
Distributed Solar: The Democratizaton of Energy

Blogroll
- GeoEnergy Math Prof Paul Pukite’s Web site devoted to energy derived from geological and geophysical processes and categorized according to its originating source.
- Survey Methodology, Prof Ron Fricker http://faculty.nps.edu/rdfricke/
- London Review of Books
- NCAR AtmosNews
- Brian McGill's Dynamic Ecology blog Quantitative biology with pithy insights regarding applications of statistical methods
- 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/
- Gabriel's staircase
- 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/.
- 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.
- OOI Data Nuggets OOI Ocean Data Lab: The Data Nuggets
- Mrooijer's Numbers R 4Us
- What If
- "Consider a Flat Pond" Invited talk introducing systems thinking, by Jan Galkowski, at First Parish in Needham, UU, via Zoom
- 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.
- James' Empty Blog
- Team Andrew Weinberg Walking September 8th for the Jimmy Fund!
- Number Cruncher Politics
- 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
- Ives and Dakos techniques for regime changes in series
- BioPython A collection of Python tools for quantitative Biology
- Label Noise
- All about models
- 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”
- "Perpetual Ocean" from NASA GSFC
- Leadership lessons from Lao Tzu
- 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
- Dr James Spall's SPSA
- Giant vertical monopolies for energy have stopped making sense
- "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.
- Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI)
- Fear and Loathing in Data Science Cory Lesmeister’s savage journey to the heart of Big Data
- The Keeling Curve: its history History of the Keeling Curve and Charles David Keeling
- Slice Sampling
- Carl Safina's blog One of the wisest on Earth
- Dollars per BBL: Energy in Transition
- Charlie Kufs' "Stats With Cats" blog “You took Statistics 101. Now what?”
- Brendon Brewer on Overfitting Important and insightful presentation by Brendon Brewer on overfitting
- Los Alamos Center for Bayesian Methods
- Karl Broman
- Thaddeus Stevens quotes As I get older, I admire this guy more and more
- Musings on Quantitative Paleoecology Quantitative methods and palaeoenvironments.
- Dominic Cummings blog Chief advisor to the PM, United Kingdom
- ggplot2 and ggfortify Plotting State Space Time Series with ggplot2 and ggfortify
- WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION Cathy O’Neil’s WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION,
- Professor David Draper
- 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.”
- 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.
- 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/
- distributed solar and matching location to need
climate change
- 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
- Eli on the spectroscopic basis of atmospheric radiation physical chemistry
- And Then There's Physics
- Tell Utilities Solar Won't Be Killed Barry Goldwater, Jr’s campaign to push for solar expansion against monopolistic utilities, as a Republican
- The HUMAN-caused greenhouse effect, in under 5 minutes, by Bill Nye
- Transitioning to fully renewable energy Professor Saul Griffiths talks to transitioning the customer journey, from a dependency upon fossil fuels to an electrified future
- Climate Change Reports By John and Mel Harte
- "Climate science is setttled enough"
- Spectra Energy exposed
- Andy Zucker's "Climate Change and Psychology"
- 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.
- World Weather Attribution
- `The unchained goddess' 1958 Bell Telephone Science Hour broadcast regarding, among other things, climate change.
- "A field guide to the climate clowns"
- “Ways to [try to] slow the Solar Century''
- 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
- “The Irrelevance of Saturation: Why Carbon Dioxide Matters'' (Bart Levenson)
- Sea Change Boston
- Klaus Lackner (ASU), Silicon Kingdom Holdings (SKH) Capturing CO2 from air at scale
- "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
- Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature
- HotWhopper: It's excellent. Global warming and climate change. Eavesdropping on the deniosphere, its weird pseudo-science and crazy conspiracy whoppers.
- Climate model projections versus observations
- Tamino's Open Mind Open Mind: A statistical look at climate, its science, and at science denial
- Updating the Climate Science: What path is the real world following? From Professors Makiko Sato & James Hansen of Columbia University
- Ray Pierrehumbert's site related to "Principles of Planetary Climate" THE book on climate science
- Bloomberg interactive graph on “What's warming the world''
- MIT's Climate Primer
- An open letter to Steve Levitt
- Ice and Snow
- The Carbon Cycle The Carbon Cycle, monitored by The Carbon Project
- Dessler's 6 minute Greenhouse Effect video
- Équiterre Equiterre helps build a social movement by encouraging individuals, organizations and governments to make ecological and equitable choices, in a spirit of solidarity.
- "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.
- Earth System Models
- Energy payback period for solar panels Considering everything, how long do solar panels have to operate to offset the energy used to produce them?
- Non-linear feedbacks in climate (discussion of Bloch-Johnson, Pierrehumbert, Abbot paper) Discussion of http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1002/2015GL064240/abstract
- Risk and Well-Being
- The Sunlight Economy
- Rabett Run Incisive analysis of climate science versus deliberate distraction
- Social Cost of Carbon
- James Hansen and granddaughter Sophie on moving forward with progress on climate
- Agendaists Eli Rabett’s coining of a phrase
- "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 Scientific Case for Modern Human-caused Global Warming
- Jacobson WWS literature index
- SolarLove
- All Models Are Wrong Dr Tamsin Edwards blog about uncertainty in science, and climate science
- Professor Robert Strom's compendium of resources on climate change Truly excellent
- 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.
Archives
Jan Galkowski
Category Archives: UU
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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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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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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What if Juliana v United States fails?
This is a replica of a comment I made at another site. As of 23:55 EST on 21st January, it hasn’t been release from moderation. Perhaps the moderator is busy. I do not know. I am proceeding as if it … Continue reading
Posted in an ignorant American public, an uncaring American public, Anthropocene, being carbon dioxide, Boston Ethical Society, carbon dioxide capture, clear air capture of carbon dioxide, climate, climate business, climate change, climate disruption, climate economics, corporate litigation on damage from fossil fuel emissions, corporate supply chains, corporations, ecological disruption, ecomodernism, economics, ecopragmatism, environment, environmental law, extended producer responsibility, extended supply chains, First Parish Needham, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, global warming, greenhouse gases, Hyper Anthropocene, investment in wind and solar energy, Juliana v United States, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, Mary C Wood, optimization, Our Children's Trust, pollution, population biology, population dynamics, Principles of Planetary Climate, quantitative biology, quantitative ecology, radiative forcing, rationality, reasonableness, sea level rise, sustainability, the tragedy of our present civilization, tragedy of the horizon, United States Constitution, United States Government, UU, UU Needham, zero carbon
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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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No ordinary lawsuit: Levi Draheim, UUMFE Guardian of the Future
No Ordinary Lawsuit Federal climate change lawsuit plaintiff Levi Draheim in Washington, D.C. (Photo credit: Robin Loznak/Our Children’s Trust) The full story, and in audio from PRI. UU Ministry for Earth description of his award. Levi is a plaintiff in … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, atmosphere, being carbon dioxide, bridge to somewhere, carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide capture, children as political casualties, clear air capture of carbon dioxide, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate justice, environment, environmental law, First Parish Needham, fossil fuels, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, James Hansen, Juliana v United States, Levi Draheim, New England, Our Children's Trust, Unitarian Universalism, UU, UU Mass Action, UU Ministry for Earth, UU Needham, UUMFE
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Leaders (say they) Don’t Know About Lags
Maybe they don’t. Most people don’t. On the other hand, there’s little more to them than understanding skeet, realizing aiming where the clay pigeon is now is a useless tactic for hitting it. Aim where the pigeon will be is … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Meteorological Association, AMETSOC, anti-intellectualism, anti-science, atmosphere, attribution, Boston Ethical Society, carbon dioxide, Carbon Worshipers, climate change, climate disruption, climate economics, climate education, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Cult of Carbon, dynamical systems, environment, ethics, evidence, forecasting, geophysics, global warming, Massachusetts Interfaith Coalition for Climate Action, moral leadership, Our Children's Trust, Principles of Planetary Climate, rights of the inhabitants of the Commonwealth, the right to be and act stupid, the tragedy of our present civilization, tragedy of the horizon, unreason, UU, UU Humanists
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CO2 efficiency as a policy concept
I listened to the following talk, featuring Professor Kevin Anderson, who I have mentioned many times here before: While I continue to be hugely supportive of distributed PV as an energetic and democratic solution, as inspired by John Farrell at … Continue reading
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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Remember. But remember, too, we are no longer in the 19th century. Our risks today are much bigger.
Hat tip to Tamino. Thoreau’s “Slavery in Massachusetts”. But, recall, the stakes we gamble upon today are much bigger than those, as big as they were. See here for further details. But watch the episode if you really want to … Continue reading
“Carbon emissions and climate: Where do we stand, and what can be done if it all goes wrong?”
On Sunday, 11th February 2018, I presented an Abstract of a 3 hour talk on the subject, “Carbon emissions and climate: Where do we stand, and what can be done if it all goes wrong?” at the Needham Lyceum, hosted … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, being carbon dioxide, Carbon Cycle, carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide capture, carbon dioxide sequestration, Carbon Tax, civilization, clear air capture of carbon dioxide, climate, climate change, climate disruption, COP21, Cult of Carbon, differential equations, dynamical systems, ecology, emissions, environment, exponential growth, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuel infrastructure, fossil fuels, geoengineering, geophysics, Glen Peters, Global Carbon Project, global warming, greenhouse gases, Humans have a lot to answer for, Hyper Anthropocene, investments, James Hansen, Kerry Emanuel, liberal climate deniers, Mark Carney, Michael Bloomberg, Minsky moment, mitigation, nonlinear, nonlinear systems, oceanography, phytoplankton, population biology, population dynamics, precipitation, Principles of Planetary Climate, quantitative biology, quantitative ecology, radiative forcing, rationality, Ray Pierrehumbert, risk, sea level rise, sociology, stranded assets, supply chains, sustainability, T'kun Olam, the right to be and act stupid, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets, thermohaline circulation, tragedy of the horizon, unreason, UU, UU Needham, Wally Broecker, zero carbon
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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
`Message from Sally Yates to Justice Department lawyers before she was fired’
The story. On January 27, 2017, the President signed an Executive Order regarding immigrants and refugees from certain Muslim-majority countries. The order has now been challenged in a number of jurisdictions. As the Acting Attorney General, it is my ultimate … Continue reading
Posted in atheism, Donald Trump, dump Trump, ethical ideals, justice, secularism, UU, UU Humanists
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The Azimuth Climate Data Backup Project, in association with ClimateMirror
(Updated the afternoon of 31st May 2017.) The Azimuth Climate Data Backup Project, operating in association with ClimateMirror, is being funded via the Kickstarter available at this link. Give what you can. Thanks! See our goal statement. This is all … Continue reading
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, citizen science, civilization, climate, climate change, climate data, climate disruption, climate education, climate justice, Climate Lab Book, cynicism, denial, Donald Trump, education, EIA, ethics, evidence, fear uncertainty and doubt, forecasting, fossil fuels, Global Carbon Project, global warming, greenhouse gases, Hyper Anthropocene, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, NASA, NOAA, open data, open source scientific software, rationality, reason, reasonableness, risk, science, science denier, science education, smart data, statistics, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, UU, ``The tide is risin'/And so are we''
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Prescience and Response
I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers … Continue reading

