Jeff Gibbs & Michael Moore's "Planet of the humans". Fossil fuels vs renewable

[Ampster]

You just admitted the old smoke belching diesel you used to own might have been the cheapest, including the purchase price.

The only diesel engines I ever owned were on sailboats and most of them were not used that often in the course of my voyages, I don't think my 1960's experience with a VW and gas prices of $0.25 per gallon is relevant today, I did buy a 1975 VW in 2012 and converted it to electric, That was not the best economic decision based on what was available a few years later, It was a fun hobby,

[bcroe]

Search Michael Moore Presents: Planet of the Humans
Directed by Jeff Gibbs on youtube and tell me what your take on this movie is..

ONE of the things I am constantly annoyed by, is all these articles saying we must
chose between renewables, and fossil fuels. WHAT ABOUT NUKE?

Any big energy project has negatives, but those issues are orders of magnitude less
with Nuke. The Byron plant within sight of here, has proved itself at 2GW and over
90% availability for 4 decades. I propose we move beyond that wartime technology
and do even cleaner, safer, maybe even cheaper versions. There are a lot of promising
ideas under development abroad, and thorium was demonstrated long ago. The fuel
may not be renewable, but there may be enough available to outlast our sun.

The one thing we all do seem to agree on, is electricity will be essential to any solution.

Oh yea, you may learn more listening to your critics, than listening to those you agree with.

Bruce Roe

[robbyg]

I have not watched the video but I have heard him making the argument before.
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I just deleted a whole long post I made because I realize that argument is futile.
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Most of the people over 50 in the world today really don't give a crap about Climate Change and they are the ones running the show! To them it does not matter because they are fairly certain they will not be around to feel the real effects of it. The stuff happening today with the weather and the dying oceans is not an issue to them so long as they can keep on having their creature comforts and make tons of money. They say they are interested in their Kids and grand kids futures but in all honesty they are not interested enough to be willing to make serious sacrifices to their own life style to make it better for their descendants.

I don't buy into the whole argument that it causes more pollution to make a solar panel than what the solar panel can save in it's lifetime. I wonder if he factored in how much oil it takes to make a 100MW power plant?

My 10.4KW array can make about 50kwh a day and that is like 18Mwh per year. If I even use a 20 year life span that is 360MWh and lets round that down to 300 to take into account weather etc. I don't know how much oil it takes to generate that kind of power but it has got to be several magnitudes higher than what it took to make 28 panels from start to finish.

[Mike90250]

If we forget about saving the planet and just look at the economics, I wonder what conclusion they would come to? Probably a moot question since economics has never been Michael Moore's forte. I don't know much about the other guy.

With or without government subsidies or tax breaks ?? as long as the government throws money at one item, nothing in that class can reflect the true price of supply & demand.

[rebar]

With that comment we are not far apart at all. Won't read a review of anything made by Michael Moore, never mind watching anything he's made.

Why is that? I always have a open mind regardless of who says it. And Moore didn't write it, Gibbs did.

[rebar]

I don't care how many barrels of oil it took to produce the 6 EVs I have either owned or leased in the past nine years and driven over 150;000 miles. I have done the math and those miles have been the least expensive per mile of any car with the possible exception of a VW I owned when gas was $0.25 per gallon.

You just admitted the old smoke belching diesel you used to own might have been the cheapest, including the purchase price.

[chrisski]

Regardless, I made up the 10 barrels to save 5 figure to get attention.. But what if renewables requires 10 barrels of oil to save 9? Wouldn't renewables still be counter productive to world resources? And if it didn't, why hasn't renewables taken over?

With that comment we are not far apart at all. Won't read a review of anything made by Michael Moore, never mind watching anything he's made.

[chrisski]

I will never watch anything by Michael Moore, but will be more than happy to comment on him.

[Ampster]

........ But what if renewables requires 10 barrels of oil to save 9? Wouldn't renewables still be counter productive to world resources?

I don't care how many barrels of oil it took to produce the 6 EVs I have either owned or leased in the past nine years and driven over 150;000 miles. I have done the math and those miles have been the least expensive per mile of any car with the possible exception of a VW I owned when gas was $0.25 per gallon.

[rebar]

You are correct, I did not watch the movie. I question the hypothesis that it will take 10 barrels to save 5.

Maybe I should have required that anyone who replies here to have watched it? Please take the time to watch it instead of only reading the reviews..

Regardless, I made up the 10 barrels to save 5 figure.. But what if renewables requires 10 barrels of oil to save 9? Wouldn't renewables still be counter productive to world resources? And if it didn't, why hasn't renewables taken over?

[Ampster]

Huh? Saving the planet?

I'm guessing you didn't watch the movie, because Gibbs is trying to tell us renewables requires 10 barrels of oil to save 5. It gives us that fuzzy feeling because of the lie, but depletes the earths resources even faster, than just trying to conserve.

You are correct, I did not watch the movie. I question the hypothesis that it will take 10 barrels to save 5. That sounds straight out of the many Koch funded studies that make similar claims. I don't believe statements like that until I have seen empirical data to support the hypothesis. The marketplace has not proven that hypothesis to to be true. Renewables like wind and solar are at parity on a wholesales level with fossil fuel generation.
Conservation is important but there is a bigger transition taking place in transportation that is being driven by economics which will shift the consumption of fossil fuels from transportation to the generation of of electricity. The long term cost of operating a fleet of electric delivery vans may prove to be the driver of that transition. At this point it is just another hypothesis but one that has proven to be true in my nine years of driving EVs and having solar panels on the roofs of my homes.

[chrisski]

trying to tell us renewables requires 10 barrels of oil to save 5. It gives us that fuzzy feeling because of the lie, but depletes the earths resources even faster, than just trying to conserve.

I'm a firm believer that most renewables work out that way. I also believe that for the individual, the only way to beat 10 barrels to save five number is to have grid tied solar, and after 7 years (or 20) you start making up for that.

Throw in batteries, and that changes everything.

Strange how the economics coincides with the true savings to the climate. An off grid system will never beat the grid tied KWH rate, but take batteries out of the equation, and they do. Almost as if we're paying for the 10 barrels of oil to save five barrels of oil.

Barring outliers like dumping nuclear waste in town to save costs, I think economics is a wonderful way to find the true cost to climate savings.

EDIT: I have not seen the movie, but find it hard to believe michael moore would say anything negative about climate change and say that solar energy is bad for climate change.

[SunEagle]

I don't buy globe warming..

1) 1989 UN declared global warming will destroy most coastlines and turn USA into a dustbowl within 20yrs

2)1967 "experts" declared that mass starvation will destroy america by 1975

3)1975 experts warned that "global freezing" would put us into another iceage by 2000

4)1989 UN officials again predicted loss of entire nations by year 2000

5) 2006 Al gore/hollywood/political scientists predicted only 10years left before coastlines underwater (several year after book/movie deals al gore bought $8M beach front property near los angeles)

6)1982 UN declared by turn of the century that the environment devastation will be complete and worse than a nuclear holocaust

7)1970 USA democrats declared 80% of species will be extinct by 1995

8) Weapons of mass destruction was cheney and bush's lie to get us in the gulf war..

Its fear mongering.

Well if you don't buy global warming then why is the climate changing?

I never said humans were the cause of global warming or climate change all I said is there is nothing humans can really do to stop it. The Earth is changing and if we plan on living here we will have to adapt to those changes but we can't stop them.

[rebar]

Unfortunately even if everyone stopped using fossil fuels immediately the world will still get warmer due to climate change. At least those that live with high electric rates can get some type of payback by going with a grid tie system. IMO it really won't help the climate but it may help their finances.

I don't buy globe warming..

1) 1989 UN declared global warming will destroy most coastlines and turn USA into a dustbowl within 20yrs

2)1967 "experts" declared that mass starvation will destroy america by 1975

3)1975 experts warned that "global freezing" would put us into another iceage by 2000

4)1989 UN officials again predicted loss of entire nations by year 2000

5) 2006 Al gore/hollywood/political scientists predicted only 10years left before coastlines underwater (several year after book/movie deals al gore bought $8M beach front property near los angeles)

6)1982 UN declared by turn of the century that the environment devastation will be complete and worse than a nuclear holocaust

7)1970 USA democrats declared 80% of species will be extinct by 1995

8) Weapons of mass destruction was cheney and bush's lie to get us in the gulf war..

Its fear mongering.

[rebar]

If we forget about saving the planet and just look at the economics, I wonder what conclusion they would come to? Probably a moot question since economics has never been Michael Moore's forte. I don't know much about the other guy.

Huh? Saving the planet?

I'm guessing you didn't watch the movie, because Gibbs is trying to tell us renewables requires 10 barrels of oil to save 5. It gives us that fuzzy feeling because of the lie, but depletes the earths resources even faster, than just trying to conserve.