Archive for the 'Energy' Category

‘Sustainable’? Tell me your time frame

Sunday, April 7th, 2013

A regular reader writes in to protest my assertion that America now has enough proven fossil fuel reserves to last for centuries, warning “Fracking technology isn’t sustainable.” As with other shorthand terms designed to eliminate case-by-case by analysis, when “unsustainable” comes to mean merely “bad,” the results can get silly.

Electric cars cost billions, don’t help environment

Wednesday, March 27th, 2013

Envisioning cars that can go “coast to coast without using a drop of oil,” President Barack Obama on March 15 urged Congress to authorize another $2 billion over the next decade to expand research into weaning automobiles off gasoline. “The only way to break this cycle of spiking gas prices — the only way to […]

Blocking new jobs, blocking the recovery

Saturday, March 23rd, 2013

What’s slowing down job creation in Nevada, where the real unemployment rate — counting part-timers who would prefer full-time work, and those who’ve given up looking — averaged 20.3 percent in 2012? One prime suspect is ObamaCare, with its mandate that employers with 50 full-time employees or more must offer health insurance — not just […]

And after windmills, we can bring back the nuclear-powered strategic bomber

Wednesday, March 20th, 2013

A 200-megawatt wind energy project near Searchlight, Nevada (home town of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid) has been approved by the federal government. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced Wednesday the project will be built on almost 19,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management land about 60 miles southeast of Las Vegas.

Gas prices rising, just as Obama planned

Wednesday, March 6th, 2013

Last week, Nevada gasoline prices averaged $3.75 at the pump — a leap of 59 cents since the beginning of the year. The average price of a gallon of gas has increased 96 percent under our current president. According to the Energy Information Agency, the average price of a gallon of regular unleaded in the […]

Still trying to propitiate the sun god

Friday, January 25th, 2013

The National Resources Defense Council has placed Nevada first in the West and sixth in the nation for heat records broken in the year 2012. According to the environmental activists, 36 heat records fell across Nevada last year, with 12 of the state’s 17 counties experiencing record-breaking temperatures. Nevada also experienced 14 rainfall records in […]

Another excuse for statism bites the dust

Sunday, October 28th, 2012

As I was leaving for work one morning last week the recycling truck came hurtling down the street. Only one family in our immediate neighborhood, so far as I can tell, dutifully sorts their glass, plastic, and other stuff into the red, white and blue bins. The trashmen throw the contents of all three into […]

Science: Something made up to justify their latest power-grab

Sunday, September 2nd, 2012

“Too many elected officials in Washington are still calling climate change a liberal hoax,” declared U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, in prepared remarks as he opened his fifth annual “National Clean Energy Summit” show in Las Vegas Aug. 7. “They falsely claim scientists are still debating whether carbon pollution is warming the planet. …” But “This […]

Another one bites the dust

Tuesday, July 24th, 2012

Making national news, another heavily tax-subsidized alternative energy operation — the Amonix solar manufacturing plant in North Las Vegas — went belly-up last week, closing its 214,000-square-foot facility a year after it opened. A designer and manufacturer of concentrated photovoltaic solar power systems, Amonix received $6 million in federal tax credits for the North Las […]

On March 29, will ‘Save the Whales’ hold a birthday party for Edwin Drake?

Monday, February 27th, 2012

I heard the president on the radio, Thursday. In Florida to attend a $30,000-a-person fund-raiser at the home of Dallas Mavericks guard Vince Carter, President Barack Hussein Obama dropped by the University of Miami and — with comic timing as good as any stand-up comic — told the following joke about congressional Republicans: “You can […]