This is the 593rd edition of the Spotlight on Green News & Views (previously known as the Green Diary Rescue). Here is the March 16 edition. Inclusion of a story in the Spotlight does not necessarily indicate my agreement with or endorsement of it.
[Today’s Spotlight is so long because it covers the past two weeks, instead of just one.]
OUTSTANDING GREEN STORIES
ClimateDenierRoundup writes—Climate Denial Also Human Rights Denial, Mary Richardson Says, as Rep. Steve King Proves It: “Yesterday, Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland and UN High commissioner for human rights and special envoy for climate change, now chair of the Nelson Mandela-founded human rights group The Elders, accepted the Kew International Medal for her work on climate justice. In her acceptance speech, the Guardian reported, Robinson described how the recent climate strikes are just the latest example of how ‘we have entered a new reality, where fossil fuel companies have lost their legitimacy and social license to operate.’ It’s great to see someone so directly acknowledge that fossil fuels are incompatible with a healthy climate. And ‘healthy’ is used intentionally here—it is people’s wellbeing that’s at stake. As Robinson puts it, ‘climate change denial is not just ignorant, it is malign, it is evil, and it amounts to an attempt to deny human rights to some of the most vulnerable people on the planet’.”
pcf writes—Sometimes, we all need a nature break: “Last Sunday, as the ridiculous Barr report was dominating the news, it seemed like a good opportunity to spend some time in nature. After all, it’s now springtime, and here in Texas the wildflowers are spectacular. So, along with our 2 dogs, we set out to see what we could find along the roads south of the city. And what we found was something amazing. Fields of bluebonnets, acres and acres of wildflowers, and the most amazing fragrances floating on the breeze. It seemed that each turn in the road offered sights more amazing then the last. It was a respite to experience the bounty of nature continuing on it’s course, without a care for the shenanigans in DC. And, as the day wore on, such a gift to spend hours outside, with only the dogs and people I love. Too often, current political affairs overwhelm and feel crushing. In fact, since Nov., 2016, the call to despair has been strong. But it’s not really possible, standing among Mother Nature’s gifts, to focus on the negative. It seems disrespectful. And so, for that afternoon, life seemed, and indeed was, very, very good.”
Mokurai writes—Renewable Friday: Grid Storage: “Wind and solar are killing coal. Battery storage, for load balancing and time shifting, is just about to start killing gas. The same batteries in EVs will kill gasoline and diesel fuel. Load balancing for intermittent power sources, notably wind and solar, has raised new issues in power engineering design, but engineering schools have taught how to do it in general for more than a century. The problem of load balancing arose soon as electricity was offered to homes and factories and offices along with the new-fangled Swan (UK) and Edison (US) electric light bulbs. The amount of electricity produced had to exactly match the amount used. A slight variation in the brightness of the lights was tolerable, but not brownouts from low voltage, or blown filaments from high voltage. And so began the intricate dance of bringing generators online or taking them offline, and especially of trying to predict demand based on known usage according to the seasons, the days of the week and the time of day. The new issue with wind and solar is predicting supply, according to the weather as well as the seasons and time of day. One of the moldy old lies about Renewable Energy that I didn’t bother with last week was that we can’t get to 100% renewables with wind and solar being intermittent. But power engineers knew perfectly well decades ago how to integrate storage with renewables to create a system with fewer brownouts and blackouts than we get now.”
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