Salt Lake Tribune calls Pandora's Promise "blatantly one-sided"

Sean P. Means in the Salt Lake Tribune spots the bias in Pandora's Promise.

"Stone hedges his bets by never presenting the other side. In fact, most of these experts go out of their way to lampoon traditional environmentalists as loony, out-of-touch and as stuck in old thinking as climate-change deniers.

The film’s blatantly one-sided presentation undercuts the pro-nuclear argument more than any counterargument."

Pandora's bomb

When Paul Allen is buying screen time for you in theaters you can lose your shirt.  Five days, 16 theaters, $23,419. As Romm says, it's an (atomic) bomb.

Update on July 1, 2013 by admin

By weekend of June 21st, down to five theaters, each taking in on average $719. By June 28th: Gone.

Should you see Pandora's Promise? Answer: "a resounding 'no.'"

"You may be wondering if you should see the new pro-nuke movie, “Pandora’s Promise.” I think it’s safe to say that the answer is a resounding 'no,' writes Joe Romm at Think Progress. Indeed, the most stunning thing I've read about the movie comes from someone who is generally positive about it, NY Times blogger Andy Revkin:

The film also avoids discussing the high costs and logistical and policy hurdles to adding substantially to the country’s, or world’s, existing fleets of operating nuclear plants. The scale and costs required to cut into coal use using any technology — nuclear, wind, solar or otherwise — is incredibly daunting.

Huh? Doing a movie about nuclear power without discussing the high costs, would be like doing a movie comparing the US healthcare system to that of other countries … without discussing the high costs!!!":

Read the full article.

Turning down (or off) nuclear means turning on wind energy

As reported by Hannah Northey at Greenwire, Exelon Nuclear has blamed low wind power prices for its decision to cancel power uprates at its LaSalle, IL and Limerick, PA atomic power plants.

The American Wind Energy Association kicked Exelon out of AWEA for its scapegoating of wind power for its own financial woes, as well as its opposition to an extension of the Production Tax Credit for wind.

New Yorker's Specter should check the facts

Read Linda Pentz Gunter's response to the New Yorker blog piece by Michael Specter.

A response to the New Yorker blog piece, Time To Go Nuclear, by Michael Specter, which like the film it glorifies, fails to look further than the sound bites for factual verification.

An excerpt:

"In unquestioningly accepting that the “environmental credentials” of the protagonists in Pandora’s Promise “are beyond dispute” Michael Specter then laps up the rest of the film’s rhetoric apparently without a moment’s research to ascertain whether any of it is even true.

First, the film promotes its “cast” as former leaders of the anti-nuclear movement, which none of them ever was. Second, it rather changes the definition of “environmentalist” to ascribe this term to individuals who support an extractive, polluting and cancer-causing industry like nuclear energy, capable of catastrophic accidents that can render vast areas permanent sacrifice zones. Add that to some of the protagonists’ support of natural gas fracking, so-called “clean coal” and genetically modified organisms, and the more appropriate description would be “former environmentalists who now support nuclear power.”

Specter then buys into a whole host of sound bites articulated in the film that have no basis in scientific or medical reality."  Read the rest.