Exhibit 1, from an SF Chronicle op-ed by the disinformers of TBI, published July 27:

China alone is reportedly investing $440 billion to $660 billion in its clean-energy industries over 10 years. South Korea is investing a full 2 percent of its gross domestic product in a Green New Deal. And Japan is redoubling incentives for solar, aiming for a 20-fold expansion in installed solar energy by 2020.

Exhibit 2, from a Time article by Bryan Walsh, dated August 1:

China is reportedly investing up to $660 billion over the next decade in clean energy and research. South Korea is planning to invest close to 2% of its GDP each year, or about $85 billion over five years, in clean tech. And Japan is aiming for a 20-fold expansion in installed solar by 2020.

Somebody has some explaining to do to their editor (and the public) — especially since Walsh quotes The Breakthrough Institute in the article, “borrows” much of the rest of their flawed critique of Obama and Waxman-Markey (adding some new mistakes of his own), and rips off TBI’s Big Lie by asserting:  “On the campaign trail Obama promised to spend $150 billion over 10 years just on clean energy research.”

Note to the media:  That is just an outright falsehood, and if you keep quoting TBI your reputation is going to take a hit the way Bryan Walsh’s just did.  For the umpteenth time, here is what Democratic nominee Obama actually promised during the campaign in his August 2008 “New Energy for America” plan:

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I am filing this under humor, specifically ‘inanity defense’.  The explanation Anthony Watts has invented for his attempt to yank Peter Sinclair’s video off YouTube is the funniest thing you’re ever going to read — assuming of course you don’t read the laughable stuff that passes for “analysis” on WattsUpWithThat every day [see "Diagnosing a victim of anti-science syndrome (ASS)"].  ClimateProgress also has an exclusive interview from Sinclair on Watts and his wildly inappropriate attack on Sinclair’s family.

When we last left the former TV meteorologist and top anti-scientific blogger, his nonexistent knowledge of copyright laws had failed to stop the world from seeing Sinclair’s video (see The video that Anthony Watts does not want you to see: The Climate Denial “Crock of the Week”).  Thursday, Watts offered what might be called the “I have no friggin’ clue what I’m talking about but I am the world’s biggest hypocrite” defense for his failed censorship in a post with the unintentionally accurate headline, “On Climate, Comedy, Copyrights, and Cinematography.”

To understand the inanity defense, first take a moment to watch the video Watts is afraid of:

Yes, Watts actually claims that Sinclair has committed copyright infringement because “in the video Mr. Sinclair produced and posted on YouTube, I noticed that he did in fact use photographs and graphics from my published book “Is The U.S. Surface Temperature Record Reliable?”.”  If Watts wants to claim authorship of a ‘book’ on his resume that is in fact a 31-page PDF ‘published’ by that world-class publishing house The Heartland Institute (!) and posted for free, well, heck, this is the age of resume padding and vanity presses.

But Watts is going to have a hard time convincing any judge that the reproduction of a small amount of material from a PDF given away for free on the Internet hurts the “the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work,” one of the four factors considered in lawsuits over the fair use doctrine, “codified by the Copyright Act of 1976 as 17 U.S.C. § 107,” which “permits some copying and distribution without permission of the copyright holder or payment to same.”  Given how little material Sinclair used and the “transformative” nature of the work — he used it as part of a critical analysis — the whole notion that there was any copyright infringement here would lead any court to the simple summary judgment “ROTFLMAO.”

Watts would know that if he spent as much time on Wikipedia researching copyright law as he did investigating Sinclair and his family.  Since Watts’ ignorance of copyright laws rivals his ignorance of climate science, he actually and seriously and literally posted this must-read explanation on WattsUpWithThat without a trace of irony:

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