BC CLIMATE CHANGE
Saved by @Alex1Powell

What were the big energy and climate surprises of the Trump era? Four years ago, I described the most plausible arc for US climate policy under Trump (it was a boring, safe bet) but expected there'd be unexpected developments too. So how about a look back? https://t.co/1Valz4eTEg

 1) The pandemic was a huge surprise, obviously, though maybe it's too early to say how that will affect the energy/climate landscape. So far, it’s put a brake on U.S. fracking and induced Europe to pledge staggering sums on hydrogen. Maybe global CO2 emissions have peaked, idk.
2) The growth of battery storage on the US grid has, I think, been a surprise. This interview with @jburwen does a nice job of laying out the truly staggering changes in the storage landscape since 2015, driven by falling costs and some key policy changes. https://t.co/VtIFsTkOPj
3) The impact of the IPCC report on 1.5°C was surprising to me. I often wondered what'd happen once it became clear that the world was unlikely to stay below 2°C. Instead, the climate community and world leaders rallied around an even more aggressive, harder to hit target!
4) It was not obvious that Trump's retreat from climate action would spur states, cities, companies, other nations to make even more aggressive net zero pledges of their own. But that’s what happened—those pledges have really proliferated at a scale that’s been surprising to me.
5) How about the recent energy bill? I’d written a fair bit about how things like carbon capture and HFC cuts had big bipartisan support (e.g. https://t.co/VWiq4o2BO3) , but I wouldn't have predicted Congress to increase energy R&D as massively over the last 4 years as they did.
This thread was inspired by a nice @mattyglesias post on predictions — few people ever make specific predictions and then go back to see if they were right/wrong. More people probably should! (I didn’t, so my retrospective is obviously pretty squishy.) https://t.co/t6vzf3R1Df
Anyway, what were your big climate/energy surprises from the last four years?
This is a really good one. Will be interesting to see how this plays out as the pandemic recedes, whenever that might be: https://t.co/fP0LEPKaAO
Yeah this chart really underscores the energy R&D surprise. In 2017, plenty of folks thought Congress would probably reject Trump's deep proposed cuts to the Energy Department. Not many predicted that energy research spending would rise ~20% in four years: https://t.co/U3QinSibHw

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John Hayward
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@Doc_0
Just as no amount of flat temperature data would dissuade the climate cult, so no amount of flat (or even negative!) data on mask effectiveness will shake the faith of the Church of Covid. Beautiful Theories cannot be disproven by mere information.

The "Covid emergency" will never be over. It will mutate and seek out new missions when this particular virus threat abates, repurposing its funding and clinging to its power. They're already talking up the "next pandemic" and how we must forever remain at DEFCON 2 to be ready.

Masks are now a visible and tangible symbol of an entire agenda. Its champions will use every means possible to force you to wear them forever, including corporate pressure, their new favorite tool. Expect commercial mask requirements to linger, especially big corporations.

True believers, meanwhile, will wear their masks with grim determination and scowl ostentatiously at everyone who refuses to join them. It's a new virtue signal that will not go away any time soon. Mask scolding is a quick, easy, heady power rush.

All the while, studies will keep rolling out that masks don't help, and might even hurt. That was fairly common medical knowledge before the pandemic began, but it was aggressively suppressed when masks became a political symbol, and a totem for people desperate to DO SOMETHING.
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Robbie Watt
Robbie Watt
@Robbie_Watt
A brilliant talk that punctures current discourse on climate ambition in Scotland, setting out what's really needed, by @KevinClimate for @ScotClimateCA

📽️ https://t.co/i02FtSkJT8 📽️

Well worth watching. Otherwise, here's a summary thread 👇
1/10

Want scientific assessment of what Scotland should do to achieve Paris Agreement temperature targets? Look to carbon budgets. See that a failure to rapidly reduce emissions will eat up the carbon budget in just a few years, leaving impossible burdens for future generations. 2/10


Are UK emissions down 45% in 30 years? Not when including emissions from aviation & shipping, and imports & exports – then they are only down 10%. Over three decades, we have had reductions of less than 0.5% per year. 3/10


Scotland’s average per person consumption emissions are still double the global average. Scotland’s consumption emissions have not meaningfully reduced in the last 20 years… 4/10


Principles of global equity and justice mean that Scotland’s fair slice of the global carbon budget is just a few hundred million tonnes of CO2, which is less than ten years of Scotland’s emissions at current levels. 5/10
CLIMATE CHANGE
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Georgiegirl
Georgiegirl
@Georgie29009754
So What Really Went Down During The Flood In High River Alberta ? Was Something Else Going On ~ DUMB Question? The High River Flood 5 Years Ago - Heartland

What’s The Big Business In Town ~ High River Ab?

https://t.co/TiqRwudadP


Interesting ....And Then We Have That Fundraiser ~ Tom Jackson


Tom Has A Big Heart ♥️ Great Read ~ The People Connected https://t.co/T5Xf5yJM59


Stay With Me And Let’s See Where This Leads Us Q Patriots!
Look Here 👇 What’s #yyc & #yql ?
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CodesUcq
CodesUcq
@CodesUcq
1.
Symbolism Comms Thread: Humpback Whale

Let's start with an example.

01/27/2016 Dead humpback whale washes up on North Carolina coast

"a baby humpback between 1 and 2 years old"

"More biologist on scene. Something's about to
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IndiaSpend
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@IndiaSpend
#AirPollution, measured by annual PM2.5--particles finer than a human hair--reduced in bigger cities such as Delhi & Varanasi but increased in smaller cities such as Fatehabad & Moradabad, finds a @CSEINDIA analysis of 26 cities. Follow the thread for insights:

In many cities in the upper Indo-Gangetic plains, avg PM2.5 levels were above 2019 levels. #AirPollution in Fatehabad, in northern Haryana, deteriorated the most, with PM2.5 levels increasing 35% from 2019

The %age of PM2.5 in the coarser PM10--which determines air toxicity--was in the high 40s in Oct & remained so in Nov, averaging 55% in Amritsar, 48% in Chandigarh & 53% in Patna. It reached 64% in Amritsar, 69% in Chandigarh & 62% in Patna during #Diwali2020

#AirPollution reduced the most in Sirsa, 40km from Fatehabad, with a 44% lower avg PM2.5 2020 level vs 2019. This massive variation can’t be attributed to meteorology & has to do with local factors such as stubble burning, Avikal Somvanshi, CSE prog mgr, said in a press release

PM2.5 avg in Nov 2020 was 310% higher in Fatehabad, 104% in Agra and 57% in Kaithal, compared to November 2019
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IMPORTANCE, ADVANTAGES AND CHARACTERISTICS OF BHAGWAT PURAN

It was Ved Vyas who edited the eighteen thousand shlokas of Bhagwat. This book destroys all your sins. It has twelve parts which are like kalpvraksh.

In the first skandh, the importance of Vedvyas


and characters of Pandavas are described by the dialogues between Suutji and Shaunakji. Then there is the story of Parikshit.
Next there is a Brahm Narad dialogue describing the avtaar of Bhagwan. Then the characteristics of Puraan are mentioned.

It also discusses the evolution of universe.( https://t.co/2aK1AZSC79 )

Next is the portrayal of Vidur and his dialogue with Maitreyji. Then there is a mention of Creation of universe by Brahma and the preachings of Sankhya by Kapil Muni.


In the next section we find the portrayal of Sati, Dhruv, Pruthu, and the story of ancient King, Bahirshi.
In the next section we find the character of King Priyavrat and his sons, different types of loks in this universe, and description of Narak. ( https://t.co/gmDTkLktKS )


In the sixth part we find the portrayal of Ajaamil ( https://t.co/LdVSSNspa2 ), Daksh and the birth of Marudgans( https://t.co/tecNidVckj )

In the seventh section we find the story of Prahlad and the description of Varnashram dharma. This section is based on karma vaasna.
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Simon DeDeo
Simon DeDeo
@SimonDeDeo
"I lied about my basic beliefs in order to keep a prestigious job. Now that it will be zero-cost to me, I have a few things to say."


We know that elite institutions like the one Flier was in (partial) charge of rely on irrelevant status markers like private school education, whiteness, legacy, and ability to charm an old white guy at an interview.

Harvard's discriminatory policies are becoming increasingly well known, across the political spectrum (see, e.g., the recent lawsuit on discrimination against East Asian applications.)

It's refreshing to hear a senior administrator admits to personally opposing policies that attempt to remedy these basic flaws. These are flaws that harm his institution's ability to do cutting-edge research and to serve the public.

Harvard is being eclipsed by institutions that have different ideas about how to run a 21st Century institution. Stanford, for one; the UC system; the "public Ivys".
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Roger Grosse
Roger Grosse
@RogerGrosse
Important paper from Google on large batch optimization. They do impressively careful experiments measuring # iterations needed to achieve target validation error at various batch sizes. The main "surprise" is the lack of surprises. [thread]

https://t.co/7QIx5CFdfJ


The paper is a good example of lots of elements of good experimental design. They validate their metric by showing lots of variants give consistent results. They tune hyperparamters separately for each condition, check that optimum isn't at the endpoints, and measure sensitivity.

They have separate experiments where the hold fixed # iterations and # epochs, which (as they explain) measure very different things. They avoid confounds, such as batch norm's artificial dependence between batch size and regularization strength.

When the experiments are done carefully enough, the results are remarkably consistent between different datasets and architectures. Qualitatively, MNIST behaves just like ImageNet.

Importantly, they don't find any evidence for a "sharp/flat optima" effect whereby better optimization leads to worse final results. They have a good discussion of experimental artifacts/confounds in past papers where such effects were reported.
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Vibhu Vashisth
Vibhu Vashisth
@VIBHU_Tweet
RANI GAIDINLIU:THE LESSER KNOWN FREEDOM FIGHTER

Rani Gaidinliu joined the freedom struggle at 13 &was sentenced to life imprisonment at 16."We r free people—the White should not rule over us.”Thus calling out to her Zeliangrong tribesmen was the voice of 13yr-old Rani Gaidinliu.


She joined the freedom struggle in the present-day Northeast India. Today, her struggle is lost in history as most of her countrymen wouldn’t even have heard her name. B'coz our history textbooks tell us that only Mahatma Gandhi &Pandit Nehru got India its Independence.


At 16 yrs of age, this valiant girl was sentenced to life imprisonment for leading a movement to drive out the colonial rulers from Manipur and Nagaland. Nevertheless, she was released in 1947 after India’s independence and was given the title ,"Rani of Nagas".


EARLY LIFE AND HERAKA MOVEMENT

Gaidinliu belonged to the Rongmei clan of the Zeliangrong tribe in the Tamenglong district of western Manipur. Born on January 26, 1915, she was fifth among eight children.


Her native village was Nungkao, which is present day Tamenglong distt. Brought up in a specially backward region,she couldn't receive any formal education. However,this didn't stop her from joining the freedom struggle. At the age of 10 she came under the influence of her cousin.
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Jeet Heer
Jeet Heer
@HeerJeet
1. Now that Stan Lee is being eulogized far and wide, it's important to remember how marginal Stan Lee and his collaborators (Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko) were in the 1950s and 1960s.

2. Marvel Comics (before that Atlas) was just a cog in the machine of a bottom pulp publisher run by Martin Goodman, the husband of one of Lee's cousins. It was the lowest of the low in the publishing world.

3. Now Mario Puzo (not yet the author of the Godfather) shared offices with Stan Lee in the 1950s and 1960s. Puzo wrote for garrish men's adventure magazines and, like Lee, dreamed of writing a novel & breaking out. But Puzo looked down on Lee.

4. Flo Steinberg, 1960s secretary at Marvel: "They were always making jokes about us. They'd come in and giggle. mario Puzo would look in and would see us all working on his way to the office and say, 'Work faster, little elves. Christmas is coming.'"

5. When JFK was killed, the whole office of Magazine Management was stunned and quiet. Except Lee. He continued working. "He was still working on the comic books," Puzo said. "Like that was the most important thing in the world."
CULTURE