You've Got That Right

Pelosi, playing to her voters.

Hot Air

Full of hot air, short on brains as well

New McCain Ad: 'The One'

OK, This is Just Too Funny

EARTH—Former vice president Al Gore—who for the past three decades has unsuccessfully attempted to warn humanity of the coming destruction of our planet, only to be mocked and derided by the very people he has tried to save—launched his infant son into space Monday in the faint hope that his only child would reach the safety of another world.

Read about it here.

Gas At $10 a Gallon, Democrats Still Won't Act On New Drilling

It's time to vote these Democrats out of office.

Obama Lowers Sea Level, Then Flip-Flops

Despite the predictions that Barack Obama would not act on his promise to lower the sea levels until he officially becomes President, the presumptive Democratic nominee went ahead and lowered the oceans last month in a hectic attempt to boost his own shrinking poll numbers. However, the resulting growth of landmass turned into a mixed blessing when it unexpectedly revealed the lost world of Atlantis with a history so shocking and controversial that Obama is now contemplating re-sinking the island by returning the seas to their previous levels.

What the artifacts of Atlantis have told the world, is a story of the demise of a once great nation whose citizens grew spoiled and apathetic as they forgot the reasons for their success and allowed a sense of entitlement and self-loathing to set in.

More from the people's cube here.

Missing Hotspot

Each possible cause of global warming has a different pattern of where in the planet the warming occurs first and the most. The signature of an increased greenhouse effect is a hotspot about 10 km up in the atmosphere over the tropics.

We have been measuring the atmosphere for decades using radiosondes—weather balloons with thermometers that radio back the temperature as the balloon ascends through the atmosphere. They show no hotspot whatsoever.

So an increased greenhouse effect is not the cause of the recent global warming. So we now know for sure that carbon emissions are not a significant cause of the global
warming.

Dr. David Evans has his full paper here.

Starbucks On The Way Out

There is a lot to be learned about modern marketing from the Starbucks saga, pay attention. Image and packaging, it's what all cult classics are about, Obama is just the latest incarnation.

Personally, I never saw the need, never been in one of their stores. Never missed out. The iPod of coffee. This tale written by Bryant Simon tells it best

Bad news has been pouring down on Starbucks for a year. The price of the company's stock has been cut in half – and then some. Fewer people come through store doors and those who do buy less.

The company thrived throughout the past 15 years by giving middle-class Americans exactly what they thought they wanted – and this wasn't really about coffee. It was about creating a product that allowed doctors and lawyers, IT specialists and travel writers, and then their imitators, to portray themselves as they wanted to be seen. That's how products work in the world we live in. We buy things to announce something about ourselves.

Photovoltaic Breakthrough ?

Contrary to what you hear in the drive-by DNC parrot media, development work is ongoing on alternate energy sources, especially battery and solar technologies. The wide array of recent portable devices could not be possible if it weren't for battery technology advances. Work is continuing at a furious pace in all sectors of electrical power, electricity powers the world. And you thought it was gasoline. Energy end use in the USA has long since crossed the line from majority fossil fuels to majority electricity. Well yes, of course, fossil fuels generate electricity, converting one form to another, but it's the 'end use' that has switched.

Now comes MIT, touting a discovery that they have made that they say will supply solar power 24/7, rain or shine. Is this the photovoltaic breakthrough that has been pursued ever since the first solar cells went for a space ride? Maybe, maybe not ... Time will tell if it works out when the processes are converted to volume manufacturing.

MIT claims 24/7 Solar Power

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have combined a liquid catalyst with photovoltaic cells to achieve what they claim is a solar energy system that could generate electricity around the clock.

A liquid catalyst was added to water before electrolysis to achieve what the researchers claim is almost 100-percent efficiency. When combined with photovoltaic cells to store energy chemically, the resulting solar energy systems could generate electricity around the clock, the MIT team said.

"The hard part of getting water to split is not the hydrogen -- platinum as a catalyst works fine for the hydrogen. But platinum works very poorly for oxygen, making you use much more energy," said MIT chemistry professor Daniel Nocera. "What we have done is made a catalyst work for the oxygen part without any extra energy. In fact, with our catalyst almost 100 percent of the current used for electrolysis goes into making oxygen and hydrogen."

Nickel oxide catalysts are currently used to boost the efficiency of electrolyzers, and they worked equally well in MIT's formulation, Nocera acknowledged. He added that the toxicity of nickel oxide forces the use of expensive, hermetically-sealed water containers. MIT's patented catalyst formulation is "green," Nocera said, and can be used in inexpensive open containers.

"Nickel oxide can't be used around anything else in the environment because of corrosion -- even the carbon dioxide in the air will react with it to make carbonates," said Nocera. "But our catalyst uses abundant materials that don't react with environment."

MIT's patented formulation of cobalt phosphate was dissolved in water. When the electrical current is passed through it to initiate electrolysis, the catalyst attached itself to the oxygen electrode to increase its efficiency. When the electrical current was turned off, the cobalt phosphate dissolved back into water.

The simplicity of the process enables basic electrolyzers to be used, the researchers said.

"Because our catalyst is green, the machines that perform electrolysis can be much less expensive than they are today, since they don't need to be protected from environmental contaminants," said Nocera.

Currently, MIT is working with photovoltaic cell manufacturers to incorporate electrolysis using their catalyst into solar energy systems. By combining the two, excess capacity during the day could be stored as hydrogen and oxygen, then used in fuel cells at night when needed.

"Solar cell makers can add super-cheap electrolyzers to their system so that they work 24/7 -- during the day making hydrogen and oxygen, then at night recombining it in fuel cells to generate electricity," Nocera predicted.

Matthew Kanan, a MIT postdoctoral fellow, assisted in the research. Funding was provided by the MIT Energy Initiative, the Chesonis Family Foundation, the Solar Revolution Project and the National Science Foundation.

Source:

You won't run your car with this technology, but you may run your laptop. It's all energy. I predict in the long term, hydrogen transport fuel will in fact be the future. It's possible, some technology like this will provide the hydrogen, that has been the stumbling block for quite some time. In the beginning, autos ran on alcohol and diesels ran on peanut oil, but those technologies are so dated now ... They were quickly changed out for the much better suited petroleum 'alternatives'. Odd how things work, isn't it.

Pelosi's Energy Stonewall

When the inmates run the asylum, this is what you get, radical environmental Marxists trying to run your life, destroy the US economy and shutdown the American way of life. It's not a pretty picture, but it is staring you right in the face. America's problems have one word cause, Democrats, and especially the Democrat Marxists in Congress who lead the party.

This editorial from the WSJ is a must read.

Hell -- otherwise known as Congress -- has officially frozen over. For the first time since the 1950s, Members will skip town today for the August recess without either chamber having passed a single appropriations bill. Then again, Democrats appear ready to sacrifice their whole agenda, even spending, rather than allow new domestic energy production.

Or even a mere debate about energy. The Democratic leadership is stonewalling any measure that might possibly relax the Congressional ban on offshore drilling. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid know that they would lose if a vote ever came to the floor, and they're desperate to suppress an insurrection among those Democrats who are pragmatic about one of the top economic issues. Behind this whatever-it-takes obstructionism is an ideological commitment to high energy prices. The rulers of the Democratic Party want prices to keep rising.

A good gauge of the radicalism of their energy blockade is the lowest common denominator of this energy fight: The effort to blame "speculators" for $4 gas was promoted by both Barack Obama and John McCain, as well as nearly everybody else in Washington. Sure enough, the House voted 276-151 on Wednesday for a bill that would have driven oil futures trading overseas.

But the legislation actually failed to become law -- by design. It needed a two-thirds majority because Speaker Pelosi suspended the rules to prevent Republicans from offering amendments, drilling among them. Ms. Pelosi had decreed that she would not permit a roll-call vote under any circumstances, even if it stopped her own goal of wrecking the U.S. futures market.

Meanwhile, the Senate is locked down over its own antispeculation bill. Majority Leader Reid briefly agreed to allow four amendments on GOP policy alternatives, but he withdrew the offer after he was subjected to the fury of the environmental lobby and Ms. Pelosi. To prevent a vote on offshore drilling this week, Senate Democrats also let fail a bill providing home heating assistance for the poor. Same thing for tax subsidies for wind and solar energy.

Other liberal inspirations, including suing OPEC and a windfall profits tax on the oil industry, also ended up in the Congressional dumpster. And of course Democrats long ago shut down the normal budget process in both the Senate and the House to avoid any vote.

Normally, the spending hiatus would be a useful byproduct of Congressional bickering. But in this case the shutdown is malign neglect. Surging energy prices act like a huge tax increase on the economy, since energy demand is relatively fixed over the short term. The price spike is imposing genuine hardships on middle-income and working-class voters across the country.

The Democratic leadership isn't oblivious to this man-at-the-pump reality. But Al Gore's vision of the apocalyptic tides of climate change perfectly expresses their mentality: Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Reid see soaring prices as a public good -- the mechanism that will force energy enlightenment on the U.S. If anything, they think the price of gas is too low. As recently as June, the Senate debated a multitrillion-dollar carbon tax-and-regulation scheme that was designed to boost energy costs. A new version will be a priority in the next Administration.

If nothing else, this summer's oil drilling stonewall is giving voters an insight into this ideology, which recoils at any oil, natural gas or coal production -- oh, and nuclear besides. That puts 93% of all U.S. energy off limits for expansion. Back in the real world, and barring a cold fusion or other miracle, the U.S. will remain dependent on fossil fuels for decades. A fresh round of domestic oil-and-gas exploration would ease the long-term pressures that supply and demand are exerting on prices, plus bolster energy security.

And those not bound by anticarbon theology are coming around. Broad margins of the American public -- now even a slim majority of Californians -- favor increasing domestic production. Many Congressional Democrats are working below the radar to craft a compromise that couples drilling with conservation and programs to prop up renewable alternatives.

But the leadership won't bend even a bit, and so Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Reid have spent the summer using every parliamentary deception to evade debating the issue that the American public cares most about. Short of cutting off the air conditioning on Capitol Hill, Democrats won't get the message until voters make them -- perhaps in November.

Vote the Democrats out in November, save the US economy. The world doesn't need saving, it's not broke.