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Conservative Media Inanely Declare Solar Power ‘Doesn’t Work’

Ah, right wing media.  Can’t live with them.  Can’t stop conservatives from being misled by them.

So President Bush had massive tax cuts for the wealthy and destroyed the economy while ballooning the deficit.  But do conservative media declare the tax cuts for the wealthy obviously don’t work?  Of course not.  In fact they call for deeper tax cuts for the rich.

And, let’s see, a bunch of Wall Street firms and banks go under, spinning the economy into a near total collapse.  But do conservative media declare unregulated capitalism doesn’t work?  Of course not.  In fact, they call  for less regulation.

Oh, but let a solar company fail, and suddenly the whole technology doesn’t work — even though thee U.S. solar industry had $1.8 billion in net exports last year.

Media Matters has the story, which is reposted below.

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Labor Day 2040: Endless Summer

Who ever would’ve guessed that there would be a Labor Day card for global warming.  But that is what SomeEcards are for:

But “The Onion” of e-card companies makes a serious point:  In the not-too-distant future, people are going to be amazed that anybody ever thought Labor Day signified the unofficial end of summer.  As Climate Progress discussed in “Mother Nature is Just Getting Warmed Up” in June:

Stanford climate scientists forecast permanently hotter summers

The tropics and much of the Northern Hemisphere are likely to experience an irreversible rise in summer temperatures within the next 20 to 60 years if atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations continue to increase, according to a new climate study by Stanford University scientists….

“According to our projections, large areas of the globe are likely to warm up so quickly that, by the middle of this century, even the coolest summers will be hotter than the hottest summers of the past 50 years,” said the study’s lead author, Noah Diffenbaugh.

And this could happen even sooner since, “actual GHG emissions over the early 21st century have exceeded those projected in the SRES scenario used here, suggesting that our results could provide a conservative projection of the timing of permanent emergence of an unprecedented heat regime.”

In a terrific presentation from last year, Climate scientist Katherine Hayhoe has a figure of what staying on the business as usual emissions path (A1FI or 1000 ppm) would mean for the end of this century (derived from the NOAA-led report):

 

Yes, absent a sharp and deep reduction in national and global emissions, by century’s end, Kansas (!) could well be above 100°F for three full months.  Labor Day will mean a return to those pleasant mid-to-upper 90s!

It truly will be an endless summer over much of Texas and Arizona and the Central Valley of California.  Not only will it be hot, but it will be very, very dry very, very soon:

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CO2 is Just a Trace Gas

One of the talking points favored by deniers like Joe Bastardi is “CO2 is just a trace gas.”  It makes up less than less than four 100ths of 1% of the atmosphere — what harm could it really do?

Skeptical Science has the short and long response of “What the science says” (along with the video above).  Here’s the short answer.

Saying that CO2 is “only a trace gas” is like saying that arsenic is “only” a trace water contaminant.  Small amounts of very active substances can cause large effects.

Here’s the long answer:

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