Solar energy is very dilute, so solar collectors usually cover huge areas of flat arable land, stealing farmland, starving wild herbs and grasses of sunlight and creating “Solar Deserts”.

A Solar Desert expanding at Gannawarra in Victoria, Australia
Not so Green
Picture Credit ARENA

     When I was in high school, there was a book The Secret Life of Plants, which was popular. I never read it, but I think it argued that plants are not mere mechanisms, but have a mental life. Well, the author was onto something, although mainstream scientists, dismissed the work as pseudo-science. Well, even so, it was more interesting than the unreplicable bs that they produce, usually for big business’ profits.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Life_of_Plants 
  https://www.naturalnews.com/2020-09-07-plants-higher-level-cognition-scientist.html

“In a major breakthrough, Italian researcher Umberto Castiello from the University of Padua gathered together a selection of studies supporting the idea that plants can sense, feel, think and even communicate among themselves. Castiello said he hopes to fuel a discussion regarding the cognitive abilities of plants, such as those often observed in humans and animals. Discussions on plants as cognitive agents could help lead scientists to the “roots” of cognition, he added. His findings appeared online in the Journal of Comparative Psychology.

     Before sunrise yesterday, the grass temperature in Washpool, "Sunny Queensland" was minus 1.7 deg. There was no wind or sunshine. Wind turbines were becalmed and not even moonbeams energised our solar panels.
In that still, frosty darkness, green energy failed again. Not a watt came from becalmed wind "farms" or from subsidized solar panels cluttering many roofs (including ours). But we didn't need our diesel in the shed - we were
saved by trusty Old King Coal, with maybe a dash of gas or hydro. Reliable 24/7 generators provided pre-dawn power-by-wire for lights, heaters and coffee before we checked the frosty flats for new-born lambs. Yet politicians, academics and the UN-ABC relentlessly push unreliable "green"energy, promising it will promote global cooling. They should be careful what they wish for. Neither sheep nor shepherds like frosty darkness.

     I read this article about disturbances in the Earth’s magnetic field, and was about to move onto the next disaster, when I noticed something “PC.”
  https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/weird-out-nowhere-something-just-rocked-earths-magnetic-field

“On June 23rd, Earth’s quiet magnetic field was unexpectedly disturbed by a wave of magnetism that rippled around much of the globe. There was no solar storm or geomagnetic storm to cause the disturbance. So what was it? Lately, Earth’s magnetic field has been quiet. Very quiet. The sun is in the pits of what may turn out to be the deepest Solar Minimum in a century. Geomagnetic storms just aren’t happening. “That’s why I was so surprised on June 23rd when my instruments picked up a magnetic anomaly,” reports Stuart Green, who operates a research-grade magnetometer in his backyard in Preston UK. “For more than 30 minutes, the local magnetic field oscillated like a sine wave.” Green quickly checked solar wind data from NOAA’s DSCOVR satellite. “There was nothing - no uptick in the solar wind speed or other factors that might explain the disturbance,” he says. He wasn’t the only one who noticed. In the Lofoten islands of Norway, Rob Stammes detected a similar anomaly on his magnetometer. “It was remarkable,” he says. “Our magnetic field swung back and forth by about 1/3rd of a degree. I also detected ground currents with the same 10 minute period.” What happened? Space physicists call this phenomenon a “pulsation continuous” or “Pc” for short. Imagine blowing across a piece of paper, making it flutter with your breath. Solar wind can have a similar effect on magnetic fields. Pc waves are essentially flutters propagating down the flanks of Earth’s magnetosphere excited by the breath of the sun. During more active phases of the solar cycle, these flutters are easily lost in the noise of rambunctious geomagnetic activity. But during the extreme quiet of Solar Minimum, such waves can make themselves “heard” like a pin dropping in an silent room.

     Here is a very interesting video, “NASA Admits We Never Went to the Moon,” which appears to have modern astronauts talking about the challenge of getting through the Earth’s Van Allen belt of radiation, without dying, or being cooked. But, if the US went to the moon in 1969, which we all saw on telly, then how was this possible?
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=380&v=DpPMoIv1lxI&feature=emb_title
  https://www.unz.com/article/the-moon-landing-a-giant-hoax-for-mankind/

“That may be the reason why, since the presidency of Tricky Dick, no manned mission to the moon, or even beyond low earth orbit, has ever been attempted. Remember, the International Space Station is orbiting at a distance of 250 miles from the earth, whereas the moon is about 237,000 miles away. On January 14, 2004, President George W. Bush, speaking at NASA headquarters, announced a new endeavor to “gain a new foothold on the moon” and beyond, remarking: “In the past 30 years, no human being has set foot on another world, or ventured farther into space than 386 miles—roughly the distance from Washington D.C. to Boston, Massachusetts” (quoted in Wisnewski 329). No manned mission to the moon came out of this announcement. Time is working to the advantage of the moon hoax theorists, for every year that passes makes people wonder: “If it was so easy to send a man to the moon between 1969 and 1972, why has it not been done again ever since?” Less than half of the British and Russians still believe in the moon landings. Among the educated, this percentage is falling fast. What will happen in twenty years, when Americans realize hardly anybody but them believes it? Will the United States of America survive the exposure of this giant hoax?”

     As a religious fanatic, my alcohol-soaked blood shot eyes often bulging as if on stalks, I look daily for material to support my crazed world view, that most of my fellow fringe dwellers find somewhat extreme, except for Uncle Len, who always goes one level crazier than me, just for the hell of it. Take locust plagues, which are seemingly everywhere in Africa and Asia. Science may have an answer based on resources and food supply, but for me, it is clearly a prophecy of end times:
  https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/locust-swarms-in-uttar-pradesh-s-sangam-heading-towards-kaushambi/story-BDwdC7z4nx0BPxJ6q6mYeL.html
  https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/jun/08/rolling-emergency-of-locust-swarms-decimating-africa-asia-and-middle-east

“Locust swarms threaten a “rolling emergency” that could endanger harvests and food security across parts of Africa and Asia for the rest of the year, experts warn. An initial infestation of locusts in December was expected to die out during the current dry season. But unseasonal rains have allowed several generations of locust to breed, resulting in new swarms forming. Huge swarms of locusts have been causing devastation across swathes of Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Erratic weather conditions and storms have aided their path. As a result, countries have been battling the pests for months to avoid a hunger crisis. Desert locusts, which live in areas between west Africa and India, cause the most devastation and like to breed in moist conditions. These locusts live for three months. Eggs hatch two weeks after they have been laid, and hoppers become adults after about six weeks. Adult locusts can eat their body weight every day, and fly up to 150km a day in search of new supplies. Kenya is experiencing its worst infestation for 70 years, with pastoralists complaining that the vegetation on which their livestock feeds is being wiped out. Ethiopia and Somalia have not seen an outbreak this bad for 25 years. Swarms have also been destroying crops in Uganda, India and Pakistan. Fears that millions of people could be forced into hunger prompted mass control operations earlier in the year, which have had an impact in Kenya and southern Ethiopia. But experts fear rains and insecurity in Somalia and South Sudan could undermine efforts in the east and Horn of Africa. Keith Cressman, locust forecasting expert for the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, said that over the coming months locusts are expected to move farther north into Ethiopia and South Sudan. High food prices in South Sudan could compound the threat of hunger.

     Being a loner, out herein the scrub in my tent, much like Uncle Len in Adelaide, wallowing in the filth of his shed, we need a philosophical and scientific underpinning for our eccentric life style choices. Got it:
  https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/05/how-loners-help-species-survive/612019/

“There are always individuals that don’t participate in the collective behavior—the odd bird or insect or mammal that remains just a little out of sync with the rest; the stray cell or bacterium that seems to have missed some call to arms. Researchers usually pay them little heed, dismissing them as insignificant outliers. But a handful of scientists have started to suspect otherwise. Their hunch is that these individuals are signs of something deeper, a broader evolutionary strategy at work. Now new research validating that hypothesis has opened up a very different way of thinking about the study of collective behavior. Scientists have used slime molds to experimentally investigate the emergence and maintenance of social behavior, identifying mechanisms that ensure cooperation among the amoebas. But they’ve always focused on the aggregated cells. Tarnita and her team wanted to investigate whether the cells that stayed behind—the “loners,” as they called them—also played an important role.

     I have often laid awake a night thinking about things to worry about, so that I could call myself a chronic insomniac, but I have not, until now, worried about the Earth’s magnetic field disintegrating. Maybe it will not, but it does seem to be diminishing, causing big techy problems.
  https://news.sky.com/story/earths-magnetic-field-which-protects-us-from-solar-radiation-is-mysteriously-weakening-11992022

“Earth's magnetic field, which is vital to protecting life on our planet from solar radiation, is mysteriously weakening. On average the planet's magnetic field has lost almost 10% of its strength over the last two centuries, but there is a large localised region of weakness stretching from Africa to South America. Known as the South Atlantic Anomaly, the field strength in this area has rapidly shrunk over the past 50 years just as the area itself has grown and moved westward. Over the past five years a second centre of minimum intensity has developed southwest of Africa, which researchers believe indicates the anomaly could split into two separate cells. The anomaly is causing technical difficulties for satellites orbiting the Earth. European Space Agency (ESA) scientists from the Swarm Data, Innovation and Science Cluster (DISC) are using data from ESA's Swarm satellite constellation to study the anomaly. Swarm satellites are designed to identify and precisely measure the different magnetic signals that make up Earth's magnetic field. Dr Jurgen Matzka, from the German Research Centre for Geosciences, said: "The new, eastern minimum of the South Atlantic Anomaly has appeared over the last decade and in recent years is developing vigorously. "We are very lucky to have the Swarm satellites in orbit to investigate the development of the South Atlantic Anomaly. The challenge now is to understand the processes in Earth's core driving these changes." One speculation is that the weakening of the field is a sign that the Earth is heading for a pole reversal - in which the north and south magnetic poles flip. This flip doesn't happen immediately, but instead would occur over the course of a couple of centuries during which there would be multiple north and south magnetic poles all around the globe. "Such events have occurred many times throughout the planet's history," said ESA, noting "we are long overdue by the average rate at which these reversals take place (roughly every 250,000 years)".

     Today in SE Queensland (the “Sunshine State”) it is wind-less, cloudy and cold. We need electricity to brew coffee, cook dinner, warm a cold house and pump water. There is no solar or wind power being generated and no giant batteries releasing stored energy. Where does our electricity come from when we need it most? It comes mainly from the old reliable, King Coal, with maybe a bit of hydro and gas. Lord save us from Green Energy dreamers who would have us freezing in blackouts when stoves, heaters and TV’s switch on tonight.

25 May 2020,      The Australian Minister for Promoting Useless Energy thinks that hydrogen fuel, carbon capture and storage, soil carbon and biofuels are priorities for energy policy and greenhouse gas reduction. If that’s the best our leaders can come up with, Australia should have voted Green last election to speed the inevitable recession and blackouts that will eventually kill this tsunami of energy nonsense. “Hydrogen” does not supply net energy – burning it can return some of the energy used to produce it from hydrocarbons or electrolysis of water. It is an expensive explosive gas that makes less sense than Snowy 2 - more energy in than out! Moreover, we have no infrastructure that can safely store, distribute or use hydrogen in our transport fleet, energy network or smelters. Governments should not force energy consumers or tax payers to promote Canberra’s thought bubbles - let the “green hydrogen” entrepreneurs risk their own or shareholders’ money. “Carbon capture and storage” is another dumb idea. To capture CO2 emissions from coal, gas or biomass power stations consumes a lot of energy to separate, store, pipe and pump it underground (hoping it will stay there). It would be far better leave non-polluting CO2 in the lower atmosphere and surround every power station with crops and forests hungry for the CO2 plant food so essential to their growth.

     Trying to extract CO2 from the atmosphere is even dumber because the mighty oceans will quickly release CO2 from their huge stores to restore equilibrium between atmosphere and oceans. Even if it could be done, it is a bad idea – why steal plant food from grass, crops and forests? “Soil carbon” is green-speak for what every sensible pastoralist tries to do – increase the humus and biological activity in soil. The quickest way to do this is via keyline/contour ripping to retain water in the soil (as shown in Australia by P A Yeoman), and by managed periodic heavy impact of grazing animals to promote pasture growth (as shown in Africa by Alan Savory). But it is total nonsense to turn “carbon farming” into a costly rural rort run by a bureaucracy of soil samplers and modellers who think it will cool the climate. “Biofuels” are another way to waste energy, food crops and trees to do jobs better done by coal, gas and oil - a crime against humanity and the environment. If our Minister for Promoting Useless Energy is determined to sequester and store carbon, there is only one sensible way - restore the forestry industry. Harvest mature forest trees for poles, posts, sleepers, paper, cardboard or dance floors. Then replant with new trees. Young trees grow rapidly and extract much CO2. But old trees reach a stage of carbon equilibrium when the CO2 they extract in summer is equal to what they lose as leaves, branches and trunks fall to frosts, droughts, bushfires and termites.

     China keeps giving us so much. Why, it almost dumped a pile of space junk on New York City. Well, that would have gone down well. Anyway, better luck next time!
  https://nypost.com/2020/05/12/space-junk-from-chinese-rocket-narrowly-missed-hitting-nyc/

“Chunks of the massive Chinese rocket that recently took an uncontrolled plunge back into the Earth’s atmosphere narrowly missed hitting New York City, according to a report. Had the Long March 5B rocket re-entered the atmosphere about 15 to 20 minutes earlier on Monday, it would have rained debris on the nation’s largest metro area, according to Ars Technica, a technology-focused publication. The about 100-foot-long rocket was launched on May 5, carrying an unnamed prototype of a newly designed Chinese crew capsule. After about a week in orbit, the 20-ton core stage of the rocket fell back into the atmosphere around 11 a.m., moving at thousands of miles per hour and largely burning up on its way down. A bit of the spacecraft about the size of a small bus splashed into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of West Africa, according to the US Space Command, which was tracking the re-entry. Some of the space junk also appeared to have landed in a town in Cote d’Ivoire, according to Quartz. No injuries were reported. Typically, a two-stage launch will drop its first rocket into the ocean before reaching orbit — instead of allowing the large object to come back down uncontrolled, according to NASA. It’s not the first time China has seemingly shown a disregard for debris from its rocket launches. In November 2019, one of its rocket boosters dropped on a Chinese village, spewing toxic fuel and smashing at least one building, Ars Technica reported at the time.”

     Reading the article to be discussed here I was reminded for the first time in what, 40 years, of a high school debate I was in “We should rape the desert.” I was leader of the “No!’ team. Basically, we argued that our opponents assumed that desert regions are of no natural and ecological significance, But, that is false, for destroying such regions by pollution can come back and bite us on the bum. We won the debate, mainly because the other side was full of dopes. But, now change the problem to deal instead with outer space, and the moon. Why not mine the moon, and/or turn it into a giant trash bin, say for nuclear waste? Or, use it to test nuclear weapons of mass destruction?
  https://amp.theguardian.com/science/2020/may/05/trump-mining-moon-us-artemis-accords

“The Trump administration is drafting a legal blueprint for mining on the moon under a new US-sponsored international agreement called the Artemis Accords, according to people familiar with the proposed pact. The agreement would be the latest effort to cultivate allies around Nasa’s plan to put humans and space stations on the moon within the next decade, and comes as the civilian space agency plays a growing role in implementing American foreign policy. The draft pact has not been formally shared with US allies yet. The Trump administration and other spacefaring countries see the moon as a key strategic asset in outer space. The moon also has value for long-term scientific research that could enable future missions to Mars – activities that fall under a regime of international space law widely viewed as outdated.

     I very much like the idea of the voluntary abandonment of modern weapons and for soldiers to resort to fist fights and throwing huge rocks at each other. For one thing, it is cheap, and second, nothing brings home the satisfaction of defeating an opponent in hand to hand combat … witness the September 2021 boxing match to be held between Halfthor and Eddie Hall to settle differences. We see it in movies, but it really is the manly thing to do: go primal:
  https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/indian-and-chinese-troops-clash-fistfight-disputed-border

“Dozens of Indian and Chinese soldiers were injured in a cross-border clash involving fistfights and stone-throwing at a remote but strategically important mountain pass near Tibet, the Indian Army said Sunday according to the Straits Times and BBC. There have been long-running border tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbours, with a bitter war fought over India's north-eastern-most state of Arunachal Pradesh in 1962. The two countries have competing claims over their shared 3,400 kilometre (2,100 mile) border. Sometimes stand-offs involve chest-bumping, pushing and shoving, and throwing stones at each other, BBC South Asia Editor Anbarasan Ethirajan reports. The latest tense face-off took place near the Naku La sector in Sikkim, more than 5,000 meters (16,400ft) above sea level in the Himalayas. "Aggressive behaviour by the two sides resulted in minor injuries to troops. It was stone-throwing and arguments that ended in a fistfight," Indian Army Eastern Command spokesman Mandeep Hooda told AFP. The "stand-off" on Saturday at Naku La sector near the 4,572m Nathu La crossing in the north-eastern state of Sikkim - which borders Bhutan, Nepal and China - was later resolved after "dialogue and interaction" at a local level, Hooda said. "Temporary and short duration face-offs between border-guarding troops do occur as boundaries are not resolved," he added. The violent clash is the first between the two countries since 2017, when there was a brawl between Chinese and Indian soldiers near the northwest Indian region of Ladakh. Though both countries send out patrols that often engage in physical stand-offs, no bullet has been fired over the border in the last four decades.”

     The Lockdown Depression is rushing towards us. Many in politics, media and industry are digging the hole deeper, some through panic and ignorance, others cynically pushing anti-industry agendas or serving vested interests.
We will never rebuild our industries and jobs with locks, chains, hobbles, handcuffs or handouts. We need to recognise the realities of history, geography, geology and economics. Australia is a huge dry continent with an empty heart - over 70% is desert, indigenous land or national parks. Outback mines provide some income and employment but a huge area does little to employ, feed or clothe Australians. Too much land is a haven for weeds, pests and bushfires, a no-go zone for water conservation or mineral exploration, and a magnet for over-populated neighbours.

     The foundations for today’s Australia were built by aboriginals, explorers, miners, farmers and foresters. The first European explorers marvelled at the vast grasslands and open forests which were created and maintained by frequent aboriginal fires. Then prospectors, miners, drovers and settlers blazed the first wagon tracks and droving trails. Foresters followed to harvest timber thus clearing land for small farms in fertile coastal areas. The mighty Cobb and Co had a policy to “Follow the Gold” and their coach tracks became roads, and their supply stations became towns. The overland telegraph crossed the continent and railways and road trains replaced horse-powered coaches, camel trains and bullock wagons.

     Asiatimes.com features Australian plasma physicist Heirich Hora who believes that a fusion reactor can be built for as little as $ 100 million. “Producing electric power from the hydrogen-boron microexplosions is relatively straightforward in principle. The shower of positive-charged alpha particles emitted by a microexplosion in the center of the chamber generates a powerful current pulse, which can be harvested using technology already developed in the context of ultra-high-voltage DC electric power transmission systems. The DC pulse is then transformed into alternating current.”
  https://www.theaustralian.com.au/science/lasers-fire-hopes-of-clean-energy-switch/news-story/c95e88bae781899dd45b9e0ec532f020

     Here is the Hora et al. scientific paper:
  https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/laser-and-particle-beams/article/road-map-to-clean-energy-using-laser-beam-ignition-of-boronhydrogen-fusion/8BE057DC1BC9E0A588FB3ABAA993078C

     In the driest continent on Earth, which is perennially in drought, with endless battles over limited water resources, the endgame is to let China buy water from the Murray Darling; my God, why don’t they just give it to them!
  https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-06/chinese-state-owned-companies-buy-up-water-in-murray-darling/12215548

“Chinese state-owned enterprises have acquired water entitlements in Australia and some foreign water investors face limited scrutiny by the Foreign Investment Review Board.
Key points:

     Look, unlike other writers here, I am not much interested in race issues, and I learnt that in ‘Nam, where the “Negro” soldiers, as they were called then, now regarded as derogatory, and now called “Blacks,” were in my opinion brave men too. What I don’t like is emasculation, especially by symbolic acts such as gun banning and firearms culling. Like this, just to please the wife:
  http://archive.is/0oBRk

“Prince Harry recently sold his custom-made hunting rifles as a way to please “animal-loving” wife Meghan Markel, U.K. tabloids said Wednesday. “A fellow hunter bought the pair of prized Purdey firearms, thought to be worth at least £50,000, in a private deal,” The Sun reported. “Harry learnt to shoot as a child and once killed a one-ton buffalo,” the outlet said. “But Meghan is opposed to hunting and pals hinted the Duke of Sussex would give up to appease her.” The 35-year-old was absent from recent shoots at Balmoral and Sandringham, The Sun outlined. “He sold his two British-made guns five months ago — before he and Meghan, 38, quit the UK for a new life in North America.” “He bought them because he wanted them, not because they belonged to Harry, but he was quite chuffed when he found out,” a friend of the anonymous buyer said. “They are beautiful examples and he’s very pleased with them but he’s not the sort of person who wants to boast about the royal connection.”    

     Some of my fellow writers love Natural News.com as source material. In my dissenting opinion it is ok, but I read better, and so don’t use it too much. Consider the coverage of the coming war with China, where the bioweapon hypothesis is accepted and taken further:
  https://www.naturalnews.com/2020-05-06-interviews-dave-hodges-and-jr-nyquist-china-plan-to-attack-and-destroy-america.html

“The deliberate release of the genetically engineered Wuhan coronavirus was a “bioweapons Pearl Harbor” attack against the United States and Western nations. China dropped the virus in their own back yard to start the attack, then rapidly exported the virus to targeted nations through international flights while pressuring the WHO to condemn any nation that sought to block those flights. (The left-wing media also took part in condemning any effort to block flights from China as “racism.”) Importantly, the Wuhan coronavirus bioweapons attack was just the opening chapter of an attack plan against the United States that will involve financial attacks, cyber attacks and eventually kinetic attacks. I recently interviewed two experts to learn more about China’s plans against the United States. They are JR Nyquist, who publishes JRnyquist.blog (an excellent source of important articles), and Dave Hodges from TheCommonsenseShow.com, an indy media investigator who has excellent sources within the Pentagon and the US State Dept. Together, these two investigators paint a very worrisome picture of what the future holds between the USA and China, as it’s clear China has already launched a bioweapons attack against the United States and intends to follow that up with yet more direct attacks against America.”

     It was predictable; the globalist Left never let a good crisis go to waste, however it turns out. Thus, Covid-19 is now linked with climate change and the planetary crisis, at least in the minds of the acting class:
  https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2020/05/06/robert-de-niro-madonna-use-coronavirus-to-demand-climate-change-reforms-massive-extinction-of-life-on-earth-is-no-longer-in-doubt/

“Left-wing politicians have woken up to the fact that  the coronavirus pandemic “would be a terrible crisis to waste,” in the words of Hillary Clinton. Now a group of wealthy Hollywood stars is also capitalizing on the crisis to push a sweeping climate change agenda. Celebrities including Robert De Niro, Madonna, Barbra Streisand, Jane Fonda, and Joaquin Phoenix have signed their names to an editorial published Wednesday in France’s largest newspaper, Le Monde, demanding a total overhaul of economies around the world in the name of saving the environment and fighting global warming. “The Covid-19 pandemic is a tragedy. This crisis, however, has an upside in giving us the chance to examine what is essential,” the editorial says. “The ongoing ecological catastrophe is a ‘meta-crisis’: the massive extinction of life on Earth is no longer in doubt, and all indicators point to a direct existential threat. Unlike a pandemic, however serious it may be, it’s a question of a global ecological collapse whose effects will be immeasurable.”

     The religion of climate change has been given a slap in the face by socialist Michael Moore’s new film, Planet of the Humans, which is an obvious allusion to the Planet of the Apes move franchise. Moore has upset the environmentalists by attacking the sacred of sacreds, renewable energy. Here is Rolling Stone on this:
  https://theconversation.com/3-times-michael-moores-film-planet-of-the-humans-gets-the-facts-wrong-and-3-times-it-gets-them-right-137890
  https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/bill-mckibben-climate-movement-michael-moore-993073/

“Basically, Moore and his colleagues have made a film attacking renewable energy as a sham and arguing that the environmental movement is just a tool of corporations trying to make money off green energy. “One of the most dangerous things right now is the illusion that alternative technologies, like wind and solar, are somehow different from fossil fuels,” Ozzie Zehner, one of the film’s producers, tells the camera. When visiting a solar facility, he insists: “You use more fossil fuels to do this than you’re getting benefit from it. You would have been better off just burning the fossil fuels.” That’s not true, not in the least — the time it takes for a solar panel to pay back the energy used to build it is well under four years. Since it lasts three decades, it means 90 percent of the power it produces is pollution-free, compared with zero percent of the power from burning fossil fuels. It turns out that pretty much everything else about the movie was wrong — there have been at least 24 debunkings, many of them painfully rigorous; as one scientist wrote in a particularly scathing takedown, “Planet of the Humans is deeply useless. Watch anything else.” Moore’s fellow filmmaker Josh Fox, in an epic unraveling of the film’s endless lies, got in one of the best shots: “Releasing this on the eve of Earth Day’s 50th anniversary is like Bernie Sanders endorsing Donald Trump while chugging hydroxychloroquine.”