{"id":3993,"date":"2013-06-12T08:00:36","date_gmt":"2013-06-12T12:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=3993"},"modified":"2013-06-11T13:48:48","modified_gmt":"2013-06-11T17:48:48","slug":"review-of-the-misleading-movie-pandoras-promise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/06\/review-of-the-misleading-movie-pandoras-promise.html","title":{"rendered":"Review of the misleading movie Pandora’s Promise"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nHere’s a trailer for the “documentary” pro-nuke film that comes out today,
\n
\n<\/a>
\n
\nPandora’s Promise<\/a>.
\nThe film discounts solar and wind energy because its makers
\ndon’t understand the exponential decrease in solar prices or
\nthe night backup power ability of wind connected with a smart grid.
\nThe vast majority of the American people already are demanding
\nthose real renewables instead of nuclear or coal,
\nand the economics of wind and solar are also rapidly beating natural gas.\n<\/p>\n

\nAtom Ecology’s promotional writeup 7 June 2013,
\n
\nPandora\u2019s Promise \u2013 Anti-Nuclear Mob Burns Environment In Coal Fired Forges Of Industry For 30 Years<\/a> begins,<\/p>\n

\n

\nA new documentary film that reveals how opposition to and voting
\nagainst nuclear power turned into massive increases in coal burning
\npower plants. The far worse outcome for the environment as coal has
\nfilled energy demand is the story just coming to theatres.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nThe tiny germ of truth in that ten years ago is just plain wrong now
\nthat coal is not the alternative because
\n
\nsolar has reached grid parity with nuclear, coal, and natural gas<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe movie plays up Stewart Brand’s conservationist credentials
\nand his conversion to pro-nuke.
\n
\n<\/a>
\nNot in that movie, but
\n
\nin this TED talk<\/a>,
\nyou can see
\nStewart Brand lose a debate with Mark Z. Jacobson, who argued
\nwe can power the whole world with sun, wind, and water.
\nJacobson’s summary:<\/p>\n

\n

\n“We don’t need nuclear energy. There’s plenty of solar and
\nwind. We can make it reliable. That’s real data. This is ongoing
\nresearch. This is not rocket science.\n<\/p>\n

\nSolving the world’s can be done if you really put your mind to it
\nand use clean renewable energy. There’s absolutely no need for
\nnuclear power.”\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nBrand is also
\n
\npro-GMO<\/a> and pro-no-till<\/a>,
\nwhich further reduces his credibility in my mind.\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/a>
\nI read every issue of the seminal magazine Brand started,
\nWhole Earth Catalog later named CoEvolution Quarterly.
\nBut, oddly for a biologist,
\nBrand doesn’t seem to get exponential growth as in exponentially
\ndropping solar PV prices leading to exponentially expanding deployment
\nof solar power, summarized as
\n
\nMoore’s Law for solar<\/a>,
\nanalogous to the Moore’s Law that gave us personal computers, the Internet,
\nand is now driving the mobile communications revolution.\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/a>
\nThe electric utility think tank Edison Electric Institute gets it,
\n
\nand said in a report in April 2013<\/a>
\nthat distributed rooftop solar is already dirrupting the traditional
\nutility baseload business model, based on big nuclear, coal, and natural
\ngas plants.\n<\/p>\n

Some stock traders are starting to get it, as in
\n
\n“your jaw will drop with astonishment”<\/a>
\n
\n<\/a>
\nat how fast solar power will beat every other energy source.
\nAnd that trader’s projections are extremely conservative.
\nIf we simply
\n
\nproject forward the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)’s
\nrecent historical figures on annual deployed capacities for each
\nmajor power source in the U.S.<\/a>,
\nwe find that solar could well be
\nthe main source of power within a decade.
\nWill it really happen that fast?
\nNobody knows, but as that stock trader wrote:\n<\/p>\n

\n

Basically, people will start begging for Solar power in just a few
\nyears, because it will be so much cheaper than coal power.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nAnd that’s already happening.
\nAccording to
\n
\na January 2013 national poll<\/a>,<\/p>\n

\n

\n86 percent of Americans want leadership on shifting from coal and
\nnuclear energy to wind and solar. Support for this approach exists
\nacross party lines, including 72 percent of Republicans, 83 percent
\nof Independents, and 97 percent of Democrats.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nPlus Gallup 27 March 2013,
\n
\nAmericans Want More Emphasis on Solar, Wind, Natural Gas<\/a>,\n<\/p>\n

\n

\nNo fewer than two in three Americans want the U.S. to put more
\nemphasis on producing domestic energy using solar power (76%), wind
\n(71%), and natural gas (65%). Far fewer want to emphasize the
\nproduction of oil (46%) and the use of nuclear power (37%). Least
\nfavored is coal, with about one in three Americans wanting to
\nprioritize its domestic production.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n
\n<\/a>
\nThe only fossil fuel that breaks 50% in that Gallup poll is natural gas,
\nand as people realize
\n
\nthe pollution of groundwater<\/a> fracking causes
\n
\neverywhere it goes<\/a>
\nand the price of solar PV continues to drop,
\n
\nthe carbon bubble will drop<\/a>.
\nAnd the only thing less popular than nuclear is coal.
\nCoal plants are being closed throughout the U.S.,
\nand even
\nChina is proposing a carbon cap<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe movie claims we’ll always find uses for more energy so we’ll always need more, but
\n
\naccording to research last year from Georgia Tech and Duke U.<\/a>,
\nif we get on with energy efficiency in Georgia,
\nwe won’t need either of those new nukes at Plant Vogtle, even without adding solar.
\nEfficiency and conservation
\n
\ncan radically reduce costs of operating a building<\/a>.
\nAs we
\nadd solar to efficiency and conservation<\/a>,
\ntotal power use could well go down, not up.\n<\/p>\n

\nEconomics and politics are converging on solar and wind power.
\nIt’s sad Stewart Brand and the makers of Pandora’s Promise
\ndon’t understand or don’t present all the evidence,
\nand it’s sadder that Brand is being used as a face
\nfor a pro-nuke movement that is rapidly losing because
\nreal clean renewable solar and wind power produce jobs, profit,
\nplenty of clean air and water, and yes, solar and wind
\nand conservation and efficiency with a smart grid are
\nthe solution to climate change.\n<\/p>\n

\n -jsq<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s a trailer for the “documentary” pro-nuke film that comes out today, Pandora’s Promise. The film discounts solar and wind energy because its makers don’t understand the exponential decrease in solar prices or the night backup power ability of wind connected with a smart grid. The vast majority of the American people already are demanding […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556,47,141,216,14,733,6124,104,559,22,32,23,24,55,36],"tags":[8779,972,8719,8745,8753,8704,8701,8702,12,7,8799,25,562,8737,8782,6421,8712,8715,8713,8714,4787,6,8727,8716],"class_list":["post-3993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-air","category-climate-change","category-co2","category-coal","category-economy","category-media","category-natural-gas-2","category-nuclear","category-oil","category-politics","category-pollution","category-renewable-energy","category-solar","category-water","category-wind","tag-air","tag-carbon-bubble","tag-climate-change","tag-co2","tag-coal","tag-economy","tag-georgia","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-media","tag-moores-law","tag-natural-gas","tag-nuclear","tag-oil","tag-pandoras-promise","tag-politics","tag-pollution","tag-renewable-energy","tag-solar","tag-stewart-brand","tag-valdosta","tag-water","tag-wind"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3993"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3993\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4000,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3993\/revisions\/4000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}