Have You Heard of This Plan for Cutting Fuel Costs?

Question

Al Gore recently issued a statement saying that the United States must reduce its dependency on fossil fuels in the next ten years or face climate disasters of the worst kind. I recently ran across a plan for saving gasoline costs that made sense, one that could be expanded and improved upon as time goes by.

http://www.pickensplan.com/

My question is, would this relieve fuel costs to a point where Global Warming effects could be delayed or diminished? Is a change in our procedures possible in just ten years of time?

Answer 1

I have heard that the Pickens plan would cost between 3  - 30 trillion dollars.

With 300 million people in the US, that between $10,000 and $100,000 dollars per man, women and child.

I don't have that kind of money laying around. That's $30,000 to possible $300,000 for my wife, daughter and I. I don't have that kind on money laying around.

Government can't pay for it. They have to raise my taxs on me to get it. Corporations can't pay for it, they have to raise their prices to me for it.

How is this going to get paid for?

Answer 2

Won't work.

Wind energy just isn't good enough to do the job (in fact increasing wind by a lot would actually require more natural gas since coal power plants can't respond fast enough to provide back up power for when the wind disappears).

Thus you won't actually free up any natural gas (in fact you'll probably end up using more) and won't do a thing about oil.

The fact that oil is pretty much only used for transportation and just so happens to be the best fuel out there means that there really isn't much you can do (it was already replaced for electricity generation in the '70's due to price concerns).

Wind power is really just a distraction anyway, if you want to solve global warming you'll be splitting atoms (won't help with the cost of running your car though although electric cars or synthetic fuels are probably the long term solution there).

Answer 3

I wonder what the carbon footprint of this project will be??

I have to assume that loads of fossil fuel will be used to manufacture, transport and install the turbines???

The wind farm folks haven't published anything that I have been able to find.

Such an analysis would be interesting.

Answer 4

At least it is a plan to talk about.

We need to explore all possibilities but continue exploring for more oil also.  What we don't use we can sell.

America is not ready to flip a switch yet away from our Oil dependence.

We need to use our own oil, use less if we can find viable alternatives, and sell the rest to the world in what we save.

Oddly enough Wind & Solar are abundant in the same place where Oil is pumped in Texas today.  

West Texas has abundant alternative resources and it is starting to be tapped.  

I believe Texas leads the nation in Wind Power production.

I don't think Pickens plan mentions Nuclear, which is the smart clean way to create large power production plants to supplement our fossil fuel plants.  If it is indeed missing from his plan I would consider the plan incomplete.

Answer 5

I'm more worried more about our country going into debt, and not having a future of my own, or being able to afford gas

than for "global warming"... which has yet to be proven.

Global Warming in my opinion is 90% theory

Answer 6

Did you know,

Al Gores house in TN uses 542% the electricity of the avg TN home and 323% more water.

Do you trust a hypocrite? I wouldn't

Answer 7

sure. If we move entirely or almost entirely to clean fuel and energy.

Answer 8

Al Gore sat down one day and realized he has no legacy.  In desperation, he decided that being remembered for destroying his country would be better than no legacy at all.

Bad choice, Al.

Answer 9

I think too much is made of Picken's plan.  It is worthy I suppose.  Pickens claims we aren't going to drill our way out of this problem, so I could as easily say we aren't going to build wind farms to get us out of this problem either.  We should drill, use coal, oil shale, nuclear, etc.  It seems to me Picken's ego is a little bigger than his plan.

Answer 10

Yes-- I post there regularly--

SEE--- even the goals of skeptics sometimes are the same as the GW advocates...... but for economic and political reasons-- and not for GW.

This would help--  but not enough according to the IEA report which calls for 30 nuclear plants to be built each year for 30 years--- along with 17,000 wind turbines per year for thirty years.

Answer 11

Yes, I have heard of T Boone Pickens' plan to make a fortune off of wind farms.  He's also buying up all of the water rights in Texas.  This will have no effect on fuel costs as it affects neither supply of nor demand for fuel.  It will have no effect on global warming as it does not affect solar activity (the true cause of climate change on this planet).