My wife and I saw the documentary film "Unearth" today.

[NNadir]

Unearth

It played at the Princeton Garden Theater; admission was fee; it was well attended, a production of the Princeton Library. The price was free for members of the theater and perhaps everyone else

Two salmon fishermen brothers, their livelihood threatened by a proposed gold/copper/molybdenum mine set out to tour major mining areas mostly in the American and Canadian west.

They are and their native neighbors are portrayed as the "good guys" as they set out from Alaska to view major mines all over the Western United States.

The subtext is that the mining companies want to be seen as good guys because they're making the "energy transition" possible.

(I contend that there is no "energy transition," but that's me.)

The movie is moving; I wept in places.

There was a lot of discussion by the mining companies about how important they are too green energy.

During Q&A with the director of the film John Hunter Nolan, and producer Eyal Levy, I asked the question nobody wanted to hear, which was "Is 'green energy' really 'green.'" ''

I had a nice chat with the wife of a Rutgers Professor on the topic of nuclear energy.

And I got to talk about the PJM grid and what I found out when writing this post about the carbon impact of electric cars charged on the grid: A paper addressing the idea that electric cars are "green."

I recommend this film, because the Strickland brothers tour mines in British Columbia, attend a mining conference in Vancouver, travel to the mining town of Butte Montana, the Kennecott mine in Utah, and copper mines in Arizona. They let you know the results on the people there.

As for me; I don't agree we're going to mine our way out of extreme global heating into which we mined our way (oil, gas, coal).

If you can see the film, do so. If nothing else, it will inspire questions, and ask you to think about about how you live.

[moniss]

1. There is nothing that is without costs and

carbon footprint including nuclear energy. There are only comparisons to alternatives. There is no "free lunch" no matter which way anybody goes. The electric vehicles as they continue to improve in efficiency etc. will move some of the numbers and will always be a better solution than the internal combustion engine.

From an engineering perspective there are usually no comparisons that are made that are truly cradle to grave for each thing being compared and therein lies a large problem. It is not typical that anybody truly goes all the way on figuring costs and for example the environmental costs of oil extraction along with the medical costs, lost earnings etc. of the cancer etc. associated with it is never really ever factored as a cost. Likewise for mining of coal or lithium. The disposal costs for the various things are usually not fully calculated because things like landfill impacts go on literally forever. Even if people point to steel recycling or lithium recycling they do not fully address the costs of those operations and rarely will you see anybody include the future retirement costs for the workers necessary for those industries for example even though it clearly is a cost.

My point as a technically trained person is that I see people usually doing cost evaluations that go part of the way but not all of the way and for each approach the proponents hold to "studies" that support their view and wish those like me who point out the shortfalls of their conclusion about costs would go away.