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Post by engineerpoet on Apr 24, 2020 0:27:33 GMT 9.5
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Post by huon on Apr 25, 2020 12:19:44 GMT 9.5
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Post by engineerpoet on Apr 25, 2020 19:06:19 GMT 9.5
Rod Adams over on Atomic insights has an enjoyable review of the film. Yes. I tagged him and expected a response. I was not disappointed. |
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Post by David B. Benson on Apr 26, 2020 12:35:31 GMT 9.5
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Post by Roger Clifton on Apr 26, 2020 15:49:00 GMT 9.5
All the major environmental groups have been bought off, or were even established as fossil-fuel fronts. In the style of Michael Moore, the movie investigates the funding of popular Green institutions. At every turn it seems big money underlies and undermines the noblest sentiments of the Left. Big industry, including big nuclear provide corrupting profits. But the movie fails to speak of the heart of the Green movement, the small people, those who contribute their widow's farthing, and those who protest on the streets. At the very least the Green institutions provide forgiveness for what we have been doing. Eventually, this gloomy movie reaches its denouement. This should be when some grand solution should be offered to the world. Instead, we are given the message that the world now has too many people, and the solution is left to our imaginations. Let waves of climatic disaster kill them off, it seemed to say. We are left to realise that the role funded for the Green institutions is to forgive us for the crimes we have yet to commit. |
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Post by David B. Benson on Apr 29, 2020 8:58:06 GMT 9.5
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Post by engineerpoet on Apr 29, 2020 9:45:38 GMT 9.5
As I noted over at Real Climate, the Greenies are squealing like stuck pigs. The carping from the right was no danger to their groupthink, but having the fraud exposed by prominent people of impeccable lefty credentials threatens to tear down the whole rotten edifice. Not a moment too soon, IMO. Due to "renewable portfolio standards" and cheap natural gas, the Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan is due to close soon and its 805 MW of clean power will be lost. I calculated the average output of all Michigans wind farms a while back; it came to all of 608 MW. Just one nuclear plant produces 1/3 more clean electricity than all the wind farms in the state.
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Post by Roger Clifton on Apr 29, 2020 12:59:59 GMT 9.5
The linked article in the Guardian voices the pained replies from the climate change community and renewables fans, who I called the small people, above. It includes a quote from Michael Mann, a respected climate scientist, saying that the filmmakers “have done a grave disservice to us and the planet by promoting climate change inactivist tropes and talking points.” There is no doubt that Michael Mann has immense authority in climate science, but what does he mean by "climate change inactivist tropes"? Online dictionaries say that a trope is a recurrent theme. So I guess he is referring to the reiterated reactions against climate action arguments. A sort of intelligent layman's way of saying, "them's fighting words!" |
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Post by David B. Benson on Apr 29, 2020 15:53:53 GMT 9.5
Michael Mann ... "climate change inactivist tropes"... All that I can tell is that M. Mann is unhappy. |
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Post by Roger Clifton on Apr 29, 2020 16:09:10 GMT 9.5
paraphrase Michael Moore movie conclusion: "the world has too many people" If instead he had said "the world has too many fossil emissions", his message would be downright inadequate, because in the long-term the environment cannot tolerate any fossil emissions at all. It would be have been more productive if he had said "we must break the link between fossil fuels and humanity". |
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Post by cyrilr on Apr 30, 2020 19:32:06 GMT 9.5
It's a mixed bag for me.
On the one hand it's good to point out that environmental groups are more often part of the problem with their uninformed and unscientific viewpoints, and their money motivation. (the media really need to stop calling these groups environmental groups - they are misguided zeolots and activists for the most part, sometimes bordering on saboteurs and terrorists, and in their higher echelons care mostly about money). The fact that this comes from largely left wing figures has the greater impact.
It's also good to point out that buying an electric car means more power demand, while the sun won't shine brighter on your solar panels. So that's largely fossil fuels yes. However still a good idea to have EVs because it removes ground-level air pollution where people are to elevated (big chimney) release where there are fewer people and wildlife (coal plants are usually not located in the city or in nature areas). Plus EVs are more future proof since they can take electricity from various sources. Sound pollution is also greatly reduced. Not mentioning these points makes the documentary unbalanced and unnuanced.
Even worse, the elephant in the room - nuclear power - is not discussed at all. That'd be totally unaccetable even for a high school level documentary maker. For a seasoned pro like Moore, that's inexcusable.
Then there is the general tone - overly emotional and symbolic. This is fine for setting the stage, but at some point one has to produce a coherent argument with apple to apple comparisons of solutions. The message cannot be just "awareness building" on its own since that lacks empowerment without a proposed solution. Near the end there is a deux ex machina - we are all supposed to "do more with less". Which is ridiculous. The whole feature is emotional and qualitative, and then it arrives at a quantitative conclusion for a solution not supported by the entire feature!! Anyone who looks at the actual quantity of materials, energy and foodstuff that the world consumes must be forced to admit that conservation alone won't cut it. The problems are simply too big, by orders of magnitude even, for conservation to fix our problems. Unless people feel like they all want to live in a tent, with no electronics, no cars, no transport of any sort, only eating moss grown on your tent and drinking nothing but rain water collected from your tent's canvas. Which gets to the next point - antagonizing industrials. This is just unacceptable. We're the ones who buy their industrial products. What, does Moore thinks we can produce Iphones in cute organic peas farms round the corner? No, it needs an industrial infrastructure to work, as does the Internet, and any other advanced tech we have. If you were a billionaire industrialist, would you do any better? Would you feed 8 billion people - heading to 10 billion soon - and produce the billions of tons of materials and food we need every year, without causing monkey to choke in mud? How? Organic farming? That makes it worse, it has lower yield so then we need MORE land, more deforestation and thus more monkeys choking in mud.
On the whole I think it was entertaining, but unnuanced, unbalanced, unrealistic in solutions (if there were any) and unfinished.
A missed opportunity this.
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