Planet of the humans: A reheated mess of lazy, old myths
This is the the first in a series on Planet of the Humans. The other posts are here:
Post 2 – on where we’re at in 2020, with climate and clean tech
Post 3 – on the ‘bigger picture’ of the film, and why the film is so harmful
The film ‘Planet of the Humans’ opens with the director, Jeff Gibbs, operating a fossil-fuelled combustion engine vehicle, on a road full of combustion engine vehicles, followed up with some footage taken from the International Space Station (fossil fuelled rockets put that in space).
This is not a documentary about the environmental damage that had to occur for Gibbs to go on his drive – it is not mentioned. Nor is it about the harm from fossil fuels.
It is about why renewable energy is bad. I used to work in the renewable energy industry – first, with wind farms and later in research, government agencies and advocacy groups. So it was hard to resist both watching and reviewing this one, considering it launched on ‘Earth Day’, and it has been widely promoted.
Not only is the documentary bad, it’s old bad. Please join me on this journey back in time. It won’t be fun, but I’m glad you’re here with me.
All of the stuff in this documentary is ancient
It is clear that Gibbs has been trying to make this documentary for a long, long time.
“He is currently working on a film about the state of the planet and the fate of humanity”, read his bio, in 2012. It is clear, digging into these early posts, that he very passionately loathes the burning of trees to generate energy – a wildly controversial and genuinely problematic thing, for sure.
But as early as 2010, Gibbs was posting HuffPost blogs extending that into wind and solar, too.
This one, for instance, repeats a bog-standard list of anti-wind and anti-solar memes that, back in 2010, were fashionable among climate deniers. The ‘wind and solar are too intermittent’ meme, for instance, is a great hallmark of that era. “How much variable energy can a grid accept? Around ten percent, twenty percent tops it appears”, he wrote back then. I’d include examples of grids with higher percentages operating without a hitch today, but it feels almost cruel.
The extreme oldness of this documentary stands out. In one instance, he tours a solar farm in Lansing, Michigan, in which a bemused official states that a large farm can only power ten homes in a year.
It is the Cedar Street Solar Array, a 150 kilowatt 824 (that’s small) panel farm in downtown Lansing. Guess when that bad boy was built? 2008. Twelve years ago – an absolute eternity, in solar development years.
As PV Magazine writes, “The film reports on a solar installation in Michigan with PV panels rated at “just under 8 percent” conversion efficiency. It’s difficult to identify the brand of panel in the film (Abound?) — but that efficiency is from another solar era”. Efficiency gains in solar have been so rapid that by leaving the dates off his footage he is very actively deceiving the audience. The site generates 64-64 MWh a year, according to the owner – a more recent installation in the same area generates around 436. The footage really is from another era. It’s like doing a documentary on the uselessness of mobile phones but only examining the Motorola Ultrasleek.
Later, they visit the Solar Energy Generating System (SEGS) solar farm, only to feign sadness and shock when they discover it’s been removed, leaving a dusty field of sand. In the desert. “Then Ozzie and I discovered that the giant solar arrays had been razed to the ground”, he moans. “It suddenly dawned on me what we were looking at. A solar dead zone”.
Which is a weird one, because the site they were visiting, SEGS-1 and SEGS-2 site in Daggett, was midway through being replaced with upgraded solar PV, which generates significantly more electricity, is cheaper, has no site emissions and has no water usage, compared to the 1984 technology.
Sunray 2 and 3 are now generating electricity – significantly more than the old site. 97,631 megawatt hours in 2018. You could run a toaster for 9,288 years, by my calculations. There is a 650 megawatt expansion planned – to be built over existing human-impacted land.
In a red flag for any veteran of the wind farm debate, Gibbs then uses footage of a collection of old wind turbines – rusted, gross and horrible – to illustrate the short life and lasting damage of these huge spiky bastards.
If you’re familiar with the network of anti-wind farm groups, you’ll recognise that they’re old machines from South Point on Big Island, Hawaii. They were removed in 2012, by the owner of the facility. All that is left now are small hexagonal pads on farmland used by the cattle that roam it:
“Why for most of my life, have I fallen for the illusion that green energy would save us?” It sounds like he’s saying this in 2020, but he is saying it well in the past. Gibbs was posting anti-wind memes roughly 23 full epidemics ago.
Nothing in this is new. With regards to its wind and solar parts, it smacks of 2010s era climate change denial, in which renewables were seen by detractors as expensive, wasteful, low-capacity, heavily corporatised and destined to fail. Things are different in 2020, but the director isn’t. He doesn’t need to be.
Even the ideas are old
Putting aside the sites they visit and the footage they use, there are some ideas in this documentary that are well worn and highly recognisable memes from the 2009 – 2013 climate denial wonder years.
You can tell when someone’s knowledge of this has formed solely from doing a Google search for “solar panels bad don’t like”, and it really shows in this film.
Early on in the documentary, Gibbs has an exchange with an anti-wind farm protester about coal-fired power:
Protester: You need to have a fossil fuel power plant backing it up and idling 100% of the time, because if you cycle up or cycle down as the demand on the wind comes through, you actually generate a bigger carbon footprint if you ran it straight”
Gibbs: Do you ever go to things where they just go “Oh, that’s not true, it doesn’t matter we’re going to have a smart grid”?
Protester: Doesn’t make any difference, they still gotta– they’re using it. You gotta have it idling. Because, let’s just say the wind stopped right now. Just stopped for an hour. You’ve got to have that power
This extremely silly concept – that coal-fired power stations run at 100% capacity all the time regardless of how much power they output – is so old it hurts my brain. In fact, it was big in 2012, when I came across it in Australian media. It’s wrong. If the power plant generates less electricity, it uses less coal. Gibbs is putting this eight-year-old meme in the microwave and serving it up in for his audience.
Later, he presents the work of a researcher named Richard York, who claims that the addition of renewable energy has no impact on fossil fuel output. I can’t access the paper, which is from – you guessed it – 2012, but the premise is mind-numbingly silly.
Electric grids match supply and demand at all times. Energy generated from one new source has to replace energy generated from an existing source – the grid would collapse, if it didn’t. That is why South Australia’s grid looks like this:
And Denmark looks like this:
Things start to get into proper, outright, anti-vax / climate denier grade misinformation when producer Ozzie Zehner comes in.
“One of the most dangerous things right now is the illusion that alternative technologies like solar and wind are somehow different from fossil fuels”, he tells Gibbs. “You use more fossil fuels to do this than you’re getting benefit from it. You would have been better off just burning fossil fuels in the first place, instead of playing pretend” .
It is, in fact, possible to scientifically examine the emissions associated with making, transporting and erecting renewable energy, and compare it to the emissions saved by using it. There are just so many studies on this, but here’s the Breakthrough Institute’s Zeke Hausfather:
It’s important to be really clear about this: Zehner’s remarks in this film are toxic misinformation, on par with the worst climate change deniers. No matter which way you look at it, there is no chance that these projects lead to a net increase in emissions.
Gibbs attends a solar conference – again in some non-specific year – and is told by a bunch of obviously well-meaning and slightly baffled young renewable energy experts (literally the only young, diverse people in the film) that battery storage is a way of managing intermittency.
“When I looked up how much battery storage there is, it was less than one-tenth of one percent of what’s needed”, he says, presenting a pie chart (augh) of IEA data with a minuscule slice from batteries. But grid scale of batteries doesn’t need massive capacities to be functionally useful for managing the integration of renewables – so it’s a deeply misleading chart.
In checking the information, I can’t find International Energy Agency data for “51 giga BTU” of battery capacity anywhere on their site. 546,000,000 “Giga BTUs” is 546,000,000,000,000 BTUs. which is 160,032,600,000,000 watt hours, or around 160,000 terawatt hours.
This is ‘primary energy supply’ – how much energy was generated, but includes the quantity of energy wasted through inefficiency. If you only look at global annual electricity – the field in which batteries play – it’s around 20,000 TWh (they use a similar deception for Germany’s biomass share). So it’s an extra dodgy comparison.
Gibbs has created a self-sustaining argument here. If someone builds a battery storage installation, he can visit the site and monotone sadly about its presence. If someone decides to not build that battery, he can look up the statistics and monotone sadly about the lack of battery capacity.
In an earlier scene, at the launch of the General Motors Chevy Volt (2010, of course), he complains that the cars are being charged by the coal-sodden electric grid of that state – another great example of the infinite loop Gibbs has created for himself, considering his reaction if more wind and solar were built to make that electricity cleaner.
There’s gas, too. They repeatedly claim that shutting down coal plants results in replacement with gas. And in the US, gas has indeed expanded to fill a decent proportion of the gap left by coal:
The UK has a similar thing too, where both renewables and gas are squeezing out coal. But scroll back up to Denmark, above, where a combination of interconnection with other countries, massive wind build-out and coal and gas shutdown has cleaned up the grid. Or Germany, where gas output remains unchanged as coal plants shut down.
There is nothing inherent to renewable energy that makes gas compulsory. All that matter is how the transition is managed. For a long time, gas was sold as a transition fuel, including by organisations like the Breakthrough Institute. But it is becoming increasingly clear that while it might ease change, it isn’t compulsory, and the urgency of decarbonisation has increased.
This film is a long, slow painful monument to laziness
It feels so weird writing about these things again. I feel like I’ve been transported back in time ten years, back to my early days in the renewable energy industry. We’d combat these viral memes every single day.
The industry looks different now. Many wind companies have learnt that insensitive, clumsy development leads to backlash that is harmful for everyone, so they’ve started to clean up their act. Solar developers are figuring out more sustainable pathways than the boom and bust of government subsidies. The human rights issues around mining and materials are becoming more prominent. Renewable companies are taking waste removal seriously.
And then this documentary comes along – a dumb old bull in the china shop that is 2020’s hard-earned climate action environment. There’s a lot of fragile, hard-fought stuff to wreck in there, and Gibbs goes absolutely wild. He’s bulldozing a lot of hard work.
Gibbs obviously has a long-running gripe with biomass, which has a whole range of serious issues associated with it. Though I don’t know the industry well, I suspect many of his gripes there are valid.
But the outright lies about wind and solar are serious and extremely harmful. Wind and solar aren’t just technological tools with enormous potential for decarbonisation. They also have massive potential to be owned by communities, deployed at small scales with minimal environmental harm, and removed with far less impact on where they were than large power stations like coal and gas. They do incredible things to electricity bills, they decentralise power (literally and figuratively), and with more work they can be scaled up to properly replace fossil fuels.
Gibbs isn’t interested in this stuff. No one in 2012 was. He’s armed with a list of dot points from climate denier blog Watts Up With That, and he’s ready to go. The key harm of this documentary is that it does what so many communicators struggle, but fail to do – it presents ideas from one ideological cluster into the world of another. It is very actively and successfully escaping the ‘bubble’, and selling far-right, climate-denier myths from nearly a decade ago to left-wing environmentalists in the 2020s, and going by much of the comments, it seems to be doing well. Gibbs is transcending both time and ideological space, held aloft by a system that provides prominence to mediocrity.
It’s tough to look past how popular this has been. The film’s been boosted because many interviews feature the popular and well-known producer Michael Moore, including on Stephen Colbert’s Late Show. Ludicrously, it received four stars (four. fucking. stars.) in the Guardian, a media outlet normally careful to not boost climate-denier grade misinformation.
All this prominence despite the fact that the film failed to find a distributor, and was dumped onto Youtube instead. “We’ve talked to sales agents. We believe that there will be a tremendous amount of interest in this film… This is going to get distributed. It will be seen”, Moore insisted last year.
It is clear that Gibbs’ starting point was a loathing of biomass, which then turned into a loathing of every single decarbonisation technology (except nuclear power, which isn’t mentioned in the film).
But he ends up at population control – a cruel, evil and racist ideology that you can see coming right from the start of the film. I wish I had the emotional energy to go into it, but I have spent it all. Earther’s Brian Kahn writes:
“There’s a reason that Breitbart and other conservative voices aligned with climate denial and fossil fuel companies have taken a shine to the film. It’s because it ignores the solution of holding power to account and sounds like a racist dog whistle”
The film features a parade of – solely – white Americans, mostly male, insisting the planet has to reduce its population. There is no information provided on which people in the world need to stop fucking, but we can take a guess, based on the demographics of the people doing the asking.
This documentary – particularly the parts on energy, renewables and industry- is extremely bad. It is Jeff Gibb’s 2010 Huffington Post blog drawn out in one hour and forty minutes, which feels like like a decade. I knew it would be lazy, but the magnitude of laziness here is incredible. It it mostly old. It is obviously re-hashing some specific gripes, like its attacks on the nicest guy in the whole of climate activism, Bill McKibben. I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface and I’m like 2,000 words in. I don’t have the energy to glue together every single fragile thing that this bulldozer has destroyed.
It is the ultimate expression of lazy privilege to make something so void of effort, but so widely viewed and promoted. Criticism will be rebuffed as Not Being Able To Handle The Truth, or the classic We Just Wanted To Start A Discussion. It is still a package of old, dead ideas reheated by someone who knew that he did not need to put any effort into updating his thinking. There was no chance he would be talking to climate activists, talking to young people, talking to experts, talking to community advocates, talking to people from other countries, or really talking to anyone who wasn’t already mostly in his vicinity.
It should have faded off into the pit of Youtube’s unwatched terabytes, but it didn’t, because mediocrity is celebrated, boosted and broadcast if it comes from someone who looks and sounds the right way. That is a serious vulnerability. The hard work of climate and energy advocates, as they grapple with challenges like corporate malfeasance, the impacts of mining and bad development can be shattered by the monotone arrogance of a single person inflicted with the Dunning Kruger effect.
Somber music.
Edit note #1 – 28/04/2020 – A kind commenter pointed out I’d snapped the wrong sub-section of SEGS in the satellite imagery (which explains why I couldn’t find the entrance gate on street view!
Turns out they visited SEGS 1, which stopped generating in ~2015, and was replaced by a facility know as Sunray 2. It is a newer, single-axis tracking PV module system, built in 2015-2016, and has generated 74 gigawatt hours since energisation. They must have visited in the short time between this replacement process. The upgrade meant no emissions on site, lower land use, no water for cooling and a lower environmental impact.
Edit note #2 – 29/04/2020 – I didn’t have time to dig into it, but the site Gibbs visit at the start of the doc is the ‘Kingdom Community Wind Farm’ in Vermont. Gibbs compares the construction of the wind farm to ‘mountain top coal’.
Here’s the completed wind farm (Gibbs’ footage is shot in fog, so there’s no perspective or scale):
And here’s what mountaintop mining looks like:
This image of a surface mine in Boone County, West Virginia from 2009.
Based on data from NASA’s Landsat 5 satellite, this natural-color (photo-like) image document the Hobet mine in 2009″ source
They are still paying the local community on a yearly basis. “As part of the Good Neighbor Fund, payments will be made to the following towns: Eden will receive $77,420, Albany $69,885, Craftsbury $33,851, and Westfield and Irasburg each will receive $10,000. The Good Neighbor Fund provides benefits to the five towns within five miles of the project not including the host town, Lowell, which receives significant tax revenue from the project. The payments are determined based on generation”, GMP said in 2016. As of 2019, they’re running regular tours of the site for locals.
“While some are critical of the turbines, Couture, who runs Couture’s Maple Shop and Bed and Breakfast in Westfield, told GMP that he can see the turbines outside his kitchen window, “and I love it. “I love that they are generating local power. My guests at the B&B love watching the turbines – I’ve never heard a negative comment””, wrote a local paper, in 2014. So much for mountaintop mining.
Edit note #3 – 01/05/2020 – Correcting my own edit! A kind reader pointed out Green Mountain Power was sold a few years back, so have removed a sentence that stated it was still owned locally.
Read the next post here
A word on photovoltaic solar panels. They have come a VERY long way. Here is my own case history. Firstly, I replaced the oil-fired boiler and wood-burning stove with a 12 kW Panasonic air-to-water heat pump three years ago. This distributes water for our existing cast-iron rads at 65C, not the more common 55C. But as a consequence, our electricity bills have doubled to 5000 euro (US$5400) a year.
We live in the south of France, latitude 43 deg, 300 days of sun a year. Plenty of roof space on outbuildings. Here’s how we are going off-grid, and what it costs.
I am now in the process of installing some 29 kW (peak output) of solar panels (82 panels, 350 W each,). Price per 2 square metre, 18% efficient panel – 100 euro, including all shipping and taxes. 6000 Ah of battery storage. One group of panels is tilted at 50 deg south on frames to maximise midwinter sun. Our average consumption is 2.5 kW, with the worst peaks, midwinter evening, of perhaps 8 kW. So the overkill is to ensure that even at night in December there will be enough stored electricity to cover our needs. If necessary we can re-connect to the grid automatically if the batteries run low. But we do not plan to sell any excess back to the grid, because in that case the national utility company Électricité de France would have required the installation to have been done by a professional certified company, at three times the price of my DIY.
The point of all this is that my investment cost under 20,000 euro, so it will pay for its way in 4 years. Compare our private 29 kW array with the ludicrously out-of-date commercial Cedar Street array quoted in the film. The solar future is here already.
Thanks for this article. I’ve circulated it. I totally do not understand why Michael Moore and his associates made this film. All they have achieved is to make themselves look ridiculous, and possibly set themselves up for lawsuit after lawsuit. If anyone can advise me I’d like to hear your opinions.
Really sorry I lost you after about half the article , but I dont think it changes my view that you totally missed the point . One of the big point of the film is exactly that the so called renewables are pending on fossile to be MADE and they dont last long as you so clearly have pointed out . Tell me how to make more and better solar and wind turbines WITOUT the use of fossile ? And if it has to be done every 5-10 years or so , what’s the point ?
How? Using renewable energy.
Where do you get the 5-10 years from? The life expectancy of a wind turbine as quoted in the movie was 20 years. In reality, most wind turbines will still do the job after 25 years. New wind turbines must be able to perform for a minimum of 25 years, so it’s likely they’ll end up lasting even longer than that. I know that’s still not a one-stop solution, but it’s also not as bleak as you may think.
Lifespan and energy in vs out over time are all very large and this is driving the price of wind and solar lower than existing power plants. Solar panels have guaranteed output warranties of 20+ years and much longer real world life expectancy. Wind energy has moved so far beyond this film. Biofuels and mineral extraction are challenging but this is nothing compared to our fossil fueled present lives. Look around the air is cleaner today and that with just taking automobiles off the road for a few days, and electric cars
are taking over just like cellphones vs landlines.
Cleaner air in Bejing perhaps…. where’s your evidence that the air is ‘cleaner’ anywhere in NA??
To Bruce Williams Photography, who left a comment in response to this one and whom I cannot respond to directly for some reason (only known to creators of this unwieldy blog platform). Posting here in the hopes that they will see this.
This site took me a whole 10 seconds to find in Google: https://aqicn.org/city/usa/newyork/
Knock yourself out. Compare year-on-year readings between April 2020 and April 2019 (or 2018) to see the difference.
That was addressed in the article.
And solar panels last 20 years to 80% efficiency. And you’d be nuts to throw them out when they reach 80% efficiency.
Olav, indeed you did lose him. The solar panels last 40+ years and have a carbon payback of about a year. This is vastly superior to fossil fuel generation. The film is very damaging to the truth.
Solar panels and wind farms last minimum 25 to 30 years, not 5 to 10 (actually, that’s the guaranteed lifespan. They are likely to last longer). The faster we transition to 100% renewable energy, the faster renewables will be made with 100% renewable energy. So if you don’t want dirty fossil fuels to be used in the production of clean energy, then you need to support the mass build out of reneweables. Should be obvious.
Unfortunately you are incorrect. A very good friend of mine invested heavily in three wind turbines, erected in the windiest place in NA. They made 28% of their rated capacity (annualized over 20 years), and the wind turbine industry states that it’s currently around 30%. My friend never made a dime, and after 20 years the three wind turbines were dismantled and sent to landfill (no place to recycle them) because of ongoing maintenance failures. No warranty and guarantee as you suggest. You call that efficient?
No, Solar and wind facilities last far longer than 5 to 10 years. Where did you obtain this 5 to 10 year lifetime figure?
Also, while some CO2 is emitted in the processes used to make renewable energy components (notably steel and cement), their usage represents minuscule CO2 emisisons over the renewable facilities lifetime compares to burning of coal by the tons every second in a typical coal burning power plant that the renewables are replacing. See the difference? And, of course, coal burning power plants require lots of steel and concrete, and they have a limited lifetime too.
Point #1:
Fossil fuels require fossil fuels to be made too…
Yet renewables once made are highly efficient, and ya know, renewable.
Point #2:
They don’t last long…
Most solar panels have a 20 year, 80% face plate value warranty these days.
Wind lasts even longer.
Yes, their 90 day warranty does you a whole lot of good!
Some of us environmentalists have known for years that “green” energy is a scam. You wrote a long article with virtually no information, just accusations and insults. It’s typical internet writing: quibble over a detail, claim superiority with snarky language, make yourself feel better and bask in the upvotes from other people who want any straw to grasp that helps them maintain their fantasy. In one part you say that all the claims are 10 years old, and now that it’s 2020, suddenly everything is different! You say the book is from 2012, therefore it is outdated. That’s the level of your argument. I happen to study environmental science and there is no such thing as green energy. The worst enemies of environmentalism are leftists. You don’t even realize how pro-corporation you are anymore. Anyone can write a blog post. Anything to keep the delusion going just a few more years.
This comment denies global warming. It is not a scam. It is green because it does not produce CO2. It’s quite simple. Why accuse someone of being delusional just for this. The energy it has taken for people to finally accept that global warming is genuinely a danger to the existence of humans on the planet, and you have a go at someone saying “green energy is a scam,” and just write it off. It has taken 20 years and a lot of subsidy but today solar energy is the cheapest form of energy by a long way. There are moves being examined – the addition of carbon nanotubes to convert frequencies, multijunction perovskite layers – which threaten to make it even more successful by a factor of 2 or 4 times. The only thing that calling it a scam does is stop the US from engaging with solar and wind energy which does it a disservice as a country, leaving it behind in a technology race.
It’s delusional because renewables simply aren’t up to the task at hand. For a real solution I suggest you check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOeoXvRQPiI
It has been shown time and time again, that renewables, if just given the amount of money spent on fossil fuel exploration, would power the entire world. People that suggest they have not made a dent, do not realize how much has been spent on fossil fuels, and how much is spent subsidizing fossil fuels each year.
The extent to which global warming occurs, is due to CO2, or is dangerous is still being debated, whether you recognize it or not. In any case, Solar energy is a joke (provided you can do basic calculations). Wind energy is even more of a joke. Hydro-electric and nuclear power are our hope. Educate yourself to reality. Batteries aren’t there, the land mass for wind farms and solar panels isn’t there and the physics indicate that solar will NEVER be up to the task.
There is plenty of land mass for both solar and wind, and I have done the calculations as have countless others and we can quote it to you, there are international services like the EIA and GWEC which count wind positions and solar and show that there is about 35 times what we need. Hydro is a great idea, but permitting takes ten years. I am a fan of it myself, but there have been so many dam disasters (in terms of what happens to fish and fauna) that no-one wants to build them any more. In the US it takes ten to 12 years to get a permit. China has built 22,000 dams in the last 20 years, so they agree with you. Nuclear just isn’t feasible – it takes 10 years to build one that is safe, and you get Fukishima if you are not safe. And you can’t get a company to build them because they take so long and cost so much. Even France which has 50 nuclear plants is closing them down and not building any more. Japan and Taiwan are forgetting them. Only the Brits were dumb enough to agree to build one and it is £2 billion over budget and 2 years late and we are only 3 years into it. China is building some. We are waiting for SMRs, but too little too late… Stop doping the home philosophy act and giving opinions, and stop tell people to do the math, We all have. Do it yourself.
https://youtu.be/UWahKIG4BE4
Aberuther – Your comment is typical in that you have no information on why fossil fuels are the way of the future. Aside from that, Denmark alone, information cited in the article, runs on 47% wind power.
Try to write with solutions in mind, rather than making yourself feel good about your black and white thinking.
Energy density. Fossil fuels have it, wind and solar don’t.
Denmark isn’t particularly useful as a model for, say, the U.S. For a balanced view (as opposed to the present article), consult Robert Rapier in Forbes Magazine:
“Denmark is a very small country surrounded by the North Sea. It has a population that is smaller than the Houston metropolitan area. If it was a U.S. state it would rank 42nd in land area, between West Virginia and Maryland. Because of its small size and proximity to the North Sea, the entire country has abundant wind resources.”
“Also key to Denmark’s wind industry, the country has the ability to export wind power production to neighboring countries like Sweden, Norway, and Germany. That means that they can often produce at more than 100% of domestic demand, and because their demand is relatively small they can simply export that excess power to other countries with much greater demand. What that means is that they can — on average — generate a high percentage of their electricity from wind power. For 2015, that was the equivalent of 42% of the country’s electricity consumption for the year, which was the highest ever percentage by a country for a single year.”
“A large country like the U.S. doesn’t have that same level of flexibility. Weather patterns vary across the country such that the wind is never consistently blowing everywhere, and there are lots of areas where the wind resources are insufficient to support a wind farm. Further, U.S. power demand is much greater than that of our neighbors Mexico and Canada, so if we did get into a situation like Denmark where at times we produced >130% of our domestic demand, there is no way Mexico and Canada could absorb our excess.”
“So, while the Danes are to be commended on their achievement, it is in fact the U.S. that is producing more power from wind energy than any other country. The overall amount of U.S. wind power deployed has been a far bigger driver of the global wind industry than Denmark’s high percentage of power from wind.”
“I am sure there are things that the U.S. can learn from Denmark, but we can’t learn to be a very small country surrounded by water. Nor can we learn to have neighbors that can take a substantial fraction of our excess capacity. But we have clearly learned how to rapidly ramp up wind power production.”
Now at least that’s a sensible comment. But China has 200 GW of wind, and has yet to begin offshore really, and it has 210 GW of solar. That’s not a small country. You have plenty of people in the Us who know how and where to do this, the biggest issue is waiting for the transmission lines to cross the US, so that your areas of wind and your metropolitan areas can be lined up, but there is a plan and it will work. US work in NY, New Jersey, California and others will see wind go offshore in the US. The biggest problem is the Jones Act, as the US has no vessels ready to build out offshore wind.
To stubbornlyrational,
Energy density (or power production density) is not at all as important a metric as it first sounds.
For fixed installations like power plants, the main concern is not taking up land that could be used e.g. for living or agriculture. In practice, nobody wants to live immediately next to a power plant or eat produce raised in the area in the path of the fumes, so the practical density of those installations is far, far smaller than the blunt “installed power divided by total fenced area” calculation makes it sound.
Contrary to this, renewable power plants and singular installations can be built on roofs, lakes, in deserts, mountains, the sea, and other places where people don’t live and where it does not affect the environment very much. In fact, this can actually be used to affect it positively, as e.g. massive arrays of wind turbines located in the direct paths of strong winds extract some of that destructive energy and slow the wind down a little, and solar arrays raised above ground create shade which helps moisture retention in arid areas, which helps combat desertification, and also can potentially be used to combat shallow waters evaporation which is a rising concern in the US in particular. Needless to say, ground underneath turbines or PV panels does not get contaminated with any pollutants since they don’t produce any during operation.
For vehicles, energy density is more relevant, but the relevance is limited by the maximum weight requirement and minimum distance it has to travel between refueling/recharging. This is where it gets more interesting. Right now there are two standout options: batteries and hydrogen. Hydrogen is widely viewed as an inferior take on the electric energy storage because it requires an extra conversion step, bringing efficiency down. However, it is still useful in terms of both mass and density.
Trains already work on electricity, very efficiently so. As an example, over the past 50 years, Japan has drastically reduced domestic air traveling in favor of a high-speed, high-throughput, safe, quiet, comfortable electric rail service, and it’s been met with great success. I rode one of those trains, and even the economy class cabin there was supremely comfortable and an all-around superb experience. I’m told the Chinese and Shanghaian HSR and the recent French HSR trains are also quite excellent, though I haven’t tried them yet. But overall it is a solved problem in every electrified area.
Electrification of ground vehicles has been demonstrated in the past decade to be very much a solvable problem as well, and the superior mobility offered by the electric drive train will no doubt become instrumental in the future of conventional transportation, especially when it comes to safety and automation. Range anxiety is still a thing, but with more vehicles reaching 500+ km of continuous range and charging stations becoming more powerful and ubiquitous, this can be done away with in due time. The worst problems in this emerging industry are all of the teething sort. Non-battery EVs will still have a role in specialty vehicles (e.g. rescue, expedition, all that), but hydrogen can fill that niche just as well.
Sea travel, especially low-speed freight, can similarly be served by either hydrogen or designing the shape of a vehicle in a way that enables covering over 80% of the surface with a continuous sheet of hydrophobic PV film. Not mounted as is normally seen on roofs, but integrated into the structure. Sea travel is extremely power-efficient (at the expense of being much slower than ground- or air-based), and vehicles are often large enough to be able to put that surface area to good use. Smaller boats can use hydrogen cartridges as the fuel. Overall this appears to be completely solvable in the next few decades.
Air travel is much trickier to solve, but there already are electric planes, and as specific energy of batteries keeps increasing, we will eventually reach a tipping point where it will be possible to transport people and cargo long distances. Some of the estimates made earlier this decade put the minimum requirement around 300 kWh/kg at the pack level (we are not quite there yet). This will enable a good portion of the intracontinental travel scenarios, with 400+ potentially able to serve intercontinental flights. Again, hydrogen may prove useful here as well. Manned military planes will likely rely on chemical fuel for the time being, but the unmanned ones are already switching to electric motors because they produce less heat and noise.
Finally, space travel will still use chemical fuel based on hydrocarbons for the foreseeable time, with the caveat that it is only used to escape the gravity wells of planets. Interplanetary or insterstellar travel that does not involve landing or taking off a massive celestial body does not, in principle, require that.
All this taken into account, energy density does not seem like a very convincing argument in favor of fossil fuels.
“Some of us environmentalists have known for years that “green” energy is a scam.”
Vague
“You wrote a long article with virtually no information, just accusations and insults.”
Beggars belief
“It’s typical internet writing: quibble over a detail, claim superiority with snarky language, make yourself feel better and bask in the upvotes from other people who want any straw to grasp that helps them maintain their fantasy.”
Unintentionally ironic
“In one part you say that all the claims are 10 years old, and now that it’s 2020, suddenly everything is different! You say the book is from 2012, therefore it is outdated. That’s the level of your argument.”
Calling out a current documentary for using dated information that does not reflect the current state of things is a reasonable ‘level’ of argument
“I happen to study environmental science and there is no such thing as green energy.”
Appeal to authority, meaningless assertion
“The worst enemies of environmentalism are leftists.”
The worst enemies of environmentalism are those who spread misinformation in the name of their ideology. Neither the ‘left’ nor the ‘right’ has a monopoly on that, and simple-minded people who have allowed themselves to become polarized by either left or right wing propaganda are the stooges who will ensure that corporations, be they ‘green’ or ‘dirty’, give their shareholders good returns. I’m not saying that’s you, I’m just saying environmentalists have worse enemies that ‘leftists.’
@jprentic I love your response. 🙂
Repeating the words from another post isnt much of a reply. The movie isnt the whole truth – nothing ever is. But to reject everything it says is not wise. Its a starting point for a conversation, a polemic. But instead of conversation, we have lots of fearful defence and insults and not much else. Try to let go of your beliefs and look more carefully. It is a bit bleeding obvious that the answer is behaviour change by humans, but how can we change if we stubbornly resist even discussing the possible faults in our thinking?
‘The fault , dear Brutus, lies in ourselves, not in the stars’. Apologies to Shakespeare…
Hmmm, maybe you skipped over the referenced data the author shows in this post to rebut the unsubstantiated and misleading claims made in the movie?
Ah, but everything IS different. Now green energy is cheaper to install AND return their energy cost in months rather than years. It took time to get there as the tech was not mature in 2012. Sure we use fossil, nuclear or green energy to make the next generation. Hopefully ‘soon’ we can remove fossil from that list but until we get there we need all. It saddens me to see Michael Moore put his good name on Planet if the humans. I used to have much respect for his work. Less so now that lies and outright deception is used to make head lines. Tell the truth and stop fueling the denier campaign.
He actually did provide information, like how back when the facts for the documentary came out solar panels were much less efficient than now. Or how they all have 20 year warranty for the most part.
Or how some of that parts on the video flat out lied like showing a solar array getting a retrofit and claiming it was a wasteland.
And yes… The claims made in the documentary are painfully outdated.
You have never studied anything, let alone renewable energy.
Please enlighten us with all of your published literature on how bad renewable energy is
That’s what I thought as I read it. Lots of “how dare he” going on. I’ve been hearing of our global collapse for 40 years and it’s still at the shrill tone it was back then. There’s been little to no accountability for the damage the renewable’s own damage they have done to the climate, environment and species. Had I heard more contrition from them, I may be in a fairer frame of mind to believe their claims. Sadly, there has been none! Gibb is right when he says it is our out of control consumption along with no true efforts to control the over population of our planet. When he vocalizes this truth, almost without missing a beat, he’s called racist and misogynistic, the calling card of the far left of our society. Why is it that those on the far left feel they have all the rights to vocalize their concerns or beliefs, yet allow no others who disagree with them, that same right? It’s what’s disgusted me to the point of this once liberal minded individual to look upon them with great disdain. And I do not trust them when they trot out blogs such as this. Make your own film – showing both sides- as you disparage Moore and Gibb for not doing, if you feel you can show all us sceptics of this. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in life, it’s NOTHING comes free, even “renewables”. So prove us wrong by showing us the TRUE pictures. BTW…don’t forget to show those young children mining cobalt etc to make your products. Don’t just show the pretty pictures. WE want the FULL picture too.
I used to be an admirer of Michael Moore. No longer.
You accuse Zehner of trotting out old arguments, and then accuse him of the ancient canard that worrying about population size is racist. Even though the film is focussed almost entirely on energy/overpopulation in the USA, where most people are *white*. There is not a single part of the film that suggests one thing about “there are too many people of colour on the planet”. Apparently, population size is the one thing that the environmental movement is not allowed to worry about, because you are immediately accused of being racist by people who have no argument to support their preferred position of uncontrolled population growth.
People are consuming too much, and this consumption is multiplied by the number of people on the planet. It goes without saying that people in developed countries (who are often WHITE) are the worst offenders in this regard. And the more of us there are, the greater the population multiplier for consumption. **There is no racism there.**
If you actually care about conserving nature and resources for future generations, you have to acknowledge that there are too many people on the planet for long-term sustainability. We are currently living above our long-term carrying capacity by subsidizing our lifestyle (and population) with non-renewable resources that we should be saving for future generations. And switching over to wind and solar only slightly alleviates the problem. For example, USGS estimates that there is 360 years of lithium left under current consumption rates. Your irresponsible strategy of uncontrolled population growth coupled with increased need for energy storage will greatly exacerbate the rate of lithium consumption. Then what? We hust keep playing the Ponzi scheme of hoping that undefined future technology can solve the problems that we continue to create for ourselves. Eventually we’re going to be wrong, and new technology will not be able to help us.
Literally every single environmental problem is exacerbated and made harder to resolve by a larger population. So keep on trotting out the canard that worrying about population size is racist. You instantly lose credibility with thinking people when you do.
Human populations will eventually be reduced, either by our own humane conscious methods to do so, or by the crueler methods of nature when we hit the resource limits. Your choice.
Bravo!!
Actually what the author is doing is forcing you to come to one of two conclusions one of which is irredeemably racist and the other is ineffectual and probably bigoted. In other words you either support population control in developing countries where most of the population growth is happening or you support population control in developed countries where it’s already occurring on its own. Either you are a racist for advocating population control in non-white regions or a fool and a bigot for telling white people who effectively already are practicing population control, to have even less kids.
You can’t really win that argument. Not that that will deter you. Virtually all of the predictions extreme Malthusian nuts like yourself made in the mid to late 20th century were wrong. Why will this time be any different?
Playing the racism card is cheap. You seem much more interested in ‘winning’ the argument than in finding the real solutions.
Because the fundamental argument of Malthus is correct. This should be obvious even to a child.
An exponentially growing population cannot be sustained on a planet with finite resources. Even a stable population–if sufficiently large–cannot be sustained on a planet with finite resources. It does not matter if the rate of resource extraction increases geometrically (like Malthus predicted), or exponentially. Eventually, the law of declining returns will set in. On a finite planet, resource extraction cannot continue unabated forever.
So if we have unabated population growth, that means we’re constantly relying on undefined future technology to bail us out. Does that sound like responsible planning to you? That is literally how a Ponzi scheme works: you need future investors to pay off current clients. If future investors don’t show up, the whole scheme collapses.
Your other argument is preposterous nonsense. Rules that limit offspring production and resource consumption that apply to everyone in every country **regardless of race** clearly cannot be racist.
Again, your post is just more nonsense with someone who has no legitimate argument to support their plan for uncontrolled population growth, and no way of describing how 9-11 billion people can exist indefinitely on a world with finite resources, many of which we know are going to run out in a few centuries.
Thanks! A Ponzi scheme indeed. It doesnt matter that the information is a few years old, it still makes good sense. Technology got us into this mess, and so we think it will get us out of it. Thats like asking the US military to bomb a town back to what it was before it was bombed to destruction.
Human behaviour change is the answer, and it happens to be the most difficult task imaginable.
Any thoughts about exploitation of children working in the cobalt mines of the DRC. That’s quite a high price to pay for batteries, wouldn’t you agree?
Replace “batteries” with “oil” and now have the same discussion with yourself when you discover that cobalt is and has been used to remove sulphur in the oil refining process for decades.
For the record, the cobalt used in the refining process is almost completely recovered and is essentially used over and over again. If we continue to increase our use of petroleum based fuels we will continue to use cobalt, as you said, possibly from an exploitative supply chain.
The cobalt in batteries is completely recyclable, it can be (and is) recovered from end of life batteries and reused… to make new batteries.
Work needs to be done on the supply chain for both uses of cobalt, but it doesn’t mean we just stop doing things to try and progress from where we are now.
Yes! And for batteries that wont last for more than 5-8 years and then what?
I had never heard anyone complain about Biomass fuel plants until seeing this documentary.
I think the message that we cannot rely on technology to stop the issue of environmental destruction, and that instead we may need to reduce our energy use and become more effecient with what we have, is overall, a positive one.
If you want to counter important facts, lets counter the argument that environmental groups have promoted biomass fuels.
While I sympathize with your idea that we have to reduce our wasteful use of electricity, renewables becomes a hard sell if they are accompanied by depriving yourself of something and it’s not necessary. The economic miracle of the past 20 years is that we have managed to crush some fairly unpromising technologies into price brackets that are below anything we have ever seen. We can use up around 20% less energy by just taking it seriously to insulate our homes properly. But we don’t have to bypass air travel, we just have to come up with a fuel that does not give off carbon (that would be hydrogen).
As for your point about biofuels – in principle the idea was that a certain amount of wood can be burned if it is immediately going to be grown again at the same rate that it is being burned – but no-one sticks to that. In the UK we have an energy producer who’s entire output of 3 GW is shifting to biofuels, but it is all imported from the US. It is not in our footprint. We do complain bitterly about this, especially that its only profits come from a government incentive that is supposed to be for renewables only. So there are people speaking up about biofuels if you listen hard enough and has been for years.
Ignorantly, I never knew that about the Biomass fuel plants so for me, Planet of the Humans was an enlightening one. I was always suspicious of the Green *industry* (Gore, Blood, McKibben and their ilk) and this doc has totally changed my way of thinking in NOT following the herd mentality of the Green party. Oh, I still believe that changes must be made, but not via solar/wind/biomass. Yes, I am already getting flack from the Green Party followers but I personally have found another practical energy to get on board with and encourage all to watch retired Canadian engineer’s H. Douglas Lightfoot’s movie, “Nobody’s Fuel” : https://www.facebook.com/100212291339978/videos/365063730852113/
Nobody’s Fuel is itself wildly out of date, and the numbers he used about one gallon of gasoline needing a battery weighting 430 pounds is an example. It is just plain wrong because storage densities have moved so far since he recorded that. This is from an institute hell bent on bringing back nuclear energy. Nobody really has much of a problem with nuclear energy except for two things, actually three. The first is the disposal of nuclear fuel rods which can take 1,000s of years before they are harmless. The second is the current build time for a nuclear plant is around 10 years. The output is inflexible, and really really expensive. which is why there is an institute, the Lightfoot Institute who made this film, who pushes it. This is lobbying, not science. I don’t really have a problem with it for now until there is enough renewable energy installed in the world. But it would be far easier to eliminate fossil fuels with renewables because of the massive cost associated with nuclear. Much of this cost is embedded in safety – and Fukushima is a big reminder that it’s tough to always be secure.
The cost thing was supposed to be dealt with by small modular reactors, but they have taken an age to arrive and not enough can be built in time to make a difference. Over the next five years we will see a few, but they will need a huge amount of subsidies, which could be better spent on solar and wind.
Peter, from your comments, you obviously didn’t even bother to watch Lightfoot’s movie.
I watched until he said about 6 things that just weren’t true, then I realized that he was totally out of date on all his science. No point in watching further. Tell me he is not a nuclear apologist.
Actually that annoyed me. You have it so wrong.
The Lightfoot Institute recommends the following Energy Supply Plan to meet our growing energy needs:
Promote nuclear generation of electricity to your neighbours, colleagues and elected representatives.
Produce all electricity by nuclear energy & hydro and use electricity everywhere we can, for example for:
railroads.
heating of homes and cooking.
public transportation.
NOT ECONOMICALLY FEASIBLE AND THE WORLD WOULD BE AT 4.2 DEGREES BY THE TIME IT WAS DONE AT A PRICE ABOUT 6 TIMES THE COST OF DOING IT WITH RENEWABLES
Reserve liquid fuels for road and air transport, i.e., gasoline from oil, tar sands, and coal because there are no substitutes on the scale required. Completely UNTRUE HYDROGEN IS PLENTIFUL AND CAN BE OBTAINED WITH SPARE ELECTRICITY THROUGH HYDROLYSIS
convert home heating from oil to electricity—you will have to do it eventually as oil and natural gas become scarce. WE CAN BURN AS MUCH OIL AND NATURAL GAS AS WE WANT, GLOBAL WARMING WILL KILL US BEFORE WE GET ONTO THE RESERVES – OIL IS DEAD IN 15 YEARS
coal is more valuable converted to liquid fuels than burned to generate electricity—replace with nuclear.
convert large ships to nuclear power.
LARGE SHIPS RUN ON BUNKER FUEL REPLACE IT WITH AMMONIA NO CO2, NO CONVERSION NEEDED. YOU MAKE THAT FROM HYDROGEN AND NITROGEN IN THE AIR
Replace the current nuclear reactors with fast breeder reactors to ensure nuclear fuel for tens of thousands of years. HE DOESN’T EVEN KNOW HOW FAST BREEDERS WORK. HE IS A FAKE
IT GOES ON.
But Cindy was correct about Biomass. The film was definitely enlightening on that subject. Yet we hear no apologies from the renewables for their part in the destruction of our planet. Actually it continues to this day with things like mining for cobalt, as one example. THAT is the biggest problem with trusting any of the players in this entire debacle. Not one tells the entire truths.
I don’t see much data in this blog post. And I would like to see it. For example, what is the environmental impact of the land use for solar and wind? You have to put the things somewhere. On a roof, no impact, that’s fine. But when you put up wind (and I’m thinking Texas where I’ve seen hundreds, or evening where I’ve seen dozens stop a mountain top) or solar (the huge arrays) you have to be destroying habitat, right?
And the environmental cost of production I’d assume is also quite high.
Not a scientist here, but I always try to apply critical thinking and as an environmentalist what I think about every time I but a product or use energy is, what is the environmental cost of this? It’s not just about co2 and climate change, of course that’s terrible, but to not even consider the habitat destruction during the resource gathering, production, and assembly/location of the final product seems fully negligent.
Everything has an environmental cost associated to it, which is why I think if you’re making an environmental documentary the end message should always be: don’t have kids, or if you do maybe set up a group between you and 7 of your best friends who also want kids and raise that one child like the village you (and your good friends) are. I feel like otherwise you’re the type of environmentalist who drives across state lines alone, buys water from 7-11, but takes really good photos for Facebook at the environmental rally. The type of environmentalist who is more concerned about climate change, not due to the mass extinction of species that’s happening because of it, but because it will start to impact your daily life.
Honestly I’d love for this to be refuted, but I need data, not claims. In the mean time I’ll continue to attempt to consume as little electricity, clean water and products as possible in my attempt at being as good of an environmentalist as I can be, which to me means sacrifice. Unfortunate, but true.
> “On a roof, no impact, that’s fine. But when you put up wind (and I’m thinking Texas where I’ve seen hundreds, or evening where I’ve seen dozens stop a mountain top) or solar (the huge arrays) you have to be destroying habitat, right?”
Not exactly. Habitat destruction with wind turbines is minimal, about comparable to typical road construction (and no, not every road has a high throughput or is necessary at all). Those located in mountainous regions at high elevations are even less of an issue. With PV arrays it depends on location and density. You can raise them 2–3 meters above ground to partially mitigate the effect (the ground below can still serve as e.g. a grazing field); arid areas with minimal plant life only benefit from extra shade. You can float PVs on lakes with minimal impact. You can place them on roofs with no impact whatsoever. Both PV arrays and turbines can be safely moved entirely offshore—something you cannot do in any way with thermal power plants. Most importantly none of them require digging anything up from the ground further to keep working.
> “And the environmental cost of production I’d assume is also quite high.”
This applies to all power plants without exception. But since renewables are less susceptible to wear (by the virtue of being less exposed to heat and in many cases having fewer moving parts) they are easier to recycle and refurbish.
> “the end message should always be: don’t have kids”
This “end message” is misguided and unviable for multiple reasons.
1. Every species naturally has to procreate to survive and develop. It is our right as biological organisms to further our genetic material. It’s not any more sensible than offering to stop living.
2. Sharp decrease in the birth rate leads to a proportional increase in the average age of population. When the “unlimited” generation reaches the point where they have to leave the work force, the economic burden on the younger generations becomes insurmountably high, with every capable young person having to make up for several pensioners and disabled, leading to social unrest and/or apathy. We already see some of its effects on countries like Japan or South Korea where despite the strong economy and a generally high quality of life there is a huge number of shut-ins and suicides among the young people thanks to this burden.
3. If only the most responsible parts of the population stop procreating, you’ll end up with a situation where the next generation is comprised entirely of children of the less responsible parents, which, especially combined with a spike in average age, is a liability. In a way, this is already what we are seeing, with most of the developed world being on a continuous demographic decline with most of the new births taking place in some of the least developed countries. These children eventually migrate and try assimilating into the more developed countries/cultures, gradually becoming involved with their political agendas. And since they have the less responsible upbringing, you end up with people like Trump who constantly make promises they cannot fulfill, make up statistics on the spot, avoid responsibility for blunders and so on.
4. Contrary to the popular argument, a human being’s net lifetime carbon footprint is neutral. This is because the carbon it produces while breathing is the carbon it consumes from nature. Plants breathe in CO2, use the carbon in it to grow, we consume plants (or animals that eat them) and break down the carbon inside to grow, the CO2 we breathe out returns to the cycle that repeats anew. A fossil fuel’s carbon footprint, on the other hand, is always above zero because it is extracted from the dormant repositories that did not otherwise participate in the carbon cycle. We are increasing the amount of carbon in the cycle, something that is decidedly impossible to do by childbirth.
Oddly enough, Enmax, my energy provider is still saying exactly the same things about solar and wind intermittency in 2020. Nor have we seen that much battery storage grid development or massive electrification of vehicles. Many of the points addressed by this film seem to have some validity, especially concerning the motivates behind some of these “Green” institutions. Well it’s good to have alternative perspectives, such as yours, it’s left me thinking that I still don’t see the entire picture. However, I remain convinced that the real problem is based on economic inequality, and until people have an economy based on reality, nothing can really change.
Couldn’t help but get some “white privilege” in there… Entirely predictable.
Great take down and very useful for those of us fielding questions on this heap of rubbish from fellow environmentalists concerned by it. Seems Gibbs has taken this scene from the West Wing from 2004, and updated it not a single bit. That scene always bugged me with its glibness and cynicism promotion, sounds like this movie could do so much more damage again
I call b/s on Joshi’s lament that it’s ‘just old news’… The whole issue of biomass energy is still as much of a problem today as it was when Jeff Gibbs first brought it up! See: https://news.mongabay.com/2020/04/as-investment-giant-blackrock-pulls-back-from-coal-ngos-urge-the-same-for-biomass-energy/?fbclid=IwAR2r9d-YG0wWxCXCON9_7POE6gh1vqXfQma3NYBSMGINg94fHYr5rjzsgVQ
If you think a movie will do all that damage, the foundation you are standing must be quite fragile.
Dont defend, communicate openly and discuss without anger. Behaviour change – its a tough one.
Maybe funded by big oil? As with any criminal organizations they thrive on fear, uncertainties and doubt.As long as they can sent their kids in very expensive exclusive schools, eat meaty meatballs, sausages and bacon all day, drives a gas guzzling cars and reap profits but ruining the planet its ok to them. Calling them criminals are understatement.
Do you have any criticism of his positions on Biomass? This was a large part of the Doc and he claims a large percentage of renewables . Any clarity on the real numbers?
Biomass is still very much a relevant problem today! See (published a week ago) See: https://news.mongabay.com/2020/04/as-investment-giant-blackrock-pulls-back-from-coal-ngos-urge-the-same-for-biomass-energy/?fbclid=IwAR2r9d-YG0wWxCXCON9_7POE6gh1vqXfQma3NYBSMGINg94fHYr5rjzsgVQ
Biomass can be done sustainably and it can be done unsustainably. While fossil fuels cannot be done sustainably, only unsustainably.
The rate at which the forests are being destroyed for “biofuell” is not what I would cal sustainable.
How can biomass be done sustainably?
There is massive abuse of bio mass but it should not be confused with solar and wind
Without biomass as fill-in, where does that leave wind and solar? Reliant on fossil fuels! … And don’t think for a second that Big Oil hasn’t figured that out. In fact they are the Big Renewables that build wind and solar farms so as to supply the fill-in when neither are in the act of harvesting energy due to unavailability.
Solar and wind are ALWAYS being produced somewhere, and hydro can easily be used to balance them, without the need for fossil fuels. Most countries are already running on them the bulk of the time. Give an engineer a problem like intermittency, and he will come up with a solution. The number of gravity based 1 GW class energy storage systems come up with in the last 3 years is incredible, and plenty big enough to flatten intermittency. Another approach is overkill, make more renewables than you need, and another is to have grids connected over longer distances at higher speed, which means the sun is shining somewhere and the wind is always blowing somewhere, and you transmit the energy from there to where it is needed. A problem with hydro is that the water that drives it is often multi-use, for farming and drinking, and so there are way too many permit obstacles in its way. So one engineer I know came up with a non-metallic water turbine, which does not corrode even when used with seawater, and this can be installed on any clifftop lifting seawater to a huge man-made pond, and dropped through a turbine any time energy is needed. The oil companies won’t invest in it and complain about it, but it’s actually a very strong idea. Put that near wind turbines which can offer spare energy to pump water up the cliff, and if this is not required, use some seawater to hydrolyze into hydrogen and store the energy. It is all coming. And no-one has to die from breathing in coal fumes.
“Industrial-scale renewable energy does nothing to remake exploitative relationships with the earth, and instead represents the renewal and expansion of the present capitalist order.”
Learn more at https://versobooks.com/blogs/3797-end-the-green-delusions-industrial-scale-renewable-energy-is-fossil-fuel.
Yes! This is the elephant in the room, isn’t it? The environmental damage done by renewables is disregarded or discounted, as is the lifespans of wind turbines, batteries etc. As is the fact that they also use fossil fuels to construct….again and again. Good article.
I understand why the fossil fuel lobby funded denialism, but they have no idea how, or when to stop, as witness this article. Coronavirus has given us a glimpse of how to do both together. In my weblog I suggest a basic income as a catalyst. (Warning, like Greta Thunberg, my mind works differently from most) http://www.clivelord.wordpress.com
Bravo! Great critique, and it needed one badly..l
Critique! You call that ill mannered, unprofessional nonsense a ‘critique’? Where are the facts to back that up? There are none. It’s a rambling load of hogwash that sadly resorts to extremely bad language, indicative of the poorly constructed arguments against an open, honest outpouring of anguish by Michael Moore & his associates who, for my part I have nothing whatsoever in common, other than to recognise that they (unlike you ThosEM), have ‘come out’ & bared their respective souls to the brutal fact that they (and I suspect most commenting here) have failed big time & have probably wasted the best part of 20 years campaigning against an unwinnable battle. You need to revisit this documentary again & learn from it, rather than denigrate it.
I really liked your comment. Absolutely spot on!
The review of the film skips the most important parts.
The greens made a big issue of CO2. A significant part of the film is about how CO2 emitting “biofuels” are suddenly “green”,while not really much different from coal. Using coal does not destroy as much of the landscape as wood chips aka “biofuel”. The review dwells on the “old” parts to get away from the real issue. The film shows the hypocrisy of McKibben, but the review calls it “outdated”. Mckibben is a poor excuse for a scientist. How about the Koch brothers being involved in this “green” forest destroying “biofuel” What amazed me is the number of these power plants yet the review chose to ignore it.
More CO2 injected into the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels IS the issue. To get around this issue we need to get electical energy from solar panels and wind, and NOT from fossil fuels.
Your post – like several I have noted so far – is just trolling inspired by desperate fossil fuel interests. You are creating “straw man” arguments to deflect attention away from the essential issue. You are creating FUD. [Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt]
[“Bioenergy” is a side issue in which I am sure the author has little or no interest, contrary to how you frame it in your comment here. It’s one of your “straw man” distractions.]
Not true John McKeon that “More CO2 injected into the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels IS the issue.” There is NO empirical evidence, I repeat NO empirical evidence proving that CO2 is the problem that you & other ‘catastrophists’ make it out to be.
On the contrary, there is no shortage of empirical evidence (not least from NASA) proving the benefit of CO2 (greening the planet). Indeed without CO2 we’d be dead!
At just some 415ppm currently, CO2 is barely above subsistence levels eg; at 150-180ppm ppm plants & trees start to shut down & if that happens, QED – mankind too shuts down since we need the oxygen that the trees produce for our own survival.
Go do a little research & you will learn that CO23 levels have been significantly higher in past millennium (as 8,000ppm) & our planet did just fine.
So give the alarmist mantra demonising CO2, (an essential, miniscule, atmospheric trace gas, necessary for life on earth) a rest. In truth, we need MORE CO2, not less.
Just go ask any commercial horticulturist growing tomatoes in glass houses where they typically deliberately inject CO2 up to 1,200ppm to promote healthy growth levels!
This is recycling ignorance. Sure the planet was fine with more CO2, but humans could not live on it and this many humans certainly could not. And we are heading to position where it will be unsustainable. Simple physics experiment, put sun on an upturned glass bowl, leak some co2 into it, find out how hot it gets. The greenhouse effect is not mythical. We are now able to measure globally the effect on temperature, on our weather, on our ability to grow food. Documented, hundreds of times and climate deniers like you still say things like “It’s unproven.” It is so proven, and you are deliberately saying that you want to ignore evidence. You offer a horticulturist against the worlds greatest minds and assuming they missed something obvious. Did you not ever do a science subject. This debate is NOT about whether or not their is global warming, and not about whether or not humans caused it, we all KNOW that they did. It is about what to do about it.
Biomass IS fossil fuel. Electricity isnt fuel, its created by fuel.
“Mckibben is a poor excuse for a scientist. How about the Koch brothers being involved in this “green” forest destroying “biofuel” What amazed me is the number of these power plants yet the review chose to ignore it.” Well said Gerald! I couldn’t believe how ridiculously ignorant McKibben was! Elizabeth May, our Canadian Green Party leader ‘adores’ him! And I’m thinking really? I think he KNEW about the hypocrisy of the biomass plants and just played stupid to Jeff Gibbs inquiries! What I have learned is that anything with the term BIO is a branding name for Green money-making funds! The movie truly sickened me and while I had been considering joining the Green Party – no more. Especially when they rely on people such as Ketan Joshi to defend them!
“… I had been considering joining the Green Party – no more.”
I’m sure your decision is wise. Being a dead weight is not helpful.
Your comments ended on a very angry tone. Obviously this film struck a nerve. I would be interested to know your rebuttal to solar panels being made using coal, and other points this film made and of course the billionaires who contribute money, knowing that there’s a buck or a million to be made from all of this.
Confused why you present a satellite photo of Abengoa Mojave Solar Project when the report clearly indicates they were discussing SEG I, which was decommissioned in 2016 and currently is a dead zone.
Thanks mate, I got the SEGS’ mixed up. That site isn’t a ‘dead zone’ – It’s been replaced with the Sunray 2 facility. Will update the post, appreciate the help 🙂
Ketan – thanks for this.
A point though – the image of the solar dead zone is
Ketan – nice review.
A point – the satellite image of the “Dead Zone” is of the Harper Dry Lake solar thermal facility,
not SEGS 1 or its PV replacement.
The google maps for SEGS 1 at Daggett is at:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/34%C2%B051'47.2%22N+116%C2%B049'37.2%22W/@34.8631,-116.827,4534m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x0!8m2!3d34.8631!4d-116.827?hl=en
But it still shows SEGS I and II, even though they’ve been gone for about 5 years.
Thanks mate, I was wondering why I couldn’t find the entrance gate on the satellite or street view. I’ll update the post accordingly and include an edit note. Appreciate it!
Brilliant. The Titanic is sinking and we’re insulting each other about the shape of the lifeboats. Sigh.
Nearly every comment needs an English teacher to edit out the spelling errors, usage and grammatical mistakes, the irrelevancies, the substitution of assertion for argument, and an apparent inability to stick to the point. Yes, I could do it, but the majority of the writers would remain C- communicators, and I haven’t the time or incentive to teach them what they should have learned in grammar school.
Reblogged this on and commented:
After watching latest Michael Moore’s “documentary”, I had a lot of raging thoughts going through my head. I’m glad there are others who already compiled their thoughts, so I am just going to humbly agree and re-blog it.
Thanks for the rebuttals- strange that Michael Moore wanted this produced
While most of the article sounds great, the part about racism and “white male americans” has the same dishonest ring to it as it the movie itself does. Putting a collection of person pictures from the movie called “guy1” to “guy7” right under that paragraph about population control feels very disingenuous and missleading and much like what Michael Moore would do.
It bugged me enough that i searched through the movie again to figure out who these people were. For example guy2 identified as Steven Runnings, an Ecologist of the University of Montana, did not mention anything about population control at all. Which is sad, as he’s probably already unhappy of his portayal in this docu and now he’s being connected to a horrible ideology in article. Does your article really need this? The rest is a great piece, why taint that with such a low blow?
So, will Ketan chase down the evil global warming racists?
Here is some more clues for our clueless green sleuth:
2014: Ten Indian women die and dozens critical after mass sterilisation
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/11222316/Eight-Indian-women-die-and-dozens-critical-after-mass-sterilisation.html
2015: Birth control access key means of reaching climate goals: experts
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-population-climate-idUSKBN0L71IY20150203
As for Ketan’s claim these are all ‘old’ links, that renewables are more ‘efficient’ now …
That is only when the wind blows and the sun shines.
40 years ago it was the same problem, the only wind was in the brass band:
Towards 2000 captured the birth of modern renewable wind power in 1981.
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2015/07/30/4282474.htm
Michael Moore, filmmakers respond to criticism of new bombshell environmental film. https://cdn.jwplayer.com/previews/LUEQnHQB?fbclid=IwAR0phoCKB0TkdkbOJ5GopPEayG6YO7qLaJn73TxwKM31WpfJisPANzOaF6E
I accept that we need a new global economic model, but let’s walk before we run. If we still have the planet in 50 years, then we can start on those kinds of ideas, about fairness, and in effect socialism. You have to remember that outside the US socialism is fairly well accepted in most countries and it is not a dirty word. For instance you should have Bernie Sanders running for president, but the democratic party was afraid that the simple word socialist would let in Trump again, so they have gone with a so-so candidate who has no chance to win. So that’s a US problem. And to some extent US quarterly profits infect the rest of the world, but nothing like they do in the US. So Moore has that point, but it should not be delivered at the cost of our chance to live on the planet, which is down to renewables. Once we learn to live in harmony with carbon, then we have to work out what kind of planet we want, collectively without the fossil fuel companies compelling us towards their conclusion.
I believe you. In my country we have “sacrifice zones” and I see the impact of this. I don’t if there ir English information about that, but quintero in puchuncavi, Chile is a environmental disaster, and the government of Sebastián Piñera, even with a judge order has do nothing to change that. People like Giggs is dangerous, specially in 3rd world countries like mine, because this kind of shitty content is used by lobbyists to influence in our parlament. See this kind of “documentaries” in 2020 is scary.
You appear to have made a flawed assumption is your discussion about the anti-wind farm protester.
Where he states “You need to have a fossil fuel power plant backing it up and idling 100% of the time”, he’s not suggesting that it must run at 100% of capacity, 100% of the time. Rather, it needs to be running, at least idling, for 100% of the time in order to provide backup capability for those times when the local wind farm is becalmed.
Of course in reality to doesn’t have to be a coal-fired plant that provides that backup capability, it could be any form of storage, battery, pumped hydro, and a gas-fired generator, or some combination thereof.
In contrast to most commenting here, I notice renown Environmental Progress founder, Michael Shellenberger, has now ‘come out’ as it were, in full support of Michael Moore’s “Planet of the Human’s” as follows https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2020/04/21/new-michael-moore-backed-documentary-on-youtube-reveals-massive-ecological-impacts-of-renewables/?emci=6002b3a0-ff83-ea11-a94c-00155d03b1e8&emdi=25426d90-0184-ea11-a94c-00155d03b1e8&ceid=7865345#5f9ed9026c96
and also interviewed live Down Under on Sky News as follows
.
You’ll have to pardon the pun, but this is beginning to sound like a very [Inconvenient Truth’.
This article does not only NOT adress the environmental problems asscoiated with “renewables”, it is also full of primitive slurs and conspiracy accusations of the lowest kind, which perfectly shows the mindset of the author.
Here are the relevant points of criticism for “renewables”:
– RESOURCES: massive use of rare earth metals and steel, which use massive inputs of fossil fuel energy, transport, deployment and maintenance also need heavy machinery fueled by heavy fossil fuels, which brings us to
– ENERGY DENSITY: bunker fuel and diesel have an energy density that surpasses any theoretical capability of a battery. That’s why the most modern airplane can transport 9 passengers for a short distance- the weight to energy ratio is highest in fossil fuels, and a battery quickly grows too heavy with its size to allow powering a vehicle for flight, or heavy mining machines or trucks or anyhting that is at the very *base* of all industrial production.
– SCALABILITY: the article writes about the “connected grid” of Europe, yes it is connected, countries like Germany send their excess electricity over to other countries with a more stable grid, and it also imports electricity from these other countries.
However if the whole grid were so “renewable” it would need a quixckly rising storage capaccity which AGAIN is reliant on massive fossil fuel inputs to produce, deploy and maintain
– DIMINISHING RETURNS: since metals, fossil resources, minerals and other raw materials from below the earth aren’t dispersed equally, there is a law of diminishing returns whereby the exploitation of the most accessible deposits leads to a necessary explotation of LESS accessible resources, thereby increasing the amount of energy needed
And hydrogen fuels, along with their pipe dream cousin the fusion reactor, have not been proven viable, in the case of hydrogen due to its extreme volatility, so any measure to store it will starkly decrease the net energy return.
Not only does this article not adress anything about that at all, it also accuses every “non-believer” of being in a conspiracy with the “bad guys” who allegedly are the sole problem that privileged people cannot sustain their massive resource use without consequences, conventiently through make-a-wish “technology”.
According to this article “thermo-dynamics” are racist, what’s next, “gravity” is racist because it does not do what the privileged author wants it to do??
This article and its author spit in the face of all people who make personal sacrifices and take risks to life a lifestyle of genuine lower consumption and more in line with ecological cycles.
The author is the kind of type that talks about the “environment” because its fashionable, but isn’t truly one grain interested in ecology, only in his status and lifestyle.
Sigh. So, being concerned about overpopulation makes one a racist who expects people to “stop fucking” to reduce the numbers. Sigh. I’m as sorry as anyone that this film chose to address it with the words of a bunch of white males, but the human overrunning of the planet actually is a problem — maybe THE problem — and what is needed to slow it is the education, emancipation, and empowerment of women, ensuring them the right to control their own bodies. And an end to the imposition of religious dogma on the availability of contraception.
Human “overrunning” the planet is definitely not “the” problem because it doesn’t even happen in the same places where people are most concerned about environmental issues. The top 70 or so countries by birth rate are—unsurprisingly—also some of the poorest, least developed countries in the world. Population in the developed countries (even those with highest population density) is, in fact, declining, and is only partially counterbalanced by immigration from said developing countries. The latter were even poorer and less developed 50 years ago when there were half as many people on the planet. At least now they have accessible internet and UN programs gradually fixing some of the social issues.
At the same time, comparatively rich, well-off people in the developed countries have multiple orders of magnitude higher carbon footprint due to having more cars, using more energy, producing more waste. The vast majority of agricultural lands is situated in the developed world. They can completely sustain themselves. They suffer from self-imposed problems and are barely affected by the problems originating in the undeveloped countries whom they treat mainly as cheap resource colonies and restive regions. And these rich people are telling the rest of the world to reproduce less. How is that helping? No, really?
You are completely right that education, healthcare, and social and political equality solve the overpopulation problem naturally by instituting family planning, improving chances of survival and economic capability of the offspring, and by that generally remove most of the incentives for having multiple children in the first place. But by asserting that you are defeating your own argument. Lack of these things is evidently more of a problem than the size of population because the size of population is the effect, not the cause. It doesn’t solve the problems in the developed world because the developed world created its own problems that have nothing to do with overpopulation.
apologies if i didn’t notice in your article, but i couldn’t find any reference to what do you do with the old panels and turbines? obviously, they have a limited lifetime, so are they being recycled, or just left behind?
There have been a few horror stories about burying old blade, but all the materials are recyclable and that is now starting to happen all the time at last. Same for Lithium Ion batteries, but it did take a while