"Planet Of The Humans": Controversy And Enlightenment

"Michael Moore presents Planet of the Humans, a documentary that dares to say what no one else will this Earth Day — that we are losing the battle to stop climate change on planet earth because we are following leaders who have taken us down the wrong road — selling out the green movement to wealthy interests and corporate America. This film is the wake-up call to the reality we are afraid to face: that in the midst of a human-caused extinction event, the environmental movement’s answer is to push for techno-fixes and band-aids. It's too little, too late."

Here is the video.

Below are some reviews of the movie. In my opinion, the subject of climate change/green energy is the most important issue facing humanity in the intermediate and long-term. While the video is alarmist in tone, I think some of it is necessary.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_of_the_Humans

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/planet_of_the_humans

https://earther.gizmodo.com/planet-of-the-humans-comes-this-close-to-actually-getti-1843024329

https://www.resilience.org/stories/2020-04-27/review-planet-of-the-humans/

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/apr/22/planet-of-the-humans-review-environment-michael-moore-jeff-gibbs

- - - - - - -
Comment: Sometimes science is overlooked by both right and left political ideologues when discussing the subject. How else can you understand why we are not aggressively promoting nuclear power?

Ten Potentially Catastrophic Threats To Human Survival

"The risks emerging now are varied, global and complex. Each one poses a 'significant' risk to human civilisation, a "catastrophic risk", or could actually extinguish the human species and is therefore an 'existential risk'.The risks are interconnected. They originate from the same basic causes and must be solved in ways that make no individual threat worse.

"This means many existing systems we take for granted, including our economic, food, energy, production and waste, community life and governance systems – along with our relationship with Earth's natural systems – must undergo searching examination and reform."

Will COVID-19 be a wake-up call to abandon magical thinking and universally adopt science-based thinking? Consider that 

• "more than 99 percent of all species, amounting to over five billion species,^[1] that ever lived on Earth are estimated to have died out^[2][3][4] (link)"

Click on the link below:

10 Catastrophic Threats Are Facing Humans Right Now, And Coronavirus Is Only One of Them

THE Existential Issue For Humanity

"Is it too late for us? Scientists have spent decades sounding the alarm on the devastating effects of climate change. And for decades, society decided to do pretty much nothing about it. In fact, over the past 30 years, we’ve done more damage to the climate than in all of human history. Now, there’s a real chance we may have waited too long to avoid widespread tragedy and suffering. In his book “The Uninhabitable Earth”, David Wallace-Wells depicts a catastrophic future far worse than we ever imagined...and far sooner than we thought. It is undoubtedly a brutal truth to face, as you will hear in this episode, but if there’s any hope to avert the worst-case scenarios, we have to start now."

Click on link below:

The Uninhabitable Earth ("All-In with Chris Hayes" podcast)

Science-Based Thinking On The Past And Future

The latest podcast on Sam Harris' "Making Sense" was an interview with Andrew McAfee discussing his new book "More from Less: The Surprising Story of How We Learned to Prosper Using Fewer Resources―and What Happens Next." Below is the link to the interview.

#170 - THE GREAT UNCOUPLING

A Basic Harm From Christianity

Christianity focuses on the "afterlife" and looks at the welfare of life in the real world as secondary to such. This podcasts mainly talks about how this priority harms the fight against climate change but generalizes to other negative effects as well. The lesson? If one is a magical thinker in one area, it tends to poison opinion in other areas.

Christianity vs. Climate Change

Climate Change And Consensus

There is a wide gap between what scientists really know and what the public thinks that scientists know about, not only climate change but most other issues.

97% of climate scientists agree - - -

If you don't believe what they are saying, look for yourself

Photo by Thomas Hafeneth on Unsplash

Renewable Energy 101

Society must accept the reality of climate change due to fossil fuel use and its negative effect on health and the environment.  We CAN do better.

What Is Renewable Energy and Why Is It So Important?

A reality check on the issue of climate change from fossil fuels.

The History Of Reporting On Climate Change And Exposing Deniers

"Across centuries, the scientific literature documents climate research unceasingly. But from week to week, ephemeral journalism reports it unevenly. Climate-change deniers can exploit the unevenness, falsely portraying the science as unseriously contrived, not painstakingly established. That’s a reason for attention to Andrew Revkin’s New York Times posting “News coverage of coal’s link to global warming, in 1912”—and to other reporting that embraces climate science’s development since the 19th century and recognizes how the subject has, or has not, been publicly discussed."

Climate science’s long history matters—and so does the history of news reporting about it

Climate Change Policies Are On The Front Burner Now

"The political right has to abandon their conspiracy narrative about climate change. Likewise, the political left has to abandon their prejudices against nuclear power. This is an issue that needs to be solved and if both sides come together and are willing to be reasonable we can do it."

Trump and Climate

Politics And Climate Change

"Political fissures on climate issues extend far beyond beliefs about whether climate change is occurring and whether humans are playing a role, according to a new, in-depth survey by Pew Research Center. These divisions reach across every dimension of the climate debate, down to people’s basic trust in the motivations that drive climate scientists to conduct their research.

"Specifically, the survey finds wide political divides in views of the potential for devastation to the Earth’s ecosystems and what might be done to address any climate impacts. There are also major divides in the way partisans interpret the current scientific discussion over climate, with the political left and right having vastly divergent perceptions of modern scientific consensus, differing levels of trust in the information they get from professional researchers, and different views as to whether it is the quest for knowledge or the quest for professional advancement that drives climate scientists in their work."

Accepting science is so important.  Presently only one US political party does so to a significant degree.  Vote wisely.  

Biofuels Are Not The Answer

"We examined crop data to evaluate whether enough CO2 was absorbed on farmland to balance out the CO2 emitted when biofuels are burned. It turns out that once all the emissions associated with growing feedstock crops and manufacturing biofuel are factored in, biofuels actually increase CO2 emissions rather than reducing them."

Why Biofuels Are a Big Climate Mistake

Reminder: Carbon Isn't The Only Greenhouse Gas

"California will begin regulating greenhouse-gas emissions tied to dairy cows and landfills under legislation signed Monday by Gov. Jerry Brown, escalating state efforts to fight climate change beyond carbon-based gases to include methane and other pollutants."

California governor backs rules on cow, landfill emissions

The Problems With Biofuels

"No one study is ever going to be the final word on a complex question like the net effects of using biofuels. This is also a moving target as production methods are slowly improving over time. Further, researchers are looking into using different feedstocks and different methods of production. This analysis, for example, would not apply if we figure out a way of using algae for feedstock and bacteria to convert it to biofuels."

Biofuels and the Law of Unintended Consequences

Using Climate Change As A Scientific Model To Educate Science Deniers

"Cox does an excellent job emphasizing the model building nature of science. I think “scientific model” is the best term to use when discussing the nature of science (and here are three scientific words everyone should stop using).

What Climate Change Skeptics Aren’t Getting About Science

The Future Of Nuclear Energy

"Tightening regulations on carbon emissions makes nuclear more attractive, but lowering the cost of construction is critical to the future of zero-carbon nuclear power."

Contrary to some Far Left ideologues, nuclear energy CAN be part of the clean energy revolution.

Cheaper and cleaner nuclear plants could finally become reality—but not in the United States, where the technology was invented more than 50 years ago. 

Why Do Climate Change Denialists Accept Science In Other Areas?

"But here is the really difficult thing about this kind of contradiction for all of us: It always gets resolved in the end. That's because when it comes to science denial, it's reality that always has the last word."

The Remarkable Inconsistency Of Climate Denial

Responding To Climate Change Is Feasible

"While some criticize the Paris climate target as impracticable, a team of scholars argues that it is – on the contrary – a triumph of realism."

Controlled implosion of fossil industries and explosive renewables development can deliver on Paris

Technology Advances And Planning Ahead

"- - - imagine if one political party claimed that astronomers were exaggerating the risk to secure funding, that those who believed the astronomers were being “impact hysterics,” that asteroid impacts aren’t necessarily a bad thing, and there is probably nothing we can do about it anyway. An asteroid impact is more sudden and dramatic, but the effects of AGW could be comparable to a medium-sized impact in terms of the cost to civilization."

Economics, Renewables, and Climate Change

Turning Air Into Stone

"By burying CO₂ in the right sort of rock, a team of alchemists led by Juerg Matter, a geologist at Southampton University, in Britain, was able to transmute it into stone. Specifically, the researchers turned it into carbonate minerals such as calcite and magnesite. Since these minerals are stable, the carbon they contain should stay locked away indefinitely."

How to keep waste carbon dioxide in the ground

Criminalizing Science Denial

Anyone who has an open mind and is paying attention knows that there is a history of intentional denial of science by some corporations and individuals.  However, what about those who have been indoctrinated into an erroneous opinion?

The question is, "Did they knowingly do harm?"