
Michael Moore Documentary Reveals Ecological Impacts of Renewables - hirundo
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2020/04/21/new-michael-moore-backed-documentary-on-youtube-reveals-massive-ecological-impacts-of-renewables/#47503dd76c96
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manfredo
There are some lines that seem to be borderline hyperbole (“You would have
been better off just burning fossil fuels in the first place”) but it does
highlight that as far as renewable energy goes solar and wind have some major
shortcomings and difficult scalability problems. The percentages of the
earth's surface that needs to be covered in solar panels to meet global energy
demand ranges from 2-8% depending on whether the estimate factors in
efficiency losses in storage, weather, and other factors. That amount of land
consumption is going to have massive ecological impact. Solar's energy density
and intermittency are such that it just takes up a huge amount of land.

Nuclear power remains the only renewable source of energy that demonstrated
ability to provide the majority of a nation's electricity consumption, besides
geographically limited options like hydroelectricity and geothermal power.
Solar has a place on building rooftops to supplement electricity generation in
otherwise wasted space, but it doesn't make sense to choose it as a primary
power source.

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crispinb
I haven't seen the film yet, but I've heard Moore talk about it on his
podcast. Nuclear vs fossil vs renewables isn't the point at all. It's about
how the increasing size of the so-called 'economy' (of which energy production
is just one component), regardless of the tech used, is a road to inevitable
collapse. Our choices, on this view, aren't between types of growth; they are
between collapse or degrowth. Agree or disagree, but that seems to be the
point of the film, to which nuclear energy is scarcely relevant.

