Recent Posts
Recent Comments
- Zane Selvans on Think Again: Drugs
- Bryan Keith on Think Again: Drugs
- Coal Finance for Climate Activists | Amateur Earthling on Boulder’s Energy Future Is Bright
- Hanna on Straight Talk on Climate Progress in California
- Coal Exports a Bigger Threat Than Tar Sands | Amateur Earthling on Obama Delays Keystone XL Pipeline
Linkstream
- PACE Lives!
The Federal Housing Finance Administration is taking public comments on Property Assessed Clean Energy financing programs, at the insistence of California's 9th Circuit court of appeals. Here's what I told them: Property Assessed Clean Energy financing programs, as have been initiated by many states and local governments, are a potentially transformative financing mechanism, enabling property owners to make good long term investments in energy efficiency and behind-the-meter renewable energy production. They address a market failure, in that buyers often do not appropriately integrate a property's energy costs into their price assessment. So long as the state and local PACE programs are - Climate Denial Instruction In Schools
Corporate interests are pushing a model bill in many states that would require schools to teach climate change denial. It sounds creepily reminiscent of the creationism/evolution mess from a few years ago. Except with the fossil fuel industry instead of the religious right behind it. Gah. - Vision Prize
Vision Prize is an expert poll on the nature of the climate risks we face, meant to demonstrate the degree of consensus (or the lack thereof) amongst those able to judge the evidence. It's put together by Carnegie Mellon University. Will be interesting to see what the results look like... - Open Climate Science Course
The University of Chicago has created an Open Courseware style Climate Science 101, with videos of the lectures and self-assessment materials online. It's aimed at non-science undergraduates. If you, or someone you know, want to get a little more in depth knowledge about climate science on their own time, it's a great resource. - Think Again: Drugs
A great roundup of the myths surrounding the Drug War, and the cogent arguments against continuing our ridiculous, harmful, and expensive policy of ideological prohibition.
- PACE Lives!
Twitterfeed
- Roughly 2/3 of all the humans who have ever reached the age of 65 are alive today. 2 weeks ago
- What I learned about coal industry finances this week: http://t.co/UN1lXxRm 3 weeks ago
- In a room full of suits at NYU law. Everyone here wants to end the Reign of Old King Coal. Strangulation by purse strings. 4 weeks ago
- More thoughts on the dangers of giving in to a defeatist climate apocalypse narrative: http://t.co/Bwq276vQ from @AlexSteffen 1 month ago
- Authorizing US military to indefinitely detain citizens w/o trial would be unconstitutional, right? http://t.co/cRKXkpfb #tellmeimdreaming 2 months ago
Incoming Memes
Tag Archives: public
Energy Efficiency and Economics at Walnut Mews
Our condo HOA had a meeting last fall, and somebody brought up selling the flat plate collectors on the roof that are part of our defunct solar thermal hot water system. The 750 gallon cylindrical storage tank rusted out in … Continue reading
Posted in journal
Tagged architecture, boiler, boulder, building, colorado, efficiency, energy, finance, heater, insulation, PACE, public, solar
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A dispatch from the future
A firsthand account of the floods in Queensland. Australia has been living in the (climatic) future for some time, facing the prospect of desalinization plants and admitting that most of their agriculture is not viable, given soil both saline and … Continue reading
German Passive House building robots
A short video from German home fabricator Hanse House. They do both stock and custom homes, but both are fabricated off-site. The video shows their production facility, and some of the techniques for putting together a building in pieces. It’s … Continue reading
Posted in journal
Tagged architecture, design, efficiency, energy, germany, hansehouse, manufacturing, off-site, passivhaus, prefab, public, robots, sustainability
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Boulder’s Passive Aggressive Building Standards
Usually when people say that “better is the enemy of good enough”, they’re pointing out that striving for perfection can be a distraction from just getting the job at hand done. There are other dynamics that involve these concepts too. … Continue reading
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Tagged architecture, boulder, climate, colorado, design, economics, efficiency, energy, passivhaus, policy, public
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The Yeti Homeland Project
I’m not sure what to make of our willingness to participate in the terraforming of the Earth. To explore it, I’ll consider an alternative history in which Antarctica was marginally habitable, and colonized a million years ago by woolly hominids … Continue reading
Posted in journal
Tagged antarctica, change, climate, conspiracy, energy, gas, greenhouse, ice, public, science, sustainability, yeti
5 Comments
A Thousand Splendid Power Plants
Xcel Energy’s Valmont East Terraforming Station in Boulder, CO. As a side effect, it powers all the lights you see in the background. James Watt’s industrial revolution was fired by coal, is fired by coal, and shall be fired by … Continue reading
For Richer or for Poorer: How Much is “Enough”?
I am wearing a sweater. It was made in Italy, from some of the fuzziest sheepies on the planet. New it cost more than $100; I know because it had the original tags on it when I bought it, never … Continue reading
Nils Gilman and Deviant Globalization: The Graying of the Markets
We watched a Long Now talk last night by Nils Gilman, entitled Deviant Globalization. I first ran across Gilman in a shorter talk from a couple of years ago about the global illicit economy — black markets. He describes deviant … Continue reading
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Tagged corporations, economics, finance, globalization, market, money, politics, public, reviews, stuff, talks, terrorism
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Empirical Investing
In my previous post I described the stock and bond markets by analogy with a casino, but you might reasonably question the validity of that analogy. Are market returns really as unpredictable as coin flips? The real payoff probability distributions … Continue reading
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Tagged economics, finance, investing, math, money, public, retirement
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An Introduction to Retirement Investing for Scientists
After spending a number of afternoons and evenings with friends and family over the last few months reviewing their retirement planning and investments, I’ve gone and done something a little bit crazy: I suggested to the GSC at Caltech that … Continue reading
Posted in journal
Tagged consumerism, economics, investing, money, personal, probability, public, retirement, statistics, stuff, vanguard
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