
Distributed Solar: The Democratizaton of Energy

Blogroll
- All about models
- Tim Harford's “More or Less'' Tim Harford explains – and sometimes debunks – the numbers and statistics used in political debate, the news and everyday life
- "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.
- BioPython A collection of Python tools for quantitative Biology
- OOI Data Nuggets OOI Ocean Data Lab: The Data Nuggets
- distributed solar and matching location to need
- Mark Berliner's video lecture "Bayesian mechanistic-statistical modeling with examples in geophysical settings"
- "Consider a Flat Pond" Invited talk introducing systems thinking, by Jan Galkowski, at First Parish in Needham, UU, via Zoom
- Fear and Loathing in Data Science Cory Lesmeister’s savage journey to the heart of Big Data
- 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/
- 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.
- Mertonian norms
- WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION, reviews Reviews of Cathy O’Neil’s new book
- International Society for Bayesian Analysis (ISBA)
- What If
- South Shore Recycling Cooperative Materials management, technical assistance and networking, town advocacy, public outreach
- Slice Sampling
- Risk and Well-Being
- SASB Sustainability Accounting Standards Board
- Quotes by Nikola Tesla Quotes by Nikola Tesla, including some of others he greatly liked.
- "Talking Politics" podcast David Runciman, Helen Thompson
- American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
- All about Sankey diagrams
- John Cook's reasons to use Bayesian inference
- 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
- Tony Seba Solar energy, electric vehicle, energy storage, and business disruption professor and visionary
- 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.
- AP Statistics: Sampling, by Michael Porinchak Twin City Schools
- 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”
- Healthy Home Healthy Planet
- London Review of Books
- Awkward Botany
- WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION Cathy O’Neil’s WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION,
- "Perpetual Ocean" from NASA GSFC
- Team Andrew Weinberg Walking September 8th for the Jimmy Fund!
- Survey Methodology, Prof Ron Fricker http://faculty.nps.edu/rdfricke/
- Label Noise
- 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
- American Statistical Association
- Number Cruncher Politics
- Gabriel's staircase
- Nadler Strategy, LLC, on sustainability Thinking about business, efficient and effective management, and business value
- Musings on Quantitative Paleoecology Quantitative methods and palaeoenvironments.
- Brian McGill's Dynamic Ecology blog Quantitative biology with pithy insights regarding applications of statistical methods
- Earle Wilson
- Leverhulme Centre for Climate Change Mitigation
- 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.
- The Alliance for Securing Democracy dashboard
- 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.
- Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI)
climate change
- Dessler's 6 minute Greenhouse Effect video
- Ricky Rood's “What would happen to climate if we (suddenly) stopped emitting GHGs today?
- Thriving on Low Carbon
- Wind sled Wind sled: A zero carbon way of exploring ice sheets
- 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.
- 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%.
- Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature
- "Climate science is setttled enough"
- An open letter to Steve Levitt
- "Getting to the Energy Future We Want," Dr Steven Chu
- Climate Change Reports By John and Mel Harte
- 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
- The beach boondoggle Prof Rob Young on how owners of beach property are socializing their risks at costs to all of us, not the least being it seems coastal damage is less than it actually is
- David Appell's early climate science
- Climate impacts on retail and supply chains
- Tell Utilities Solar Won't Be Killed Barry Goldwater, Jr’s campaign to push for solar expansion against monopolistic utilities, as a Republican
- Ray Pierrehumbert's site related to "Principles of Planetary Climate" THE book on climate science
- All Models Are Wrong Dr Tamsin Edwards blog about uncertainty in science, and climate science
- “Ways to [try to] slow the Solar Century''
- “The Irrelevance of Saturation: Why Carbon Dioxide Matters'' (Bart Levenson)
- Grid parity map for Solar PV in United States
- "Lessons of the Little Ice Age" (Farber) From Dan Farber, at LEGAL PLANET
- Tamino's Open Mind Open Mind: A statistical look at climate, its science, and at science denial
- Sea Change Boston
- 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.
- Équiterre Equiterre helps build a social movement by encouraging individuals, organizations and governments to make ecological and equitable choices, in a spirit of solidarity.
- Documenting the Climate Deniarati at work
- Solar Gardens Community Power
- Updating the Climate Science: What path is the real world following? From Professors Makiko Sato & James Hansen of Columbia University
- `The unchained goddess' 1958 Bell Telephone Science Hour broadcast regarding, among other things, climate change.
- Mrooijer's Global Temperature Explorer
- Climate at a glance Current state of the climate, from NOAA
- The Sunlight Economy
- 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
- Agendaists Eli Rabett’s coining of a phrase
- "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 Carbon Cycle The Carbon Cycle, monitored by The Carbon Project
- Reanalyses.org
- Exxon-Mobil statement on UNFCCC COP21
- Spectra Energy exposed
- Rabett Run Incisive analysis of climate science versus deliberate distraction
- Klaus Lackner (ASU), Silicon Kingdom Holdings (SKH) Capturing CO2 from air at scale
- Transitioning to fully renewable energy Professor Saul Griffiths talks to transitioning the customer journey, from a dependency upon fossil fuels to an electrified future
- 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
- "Warming Slowdown?" (part 2 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. The second part.
- Ice and Snow
- Skeptical Science
- Tuft's Professor Kenneth Lang on the physical chemistry of the Greenhouse Effect
- History of discovering Global Warming From the American Institute of Physics.
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.

