If Brian Harrison and W. G. Stover, the two Solyndra executives who took the Fifth Amendment at a Congressional hearing on Friday, ever spend a day in jail, I’ll stand on my head in Times Square.

It’s not going to happen, for one simple reason: neither they, nor anyone else connected with Solyndra, have done anything remotely criminal. The company’s recent bankruptcy — which the Republicans are now rabidly “investigating” because Solyndra had the misfortune to receive a $535 million federally guaranteed loan from the Obama administration — was largely brought on by a stunning collapse in the price of solar panels over the past year or so.

The company’s innovative solar panels, high-priced to begin with, became increasingly uncompetitive in the marketplace. Solyndra didn’t have enough big commercial customers to create the necessary economies of scale. And although Harrison and Stover remained optimistic up to the bitter end — insisting six weeks before the late-August bankruptcy filing that the company was going to be fine — they ultimately failed to raise additional capital that would have allowed Solyndra to stay in business.

The Republicans are trying to make that optimism appear sinister, but if we’ve learned anything from the financial crisis, it is that wishful thinking in the face of a collapsing market is not a crime. Otherwise, Richard Fuld, the former chief executive of Lehman Brothers, would be wearing prison garb….

At the hearing on Friday, several of the Republican congressmen boasted that, in passing the continuing resolution to keep the government running the day before, they had succeeded in slashing the program that had made the loan to Solyndra….

But the real winner isn’t the American taxpayer or even the House Republicans. It’s the Chinese solar industry.

That’s business columnist Joe Nocera in a great NY Times piece “The Phony Solyndra Scandal.”  Nocera is not some progressive, renewable energy advocate columnist.   Before joining the NYT in 2005, “Mr. Nocera spent 10 years at Fortune Magazine, where he held a variety of positions, including contributing writer, editor-at-large and executive editor.”

That’s why his piece makes so much sense –  he is just looking at this with business sense.  Here’s more:

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Cyclists form the shape of a giant bicycle as environmental campaigners 350.org launch their Moving Planet – a global day of events focused on moving the planet away from fossil fuels towards a safer climate future – at Haggerston Park in east London. Photo credit: Yui Mok/PA Wire

GLOBAL — Photos and videos of massive bicycle rides and marches are streaming onto the 350.org website this morning, as over 2,000 “Moving Planet” clean-energy demonstrations get underway in 175 countries around the world.

“The planet has been stuck for too long with governments doing nothing about the biggest problem we’ve ever faced,” said Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, the international climate campaign coordinating the demonstrations. “This is the day when people will get the earth moving, rolling towards the solutions we need.”

Moving Planet got an early start in Cairo on Friday afternoon, when hundreds of Egyptians took to the streets to form a “Human Nile,” raising awareness about the threat global warming poses to critical water resources.

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I re-instigated the weekend question a month ago and response has been great.

You have given great answers to “What Topics Would You Like Climate Progress to Cover?” and “If You Could Ask a Climate Scientist One Question….” and “Is President Obama a Lost Cause Environmentally — and What Should Progressives Do?“  And Stephen Lacey and I are definitely incorporating your ideas into our planned future posts.

They say knowing what questions to ask is as important as knowing how to find the answers.  So I’d like you to suggest weekend questions you would like Climate Progress to ask you, the readers, in the coming months.

Some classics include  “What should Ian do with his life?” and, of course, “Where would be the best place to live in 2035? 2060?“

by Sheril Kirshenbaum, in a Science Progress cross-post

Marine chemist Richard Feely, a senior scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration, has been collecting water samples in the North Pacific for over 30 years. He’s observed a decrease in pH at the upper part of the water column, notably the region where carbon dioxide from automobile exhaust, coal-fired power plants, and other human activities has collected. This surface water is now acidic enough to dissolve the shells of some marine animals such as corals, plankton, and mollusks in laboratory experiments. Feely’s findings are just one sign of a troubling global phenomenon called ocean acidification.

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