Leftie hero Michael Moore took a good look at Alternative Energy and produced a film showing its very unsavory underbelly.
Needless to say, the various greenies out there do not want their rice bowl taken away - especially by someone with as much street-cred as Michael Moore. From The Daily Caller:
Climate Activists Want Michael Moore’s Doc Panning Green Energy Banned, Say It’s Chock Full Of Misinformation
Anti-fossil fuel activists unsuccessfully attempted to lobby to remove Michael Moore’s documentary panning green energy over claims that it contains pro-oil industry misinformation.
Activist Josh Fox, climate scientist Michael Mann and other environmentalists signed onto a petition Friday asking the producer to take down “Planet of the Humans,” saying Moore’s film relies on old data to claim solar and wind energy is dependent on fossil fuels. Films for Action, which claimed credit for the film, said in a statement Saturday that it nixed the film before putting it back online, saying the move was meant to engage in debate.
The information in the movie was correct and up to date as far as I know.
As for this line: claim solar and wind energy is dependent on fossil fuels - that was true then, it is true now and it always will be true until vastly cheaper and more efficient methods of energy storage are developed. Maybe in five or ten years but I am not holding my breath.
Wind and solar power are not baseload. They are not continuous. They come and go at random intervals. In order to back up the expected energy and not suffer power outages, you have to have the equivalent amount of conventional power generating capacity available to come online when needed. Since it can take five or ten minutes for even a natural gas turbine generator to reach full capacity, these generators need to be running on hot-standby. Running at full speed but without any actual load.
My only gripe about the movie is that it did not offer a future with the new technology nuclear power reactors. There are some amazing designs out there that would solve all of the worlds energy problems cheaply and reliably. We have about 5,000 years of known Thorium reserves. Uranium is about as common in the Earth's crust as Platinum. Thorium is about as common as Lead. Thorium is a much more efficient fuel too and its waste products only need to be sequestered for about 300-400 years.
These "activists" need to find a real cause and get behind that. Do some real good. Bring the industrial revolution to Africa - lift them up out of their poverty. Bring the agricultural revolution to the third world. Feed them. Don't hector them for not following the green diktat, S.T.F.U. and feed them.
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