T. Boone Pickens' Plan to Catch the Wind
T. Boone Pickens — the 117th-richest person in America, but only the 369th in the world — his creatively-titled Pickens Plan to reduce America's dependence on foreign oil, thereby saving it hundreds of billions of dollars, by filling our cars up with natural gas and erecting an untold number of windmills across Middle America. And he thinks we can do it all in ten years.
He wants us to believe that?! Hey, Pickens! Come back when you're the 115th-richest person in America. Then maybe we'll talk…
Somewhere toward the end of the video, he hints that, to bring his genius plan to fruition in ten short years, we'll need the right president. But he doesn't say who he thinks that right president is. And, his website isn't much more message…
On January 20th, 2009, a new President will take office. We're organizing behind the Pickens Plan now to ensure our voices will be heard by the next administration. Together we can raise a call for change and set a new course for America's energy future in the first hundred days of the new presidency — breaking the hammerlock of foreign oil and building a new domestic energy future for America with a focus on sustainability.
Something somewhere in the back of my head tells me his choice isn't gonna be the Democrat.
RSS
Check out the video on the main site, it's a bit more succinct.
Hi. Welcome to, "The Joy Of Swift Boating With T. Boone Pickens." First, I'd like you to paint a nice little boat here. Ahh. That's better. Broad, broad, strokes. Here's a bird, stuck in the oil. Let's call him Barack.
Thanks, Skye for the link. The CSPAN video ended when it was getting really interesting–Pickens the geologist was rather animated. He's doing something great in pushing alternative energy and doing so without an obvious political agenda; he didn't give Bush a lot of credit for pushing biofuel.
There is a public Forum for discussions about Pickens plan :
http://www.pickensenergyplan.com
Cheers.
C'mon T. Boone: Support Ralph Nader! He's all for your plan. Obama is big-time flip-flopper on this issue, not to mention an out-an-out liar.
Check his record…
He at least has a more rational solution than everyone else. He's not talking about mysteriously generating more natural gas; he just wants to reallocate it. Also, it took 80 years to develop gasoline. It's refinement involves removing it from the ground, shipping it around the world, heating it to 700 degrees F, and then 1300 degrees F, and then shipping it across the country to your pump. While I think hybrids, soy diesel, and ethanol-gas are more important to automotive development, at least someone is pointing out that automotive is less than 25% of the problem and advocating solutions to our greatest power needs.
I wouldn't that his plan is very reasonable, although i some areas good and useful – but not on a large scale. You still have to pay for the infrastructure for coal/gas/nuclear plants because the win doesn't always blow. Texas has the most wind farms yet on the hottest days, the wind doesn't blow causing the citizens to pay for all the backup generators and emergency generated electricty (which is charge indirectly to the citizens at a higher rate). This wind power stands to make Pickens much richer at the expense of the taxpayers which will still have to pay for all the generators and plants. The wind power cannot be stored in batteries since they generate AC current and wind blows too much, they shut down since they have to stay within a frequency that won't surge the power lines. The most viable solution is nuclear energy and recycling nuclear fuel which produces little waste and is much cheaper/cleaner in the long run.
Energyhog, in general I think you make some good points, but recycled nuclear waste is cleaner and cheaper in the long run? We can't decide what to do with the nuclear waste we've already got. I'm not against nukes, but I have to agree with Obama that we can't talk nukes until we solve the waste problem once and for all. Solve that problem, politcally and practically, and you've got a nuclear solution.
can we send nuclear waste on a rocket and send it to the sun? can we send nuclear waste on a rocket into a blackhole? I think the sun is the better choice because we do not know whats on the otherside of a blackhole, what squooshing radioactive nuclear waste will do, rip through time-space continuum?
Having grown up in Texas I can feel safe in saying that a plan that benefits T. Boone Pickens probably aint gonna benefit me.