Coming from a billionaire oilman, it is shocking advice. But T. Boone Pickens is warning Americans to use more natural gas and to start using wind power because the price of oil is never coming back down.

GMA

Pickens has been all over the media lately, pushing most of what I have been saying all along, only he has the resources to help make it happen. Citing a recent DOE report, he proposes a dramatic increase in the utilization of wind energy - as much as 20% of electrical power - to free up natural gas to use for transportation and then expand natural gas production.

For the most part, I agree. We cannot gain independence from foreign oil while increasing our dependence on oil. I would put as much if not more emphasis on solar (which has even greater potential) and see natural gas as a viable but short-term transitional energy source. The fundamental point should be clear to all - if oil is the problem, a little more oil is not the answer. So be a slimey oil booger if you want, but Pickens knows.

I've often wondered if T. Boone Pickens is related to the immortal character actor Slim Pickens (he who rode the a-bomb to the ground in Kubrick's Dr. Stragelove), and who once played a rube who chased a stringed wallet on a New York sidewalk.

Seems to me the two Pickens, the takeover artist and the rube, are not unalike.

Survival kit contents check. In them you'll find: one forty-five caliber automatic; two boxes of ammunition; four days' concentrated emergency rations; one drug issue containing antibiotics, morphine, vitamin pills, pep pills, sleeping pills, tranquilizer pills; one miniature combination Russian phrase book and Bible; one hundred dollars in rubles; one hundred dollars in gold; nine packs of chewing gum; one issue of prophylactics; three lipsticks; three pair of nylon stockings. Shoot, a fella' could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff.

"Well, boys, I reckon this is it — nuclear combat toe to toe with the Rooskies. Now look, boys, I ain't much of a hand at makin' speeches, but I got a pretty fair idea that something doggone important is goin' on back there. And I got a fair idea the kinda personal emotions that some of you fellas may be thinkin.' Heck, I reckon you wouldn't even be human bein's if you didn't have some pretty strong personal feelin's about nuclear combat. I want you to remember one thing, the folks back home is a-countin' on you and by golly, we ain't about to let 'em down. I tell you something else, if this thing turns out to be half as important as I figure it just might be, I'd say that you're all in line for some important promotions and personal citations when this thing's over with. That goes for ever' last one of you regardless of your race, color or your creed. Now let's get this thing on the hump — we got some flyin' to do."

no doubt(!)

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T. Boone Pickens is from Oklahoma and so is Garth Brooks and Slim Pickens was in a Mel Brooks movie so they could be related - if Garth Brooks and Mel Brooks are related. What do you think?

and if anyone would know the power of wind, it would be Slim Pickens in the campfire & beans scene in Blazing Saddles. Mel Brooks was saying he'd consider bringing that show to Broadway if he can find a way to do that scene on a stage.

Don't really follow your reference, though assume it regards o/t, but Ducadmo is more than able to take it to another level, so I don't really see your point, lest it be some weird notion of highjacking, which insults both Duc and me and lessens thee.

Are you stalking me?

just asking...

do I occasionally stalk morons, lunatics, cretins and fools?

(*gulp*)

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I think they're kissin' cousins.

T Boone's history is of takeovers and deconstruction and selling-off of assets, and I see only self-interest in his newfound environmental consciousness, even though he mouths all the politically correct words.

There's something in it for him, and his recent conversion is a sucker play, like the stringed New York wallet chased by his namesake.

That said, every effort to divorce North America from dependence on foreign energy sources is boon to our economies, and I couldn't agree more with your premise.

You seem to stalk your betters and lessors regardless of intellectual acuity. You seem to have a fetish for deviancy, not unlike the Glenn Close character in Fatal Attraction.

Otherwise, you're a damn good poster.

But that's just my take.

just sayin'

or maybe he is.

He mentioned on npr this morning that N. Dakota could supply enough wind energy to power the nation. I'd heard that elsewhere-- that the Dakotas have the best wind (strongest, most consistent) in the nation. They just don't have the transmission lines. Not a bad place for solar either-- about the same irradiation as here in central Texas, and with most solar panels having a negative temperature coefficient around 0.5%/°C, I think it'd rival the desert. (Not that it doesn't get hot in the Dakotas.) I haven't gotten around to studying transmission losses over large distances, or how performance could be increased with an updated grid. (Needs to be done anyway-- I'm told via an Ercot employee that the grid in Texas could be taken down with five guys with shotguns.) But, would there be any objections to taking over the Dakotas for use as the nation's powerhouse? Use their new refinery for the oil from the Bakken formation while we ween ourselves off and see if a clean coal technology comes along (a model TIPS plant is in the works)?. Wouldn't we be pretty well set?

The Dakotas will not produce enough electricity to power the nation. The DOE estimated that if we put all reasonable effort into wind energy across the nation, it could provide about 20% of our current utilization. I'm all for it, but I'd prefer to be more realistic and hope that we could get to 10-15% in the next ten years - allowing that even though we continue to increase efficiency, the requirements will grow.

Wind will and should be the first source we turn to when it is practical. It is not practical in much of the south or here in the Southwest, but it is on the High Plains, Texas, parts of Appalachia and the New England Coast.

In the Southwest - including Arizona, southern California, Nevada, New Mexico, and parts orf Colorado - we should be looking at solar in the same way, but it's not as inexpensive, so we are more dependent on the Alternative Tax Credits than states that have a lot of wind.

TIPS is an interesting technology, but it stops at capturing and pressurizing CO2. What do you do with it after that? A few projects (including two in Arizona) use the gas to grow algae for biofuel. That amounts to secondary utilization, but it still eventually winds up in the air. Until there is proven and cost effective sequstration technology - I am hesitant to promote significant expansion of coal while wind is competitive and can take up the slack. I do think we should be ready to put public funds into retrofitting older coal plants to cleaner technologies.

In my mind - the primary goal is to get away from dependency on oil. We don't have enough of our own and we never will and the global supply will from here on never meet the ever increasing demand.

We will need more nuclear power, there is no question in my mind. I don't want to rush into it until we know what we're going to do with the waste, and how we're going to build a national grid to maximize the use of alternatives while using nuclear to strategically handle baseloads. I don't hear many voices talking in these terms yet.