Your Monday Crazy | Vol. 3 / No. 7.1

Not pictured: proof these don't cause cancer | Photo: USDA, CC BY 2.0
Not pictured: proof these don’t cause cancer | Photo: USDA, CC BY 2.0

Yesterday I woke up to a news story entitled US town fears solar farms would “suck up all energy from the sun.”

Now, I don’t know if these people are totally crazy, or if they just look it because of the reporting, but when the reasons you’re giving to reject a rezoning to allow solar power plant development include a retired science teacher worried that “no one could tell her that solar panels didn’t cause cancer,” and a local man concerned that the solar farms would “suck up all the energy from the sun,” you’ve got to hope it’s just selective reporting. Even if they only took the quotes from the craziest people, for these two at least I think my friend’s response might be just a little bit perfect, so I’m quoting it below:

“But, like, if the solar panels suck up the Sun, wouldn’t that be, like, good for global warming? If I were President I’d totally put solar panels on, like, polar bears.”

Here’s a link to a more in-depth look which only sort-of allays my fears about the good residents of Woodland, North Carolina.

Happy Monday, everyone.

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Richard Ford Burley is a writer and doctoral candidate at Boston College, as well as an editor at Ledger, the first academic journal devoted to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. In his spare time he writes about science, skepticism, feminism, and futurism here at This Week In Tomorrow.