdfricke/
- Subsidies for wind and solar versus subsidies for fossil fuels
- "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.
- distributed solar and matching location to need
- Mrooijer's Numbers R 4Us
- James' Empty Blog
- Dollars per BBL: Energy in Transition
- Beautiful Weeds of New York City
- Awkward Botany
- BioPython A collection of Python tools for quantitative Biology
- The Plastic Pick-Up: Discovering new sources of marine plastic pollution
- 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.”
- John Kruschke's "Dong Bayesian data analysis" blog Expanding and enhancing John’s book of same title (now in second edition!)
- The Mermaid's Tale A conversation about biological complexity and evolution, and the societal aspects of science
- 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.
- "The Expert"
climate change
- “The Irrelevance of Saturation: Why Carbon Dioxide Matters'' (Bart Levenson)
- History of discovering Global Warming From the American Institute of Physics.
- Mrooijer's Global Temperature Explorer
- Sir David King David King’s perspective on climate, and the next thousands of years for humanity
- "A field guide to the climate clowns"
- Spectra Energy exposed
- Grid parity map for Solar PV in United States
- James Hansen and granddaughter Sophie on moving forward with progress on climate
- 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
- Professor Robert Strom's compendium of resources on climate change Truly excellent
- World Weather Attribution
- SOLAR PRODUCTION at Westwood Statistical Studios Generation charts for our home in Westwood, MA
- "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
- Exxon-Mobil statement on UNFCCC COP21
- "Climate science is setttled enough"
- Climate at a glance Current state of the climate, from NOAA
- HotWhopper: It's excellent. Global warming and climate change. Eavesdropping on the deniosphere, its weird pseudo-science and crazy conspiracy whoppers.
- Model state level energy policy for New Englad Bob Massie’s proposed energy policy for Massachusetts, an admirable model for energy policy anywhere in New England
- Ice and Snow
- "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
- Social Cost of Carbon
- Ray Pierrehumbert's site related to "Principles of Planetary Climate" THE book on climate science
- The Carbon Cycle The Carbon Cycle, monitored by The Carbon Project
- NOAA Annual Greenhouse Gas Index report The annual assessment by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the radiative forcing from constituent atmospheric greenhouse gases
- Documenting the Climate Deniarati at work
- Climate Change Denying Organizations
- 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.
- AIP's history of global warming science: impacts The American Institute of Physics has a fine history of the science of climate change. This link summarizes the history of impacts of climate change.
- All Models Are Wrong Dr Tamsin Edwards blog about uncertainty in science, and climate science
- The Green Plate Effect Eli Rabett’s “The Green Plate Effect”
- Andy Zucker's "Climate Change and Psychology"
- Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature
- The Sunlight Economy
- Energy payback period for solar panels Considering everything, how long do solar panels have to operate to offset the energy used to produce them?
- MIT's Climate Primer
- Interview with Wally Broecker Interview with Wally Broecker
- David Appell's early climate science
- Solar Gardens Community Power
- Ellenbogen: There is no Such Thing as Wind Turbine Syndrome
- An open letter to Steve Levitt
- Thriving on Low Carbon
- Tuft's Professor Kenneth Lang on the physical chemistry of the Greenhouse Effect
- Paul Beckwith Professor Beckwith is, in my book, one of the most insightful and analytical observers on climate I know. I highly recommend his blog, and his other informational products.
- Rabett Run Incisive analysis of climate science versus deliberate distraction
- Agendaists Eli Rabett’s coining of a phrase
- On Thomas Edison and Solar Electric Power
- 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
- Simple models of climate change
- Warming slowdown discussion
Archives
Jan Galkowski
Category Archives: the stack of lies
What happens when time sampling density of a series matches its growth
This is the newly updated map of COVID-19 cases in the United States, updated, presumably, because of the new emphasis upon testing: How do we know this is the recent of recent testing? Look at the map of active cases: … Continue reading
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Statistical Association, anti-intellectualism, anti-science, climate denial, corruption, data science, data visualization, Donald Trump, dump Trump, epidemiology, experimental science, exponential growth, forecasting, Kalman filter, model-free forecasting, nonlinear systems, open data, penalized spline regression, population dynamics, sampling algorithms, statistical ecology, statistical models, statistical regression, statistical series, statistics, sustainability, the right to know, the stack of lies
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Fraunhofer ISE assessment of practicality and cost of reducing emissions by 80% in Germany by 2050
The report. From the Summary: Figure 1 summarizes the main results of the analysis. A future energy scenario emitting 85% less CO2 emissions than 1990 levels is compared with a reference scenario, which assumes that the German energy system operates … Continue reading
reality of natural gas prices: volatile, undependable, and contrary to social interest
Updated, 11th January 2018 There’s been a lot written about natural gas, New England, and supposed price spikes due to constraints on pipeline capacity. I’ve had my turn a couple of times here (and here), as a matter of fact … Continue reading
Posted in Amory Lovins, anomaly detection, Anthropocene, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, clean disruption, Cult of Carbon, decentralized electric power generation, distributed generation, electricity markets, evidence, explosive methane, financial series, fossil fuel infrastructure, fossil fuels, gas pipeline leaks, greenhouse gases, Hyper Anthropocene, investment in wind and solar energy, ISO-NE, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, local generation, local self reliance, natural gas, pipelines, public utility commissions, rate of return regulation, regulatory capture, reworking infrastructure, rights of the inhabitants of the Commonwealth, risk, stranded assets, supply chains, the stack of lies, the tragedy of our present civilization, Tony Seba, utility company death spiral, zero carbon
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tripleplus ungood: Long run hot climate models are also the most accurate reproducing today and recent past
Patrick Brown and Ken Caldeira dropped a bombshell into the recent (7 Dec 2017) issue of Nature, and the repercussions are echoing around the scientific world. (See, for example, the related article in MIT’s Technology Review.) To be crisp, current … Continue reading
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Meteorological Association, American Statistical Association, AMETSOC, Anthropocene, bifurcations, clear air capture of carbon dioxide, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate economics, climate models, critical slowing down, Cult of Carbon, destructive economic development, Global Carbon Project, global warming, Humans have a lot to answer for, Hyper Anthropocene, Kevin Anderson, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, radiative forcing, Spaceship Earth, 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, Timothy Lenton, tragedy of the horizon
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What does it really mean for an electrical grid to be resilient?
(Slightly updated 2nd October 2017 to add a link to the Brattle Group’s report on the myth of baseload generation.) Secretary of Energy Rick Perry has recently called for `baseload` coal and nuclear plants which are no longer competitive in … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, American Meteorological Association, American Statistical Association, AMETSOC, Anthropocene, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, bollocks, bridge to nowhere, Carbon Worshipers, corruption, Cult of Carbon, decentralized electric power generation, demand-side solutions, denial, disingenuity, disruption, distributed generation, Donald Trump, electricity, energy utilities, engineering, ethics, false advertising, fear uncertainty and doubt, FERC, grid defection, Hyper Anthropocene, local generation, local self reliance, making money, meteorological models, meteorology, microgrids, public utility commissions, rate of return regulation, rationality, reason, regulatory capture, resiliency, science denier, superstition, 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, tragedy of the horizon, transparency, utility company death spiral
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On the responsibilities of scientists
On 4 September 2017, I added a blog post here titled “On the responsibilities of engineers”. Scientists have responsibilities, too. And I am delighted to say that the National Academies have just demonstrated a proud example of how such responsibilities … Continue reading
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Statistical Association, anti-science, attribution, Boston Ethical Society, chemistry, citizenship, compassion, Donald Trump, dump Trump, ecology, Ecology Action, economics, environment, environmental law, Environmental Protection Agency, ethics, evidence, fossil fuels, justice, land use to fight, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, pollution, rationality, reason, reasonableness, risk, science, science denier, secularism, sustainability, the right to be and act stupid, the right to know, the stack of lies, the value of financial assets, tragedy of the horizon
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Defying technology, trends … nay, defying Mathematics!
The creatures from Trumpland are planning an Energy Week in the upcoming, probably to lead up to the Fourth of July celebrations. Our Orange Leader … will tout surging U.S. exports of oil and natural gas during a week of … Continue reading
Posted in American Petroleum Institute, American Solar Energy Society, Anthropocene, being carbon dioxide, Bloomberg, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, bridge to nowhere, bridge to somewhere, carbon dioxide, Carbon Worshipers, clean disruption, climate business, climate economics, corporate litigation on damage from fossil fuel emissions, corporations, destructive economic development, Donald Trump, economics, electricity markets, energy, energy utilities, evidence, explosive methane, exponential growth, extended supply chains, false advertising, FERC, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuel infrastructure, fossil fuels, fracking, global blinding, greenhouse gases, Humans have a lot to answer for, Hyper Anthropocene, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, investments, Joseph Schumpeter, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, military inferiority, Minsky moment, pipelines, politics, pollution, rights of the inhabitants of the Commonwealth, risk, solar democracy, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, the energy of the people, the green century, the problem of evil, the right to be and act stupid, the stack of lies, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets, tragedy of the horizon, United States, utility company death spiral, wind energy, wind power
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Taking advantage of the natural skepticism and integrity of scientists and their co-workers, and their commitment to scientific process
I’ve seen this. One can seldom discuss or debate a science denier, whether at (my) presentations at UUAC Sherborn or in many places online, without their employing moving the goalposts or, when they fail to response to an explanation, trotting … Continue reading
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Meteorological Association, American Statistical Association, bridge to nowhere, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, climate disruption, climate economics, climate zombies, Daniel Kahneman, destructive economic development, engineering, ethics, evidence, force multiplier, George Sughihara, Humans have a lot to answer for, Hyper Anthropocene, ignorance, military inferiority, Minsky moment, organizational failures, Our Children's Trust, rationality, reasonableness, science, science denier, selfishness, the right to be and act stupid, the right to know, the stack of lies, the tragedy of our present civilization, United States
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Sleeping Giant Awakening
Damn straight. Update, 2016-12-18 More links to and comments on the same event: San Francisco Chronicle From the office of California’s governor From Climate Denial Crock of the Week On the Carbon Lobby and the Trump Gang Update, 2016-12-24 An … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Meteorological Association, American Solar Energy Society, American Statistical Association, AMETSOC, Anthropocene, California, Carbon Worshipers, citizen data, citizen science, climate, climate change, climate data, climate disruption, data science, Donald Trump, ecology, Ecology Action, geophysics, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, ignorance, Jerry Brown, science, sustainability, the right to be and act stupid, the right to know, the stack of lies, the tragedy of our present civilization
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Overreaction to the Trumpistas?
Anyone who thinks the reaction of people in the streets against the election of Donald Trump to be President is an overreaction, or, by extension, the fierce opposition to voters who chose to elect him is somehow lacking understanding or … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, Bill Maher, bridge to nowhere, Carbon Worshipers, civilization, climate economics, climate zombies, Donald Trump, dump Trump, fear uncertainty and doubt, fossil fuels, fracking, Hyper Anthropocene, ignorance, Joseph Schumpeter, Our Children's Trust, rationality, reason, reasonableness, science denier, the right to be and act stupid, the stack of lies, the tragedy of our present civilization
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Bastardi’s Bust
Famous climate denialist Joe Bastari of WeatherBELL Analytics LLC, formerly of Accuweather.com made a prediction on Arctic ice recovery back in 2010 (when at AccuWeather), and observations have since made his “studies” laughable. I have heard his colleague, Joseph D’Aleo … Continue reading
Posted in Accuweather, American Meteorological Association, anomaly detection, Anthropocene, Arctic, climate change, climate disruption, climate models, coasts, ecology, environment, evidence, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, ice sheet dynamics, meteorology, NOAA, science denier, shorelines, statistics, Stefan Rahmstorf, the right to be and act stupid, the right to know, the stack of lies, the tragedy of our present civilization, time series
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Once more, with feeling: Responding to Kostrzewa in The Providence Journal
It’s making the rounds. Today it’s John Kostrzewa, Assistant Managing Editor of The Providence Journal, arguing the necessity of natural gas and its pipelines with his “Why R.I.’s economy needs a natural-gas pipeline”. And my response, below, which allowed me … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, Anthropocene, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, bridge to nowhere, Carbon Worshipers, citizen science, citizenship, clean disruption, CleanTechnica, climate business, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, denial, disruption, distributed generation, electricity, electricity markets, energy, energy utilities, evidence, extended supply chains, FERC, fossil fuels, fracking, gas pipeline leaks, global warming, greenhouse gases, Hermann Scheer, Hyper Anthropocene, investment in wind and solar energy, Joseph Schumpeter, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, methane, microgrids, natural gas, pipelines, public utility commissions, PUCs, regime shifts, regulatory capture, Rhode Island, risk, Sankey diagram, solar democracy, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, stranded assets, supply chains, 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, Tony Seba, utility company death spiral, zero carbon
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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
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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''
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“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
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Frum on Trump
Great interview, on On Point.

