Michael Moore Offers Free Streaming of Movie Criticizing the Green Movement (youtube.com) 230
Nearly 16 years ago, Slashdot's original co-founder CmdrTaco posted that liberal film-maker Michael Moore had won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival for a documentary about the Bush administration -- and noted later that Moore approved downloads of the film through networks like BitTorrent.
But now the 66-year-old filmmaker is offering free streaming on his YouTube channel for a 2019 film he'd backed called "Planet of the Humans." The film "reveals the heavy environmental impact of renewable energy and the problems with solar energy, wind energy and biogas, among other forms of power," writes Newsweek. "Instead, the documentary argues that the only way to save the planet is to stop the growth of the human population and reduce its consumption."
The film features appearances by everyone from Elon Musk and Al Gore to Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Koch Brothers. (And it includes music from many artists including Radiohead and King Crimson.) In its description on YouTube, the film's director Jeff Gibbs argues that no amount of batteries will save us. "This urgent, must-see movie, a full-frontal assault on our sacred cows, is guaranteed to generate anger, debate, and, hopefully, a willingness to see our survival in a new way — before it's too late.
But now the 66-year-old filmmaker is offering free streaming on his YouTube channel for a 2019 film he'd backed called "Planet of the Humans." The film "reveals the heavy environmental impact of renewable energy and the problems with solar energy, wind energy and biogas, among other forms of power," writes Newsweek. "Instead, the documentary argues that the only way to save the planet is to stop the growth of the human population and reduce its consumption."
The film features appearances by everyone from Elon Musk and Al Gore to Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Koch Brothers. (And it includes music from many artists including Radiohead and King Crimson.) In its description on YouTube, the film's director Jeff Gibbs argues that no amount of batteries will save us. "This urgent, must-see movie, a full-frontal assault on our sacred cows, is guaranteed to generate anger, debate, and, hopefully, a willingness to see our survival in a new way — before it's too late.
The growth of population already stopped (Score:4, Insightful)
Despite what decades of sci-fi told us when take away the religious commandment to multiple, do sex ed, allow birth control and give people something to do besides raise babies and they stop breeding uncontrollably. Hell, under population is likely to be a problem.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:The growth of population already stopped (Score:5, Insightful)
I wouldn't count on Africa plateauing any time soon.
Because they're not improving or because they'll choose a different path than the rest of the human race? The reason I ask is that we have a lot of indicators saying that even in Africa the value is trending towards fewer, more educated and skilled children rather than bulk reproduction. The argument is typically based around children being an investment, but in the rich world it's not obvious that raising six high school drop-outs beats two college degrees. You have to put a lot more into it that you could have saved for your own retirement and if your kids are barely scraping by they're not really able to give you many kickbacks.
A good example is Asia, which used to be famous for its sweatshops. Maybe there's a few left, I won't say it's completely a thing of the past but a lot of those jobs have been automated away. And with that the foundation for mass breeding kids is gone - they're simply not economically valuable anymore. By all means, there's certainly those who want large families for other reasons but financially that's usually seen more as a sacrifice than an investment. There's very little doubt that those who only raise one or two kids raise the bar for what a normal level of expense is for a child, you could raise many kids but most families would have to severely curb spending per child.
Re:The growth of population already stopped (Score:5, Insightful)
Because we didn't stop coloonization, we just outsourced the more problematic parts.
Re: (Score:2)
No more sweatshops in Asia? You've got to be kidding.
Re:The growth of population already stopped (Score:5, Informative)
I wouldn't count on Africa plateauing any time soon.
People said the same about many other places, including India, Bangladesh, and Southern Europe.
In each case, the demographic dropoff not only occurred sooner than most predicted, but the decline was much bigger. Today Southern Europe has a lower birthrate than the North. Spain, Italy, and Greece are all at about 1.3 BPW. Bangladesh is at 2.0. India is at 2.2.
Things are changing fast in Africa. Child mortality is dropping. Literacy and urbanization are rising. All of these preceded a fall in birthrates elsewhere.
Re: (Score:2)
As long as we keep dumping weapons into the continent that problem should take care of itself.
Re:The growth of population already stopped (Score:5, Informative)
As long as we keep dumping weapons into the continent that problem should take care of itself.
Wrong. This is a commonly believed fallacy. It is the exact opposite of the truth.
War-torn countries tend to have the HIGHEST population growth.
Afghanistan has the highest birthrate in Asia.
Niger is in the midst of civil war and has the highest birthrate in the world. Somalia, Mali, and Congo are nearly as high.
List of countries by birth rate [wikipedia.org].
The solution to population growth is better education, better healthcare, higher literacy, more economic opportunities, urbanization, ... and peace.
Re: (Score:3)
Afghanistan has the highest birthrate in Asia.
To make up for the deathrate.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I see.
Send more weapons.
Re:The growth of population already stopped (Score:4, Informative)
Birthrate does not necessarily equate to population growth - you have to also take into account infant mortality rates. In high infant mortality rate areas, people tend to have more children to offset the loss.
Re: (Score:2)
The locusts will see to that.
Re: (Score:3)
Natural Selection will win in the end (Score:2)
Lower birth rates are just a short term effect of contraception and misplaced human values.
People that come from larger families tend to have larger families themselves, for reasons of both nature and nurture. People that have larger families have more children. So over time, most people come from larger families.
The meaning of life is not to "live well". The meaning of life is simply to pass on our genetic material. Living well just makes it more likely that our grandchildren will survive, which is why
Re:Natural Selection will win in the end (Score:5, Funny)
The meaning of life is not to "live well".
Pardon me if I don't engage in epistemological debates on Slashdot. This just isn't the proper venue for any discussion about "the meaning of life" that doesn't end with the number 42.
Re: (Score:3)
The meaning of life [wikipedia.org] is from Monty Python and 42 [wikiquote.org] is from Douglas Adams.
Surely he meant "The answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything", otherwise it's just nonsense like the time Picard, Skywalker and Dr. Who used the Stargate to foil the planned alliance between the Vorlons, the Peacekeepers and the Cylons.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Also of note, technology is another name for efficiency. Every generation it takes less energy (including human labor) to produce the same stuff, as long as technology progresses. But we simply consume more stuff, up till we reach the limits of what we're able to produce, and the environmental impact we're wiling to tolerate. Fewer people would just have us each consuming more energy each, especially once we're talking about mostly-robotic production.
Also of note, we're really not that far off from movin
Re: (Score:2)
I think we will make the problem a lot smaller with actually good batteries.
If you do something crazy like installing a huge battery on every city, you make solar and wind actually viable, you make selling excess of power production far easier, you end a LOT of bullshit involved in synchronizing the whole power grid that is needed on our current systems, and can even deal with natural disaster situations better, like if the power grid goes out, you can literally send a truck with a big battery on it's back
Re: (Score:3)
I think we will make the problem a lot smaller with actually good batteries.
Not even close.
and can even deal with natural disaster situations better, like if the power grid goes out, you can literally send a truck with a big battery on it's back and charge the city until the problem is solved.
You don't have a clue what you are talking about. Fuel oil has 100 times the energy density of a lithium ion battery.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
One KC-46 Pegasus can carry more energy in fuel oil than a Panamax class cargo ship full of batteries. Not only can the tanker plane carry more energy but it can get it there in a matter of hours so long as there is a runway. Once landed then it can offload quickly to tanker trucks and take off again. How long would it take to get those batt
Re: (Score:2)
If Musk gets his launch costs lower than Skylon, then the hurdle gets lower.
Costs per kilo to LEO:
Space Shuttle: 42,000
Falcon 9: 3,200
Skylon proposed: 1,300 (800 hoped for)
Starship estimated: 400
Starship changes everything. Especially since there will be hundreds of them, with 3 launches per day planned. Musk will send a greta number off to Mars, but it's enough launch capacity to bootstrap an orbital ring, for less than this year's bailouts.
Re: (Score:2)
How's about we first stop killing greater numbers of birds with coal pollution?
Re: (Score:2)
People will continue to do what's cheapest. Want something better? Make it cheapest.
Re: (Score:2)
Space based solar will not work (Score:3)
If Musk gets his launch costs lower than Skylon, then the hurdle gets lower.
Musk is quite tired of questions on space based solar as he knows it to not be practical. He speaks of this being impractical often and emphatically. For someone that leads companies in the space launch business and in the solar power business it would be in his best interest to promote space based power if it worked. It simply will not work and if people would only do the math on this then they would see why. Or, alternatively, people should seek out those that did the math, like Elon Musk did, and lis
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps we should get to work on space-based nuclear power, then ?
You mean like KRUSTY/Kilopower?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Seeing as how solar power's never going to work, anywhere.
Solar power is great for pocket calculators and communications satellites, so it works somewhere. Outside of that though it is most often far more expensive than other options and/or creates far greater environmental damage.
Re: (Score:2)
Solar power is also great when you're beyond the grid. It's not more expensive, it's cheaper than getting the grid extended, and it's cheaper and cleaner than the diesel fuel you'd be burning to keep the lights and refrigeration running. That's why a lot of remote farmers have replaced their gensets with PV + batteries.
I don't know where your experience with solar + batteries comes from, it's clear that you're talking from a theoretical perspective, and not a practical one. The staggering uptake of solar PV
Re: (Score:2)
So yes, your experience is largely theoretical. I've been living off-grid with PV + batteries for ~25 years, so I've got a lot of practical experience.
PV panels are about 1/3 the cost today compared to my last upgrade in 2009. The subsidy for that was direct. I paid about 50% of the bill, and my supplier billed the govt for the rest.
These days, domestic installation subsidies here are carbon credit certificates you can then sell on the market. With prices the way they are, I don't even need to bother with t
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps we should get to work on space-based nuclear power, then ?
Nuclear power is even more impractical. The bottleneck is heat rejection, you can only use radiative heat transfer in space. If your radiator is at 75C then it's going to emit just about 800 W/m^2. The best solar panels available today would be about this effective in space.
Re: (Score:2)
Area really isn't the important factor, though, is it? Weight seems to be the important thing for as long as we have to launch stuff with chemical rockets. The problem with fission is it doesn't scale down well. The reactor on one of the US attack subs (the SG8, which has had some details leak) was 2750 tons, and trying to build that in space from 28+ separate launches seems a bit unlikely, before even getting to the weight of the radiator and working fluid.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
98-99% of a solar power satellite can be made from materials available on the Moon and nearby asteroids. Solar flux in space is 4-10 times higher than places on Earth, because no atmosphere, night, or weather. So there is plenty of energy to convert raw materials from those places into satellite parts. I estimate the Starship will be able to fly for $20 million after the kinks are worked out. That's about $200/kg. A space solar array produces about 100W/kg, and if 2% has to come from Earth that's $4 in launch cost, or 4 cents a Watt. Ground-based solar farms cost about $1/Watt. So launch to space would be 4% of total cost
Umm... wow! I had no idea that getting stuff from the Moon and asteroids cost nothing! Somehow I thought we would have to build robot mining and refining plants that do not now even exist, even in plan form, and launch them from Earth - with their own propulsion systems and fuel - to those bodies to extract the materials, then convert them into the high tech components from which solar power satellites are actually made.
But clearly, because of all the people who no longer employ you (as you claim), your wor
Re:The growth of population already stopped (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The growth of population already stopped (Score:5, Insightful)
Constant growth is not necessary for capitalism but it is necessary to service the neverending debt loads taken on by those who pervert capitalism.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
I applaud this movie for uncovering the fraud and misrepresentation being pulled over the public's eyes in regard to the Green movement. BUT...
The movie ends with just one more of Moore's emotional tirades against "capitalism".
But capitalism isn't the problem. Fraud and misrepresentation are not part of capitalism. Hell... they're a lot more rampant under Socialism.
It's fraud, misrepresentation, greed, and corruption that are the problems. None of those are inherent to capita
Re: (Score:2)
Speaking of which... I applaud this movie for uncovering the fraud and misrepresentation being pulled over the public's eyes in regard to the Green movement. BUT... The movie ends with just one more of Moore's emotional tirades against "capitalism". But capitalism isn't the problem. Fraud and misrepresentation are not part of capitalism. Hell... they're a lot more rampant under Socialism. It's fraud, misrepresentation, greed, and corruption that are the problems. None of those are inherent to capitalism. Moore needs to shut the hell up about that, for several reasons. He's wrong, and therefore this is mis-education of youth. Further, spouting that BS as his "moral of the story" undercuts all the good parts he worked so hard to present.
I think what you meant was, Moore is just a douche that likes to make a name for himself by telling people what they want to hear. The truth isn't particularly important to him.
Re: (Score:2)
Constant growth is not necessary for capitalism
Higher resource consumption is not necessary for economic growth.
Pre-covid, America's economy was growing while energy consumption was falling.
Re: (Score:3)
roblem with this is that many of our most powerful people still believe in the religion of constant growth being necessary for capitalism to work.
Constant growth per capita requires only the advance of technology, which has been working well for centuries now. Seems OK to me.
Re: (Score:3)
It isn't. Capitalism is explicitly about ownership of industry being private, not consumer freedom. Thus a single company running a monopoly and so leaving you with a single choice isn't anti-capitalist, the state requiring you to buy health insurance isn't anti-capitalist, but the state producing products or providing services is. No
Re:The growth of population already stopped (Score:5, Informative)
Birth rates may be down in the first world, so to make up for it, most countries with low birth rates have immigration polices to make up the difference, to keep the overall population growing.
Economies and businesses are still pinned on the perpetual growth model, where not having continuous growth paired with an ideal inflation rate of 2% to 3% is seen as economically disastrous, and the whole financial system will collapse without it. For governments, this is one of the driving incentives to keep populations growing. One of our previous treasurers here in Australia actually said "have one for mom, one for dad and one for the country" in a bid to encourage more population growth.
This need for perpetual economic growth is the problem that has to be solved first.
Part of the problem is that without inflation, deflation really is an economic threat - if your dollar tomorrow is worth more than what it is today, there is a strong incentive to hoard it away instead of spending it, which in turn reduces the money supply (less money in circulation) and causes the remaining currency in circulation to increase in value even more compared to goods and services, until eventually most of it is stuck in bank accounts / stuffed under mattresses / buried in holes and not enabling people to buy and sell stuff.
You would also get even more aggregation of capital and currency into the hands of the few than there currently is.
I'm not an economist though so I don't know how you solve these problems.
Perhaps a decay factor on currency, so you don't want to hang on to it for too long? well that's what inflation is.
Some people think you can have a stable population but stil have perpetual growth through better technology, more value added services etc. but this too will eventually reach a limit, where it becomes impossible to keep increasing.
Re: The growth of population already stopped (Score:3)
Re: The growth of population already stopped (Score:2)
So what would be the incentive to invent or take the risk to create a company? Because the wealth cap has been tried, Nazi Germany, the USSR, Cuba, Venezuela, even proportional caps in France for example, the government keeps lowering that bar to collect more money.
Re: The growth of population already stopped (Score:5, Informative)
Influence and consumption.
The more you earn, the more you can spend on goods, experiences, and influence - it's only taxable wealth if you hold on to it.
The 90% top income tax bracket we used to have in the U.S. served a similar purpose - if you really wanted to you could continue to accumulate wealth at ten cents on the dollar, but it provided a huge incentive to spend that money on wages and infrastructure that would make it "disappear" before taxes were assessed. During that time the country enjoyed some of the fastest economic growth in history, and the rising tide actually did float (almost) all boats.
Re: (Score:3)
If the main motivation is money and personal wealth alone, then I don't think we can ever have a stable system.
We should change ourselves too, and find motivation in other things, become less competitive as a species and more collaborative.
Mankind developed up to be collaborative within his group of 30-50 people, and competitive between such groups.
Today, we are all connected, because our actions are all connected because the impact the whole world.
Therefore, we must, as a species, eithever evolve (fast) to
Re: (Score:2)
How about a wealth cap? Basically, just consider it the max score of the economic video game. You win, thanks for playing.
So we find the most productive and innovative people and make them stop.
If your goal is economic stagnation, that will work.
Re: (Score:3)
So we find the most productive and innovative people and make them stop.
If your goal is economic stagnation, that will work.
really?
https://readpassage.com/i-was-born-wealthy-and-know-rich-people-dont-work-harder-than-you
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2016-12-22/if-you-re-so-smart-why-aren-t-you-rich
https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/03/01/144958/if-youre-so-smart-why-arent-you-rich-turns-out-its-just-chance/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerkay/2015/02/02/if-youre-so-smart-why-arent-you-rich/#598fc22e49f3
tl;dr if you are rich, it is because of luck and not because you are productive and innovative
It's like a freight train (Score:2)
China had to lift their one child policy. They emptied out the rural areas.
The problem we have now isn't over population, it's taking care of the population we have while it's declining.
Re: (Score:2)
India's birthrate is around 4 something
According to Google, it is 2.2.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
I suspect it would become a problem if deflation began to rival the average return on investment, but not really before. But, ban parasitic high-speed trading that skims the profit off the market without contributing anything and the market would become far more profitable for everyone else.
Re: (Score:2)
Deflation and RoI go hand-in-hand, depending on the form of the payout. If your investment is cash in, cash out, then deflation only helps you assuming the investment matures properly and that the RoI doesn't collapse.
Let's say last year I grabbed a 2-year T-bill for about 2% (it would have been a touch higher, but let's use simple numbers). I invest $100,000 so the payout is $4000 over two years. If inflation had stayed at ~2% I would have broken even. If inflation drops and we slide into deflation, th
Re:The growth of population already stopped (Score:5, Interesting)
The difference is that technology marches on regardless of how long you hold on to the computer or phone you currently have. And as technology improves the value of those old computers and phones depreciates quickly. Holding off on buying a new computer means that the new computer you end up buying is better. But it cannot increase the value of the computer you already have.
Deflation on the other hand means that the money you currently have does appreciate in value. You're not delaying a purchase to get something better. You're holding on to an appreciating asset. Money is normally a medium of exchange, but under deflation it also becomes an investment.
Now you might think that these are just two sides of the same coin. The value of money and computers are just changing relative to one another. But computers are not a medium of exchange. People aren't trading computers for haircuts, but they are trading money for haircuts. Money is the unit of measure and everything is relative to it. If the value of your computer changes that just affects your computer. If the value of your money changes, that affects everything.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Deflation is still a crock. The only cathegory of things that might see an effect is replacement of luxury goods; for everything else there is very little choice to begin with. You cannot decide to buy food next year, or to pay your mortgage next year. You are not going to buy a next big TV to watch the olympics in the year after it was held either.
Inflation is a process that moves through society at an uneven speed. The people at the top first get money, and can buy goods and services at existing prices. A
Re: (Score:3)
You really need to think in broader terms. Essential purchases will continue to go ahead under deflation, and luxury purchases will be curtailed, but that's only a tiny part of the picture. Assume 3% deflation (relatively high but not crazy) and let's use the UK as an example which has monetary policy targetting 2% inflation. Borrowin
Re: (Score:2)
That effect does happen, but only when the tool in question (in this case, a computer) doesn't need to go any faster for the user to benefit from using it. Back in the mid 1990s, trying to use a computer from 1993 (let's say a 386dx, 486sx, or 486dx) would be painful when offered the chance of using, oh I don't know, a Pentium 100 instead. When I compare my 386dx40 (1993) to my P54c-100 (1995) the differences were night and day. I quadrupled RAM amount, increased clockspeed by 2.5x, and increased IPC by
Re: (Score:2)
"One of our previous treasurers here in Australia actually said "have one for mom, one for dad and one for the country" in a bid to encourage more population growth."
I think one of the big influences there is the advancing threat of an ageing population - less childbirth means the average age of the population goes up in the medium term, and that means greater health and pension costs (which is why we're so big on superannuation), and fewer people of working age paying taxes to contribute to those costs. Yo
'in every modern country' (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, that does a lot of good when most countries aren't.
It also does a lot of good where the standard of living in modern countries is built upon the cheap labor and resources extracted from developing countries.
Re: (Score:2)
I think you'll find that the standard of living that we in western/first world countries enjoy was established in our countries, but it's been shifted to the the cheap labour countries.
The USA, Australia, and other countries saw an enormous boost to our standards of living during the 50s and 60s, then the decline in manufacturing started in the 70s, then was progressively off-shored since then. We screwed ourselves with the never-ending chase of "cheaper, always cheaper" instead of swallowing up higher pric
Re: (Score:2)
It also does a lot of good where the standard of living in modern countries is built upon the cheap labor and resources extracted from developing countries.
To extract those resources these developing countries need to be, you know, developed.
If we are going to get cheap coal, bananas, and coffee from these nations then they need things like roads, power plants, and shipping ports. This needs people to operate them, so the local population is trained, and taught to read and write. Since us Westerners aren't too keen on seeing these workers walking around with their dongs swinging about they are clothed. Workers that are sick or injured don't make money so th
Re: (Score:2)
Re: The growth of population already stopped (Score:2)
Exactly the film is a doozy. The guys accelerated to Noam "doomsday clock" Chomsky state of senility
Re: The growth of population already stopped (Score:5, Informative)
Anyone who watches the film should know what they're getting into [filmsforaction.org]. Some excerpts:
"It is hugely disingenuous, and frankly misleading, to hide in the credits at the end of a movie the fact that two of the leading organizations being damned in the movie for their support of biomass as a “green” energy source (350.org and Sierra Club) do not, in fact, support biomass any more. Bill McKibben deserves an apology for being misrepresented in this film ..."
"A whole array of solar panels is described by one man as being barely enough to power a 1200-watt toaster. Another person says his panels are only 8% efficient, and to get the efficient ones would cost him “$1 million per square inch.” These and other claims in the film are false and hugely misleading. ... If you are able to stop the film and look closely at the array that “could barely power a toaster,” you will see that it consists of 60 solar panels, each rated at around 300 watts, for a total rating of 18.30 kW (18,300 watts). That’s a lot more than a toaster’s worth."
"The “only 8% efficient” array in Lansing, Michigan, may have consisted of very old and inefficient solar panels, but a modern solar farm of that size (approximately 250 panels, each rated at 300 watts) would generate at least twice as much electricity as the speaker was claiming, at a tiny fraction of the cost he was quoting" ($1 million per square inch)."
"It quotes an expert from Germany saying that the contribution of wind and other renewables to German electricity production is still small in comparison with coal and other fossil fuels. This is incorrect. What the movie showed to back up this claim was a pie chart showing, not German electricity sources, but German energy sources. This includes natural gas used for heating buildings, petroleum products used for transportation, and other industrial uses of energy. Wind may only account for a small percentage of Germany’s overall energy needs, but it produces nearly 30% of its electricity, and that is important."
"It is stated correctly in the movie that the Ivanpah concentrated solar power (CSP) plant in California requires a natural gas power source to start it up every morning. Other CSP plants do not, however. And newer CSP designs, like the one operating at Crescent Dunes solar plant in Nevada since 2009, use molten salt to store enough of the sun’s heat to keep the generators running all night long."
I'd add some of my own. They go heavily on the "if anything isn't perfect then it's wrong" argument. E.g. if one drop of oil goes into making something, then it's just as bad as a car that burns its own weight in oil into our breathing air every single year for its entire 2-decade lifespan. They talk about alumium, for example and how much energy goes into making it. They don't bother mentioning that literally 75% of all alumium ever made is still in use today, because of the high recycling rate on alumium, and that recycling it only takes 5-10% as much energy as making new alumium.
They also go heavy on "argument through incredulity" about intermittency of wind and solar, ignoring the three elephants in the room, A) that the grid has since its inception been dealing with the flipside of supply intermittency (eg, demand intermittency), and has been designed from day 1 for how to fix mismatches between supply and demand; B) that many countries already have grids with high wind and solar penetration, and C) that there's an entire library full of peer-reviewed research on the topic which says that it's not a problem, and goes into exhausting detail on why. The short of it (load following = what you actually want, not "baseload"):
* Intermittent + Peaking = Load following
* Intermittent + Storage = Load following
** Battery = Short term
Re: (Score:3)
Anyone who watches the film should know what they're getting into
It's a Michael Moore film. It's entertaining. If people actually cared about knowledge they would read.
Re: (Score:2)
"A whole array of solar panels is described by one man as being barely enough to power a 1200-watt toaster. Another person says his panels are only 8% efficient, and to get the efficient ones would cost him “$1 million per square inch.” These and other claims in the film are false and hugely misleading. ... If you are able to stop the film and look closely at the array that “could barely power a toaster,” you will see that it consists of 60 solar panels, each rated at around 300 watts, for a total rating of 18.30 kW (18,300 watts). That’s a lot more than a toaster’s worth."
I haven't watched the film yet but if the film skewers solar for only being 8% efficient then they are obviously talking about solar projects from at least 10 years ago. Current solar technology is about 20% efficient. I have a 6.5kW solar array on my house and for about 8 months out of the year I make more energy than I use, the excess goes back into the grid. So, yes, 18.3kW should be enough to run three houses, let alone a single toaster.
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps closer to 30 years old for those panels or they're some new emerging PV tech still being developed ( often they have lower % but also lower production cost or environmental cost). So far as crystalline PV, they've never been below about 12%, even back in the 1980's. Some real BS being poured in to that movie for sure.
Covid19 is trying as hard as it can (Score:4, Informative)
but it's just not deadly enough.
Re: (Score:3)
Limiting births results in a rapid increase in the average age of the population. Because people retire and need more health care support as they get older, they impose an increasing load on the younger people as the population declines...which is not a good thing. In places like Japan where the birth rate is VERY low - this is becoming a crisis. Way too many young people are having to move into jobs like nursing and geriatric medicine to support the slew in the average age slew.
COVID-19 kills (predom
Re: (Score:2)
He's just working on his international approval levels.
Does it offer proposed solutions? (Score:2)
Re:Does it offer proposed solutions? (Score:5, Insightful)
It has a few good points, but there's some questionable stuff in it as well. One thing that really stood out to me was that someone (it wasn't the main narrator) was complaining that because the Tesla gigafactory was hooked up to the grid it couldn't possibly be 100% renewable energy as Musk claimed. Does the guy not realize that there are laws requiring stuff to be hooked up the grid and that is's possibly that excess energy is being pushed onto the grid?
I think it's been pretty obvious to anyone paying attention that some of the green energy stuff has been as much a scam as you'd find anywhere, but this documentary doesn't really good a good job of separating the good from the bad. In some cases it makes a compelling argument that things like biomass power plants can be just as awful as coal (such as the one that was burning tires along with everything else), but it tries to use that to insinuate everything is just as awful when that isn't established.
Re: Does it offer proposed solutions? (Score:3)
It does a horrible job. It has all the patterns of denier crap: for instance, in the Vegas solar natgas installation, the only relevant question should be does it produce less CO2 and non CO2 pollutants on a per megawatt basis than the coal plant. But instead it dwells in the fact that it includes natgas at all. Or how much natgas it is using (for double production capacity). Hiding all meaningful metrics for carefully presented things that seem significant.
Re: (Score:2)
Nuclear *is* a non-starter in modern times. Now if we could go back in time, it could have been a good technology, but not anymore.
Nuclear is very expensive in startup costs, but cheap to run. But that's actually not that good. It means that when you build a nuclear powerplant, you're making a bet that you'll pay it off in some reasonable time. To do that, you need to run it as much as possible. This is a safe bet so long no other technology overtakes you, but if it does, you're screwed.
Currently solar can
Re:Does it offer proposed solutions? (Score:5, Informative)
That's true of large-scale gigawatt fission; however, small scale fission reactors across the megawatt range are getting increasingly appealing - some models are even being designed as replacements for the boilers in existing coal and nat-gas power plants. When you can get away with digging a relatively small underground vault at an existing power plant to protect a "nuclear battery" reactor that's mass-produced and delivered from the factory on demand, replaced as needed, and physically incapable of a meltdown without intentional sabotage... suddenly nuclear power starts looking far more appealing.
Reduce consumption. (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
misleading title (Score:2)
It actually does the opposite: it sides with ecofascist misanthropic part of the movement
So less is Moore? (Score:2)
Renewables can improve, fossil fuels can't (Score:2)
Of course renewables, with past and current technologies, have a footprint. The mining operations for cobalt and lithium are no joke. There's still a huge difference between them and fossil fuels and nuclear: the mined ingredients are extremely recyclable. You can't say that for petroleum which gets burned, leaving pollution and a market incentive for pumping and burning more.
Further, there's not much tweaking left to slightly improve gas, oil, or coal. The costs of supposed "clean coal" and carbon seq
Re: (Score:2)
1.) yes, fossil fuel - USE - has seen an increase in efficiency - it has now reached the top end of the scale which means only small increase steps are possible
- what is possible however is replacing old tech that uses fossil fuel by more efficient ones -> cost
- it is not really possible to further increase efficiency by considerable amounts
- CCS tech, will, at anytime decrease efficiency and therefore undo or minimize the gain
2.) "more than renewables" - rethoric trap - because you are comparing apples
Another Moore film... (Score:4, Insightful)
...guaranteed to generate anger...
Of course it is. That's the hallmark of Moore's shockumentaries. Start with a handful of cherry-picked facts, skip all the in-depth analysis and nuance that might complicate the solution, and end with a subtle-as-a-sledgehammer question of "why aren't you making this better already?".
Of course the "establishment" folks will be angered by this "debate". It trivializes several complex fields of expertise, then decides that there's no better option than genocide.
Seriously? (Score:3)
A fat guy telling us to slim down?
Re: (Score:2)
I could raise a Ford Excursion to that.
I watched it (Score:5, Interesting)
The subject matter is my career. There is 80% truth told here, but the Paretto Principle dictates the 20% lies will do more damage.
The mining cost is gigantic, and it's good to flag it. But the reuse, repair, and secondary market is ignored. He tries to dodge the OEM class, but winds up cricketting the "no repair no reuse" mantra
Re:I watched it (Score:4, Insightful)
but winds up cricketting the "no repair no reuse" mantra
Yeah, the main reason that we don't have a huge network for recycling things like EV batteries is that they haven't been on the market long enough for significant amounts to be leaving the market to make said infrastructure reasonable.
Especially when EV batteries are projected to last something like 3 times as long as the lead-acid batteries which are basically 100% recycled out of traditional ICE vehicles.
Once a "good fraction" of cars have been EV for like the past 10 years, then the infrastructure for recycling all those batteries will make simple sense, and should be around. At some point, we'll probably pull the batteries out of cars that had been sitting for a while and recycle those.
Re: (Score:2)
A Tesla car is likely to last 600,000 miles - and with next-gen batteries, for a million miles. An average gasoline car needs engine and/or transmission work that typically costs more than the car is worth at between 150,000 and 200,000 miles.
So unless you can show that a Tesla needs between 3 and 8 times as much resources to make as a regular car - this is a poor argument.
And that's even ignoring the CO2 savings over it's life. A gasoline engine is typically only 25% efficient - and the oil refinery on
Or we could do nuclear energy (Score:2)
Green New Deal is no more (Score:3, Insightful)
This movie will put an end to the Green New Deal. This shows just how implausible it is to run the US economy on wind and solar power. I'm sure people will claim that new technologies, technologies not discussed in the film, will make wind and solar power viable in the future. That's nice, but what are we to do until then? As it is now it takes a lot of coal to produce the silicon, aluminum, and cement for solar PV panels and windmills. This need for coal in these industrial processes will not change until these claimed future advancements come. Assuming that they come at all.
The movie will leave many people with a sense of hopelessness, that there are no solutions to the problem of environmental damage from energy. There are solutions, solutions that were barely mentioned in the film. There's nuclear, geothermal, and hydro.
Why didn't the film talk about nuclear power? I thought nuclear power was the worst thing for the environment? That it is too expensive, and far too dangerous, to consider. I believe that the film makers chose to not mention nuclear power because if they did then it would get people to look closer. Perhaps because by comparison nuclear power looks to have a very light touch on the environment.
I hear people talk about how bad hydro power is on the environment. Do you know what is also bad for the environment? Floods. Droughts. Both of which can be managed with dams. The same kinds of dams needed for producing power and allowing for cheap and safe movement of goods by rivers and canals.
This film shows the Green New Deal is not viable. People will now have to look for other solutions. The future of our energy supply will have to include nuclear and hydro. If we don't have nuclear and hydro in our future then we will face far more environmental damage than that caused by coal and natural gas.
I really hope he's wrong. (Score:2)
If he's right, then solving global warming will be orders of magnitude more difficult than expected, and we're doomed to Blade Runner-level environmental destruction, starting with oceanic mass extinction in the next decade or so. Everything I know about renewable power says he's wrong but I'll watch the movie and see.
Re: (Score:2)
Update: I've watched the movie and, good news, he's wrong. This movie is everything that's wrong with environmentalist culture in a nutshell. It doesn't like green energy because:
- It harms environmentalism's bad old sacred cows: It chops down trees, digs mines, spoils environments, uses conflict minerals, takes a shit-ton of energy to build and even sometimes incorporates fossil materials. Doesn't matter the relative or absolute scale of these activities or what the energy return is on them or how sustaina
We're probably in line for a die-back (Score:2)
Frankly the way most people are acting it really makes me wonder if we're even worth saving anyway.
Too many reasons... (Score:3)
There's hundreds of causes let's pick out a few...
Lower birth rates come as capitalism is perverted and first world takes on more debt. People want more stuff, they need to earn more, they spend more time getting educated and time "building their pile" and they have less time for children.
The push of radical feminism of the 60s/70s has led to more women being able to choose the lifestyle they want not the same as their mothers or grandmothers. Stating the obvious men can't have babies, so women have to take time out from careers to at the very least give birth even if they go back to their careers, quite a few may never want to go back.
Better educaiton leads to better opportunities for luxury goods, that costs money, some borrow money to pay for those others have the money, either way they uses resources.
Obvious one, better medical healthcare has seen that the largest numbers in the population demographics are now 16-30 year olds and the 60-80 year olds. There are more people either in education, menidal jobs or working their way up the ladder OR more retired and not working. This is shrinking the working population, the government debts increase, more taxes, more debts for the lifestyles we've been told we must have.
Technology has brought a plethora or aspirational bullshit advertising right into every aspect of our lives, TV and magazines are dying but the web is a quagmire of advertising, social media shows us the lifestyles of blonde haired, super beings with bronzed tans living in bliss on tropical islands and exotic trips, we all want that and we'll pay anything to try to get it 'cos it's better than the shitty boring life most of us will have to lead.
Less people dying at the age of "three score and ten" and living well into their 90s means that the investments in pensions fueled by the working age people ( 25-65 of which there are fewer ) is shrinking, more debt for old people who weren't expected by insurance companies to live past 80 at most.
Fewer working age people having children in mid-20s, now putting it off until their late 30s early 40s. Nothing odd about a woman giving birth in her mid-40s, she's had a good education, good diet, exercised well all her life giving birth at 40 is not considered as dangerous as it was 30-40 years ago when mid-20s was the right age. The only families now still having children are generally low-income families who don't have higher education, don't have good diets and therefore are repeating the patterns of their own parents, having kids around mid-20s. Affluent, well educated families will have maybe one child and ensure they're given all the benefits they need to have a good career.
These are just a few things off my head, there are thousands more reasons.
I came from a normal working class family, my father never made much money and higher education wasn't really on the cards, we simply couldn't afford it. My side of the family I have just 3 cousins, no siblings, I have one child and one of my cousins had one child "by accident", the other two have no intention of having kids at all and they're into their early 50s now. My wife came from a family of 8 siblings, they've all had good careers and worked hard and at most they've had 2 children to just two of her siblings, the rest is one or no children. A tiny, tiny little personal sample of the value of better education, job opportunities ( I make good money as an IT tech ) and better healthcare. I don't eat incredibly well but there's a good chance I'll survive into my 70s even if I'm not in perfect shape, baring cancers and accidents obviously.
Simply stating that the world's problems are just the result of one or two things is a fallacy, there are hundreds if not thousands of reasons why we as a species are struggling but if we want to make a good start, stop people praying at the "alter of celebrity" and remove social media, dump that aspirational BS and people might start believe in their own self-worth and stop buying shit they don't need and can't afford. It's not a solution but it's a start!
How science works (Score:3)
Continuous refinement of scientific models is a good thing, it is how we move from possible outcomes of early outcomes, to the probable outcome of recent past and near absolute certainty of current climate models.
Scientific probability is far more certain than the wilful ignorance of the anti-environmentalists unfounded opinions.
doc is passable, let's talk about real problems (Score:3, Informative)
I watched the doc 2/3 through. I read top comments here
Clearly, this is one of the typical modern documentaries when the creators pushes one-line song to the brim to feel up the space of 1-2 hours required to be taken "seriously". The doc is unbalanced methodologically, it focuses too much on some events and meandering, as if it tries not to waste hours of throwaway footage of ordinary people who mumble and stutter if they asked to present their thoughts on the spot.
Despite carefully chosen title "planet of the humans" that seems to be...uh... humanistic, tree-huggers - people who care more about "nature" than humans are regularly given a word, like this insane Midwest lady that calls Lake Superior "sacred". These are just the same old cultural Marxists that try to push for an authocratic state that will confine humans, limit humans to the mere basics of pre-industrial era. You do not have to say it, but that's the hints the talkers present here and there throughout the 2/3 of the doc I have been watching.
What are the real problems?
Real problems of humanity are always economical. Economy is the cornerstone the three turtles and the whale of all that we see around, all of our material life - not the technology, not the science. It's economy. Without establishing economic order based on free market, science will be the science of Lysenko and "cybernetics is pseudo-science", the technology will neglect consumers - we, former Soviet citizens, all had that plenty in Soviet Union.
That's why all the real problems of humanity are always economical.
Current economic problem is that consumption based economy is facing its inevitable end (it won't happen soon, but it is going to happen) for a simple reason: once people achieve certain level of material prosperity they tend to have less children in modern West-influenced world.
Less people - less consumption. The demographic pyramid shifts to old - less consumption. Less consumption - stagnation of economy. Overproduction is not new, it has been here a prominent feature of too successful capitalism for more than 100 years now. And we are starting to overproduce like crazy.
Desktop industry stagnated long time ago (thanks, gamers, by the way, I love you for still simulating that sector. You are utter idiots, of course, but you are very useful idiots - characteristic feature of consumption economy are useful consumer idiots), cell phone industry is entering that stage.
That's the problem - consumption is getting reduced - lesser and lesser idiots are born because lesser and lesser humans are born.
The danger is economic stagnation (like in Japan - endless period of stagnation for dozens of years) and more potential for sudden severe economic crises that could lead to what Lenin called "revolutionary situation", which in turn can lead to more castros, stalins, ruling parts of the planet here and there.
There are plenty of other economic problems - some of them are touched upon in this documentary - non-renewable resources, for example. Resources are limited.
Non-economic problems, like climate change or pandemics are only important because they affect directly or indirectly the basis of our society - economic growth, economic ladder, free market, etc.
Points missed (Score:3)
Moore once more presents an argument - supply and demand, but only cherry picks the parts that he likes. He argues to reduce demand while forgetting and in the middle of the law of supply and demand. Moore argues for population reduction, however he is making the argument to the wrong audience. Civilized countries that are likely to watch his movie have already reduced their birth rates. Third world countries where there is widespread civil unrest or corruption have high birth rates. Are you seriously going to knock on the door to Afghanistan, China or India and tell them to stop having babies? The result is he completely missed the mark and wasted energy making a film about wasting energy.
To his credit about population demand - one of the biggest flaws in the modern green movement is putting their resources where where it makes the least impact - modern suburbia. Getting one more mpg out of a Toyota Prius is pretty much meaningless in the grand scheme of things compared to getting one less baby out of a mother. Think of this way, China had a one child policy for years and argued that they deserved environmental credit for the policy. China estimates their policy prevented 300 million people from being born: http://greeneconomics.blogspot... [blogspot.com]
Michael Moore also has some valid points in the film, especially with regards to greenwashing which the modern green movement is rife with. Unfortunately he ignores the elephant in the room - nuclear energy. Nuclear energy is by the greenest energy that we have and there is no science based reason not to use it. We should standardize on one design like they did in France for scalability and efficiency reasons and implement Nuclear for wide scale usage. We should then pair that with simplified federal licenses and regulation that is science based instead of FUD based. That would give people the massive carbon reduction that they want while being clean, sustainable actually green instead of greenwashing.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, like David Suzuki who said how we must live (hint : we must stop consuming that much...) but he have 4 F***** BIG houses/properties in Canada. His footprint is probably equivalent of thousands of "normal" citizen together. And we can talk about Al Gore also...
Re: (Score:2)
Old joke:
Two planets meet.
Planet 1: You look horrible, what's wrong?
Planet 2: I got homo sapiens.
Planet 1: Oh, don't worry. It will pass.
Re: (Score:2)
Given his age, it would be reasonable to add ... and his family.
Re: (Score:3)
Gates was never motivated by money. Read his "Open letter to hobbyists" he's always been motivated by being an asshole.