About the Michael Moore-executive-produced film, climate scientists are saying there are a great number of factual errors. Some of these scientists have rebuttal pieces written, but they’re in pre-publication review. One big problem, I saw stated, is that the purported facts about how solar panels are made are a decade out of date.
Bill McKibben (founder of 350.org, an organization urging us to keep fossil fuels in the ground and keep atmospheric CO2 concentration below 350ppm – oops, we’re now around 416ppm) had a finger pointed at him in the film. Here’s his rebuttal.
I watched the first half of the film. Its method at times was to show some bad aspect and to imply therefore it’s all bad, while ignoring the larger and more relevant truths. For example, the filmmaker is right to criticize industrial approaches to renewables, but I think the larger truth is that the problem is market-based approaches, period, where we only get solutions if some industry can make money at it. In my view, it’s way too late for that, and we should invest our money and efforts into renewables as a primary goal, as a first-class objective, just because our future well-being depends on it.
And of course we have to start where we are, which is with energy from fossil fuels, and use that to convert our energy systems to use renewables as quickly as possible. Which is just a start because I keep seeing 2C as a real limit which we should not exceed for fear of truly dire consequences. And 1.5C as a much better limit but getting close. And 1.0C was really the right goal but scientists working on IPCC recommendations worried politicians would just turn their backs on the whole thing.
