Chris White Tech Reporter April 26, 2020 1:29 PM ET
Anti-fossil fuel activists unsuccessfully attempted to browbeat the film producer behind a Michael Moore documentary panning green energy into permanently removing the movie 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 initially nixed the film before putting it back online, saying the move was meant to engage in debate.
“We are disheartened and dismayed to report that the film is full of misinformation — so much so that for half a day we removed the film from the site,” Films for Action noted in a press statement Saturday. “Ultimately, we decided to put it back up because we believe media literacy, critique and debate is the best solution to misinformation.”
The company then shared some of its thoughts on the film’s premise, which was directed by environmentalist Jeff Gibbs and argued human beings are the problem, not energy production. Films for Action decided that effectively banning the film would be a form of censorship. (RELATED: Michael Moore Rolls Out A Doc Ahead Of Earth Day Destroying A Common Enviro Left Narrative)
“We still need to transition to 100% renewable energy. There is no other option. But the delusion that we need to dispel is the idea that renewables can power our industrial civilization as is, and that these technologies are entirely ‘green’ when they are themselves still destructive,” Films for Action noted in the statement.
Gibbs and Moore lashed into wind, solar and biomass in particular.
“Green energy is not going to save us,” Gibbs noted in the film before focusing his ire on environmentalists Bill McKibben, Van Jones, Robert F. Kennedy and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, all of whom push for a combination of solar panels, nuclear or wind power to replace oil production.
Fox, who’s perhaps best known for producing the anti-fracking film “Gasland,” told his Twitter followers Friday that the attempt to take down the film was successful. He included in the tweet a screenshot of Films for Action’s statement, which did not include the section of the post explaining why the producer opted not to take down the film.
Screenshot of a tweet from activist Josh Fox praising Films for Action’s initial decision to take down the film (Screenshot/Tweet)
“I just received notice that the distributor of Michael Moore’s #PlanetoftheHumans is taking the film down due to misinformation in the film,” Fox wrote before criticizing Moore. “My hero has fallen. I have watched @MMFlint PUNCH UP at authority and hypocrisy with glee for his whole career. He has deeply inspired me and taught me. But now he’s the Goliath in the room, PUNCHING DOWN at us.”
Neither Fox, Mann nor “Planet of the Humans” have replied to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment. Mann, a Pennsylvania State University professor, has been criticized in recent years for embellishing his credentials. Environmentalists wrote reviews of the film after it was posted for free on YouTube claiming that the movie relies on old, outdated information.
Fox is a proponent of the Green New Deal, a policy idea meant to aggressively transition the United States away from the oil industry.
I respect the intellectual honesty of Moore and his friend. As I understand it they set out to “promote” renewables but as they got into it they saw it was all a scam so they continue and put forward the facts as they found them, which is great.
They did not address climate change or other alternative energy sources but that was not their goal, so that is fine with me.
The question I would ask is –who funds / supports Josh Fox ?
It seems the CCP should support Josh Fox
A long awaited expose’ on so called ‘renewable energy’. What could be more progressive than to recycle carbon to generate energy and return the unused carbon to the earth?
Ha! Tony Heller gave them hell on twitter and I bet a lot of others did also. Thus the 180.
https://realclimatescience.com/2020/04/defeating-censorship/
All of Moore’s “documentaries” contain misinformation. Including ‘Bowling for Columbine’ for which he got an Academy award among others, and which made him. But this time the communist has turned his jaundiced eye against a pet of the left and they can’t handle it. Pretty sure bet that ‘Planet of the Humans” won’t be on the list for the next Academy Awards.
Exactly, Michael Moore has a point of view he pushes in his “documentaries” and plays fast and loose with the facts (to be kind) to push it. And the Left was perfectly fine with all his previous efforts because the POV he was pushing was in alignment with their own. Now that he’s made one that doesn’t, now, all of a sudden they cry “misinformation”.
Odd, it seemed quite factual to me.
I look forward (once they stop shrieking incoherently) to their point by point refutation.
I wonder why they think oil/coal/gas companies would be against wind and solar? they are major sustainers of their businesses.
Too good to be true that Moore has seen the light about worth less than nothing wind, solar, ethanol. Expect an apology and withdrawal from his new found positon.
Critique of Michael Moore’s Film “Planet of the Humans”
I suggest that courageous teachers everywhere insist on showing the Jeff Gibbs video right alongside any required airings of “Inconvenient Truth”.
Most of the video targets the flim-flammery and corruption of the “alternative” “green” movements. Every named leader has “made deals that (he) shouldn’t have”. But energy is life, and unfortunately, by seeing the Devil in every detail of energy production – when survival itself equals an irrecoverable degradation of the commons – civilization itself must be seen as evil. So this becomes Gibbs’ Jeremiad about overpopulation, at
least an honest attribution of cause for the coming apocalypse.
I don’t know why liberals despise the Ridley, Pinker research showing that advanced and wealthy societies eventually find their way out of the overpopulation conundrum on their own.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/transformation/steven-pinker-s-ideas-are-fatally-flawed-these-eight-graphs-show-why/
Perhaps it is my provincial or overly-optimistic view that people want to move in generally the same direction: toward democratic, free and open societies in which they have the opportunity to acquire property, wealth, education, higher health standards, leisure time, and basic freedoms of movement, association and speech. When they have these basic securities, a cleaner environment is great too. Finally, for their own families’ sakes, or so the theory goes, they choose to remain small. India’s and Africa’s problems, in this view, will resolve themselves.
As these countries become better off, they’ll no doubt pose geopolitical problems for the United States. To deal with them, and with the current archvillain on the world stage, will be a test of America’s technological and scientific prowess, politial skill, and wise leadership. Take away China’s repressive government, the illusory benefits of socialism, and what’s left are people more or less trying to be like us.
But… countering the jolly Green oaf is a great first step. You can’t kill all the chimeras at once.
Thanks for the video and the many interesting posts about it.
Michael Moore claims that, until he looked into, he really did think that green energy schemes would save us. I suspect that he’s snudgin’ a little there. Somebody who can see now that solar and wind and biomass won’t work could see it back then too. Could he really have not understood that the sun doesn’t shine at night, or that manufacturing and erecting huge steel structures might involve a bit of mining and fossil fuel intensive manufacturing, or that the bio in biomass was wood?
I made it through most of Planet of the Humans, but the whole thing was just an evocation of the phrase, “duh.”
hmm, “did think that green energy schemes would save us.”
Well, Michael seems to think he doesn’t need to know anything about science.
This of course requires “mind reading”, but he seems to give such clues.
But I would say he doesn’t “care about” science, but rather have other people
be more interested in this difficult topic, and Mike rather focus on what he good at, which is
bullshitting. Maybe he thinks it’s bullshit, but then again science would have be some amazing
bullshit.
I imagine Micheal will talk to anyone, because he is looking for story material, so seems very
hard imagine not running across someone who wouldn’t say “alternative energy” is crap. I think
even the people installing solar panels might tell him that. Or he buys an electric cars, and would not be impressed.
The other thing is I don’t think anyone thinks “the green energy schemes would save us” rather it’s at best the hope/faith “the green energy schemes could save us” – somehow, or appears to be going it right direction.
I think it’s pretty easy to be fooled by the idea that solar energy {or wind} could “help” add some electrical power to the grid. And of course if camping with RV, a solar panel could be useful.
But I think what important is that everyone has to have a religion- roughly as film says, if have religion it serve the function of not having to think about something too much.
Perhaps, what triggered Micheal, was the notion that solar energy was cheaper than coal powerplants, and he wanted to prove this claim.
And he couldn’t.
After moving to a gorgeous historic country town and discovering they were in the process of building 300 hectares of solar infrastructure I thought I’d better do a little research on it. I was horrified! I’ve learnt alot this past year (it’s like the movie was made based on what I’d learnt) and I’ve had a few rants on this site. Thought I should share the ‘truth’ with 20 of my lefty artist friends, some of whom I had close relationships with and had known for years, and all bar none turned their backs on me. That was just before Christmas. Two days ago I sent the link for Planet of the Humans to 10 of them, an hour a forty minutes of their time, none have responded.
An additional 800 hectares of solar panels is in the pipeline planned to go in next to the the existing plant four kilometers from town. To rub salt into the wound I found out last week that there is a new proposal for a 1,000 hectare solar plant seven kilometers north of here.
I can see this beautiful town that is so dependent on tourists to survive ending up like that ghost town in the movie. More than 2,000 hectares of what will become toxic waste dumps. As you all know Australia is famous for their grassfires, and we’ve already been told by the firey’s that the firefighters won’t go near a solar fire.
I really thought these people cared enough about me to at least listen to what I had to say, that and the constant battle with bureaucracy to try to make them aware of the truth about renewables. I am feeling gutted.
Please send this movie on to as many people as you can.
A lot of people are sheeple, Megs.
My Australia friends say your experience is normal. Anyone at odds with the green thoughts is treated as a leper. The more affluent the neighborhood, the more conformist thinking.
If Moore’s movie gets banned by progressives it’s going to be a second red pill for him. The renewable scam was his first red pill. What was that old saying , a liberal is a conservative who hasn’t been mugged yet.
Thought crime! Unperson!
Now back to the daily rage session.
Quote from the article:-
“We still need to transition to 100% renewable energy. There is no other option.”
Patently untrue. Nuclear is an option, and in a real crisis would be the obvious solution, but it is, with few exceptions, not acceptable to greens. So that indicates no crisis!
100 % renewable energy is possible if most of it is biomass generation, but that is CO2 intensive, higher than coal generation per Mwatt hour, ignoring the CO2 in producing the fuel and loss of forests. It is certainly far from ideal, especially when it attracts subsidies.
Wind and solar are not possible as a base for 100% renewable generation as they are unsuited for large scale grid supply. The film made no mention of their technical weakness such as lack of inertia, and asynchronism.
If you have a grid failure wind and solar cannot assist in providing power to restore it, i.e. they can’t do a black start. An other weakness is that their short circuit capability is low which makes the grid protection systems less effective or requires more and different type of (expensive) protection, if there is such a thing?
Geothermal has potential only if the geology is favourable. A lot of geothermal sites have load restrictions or the heat source drops off. Wave and tidal generation have much the same problems as wind and solar.
Despite all the media attention to battery storage, this is unfeasible. most seem to confuse storage to cover intermittency rather than a task it can do which is cope with demand peaks which requires a far smaller amount of capacity, it is expensive, however, and less effective overall than other systems such as pumped storage, which have a much longer life span.
Nuclear energy is not an option.
It is the ONLY option.
Biomass can’t be big enough, wind isn’t steady enough, sun disappears at night and is weak in winter, hydro can’t be big enough, tide can’t be big enough, and isn’t constant, geothermal can’t be big enough.. and fossil is increasingly taking so much energy to extract that it will become less and less valuable as a fuel.
Whereas the EROEI and the energy density of nuclear material means that there are about 10,000 years of financially and energy-viable reserves on the planet. And then there is fusion. 10,000 years MAY be long enough to get a viable fusion reactor. Not that I am holding my breath.
All the false claims of renewables can be dismissed by asking ;’is there enough of it, even if it works, and at an overall integrated cost that doesn’t cripple the world’s economy’.
Once you ask THAT question the answer is ‘if not fossil, then nuclear’
Controlling fusion energy is easy. Using magnetics a dead end. Magnetic bottles won’t work since we lack a magnetic monopole. We just need to control gravity. If we had control of gravity we could control a fusion reaction the same way as the sun. 😉 See I told you it is easy. /sarc
Until then maybe we could make LFTR’s and start reprocessing fuel for our conventional reactors. 👍😀
You have your answer, right there.
All we need is to start making magnetic mono poles. If the government wanted to, they could make these mono poles. All they have to do is pass a law requiring companies that make magnets to start making these as well.
Leftist enviro-fascists always fail to provide concrete empirical evidence of “misinformation of opposing views” or data to support their insane positions because none exist…
Solar, wind and biofuels are insanely expensive, intermittent, unreliable, diffuse and have laughable energy densities and will never replace conventional energy sources.
Because of the Left’s Cancel Culture, any opposing views they don’t like (not that they’re false or unsupported) are censored and the people espousing opposing views are personally attacked and often ruined for no good reason.
Hard empirical evidence, simple physics, logic and common sense overwhelming show solar, wind and biofuels are completely incapable of replacing fossil fuels and nuclear power.
Leftists believe the mere repetition of lies somehow magically make their absurd lies the truth… Not so much…
You’d think a new Michael Moore documentary on “renewables” would attract a little attention from the BBC, but, no, not even a whisper.
Same with the ABC in Australia Redge, disgusting and cowardly.
The facts are well known to all of us; it’s the fact that they are being told that is extraordinary. Watch right through to the end as there are clips inserted throughout the closing credits.
Note that ‘for some reason’ the tally of likes and dislikes is not showing on Youtube. Hmmm, I wonder why that would be:
I totally agree.
This is the most important environmental film in the last 10 years.
It is like childhood’s end. The largest amount of ‘green’ energy is now (Biofuel).
Biofuel is cutting down trees and burning them.
It is all a corrupt game. Corrupt is the problem and corruption requires lies and power.
The money spent on ‘fighting’ climate change has resulted (total net) in significantly more damage to the environment.
Ethanol fuel has expensive consequences for vehicles. Here is Chris Harris, a venerable BMW Motorrad (motorcycle) master mechanic. The first 3 minutes are all you need.
https://youtu.be/nj2CyLoaSEI
It probably is full of misinformation; the misinformation that AGW is real.
The bits about renewables not doing what they’re supposed to are right.
LOL, so you AGREE with the bits that are correct, but cherry-pick all the bits that happen to be nonsense and all of a sudden you REJECT those parts.
Consistency, thy name is NOT denihilism.
The whole climate change scare is one blockbuster of disinformation. Take it down.
“old data”
The solar array in the desert was closed down last year. The film was produced over the last year.
You can see it on google earth that the desert has taken over Ivanpah. The 3 towers have been taken down, and most of the mirrors are either gone or askcue. As the film says, it’s a solar dead zone.
If you search it on Google, Ivanpah is said to be a roaring success. Wackapedia doesn’t even give one hint that the whole thing has been “dismantled” – to be kind.
– JPP
No more bird cooking at Ivanpah, huh. That’s a good thing. Glad to hear it.
According to Wiki it is still running.
The towers are still up in Google Earth. You have to look closely since it doesn’t show three dimensional objects very well.
Oh, OK, I was relying on the 3 dimensional views…
– JPP
Most of the mirrors are not gone or askcue [sic]. The images aren’t necessarily taken at the same time, and are stitched together, so some will appear at different angles than the rest.
Well, at any rate the 350,000 mirrors, each the size of a garage door are not being used for their designed purpose. The same with the 3 towers, they are essentially dead. . .
– JPP
Not sure what you’re seeing, but each tower is “lit up” in Google Earth.
@Jeff Alberts,
Take another look on google earth. (I just did) It looks like the one closest to the road might be operational with about half of it’s mirrors aimed towards the tower. (if that)
The other two are in much worse shape.
– JPP
@Jeff Alberts,
This is from 5 years ago. If you look carefully on google earth, all three if the Ivanpah plants are probably non functional now !!!
https://www.kcet.org/redefine/are-solar-power-towers-doomed-in-california
Just sayin – JPP
Kain’t find find much about ol’ Ivan on googly…other than it’s a smashing success story to this day.
Is it up or down?
Maybe they are, but Google Earth shows no evidence of that, that’s all I’m saying. I’ve looked carefully, but you haven’t. You thought all three towers were down, and that most of the mirrors were missing or otherwise non-functional. It shows no such thing.
https://earth.google.com/web/@35.55210413,-115.46757026,918.25823849a,6964.23224344d,35y,0h,26.83885118t,360r/data=CmsaaRJjCiUweDgwY2Y0MzM0Y2VlYmM3NmQ6MHg4MTYyMGM1N2Q3YjE1YWRlGaby0T1Gx0FAIQpdeBQd3lzAKihJdmFucGFoIFNvbGFyIEVsZWN0cmljIEdlbmVyYXRpbmcgU3lzdGVtGAEgAQ
You can’t take Google Earth as a seamless snapshot in time. any given area is many snapshots over different times, maybe different times the same day, but most likely over different days/weeks/months.
Ok, I looked at your link which took a while to load, but it’s the same thing that i’m looking at on my google earth pro.
the dark blue things are not mirrors, bot the things they are attached to. Same with the black things – not mirrors. The actual mirrors are actually light blue.
I stand by what I said – I don’t think any of the towers are functioning – not to anywhere near capacity. I looked at all three arrays again and I stand by my assumption.
I’m in AZ and I could drive there to prove it – maybe someone near Las Vegas can verify it.
But I can’t from where I am at………Yes the photos were probably taken at different times as you say.
– JPP
JPP: Since Googly has $ in this mess you’d probably have to drive there to see what is really going on.
Sad is it not?
The land of the free and the home of the slave….
The mirrors are going to be whatever color they’re reflecting. Mostly what we’re seeing are the shadows of the mirrors since many of them are at upright angles. The things they’re attached to are just frames, and they don’t seem to be dark blue or black.
The towers are fully lit up, they wouldn’t be that way if most of the mirrors weren’t functioning.
Again, you may be right, but not by the evidence you’ve given.
In a previous post I asked if the upwelling and downwelling radiation claimed was measurable and was being measured and was advised that it was and the claimed values were confirmed.
“renewable energy” is primitive 16th century energy, and is not an alternative to reliable energy.
Anyone with any knowledge of future energy technologies realizes that molten salt SMRs are the future : China knows this, India knows this and Russia knows this. Only the energy-illiterate renewable crowd exhibits total ignorance of the obvious future staring us in the face. Despite the fact that molten salt nuclear reactors resemble typical conventional reactors in practically name only, these renewable morons think any technology which contains the word nuclear should be opposed.
There are no humans dumber than the renewable crowd.
These deniers get everywhere.
Notice how the Green Blob immediately goes after the people behind the film, rather than address the points it raises?
They handily divert attention by wailing of ‘misinformation’ yet the same voices are as silent as a church mouse about demonstrable flaws in Al Gores ‘An Inconvenient Truth’.
“Notice how the Green Blob immediately goes after the people behind the film, rather than address the points it raises?”
That’s always the way the radical Left attacks opponents. They attack the person not the facts, because most of the time they don’t have the facts on their side.
Nail on head.
I have a simple question which stops Leftists in their tracks when they resort to ad hominem attacks on me: “What have I said which is false?” I have never had a coherent answer.
I watched it, most of it was old news for me as the biomass scam was already aired on national television (!) in the Netherlands in 2017 in a Zembla documentary. On the other hand it was a Malthusian praise of Rachel Carson who feared capitalism for the end of all biodiversity (which did not bappen).
And the Koch brothers are now the evil green industrials? LOL
The Intolerance of the modern version of the flagellants is as predictable as the rising of the sun.
I (and most I know) rarely agree with Moore, but I have not heard a large outcry to ban him until now.
I suppose they’re right. The complete truth about the renewables industry is that it is far more, wasteful, corrupting and anti-human than the movie says. And the players such as Gore and McKibben are are utterly immoral opportunistic egomaniacs.
The high point of the documentary, for me at least, is when they claim they “were fed a lie” about green energy. I would dispute that. They demanded to be lied to, and in spite of all the evidence around them, for years, refused to believe. We can only be grateful they finally woke up to realize their error. Now they get to see what it is like to have a “wrong opinion.”