For me, the VERY flawed film provoking some thought. It's a monkey slinging poo far and wide, but it pales compared to our Senate.
(hereafter "it" refers to the film)
In no special order, here are some of the PROs, CONs, and ??? I saw, and some of the hard NUTs to crack.
PRO: It reminded me how burning new biomass is akin to burning old biomass -- coal, oil & gas.
PRO: By contrast, it reminded me how ALL our cleanest energy options leverage sun & moon-driven MOTION & HEAT, not burning/oxidizing & releasing chemical energy.
NUT: Motion & heat conversion systems are nearly all large and expensive, requiring major energy transport/distribution ... since their core job is transforming very diffuse energy sources into the concentrated form we prefer: high-wattage electricity.
CON: It ignored physicists' reports that for each joule humans use, 6000 joules of solar energy fall on the 1/3 of earth (still) above water. All 7 billion of us can't figure how to capture 1/6000th of that energy? Really?
NUT: We're being GROSSLY profligate. Corporations have evolved to make money from the volume of redundant demand throw-away individuality bolsters; so they rail against cooperative reuse ... until some firm like Uber figures how to _monetize_ sharing. Our privatized, uncoordinated land management inveighs against co-location and sharing. Few on DU think of conservation as "a personal choice"; but national-scale management, with systems designed for conservation and reuse -- stymied by profit-taking -- WAS moving at a glacial pace -- 'til glaciers started moving faster. COVID is again highlighting the effectiveness of COORDINATED work. We're drowning in corporatist propaganda saying the kind of rapid responsiveness elsewhere would oblige us to autocratic communism. (What of S.Korea?) Meanwhile, OUR Congress persistently legislates against multiple points of majority agreement. WHO has an autocracy? We suffer corporate waste, and inefficiency because governmental coordination would be "overreach"? Really?
With multiple solutions in hand, why are we moving so slowly to net-zero buildings, to replace the buildings using ~40% of our energy? Because, though great numbers want it, our captured State is unable to act contrary to incumbent mega-industries like Home Depot and Ikea, feeding on our uncoordinated needs.
???: Of the non-chemical energy sources, does only hydro offer the wattage needed for high-energy uses like steel processing? Does that imply co-locating smelters near dams?
PRO: It reminded ME that the best we can do for the Earth is leave it alone as much as practicable.
NUT: Why was the success of BiosphereII slammed as a failure in our corporatized press, over a trifle? Because self-sustaining communities don't need ADM, Monsanto, & kin. SpreadCo in Japan has advertised growing 30,000 heads of lettuce a day indoors. Plenty Inc raised $200M to grow lettuce in the pricey SF Bay Area. But corporate media has mainly ignored MIT-led "OpenAg" efforts to democratize "controlled environment ag" and move away from pouring chemicals through the soil into rivers & lakes.
NUT: OUR confusion. Crop fertilizer is crop fertilizer, is a human-controlled thing. Run-off is UNCONTROLLED. Pouring "organic" manure on the soil is NOT better for Earth or humans than precisely titrating N-P-K or other molecules into an aeroponic/hydroponic feed solution. We progressives are still not effectively fighting incumbent FUD through language-muddling around terms like "organic".
PRO: It reminded me of the centrality of propaganda and corporate word games.
NUT: Scale! Where large natural ecosystems must be manipulated, private corporations won't do. The Dutch and others on the North Sea have _done_ massive earth works. We can't??? No, we _don't_ because that scale requires government; and our privateers use our captured State to block us going anywhere they don't profit from.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-california-go-100-percent-green/
Stanford's Mark Jacobson: "The main obstacle is that there are people with a financial interest in stopping it from happening."
NUT: One of the simplest, most mature, reliable energy storage systems known is pumped hydro. Why isn't it more used? Why is energy storage reported as such a tough problem? Yes, lots of earth-moving and equipment are needed up front, but the systems serve a long time. What's their real TCO? I'm not trying to kill off endangered species; not endorsing CARELESS assaults on nature ... but ... nature is pretty resilient, and mostly recovers when we keep our assaults well-bounded and controlled. [The only "justification" for nuclear is the energy density needed in: pacemakers, submarines, 1.2megaton bombs, etc]
CON: It implies Ivanpah failed, but Wikipedia reports increasing Ivanpah production thru 2019. Ivanpah's primary mechanism converts light to heat in a closed fluid -- then converts heat to electricity. The concentrated electric energy it produces thus takes from the heat energy the sun would have dispersed into that environment.
???: Can anyone here explain why Ivanpah uses gas energy instead of STORING enough solar heat to restart itself each morning?
CON: It reports a 20-year life for wind turbines. Towers are ultra-simple buildings. Much more complex buildings last much longer. EIA.gov reports a design lifespan of 20 years. (designed not to last by whom?) It also reports that mfrs have often replaced components to leverage improved technologies. Those aren't whole replacements, not wear-outs, those are "upgrades" by firms who are effectively paid extra to upgrade more often -- via write-offs, purchases from self & friends, etc.
How often do non-manufacturing owners, producing electricity for their own consumption replace wind turbines? A wind turbine has one set of blades, rotating on one axle. Toyotas & Hondas with 4-6 pistons exploded up & down at 1000s of RPM, while bouncing down bumpy roads, routinely last 30 years with untrained maintenance. How does 20 years make sense for a system with so few moving parts???
Forbes: "Offshore wind could generate 11 times more electricity than the world needs ... according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
NUT: France's Rance tidal power station, finished in 1966, still offers 500GWh/yr. Why do we still have nothing comparable?
DoE estimated in 2012, non-powered US dams had 12,000 MW of potential hydropower capacity. Why are they non-powered?
NUT: More linguistic confusion around "efficiency". It matters little that a system may "inefficiently" handle large quantities to get proportionally small energies ... IF it produces the needed electricity at manageable costs without polluting consequences. Counting all the externalized costs, what is the real TCO and true efficiency of our conceptually-nonpolluting options: hydro, solar power towers, solar updraft towers, tidal systems, natural water and soil as heat sinks, etc?
CON: It's "overpopulation" argument is long discredited. If we want more babies, crush all the joy we can out of their lives, leaving only sex/procreation. If we want fewer, help them be happier engaging in other interesting things, with high confidence they will live to see their aspirations come to fruition.
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