T. Boone Pickens' Energy Plan

[Ravi]

I guess you can't read, Wuh. Maybe you never hugged a teacher.

 

[Wow]

I guess you can't read, Wuh. Maybe you never hugged a teacher.

You are off topic.

Personally, I would never want a Teacher to touch any child.
America has a Teacher on student rape epidemic!

 

[Zoomie1980]

So by now, hopefully most of us have seen T. Boone Pickens' smiling face, disingenuously trying to promote his new energy plan that will save America with the power of capitalism.

For those who don't know, the gist of it is that Pickens wants the US to reduce its dependency on foreign oil by adjusting our automobiles to run on natural gas, which would be diverted from our electricity generation, and then drastically increase our use of wind power to make up for it.

Naturally, Pickens is heavily invested in natural gas and wind power. (Interestingly, after Pickens' multimedia campaign began, the first two things our nation's Secretary of Commerce suggested in a Detroit News column to reduce our dependency on foreign oil were - surprise! - wind and natural gas.) He doesn't quite spin it that way on television - "I've been an oil man all my life, but this is one situation we can't drill our way out of." Yuck yuck yuck.

So here's the thing - I'm inclined to be extremely distrustful of this, but my secret confession is that I actually don't know what would be wrong with this plan. Apparently, neither does Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, who blogged his approval of Pickens' plan on the Huffington Post!

I won't rule out that Pope is on Pickens' payroll, and that the Huffington Post are sell-outs - but I have absolutely no evidence for that, and don't actually claim it.

So my hope is that, by bringing this up for discussion here, someone will give me a legitimate reason to hate this plan. Otherwise I'll be tragically obliged to...ugh...go along with it. (Please note the partial sarcasm and self-ribbing.)

Seriously, what do people think of this?

Bottom line, any workable energy solution has to do it ALL.

1) We have to drill and drill everything we can possibly get to as fast and hard as we can to provide the resources to get us from A to B in the first place

2) We need to have a massive nuclear power construction program.

3) We need simultaneous massive investment in wind and solar power

4) We need massive work in battery power and a complete retooling of America's automotive production away from internal combustion engines and to gas-electric and eventually ALL electric vehicles.

5) We need a wind turbine or solar panel on every building and/or backyard in the US. They should be like airconditioners are today.


Bottom line is we can't pick just whatever suits are individual political sensibilities. We have to collectively swallow some bitter political pills and DO IT ALL.

Not doing it all, afterall, has caused the War on Drugs to fail and immigration reform to fail.

 

[Charles_Main]

Please, Denmark started moving to wind power years ago because they were smarter.

Thanks for proving my point for me. They started moving to wind power years ago. The did not simply make an over night switch, and neither can we.

 

[Charles_Main]

Bottom line, any workable energy solution has to do it ALL.

1) We have to drill and drill everything we can possibly get to as fast and hard as we can to provide the resources to get us from A to B in the first place

2) We need to have a massive nuclear power construction program.

3) We need simultaneous massive investment in wind and solar power

4) We need massive work in battery power and a complete retooling of America's automotive production away from internal combustion engines and to gas-electric and eventually ALL electric vehicles.

5) We need a wind turbine or solar panel on every building and/or backyard in the US. They should be like airconditioners are today.


Bottom line is we can't pick just whatever suits are individual political sensibilities. We have to collectively swallow some bitter political pills and DO IT ALL.

Not doing it all, afterall, has caused the War on Drugs to fail and immigration reform to fail.

Damn straight. Great point that will be lost on most.

 

[dilloduck]

Bottom line, any workable energy solution has to do it ALL.

1) We have to drill and drill everything we can possibly get to as fast and hard as we can to provide the resources to get us from A to B in the first place

2) We need to have a massive nuclear power construction program.

3) We need simultaneous massive investment in wind and solar power

4) We need massive work in battery power and a complete retooling of America's automotive production away from internal combustion engines and to gas-electric and eventually ALL electric vehicles.

5) We need a wind turbine or solar panel on every building and/or backyard in the US. They should be like airconditioners are today.


Bottom line is we can't pick just whatever suits are individual political sensibilities. We have to collectively swallow some bitter political pills and DO IT ALL.

Not doing it all, afterall, has caused the War on Drugs to fail and immigration reform to fail.

Mass amounts of investments are going to have to come from people with massive amounts of money. Why are they not investing and what are they waiting for?

 

[BaronVonBigmeat]

The fact that Pickens has to go on TV to promote his idea instantly sets off alarm bells. If his ideas had merits on their own, he'd already be selling his products and making money. But no, he has to push the propaganda angle so that people will call their congressman and ultimately get the government to force people into doing what he wants.

Wind is cost effective--when it's running. When it's not running...you have to run backup generators, which burn natural gas. And sometimes the wind turbines won't run at all. Which means your "backup" generators have to be every bit as big as today's "regular" generators. Which means we're going to just take today's existing plants, and add a buttload of wind turbines which will run intermittently.

The man wants to sell wind turbines and natural gas, it's just that simple. We've already seen what happens when government got heavily involved with ethanol--lots of poor brown people were pushed to the brink of starvation. I'd hate to see what unintended consequences we'd see with this plan.

 

[Ravi]

Good post, Baron, and probably close to the truth of the matter.

Zoomie, drilling as hard and fast as we can for what reason, if as you claim elsewhere, there is no oil shortage? I'm beginning to suspect you are heavily invested in the oil companies.

 

[stivex]

The fact that Pickens has to go on TV to promote his idea instantly sets off alarm bells. If his ideas had merits on their own, he'd already be selling his products and making money. But no, he has to push the propaganda angle so that people will call their congressman and ultimately get the government to force people into doing what he wants.

Wind is cost effective--when it's running. When it's not running...you have to run backup generators, which burn natural gas. And sometimes the wind turbines won't run at all. Which means your "backup" generators have to be every bit as big as today's "regular" generators. Which means we're going to just take today's existing plants, and add a buttload of wind turbines which will run intermittently.

The man wants to sell wind turbines and natural gas, it's just that simple. We've already seen what happens when government got heavily involved with ethanol--lots of poor brown people were pushed to the brink of starvation. I'd hate to see what unintended consequences we'd see with this plan.

Let us not forget that birds can get killed by windmills.

We DO need to invest in all sources. No one source will do it all.

To compare us to the Danes is stupid. They don't have nearly the infrastructure and world police rolls that the US does.

There are leaders and followers. If your idea of leadership is to be more like and follow the Europeans, then you are not advocating leadership at all.

 

[Charles_Main]

Good post, Baron, and probably close to the truth of the matter.

Zoomie, drilling as hard and fast as we can for what reason, if as you claim elsewhere, there is no oil shortage? I'm beginning to suspect you are heavily invested in the oil companies.

Could it be to get our own oil instead of buying it from others? holy crap would that be a good idea we better not do that.

 

[Charles_Main]

Let us not forget that birds can get killed by windmills.

yeah poor birds lol.

But seriously here in Michigan many people have these things on their cars. Air passes through them and they let out a high frequency sound which scares the Deer of the road, and lets them know a car is coming. It seems to me it should be easy enough to come up with a similar solution to keep birds from getting killed by wind mills, if it is so important to some.

 

[Care4all]

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/reserves.html
wh owns the most natural gas reserves in the world?

1. the middle east
2. the russians, including all of the ''stans''... ie. uzbekistan, tajikistan, turkmenistan.....

and of course the natural gas pipeline needed goes through afghanistan...

we don't need another Cold War or War, only over natural gas as the fossil fuel....

we have alot of natural gas of our own to use, but i really would hate to see us importing it from the middle east who has the most of it....rumor is, we don't have enough refineries to purify the gas down to pure methane or pipelines to transport it....the natural gas that comes out of the ground PRIOR to our oil, is pumped out first, they store it temporarily, then reinject it back in to the ground caverns because there are not enough plants to process it, in many cases....this keeps the prices very high for natural gas in certain regions....

our oil companies own and sell natural gas....

Informationsstelle Militarisierung (IMI) - 2007

just some things to consider!

care

 

[BaronVonBigmeat]

For what it's worth, I've read that vertical axis wind turbines do not have any problems with bird kills. Why, I don't know. As far as I know though, no one is building vertical axis turbines on the same gigantic scale as conventional windmills. The vert. windmills are kind of cool though, I've seen companies paint them and install them as functional decorations.

 

[Charles_Main]

For what it's worth, I've read that vertical axis wind turbines do not have any problems with bird kills. Why, I don't know.

Because they are like a cork screw instead of a fan, and can be in side of a cage or screen. They also are cheaper to make, and can produce power with much less wind.

 

[Chris]

Let us not forget that birds can get killed by windmills.

We DO need to invest in all sources. No one source will do it all.

To compare us to the Danes is stupid. They don't have nearly the infrastructure and world police rolls that the US does.

There are leaders and followers. If your idea of leadership is to be more like and follow the Europeans, then you are not advocating leadership at all.

Clueless post. The Danes were smarter than us. I know that hurts, but it is true. Can we do it? Of course we can, that is the whole point of what T. Boone is doing. General Electric makes the hardware, all we need to do is put it to use.

Likewise the Israelis are developing solar power. We can do that as well. There is a solar corridor that runs from Texas to the California coast, and there is a wind corridor that runs from Texas to the Canadian border. We can do it, once we don't have two oil men in the White House.

 

[BaronVonBigmeat]

If wind/solar is so great, you'd think that profit-hungry businessmen would have put their money into it. I wonder why they haven't?

Hint: they are intermittent power sources.

 

[Chris]

If wind/solar is so great, you'd think that profit-hungry businessmen would have put their money into it. I wonder why they haven't?

Hint: they are intermittent power sources.

No, that is not it. There is no powerful solar and wind lobby in Washington. There is, however, a powerful oil, coal, and automobile lobby that gets billions in government subsidies.

 

[Wow]

Clueless post. The Danes were smarter than us. I know that hurts, but it is true. Can we do it? Of course we can, that is the whole point of what T. Boone is doing. General Electric makes the hardware, all we need to do is put it to use.

Likewise the Israelis are developing solar power. We can do that as well. There is a solar corridor that runs from Texas to the California coast, and there is a wind corridor that runs from Texas to the Canadian border. We can do it, once we don't have two oil men in the White House.

The Danes are smarter than us?
What kind of comment is that?

The US is developing most of the alternative energies in the world but
environmentalists have been preventing the Americans from using their own technology.

It's all about greedy Lawyers blackmailing energy companies.

Politicians allow it to happen.

 

[Chris]

Here is a good article about Texas wind farms and the Danes....

Texas emulates Danes' wind industry | Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Business News

 

[dilloduck]

No, that is not it. Their is no powerful solar and wind lobby in Washington. Their is, however, a powerful oil, coal, and automobile lobby that gets billions in government subsidies.

Don't wind and solar proponents know how to bribe people ?