Planet of the humans - a close look at environmentalism

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ontheway1 said:
This was generally my reaction to Michael Moore,. Until I saw this movie.
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OK, well, at least with Michael Moore you know you have to take his premises for 3rd party confirmation before you just take him at face value (not that this is ever a bad idea).

Here is an excerpt from a review by a website with knowledge of the photovoltaic industry:
It’s difficult to take the film seriously on any topic when it botches the solar portion so thoroughly. Although the film was released in 2020, the solar industry it examines, whether through incompetence or venality, is from somewhere back in 2009.… The filmmakers don’t offer a plan to alter our energy course, but they certainly make population a theme.

They quote Heiger in the film, “There are too many human beings using too much, too fast.” Nina Jablonski called population growth “the herd of elephants in the room.” Another interviewed anthropologist spoke of population crashes.

They ask, “Can a single species that’s come to dominate the entire planet be smart enough to voluntarily limit its own presence? Removed from the debate is the only thing that might save us: getting a grip on our out-of-control human presence and consumption. Why is this not the issue? Because that would be bad for profits, bad for business.”

The film is long on criticism but offers no solution other than a vague non-capitalist pastoral alternative along with a bleak, harrowing final scene.


We could stop having sex altogether and in a year we’d still have over 7 billion people who need energy. It is not possible to feed everyone without it. If you want to talk “harrowing future,” act like keeping up the most efficient power grid possible isn’t important as long as people do what they are not going to do anyway, which is to stop reproducing at even a replacement level.

In other words, his criticisms are not well-informed and his alternative premise is absurd. Should married people consider limiting family size for reasons other than their own ability to provide for them? Possibly. China shows what happens when you try to enforce population control, though. That does not work, either. We really do have to figure out how to make energy more cleanly, how to establish more frugal habits for using it, and how to do what we need to do with less of it.

That is not what Michael Moore is saying, though. He’s criticizing a business that requires manufacturing capacity for having business allies and for not having arrived at an ideal technological state. Sorry, but even his films are “big business” with a bottom line.
 
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I watched the movie yesterday. It did add details to what many see as the irrational claims and aims of the renewable movement that we are supposed to just swallow less be called a denier.

Andrew Bolt’s comments 🙂

 
Meh. If one is already taking semi-extreme measures to guard creation, what’s the point of watching some docu-drama that laments the past, demonizes the present and frets over the future?

Caring for creation, fine. Good. Expected. Making it a demi-god? Not so much.

Oh, and it’s ‘popular media’. Not popular with me.
 
Click here to read the National Review’s take on Planet of the Humans. Fair warning: The take is not a positive one.
 
Some of his information is years, even decades out of date, at least from my limited knowledge of green energy.
Not a credible documentary, imo.
 
ontheway1 said:
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ImQuiet:
Some of his information is years, even decades out of date, at least from my limited knowledge of green energy.
Not a credible documentary, imo.
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LOL. (imo)
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Can you give me a reason as to why his data on the efficiency of solar panels is close to 20 years out of date? Seems like a pretty important thing to get right.
 
ontheway1 said:
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ImQuiet:
efficiency of solar panels is close to 20 years out of date
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Where and how did you acquire this knowledge? Is this fact or your opinion (based on “reliable” sources like msnbc)?
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Science Olympiad, for the Wind Power event, back in HS. I based my binder on research done by NASA, so I imagine it’s fairly accurate. Those numbers were dated even then, and that was 5 years ago!
Although if you don’t believe me, there’s a Vox article linked in this very thread which backs me up.

 
I get it. The left hates this film. The problem is that Moore is more left than most of the lefties. So what does that say about the arguments put forth by leftist outlets like the Vox?
Michael Moore’s movie is all about the green movement being in bed with big oil and corporate America. And he shows how they do it.
The left is attacking Michale Moore for being in bed with big oil and corporate America.
I find this hillarious. Don’t you?
 
ontheway1 said:
I get it. The left hates this film. The problem is that Moore is more left than most of the lefties. So what does that say about the arguments put forth by leftist outlets like the Vox?
Michael Moore’s movie is all about the green movement being in bed with big oil and corporate America. And he shows how they do it.
The left is attacking Michale Moore for being in bed with big oil and corporate America.
I find this hillarious. Don’t you?
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I find it hilarious that you’re putting the entire spectrum of the political left under one label. Don’t you?
 
Here’s how I explained it in another forum: the optimistic view about solar energy is that improved solar panels have an energy return of 30 (i.e., for every unit of energy needed to manufacture a panel, it could produce 30 units from light). The problem is that that’s nameplate power, i.e., what a source can produce given ideal conditions.

In the real world, though, there are no such conditions. Depending on one’s distance from the equator, panels actually produce only around two to four hours’ worth of electricity a day, which leads to an energy return of 6, not 30. Include the energy cost of wires, charge controllers, batteries, and inverters, and the return drops to 3. Include wear-and-tear, dust, and rodents, and the return drops further.

Similar can be seen in things like wind energy, where many components cannot be recycled, or biofuels, where the energy return is slightly above 1. Meanwhile, the world economy needs returns at 15 or better, and esp. better as more people worldwide join the middle class and consume more.

As Charles Hall points out in his studies, all renewable sources of energy have low returns even with technological improvements because their components, like many manufactured goods, are heavily reliant on fossil fuels for mining (around 70 pct of machinery), manufacturing (electricity supplemented by diesel power plants), and shipping (bunker oil and marine diesel for supply chains extending thousands of km and involving dozens of countries). Even mechanized agriculture involves the same.

These and other realities were raised by the documentary, for which points in negative reviews consist of the ff.: the points about solar and wind are outdated, the feature is hurtful to environmentalists and even the left, and new technologies are in the pipeline.
 
I just read a brief synopsis, but it reminds of something I read years ago about how everything we are doing now actually has little impact and that the only real way to address environmental concerns would be through draconian measures you’d never get a democratic society to except. The difference seems to be the author I read thought these extreme measures were a bad thing, but this documentary may promotes them as good.
 
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