A Great Use for Solar

Fox News reports that Nissan is launching a hybrid cargo ship, with 281 photovoltaic solar panels supplementing the vessel's massive diesel engines. 

Most cargo ships use diesel-powered electricity generators to power the thousands of electrical devices on-board - from radar equipment to lighting to coffee makers and iPod chargers. The solar panels render the generators unnecessary, thus significantly reducing the amount of diesel fuel burned on each trip.

This innovation is in addition to more conventional energy-saving elements like LED lighting throughout its hold and living quarters, and low-friction paint for the hull.

Look for more of these kinds of efficiency gains in the shipping industry. They realize it's a sound investment, and will help us stretch our finite natural resources.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2012/02/04/nissans-solar-powered-hybrid-cargo-ship/#ixzz1lVnuBD5W

Energy Indepenence is possible

The fringe environmentalists want us to believe that so-called green energy is vital to our national security. We need to be independent of foreign oil in order to stop supporting regimes that are hostile to our interests. But they are lying.

If they were truly serious about energy independence, then they would stop blocking the development of the abundant natural resources in our own backyard. The North Slope pipeline in Alaska can safely transport upwards of 2.2 million barrels of oil each day from the oil fields to the refineries. Currently, there are three untapped oil fields in Alaska: the National Petroleum Reserve, the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, and the 0.0087% of the 23 million acre ANWR that is necessary to begin oil production. Those fields contain an estimated 60 billion barrels of oil. At the peak transport capacity of 2.2 million barrels a day, that is over 70 years of production.

Is that a permanent answer? No. But it is a safe and affordable alternative to foreign oil that would give us time to develop other non-petroleum based fuel sources.

If our government was serious about energy independence, they would open these areas up for oil production.

Liberalism attacks the poor: Radical Environmentalism

One of the most amazing contradictions of modern politics is the claim that liberal policies intend to help the poor and underprivileged. I'll return to this theme often. Today, we'll examine the cruelty of the radical environmentalist agenda.

This chart (please click to enlarge> gives us a crystal-clear view of the dramatic rise in gas prices since 2004 ... when the democrat party took over Congress and began pushing a far-left economic agenda ... and again since 2008, when that agenda began to be implemented by the current presidential administration.

Radical environmentalists believe this is a good thing. They believe that this will force the economy into reduced dependence on fossil fuels.

But who is most impacted by the price of gasoline? It is the working class. They have to pay for gasoline ... and this increase means that a far greater proportion of their income is going to be spent on just getting to work. And that means that less of their income is available for food for their family, for clothing for their family, and for charitable contributions to those that could use the help.

The rise in gasoline prices ... which can be tied directly to regulatory changes made in the past two years ... is a cruel tax on the poor.

Source of the chart: Gasoline Price History