Anyone heard about Boone Picken's plan to get the US free of foreign oil?

Question

He says a fool with a plan is better than a genius with no plan. He's a billionaire oil tycoon who wants to help America get off oil. The plan just might work!

www.pickensplan.com

Answer 1

The environmental wackos will not allow wind farms. They hurt the birdies. And ruin Ted Kennedy's view.

Answer 2

Well, yes... but he says that because any idiot with a plan is willing to charge ahead whether it's a good idea or not just because they're an idiot.

I hate to say it, but there's no advantage to doing something disastrous just for the sake of not waiting to figure out how to do something positive.

Mr. Pickens is talking about building in excess of 1,000 miles of complex wind turbines and an even more complex power grid to transmit the electricity they produce across the United States.

That's hundreds of thousands of turbines to maintain.  Then there's the cable.  He doesn't bother to mention that you have to essentially sacrifice several million square miles of the United States to his plan.  All of those windmills have to be individually connected to the power grid.  To do that, you have to dig out, burn down, blow up, and dig up everything standing between your windmill and your power grid.

You're essentially talking about plowing the entire middle of the United States under.  The environmental impact would be devastating to the Midwest.

And there's little chance of the area recovering.  Once you had it built, you would have to constantly maintain the equipment.  That means a constant increase in the amount of cars and trucks driving through areas they wouldn't have before.  It means laying a lot more road than there is now, which means consuming even more oil and tar (we use it in asphalt, and I'm afraid there is no plug in, hybrid version of asphalt).  Then you're stuck maintaining all the extra roads everywhere.

Even neglecting the environmental impact, it would be a logistical nightmare to maintain.  Instead of having your power production source in as few places as possible so you can concentrate your efforts to maintain it and repair damage, you're spreading it out as much as possible and increasing the amount of time and personnel needed to keep the thing going.

Have you noticed that most of the extended power outages in this country are the result of the amount of time and effort needed to repair the cables spread out everywhere?

You're talking about not only having your power cables laid out like that now, but having your production source of power laid out that way.  No more quick repairs to the power plant, because no power plant to produce the power.  Crews would have to repair one small increment, pack everything up, travel to the next location, repair the next small increment, pack everything back up, travel to the next location, etc, etc, etc...

And it would be a serious problem, because getting back to the environment, the man is talking about putting all these nice, tall, spindly structures in an area of the country called TORNADO ALLEY.  There would be a very real risk of having a significant portion of your power grid destroyed each spring and fall and you would have to start coping with the fact that you had large rotating sections of the United States without power on a continual basis.

I could keep going, and going, and going, and going.  There's a reason we don't use wind power on a large scale.  It isn't feasible, at least not with the technology we have available.

This plan would be an unmitigated disaster.

Answer 3

I don't think we'll be 'free' of foreign oil for a long time. No offense, but Boone Picken's is a bit of a nut.

Irregardless, I'm against Mr. Picken's wind turbine plan primarily because it's been proven to kill bats, wildlife, and hundreds of thousands of migratory & predatory birds every year. This is not a good thing. The far-left environmentalists keep attempting to hide this fact under the rug.

The turbines are also an eyesore and create a great deal of noise. The use of turbines is not yet environmentally sound.

Best wishes.

Answer 4

I was not aware Pickens said we could be FREE of foreign oil but I know he likes wind and solar, Canadian oil sands and other sources of energy.

Answer 5

Just another nut case with what seems to be but isn't a good idea.The scale is too large to maintain,with any real benifits.

Answer 6

I would be interested to learn if there is a outside motive behind mr. picken's agenda, seldom do we find people being sincere when it comes to doing things from the goodness of thier hearts, and being a former oil man, I wonder what he would say about an honorable christian oilman named Lindsey Williams who already has exposed the truth about oil supplies in alaska and the united states for that matter, this oil crisis is lies upon lies.

Answer 7

He was on the news (and in commercials) recently.  He's started up a wind farm (bigger than farm, but you get the idea).  He's pouring loads of money into it.