More On Boone Pickens Ideas To "Save" America

Yeah, right.....Boone Pickens has a bunch of ideas he claims will save America from its "addiction" to foreign oil. What he really wants is for us to become addicted to things he owns. He even has the audacity to ask the government (meaning taxpayers) to pay for his schemes. He wants to pick our pockets coming and going. But wait, let's take a close look at some facts and realities. See the following article. Peter


Blowing Hot Air Up Our Shorts
Paul Driessen Tuesday, July 22, 2008 (source)
T. Boone Pickens is being lionized for his “socially responsible” efforts to legislate national “clean” wind and solar energy mandates.
We’re “the Saudi Arabia of wind,” he argues. We need to “overcome our addiction to foreign oil,” by harnessing that wind to replace natural gas in electricity generation, and using that gas to power more cars and buses. If Congress would simply “mandate the formation of wind and solar transmission corridors, and renew the subsidies” for this renewable energy, America can achieve this transformation in ten years, he insists.

Pickens’ pitch makes good ad copy, especially in league with Senator Harry Reid’s bombast about oil, gas and coal “making us sick.” However, his policy prescriptions would impose vast new energy, economic and environmental problems.

Hydrocarbon fuels created America, gave us the technologies and living standards we enjoy today, enabled us to eradicate diseases that plagued earlier generations, and boosted our life expectancy from 50 in 1900 to nearly 80 today. They still provide 85% of our energy, and we could greatly reduce our reliance on oil imports if we would simply end the outrageous policies that keep our nation’s abundant energy resources locked up.

We have enough oil, natural gas, oil shale, coal and uranium to provide power for centuries. We have a growing consensus that we need to drill, onshore and off. But partisan intransigence and absurd environmental claims prevent us from utilizing them. Instead, we’re offered bromides like wind.

Wind contributes more every year to our energy mix. However, it still provides only 1% of our electricity – compared to 49% for coal, 22% for natural gas, 19% for nuclear and 7% for hydroelectric.

Wind power is intermittent, unreliable, noisy and expensive (even with subsidies). Many modern turbines are 400 feet tall and carry 130-foot-long, 7-ton blades that slice up raptors and other birds. They operate only 8 hours a day, on average, compared to 85% of the time for coal, gas and nuclear plants. They rarely provide power during peak summer daytime hours, when air-conditioning demand is highest, but wind speed is low to nonexistent.

Using wind to replace all gas-fired power plants would require some 300,000 1.5-MW turbines, covering Midwestern “wind belt” acreage equivalent to South Carolina. The noise, scenic impacts and bird kills caused by such an “eco-friendly” energy source defy imagination.

Building and installing these turbines requires 5 to 10 times more steel and concrete than is needed to build far more reliable coal or nuclear plants to generate the same amount of electricity, says Berkeley engineer Per Peterson. Add in the financing, steel and cement needed to build transmission lines from distant wind farms to urban consumers, and the effects multiply.

That means vastly more quarries, mines, cement plants and steel mills to supply those raw materials. But radical greens oppose such facilities. So under the Pickens proposal, we would likely import more steel and cement, instead of oil.

Moreover, since adequate wind is available only a third of the time, we would also need expensive gas-fired generating plants that mostly sit idle, but kick in whenever the wind dies down. That means still more money, cement and steel – and still higher electricity prices.
A successful oilman, investor, deal-maker and speculator, Pickens’ large natural gas holdings position him to make billions from selling gas for backup electricity generation under his wind energy proposal – especially if drilling bans remain in effect, keeping gas prices in the stratosphere. Launching the enterprise with the backing of federal mandates and subsidies minimizes his financial risk and attracts “free market” investors, by putting the risks for this fanciful scheme on the backs of taxpayers.

In short, Pickens’ proposal is “true green” – in the financial and public relations arenas, though hardly in the ecological sphere.

Pickens says we can’t drill our way to freedom from foreign oil. But that’s true only if we keep our best prospects off limits to drilling. Open ANWR and the OCS, and the situation changes dramatically.

There are other viable, economically sound options, as well. Unfortunately, greens and Democrats have opposed them for decades and refuse to budge now – no matter how soaring energy prices batter poor families, workers, small businesses and countless industries: including automobiles, airlines, tourism, chemicals and manufacturing.

A single 1000-MW nuclear power plant would reliably generate more electricity than 2,800 1.5-MW intermittent wind turbines on 175,000 acres. Permitting more nukes would ensure that we can meet increasing electricity demand for a growing population and millions of plug-in hybrid cars.

Coal too offers centuries of affordable, reliable fuel for electricity and synthetic gas and oil, at lower cost than competing fuels, and with steadily diminishing emissions. With 27% of the world’s total coal, America is also the Saudi Arabia of this vital resource. America needs more coal-fired plants, to avoid the widespread brownouts that analyst Mark Mills says will be commonplace if we do not.

Between 1970 and 2006, coal-fired electricity generation nearly tripled – while NOX emissions remained at 1970 levels, sulfur dioxide pollution fell nearly 40% below 1970 emissions, and fine particulates declined to 90% below 1970 levels. In a few years, power plant stacks will emit only water and carbon dioxide, the two dominant greenhouse gases of Climate Armageddon hypotheses.

Al Gore, James Hansen and certain legislators may fervently believe fossil fuels are destroying the planet. But they are increasingly on the fringes, whereas countless others finally realize that we have vastly more important priorities, the economic costs of climate bills like Warner-Lieberman would be staggering, and the global CO2 and climate benefits of US economic suicide would be imperceptible.

Nearly 32,000 scientists have now signed the consensus-busting Oregon Petition, saying they see “no convincing scientific evidence” that humans are causing catastrophic climate change. They have now been joined by the American Physical Society, which recently announced that it was reassessing its prior position – that evidence for global warming was “incontrovertible” – because many of its 50,000 physicist members disagree strongly with climate chaos claims.
Halfway around the globe, China continues to build two new coal-fired power plants every month, to power its electricity-hungry homes and businesses. India too is charging ahead with hydrocarbon-based energy. Its new National Action Plan on Climate Change disputes manmade global warming fears and asserts that the nation is more concerned about saving its people from poverty than from climate change.

“Political leaders,” says journalist Barun Mitra, “can no longer afford to sacrifice the poor today for the sake of the rich tomorrow.” Neither in India, nor in the United States.

It’s increasingly obvious why Gore, Hansen and Reid are becoming more shrill and hysterical by the day. The hot air they are trying to blow up our shorts is no basis for economy-killing cap-and-trade rules or ecology-killing forests of wind turbines.

We need to safeguard access to the opportunities created by abundant, reliable, affordable energy – as a fundamental right of Americans and people the world over.

Headed For Disaster Because Of The Belief In The Myth Of Man-Caused Global Warming

If anyone thinks gasoline, diesel and jet fuel are expensive, and are harming our economy, take a look at what is going to happen to the cost of electricity and the natural gas we use to heat our homes, cook our food and run much of our industry. Try to imagine how this affects the cost of nearly everything we need to live, from food, to clothing, to shelter. Nothing will escape this inflationary cost escalation. Imagine the jobs lost, as businesses continue the flight to countries with more rational environmental laws. Now, also consider that this impending disaster is greatly due to the myth of man-caused global warming, that burning coal and gasoline and the carbon dioxide this emits is causing dangerous global warming and climate change.

Finally, ask yourself another question; which is worse, the very remote possibility of a slight increase in some arbitrary global temperature, or severe global economic depression?
Peter

Opposition to Coal Will Reduce Electricity Reliability, Harm US Economy
US Department of Energy NETL Report
Summary on SPPI (source)

In an April 2008 white paper entitled, “Natural Gas and Electricity Costs and Impacts on Industry”, the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) reported that opposition to new coal-based power plants is leading to a generation capacity shortage in many areas of the country and endangering U.S. energy security. The opposition is also inducing a “dash to gas” and quickly causing a rise in natural gas prices at a time when federal climate change legislation could immediately lead to a doubling of natural gas consumption for power generation. This legislation would increase the country’s dependence on foreign energy sources in the form of liquefied natural gas (LNG) causing both natural gas and electricity prices to increase dramatically.

NETL also describes how coal has protected consumers from even higher natural gas prices. Unfortunately, the current opposition to coal would allow natural gas prices to match the percentage increase in the price of oil. Such increases in the price of natural gas could cause trade-exposed sectors of U.S. industry to shut in production, especially against coal-powered competitors like China or regions like the Middle East, where cheap natural gas reserves supply power needs. NETL estimates, by 2016, the absence of 18 GW of currently forecasted new coal-based power plants would mean additional natural gas demand of 1.4 Tcf/year, or almost all of the presently forecasted LNG growth. If electricity growth were higher, as it is in U.S. Energy Information Administration’s latest Annual Energy Outlook (AEO), up to an additional 2.3 Tcf of natural gas for generation would be needed.

In the event of climate change legislation with relatively strict cap and trade provisions, such as S.2191 - the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, an additional 5.4 Tcf/year is required for even more coal-to-gas switching, and even more natural gas generating capacity would be necessary just to meet peak demand. Since this approximate 9 Tcf increase in natural gas consumption would be occurring at high prices, the impact on the economy would be severe. Because both electric rates and heating prices would escalate, no sector would be exempt; although families and energy-intensive industry would certainly bear the heaviest burdens.

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For more of this one page summery go here. For full NETL Report go here.
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