Oh, NO!
No encores of Una Paloma Blanca
Posted on 08/11/2008 6:22:31 AM PDT by kellynla
At first glance, the energy proposals of Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens for wind power and increased gas usage sound good. "We can't drill our way out of this crises"; I happen to disagree with this statement. We still need to drill to make ourselves "independent from foreign oil."
But the real issue is what is behind the clamor to expand wind power in lieu of increasing oil drilling. To understand this you have to read between the lines.
Not only does Pickens' firm, BP capital, have significant investments in natural gas, but last June he announced plans to build the world's largest wind farm in west Texas, capable of producing 4,000 megawatts of electricity.
The federal government subsidizes wind farm operators with a tax credit worth 1.9 cents per kilowatt hour - potentially making for a tidy annual taxpayer gift to Pickens based on his anticipated capacity. But Pickens and wind power investors have a problem: since congress didn't renew the wind subsidy as part of the 2007 energy bill, it will expire at the end of this year unless reauthorized. Government subsidies the most important aspect for wind power usage and expansion; without them, wind can't compete against fossil fuel-generated power.
As pointed out by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on July 9, "In 1999, 2001 and 2003, when Congress temporarily killed the credits, the number of new turbines dropped dramatically."
President Bush and Senator McCain have both called for renewed offshore oil and gas drilling. With gasoline prices around $4 per gallon, something needs to be done. However why is there opposition to offshore wind development? The Wall Street Journal notes that although there is no formal moratorium against offshore wind power, environmentalist and NIMBY opposition has stalled every sea-based wind project proposed in the U.S. thus far.
(Excerpt) Read more at rightsidenews.com ...
T. Boone is just an old oil salesman.
Now he’s trying to sell wind power.
It doesn’t mean it’s not feasible.
It just means it’s T. Boone Pickens.
Blasphemy !!!!
BTTT
T. Bone, GE, and Congress will make billions, all from guess who?
....concerning wind power......
why couldn’t every home have a wind mill in their yard to produce their own power????? seems to me that if I were to have a wind mill here, the power it would produce could run my home with ease.....anyone else agree/disagree?
If wind power were so terrific the aircraft carriers would still be using sails.
As is always the case with T. Boone, “Follow the Money!”.
ole T-Bone is trying to use whatever credibility he has (funny how oilmen are fiends when they are republicans, but saints when esposing left wing ideas?) to focus attention upon what is nothing more than his own financial agenda.
he’s self serving, and no better then a used car salesman.
I actually believe T. Boone. I think he has financially positioned himself to where the plan will work. The goal to use natural gas to replace our oil usage in autos could be workable.
Wind power just doesn’t work everywhere...just as solar doesn’t work everywhere...I know in Southern Cali, the breeze at my house wouldn’t fill a balloon. LOL
Now, solar is another issue, and my next house will have a solar roof!
For the TRILLIONS of taxpayer dollars that Pickens wants for transmission lines to produce at best 2% of our energy needs, NUCLEAR is a heck of a lot better energy source!
Sometimes the wind doesn’t blow. Just a thought since you will have to pay for backup of some sort.
Pickens is just trying to get govenment funding(our tax dollars) for transmission lines and the cost is HUGE especially for the miniscule R.O.I.
We’re talking TRILLIONS for, at best, 2% of our energy needs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_power
The basic idea of course is that the waves will always be there and can be used to power turbines. Apparently hurricanes are not an issue because the turbines are just below the surface. I've no idea if they are a danger to dolphins.
“why couldn’t every home have a wind mill in their yard to produce their own power?’
Seems to me you can’t allow that. That number of windmills would obviously have an effect on the weather patterns and cause an drastic escalation of global warming.
:)
Does the wind blow 24 hours a day every day? If not, you need a backup source of power. Some systems are combining wind with solar as the backup, but these arrays are still more costly than just hooking up to the electric grid. Personally I’d love to be off the grid with wind and solar but it’s just not economically feasible yet.
1.9 cents per kWh is $19 per MWh, times 4000 MW capacity is $76,000 per hour if there’s enough wind to get to capacity.
But they're ugly, and they chop up the poor little birdies... < /greenie whacko >
Picken’s has got big investments in natural gas. Natural gas turbines are the flexible backup for wind turbines. Every wind turbine needs to be backed up by a flexible power source since they aren’t there when you need them the most..hot summer days.
We need to replace the natural gas power generation with nuclear. It runs all the time.
Picken’s wants to make sure that he gets his subsidies extended and then help with the extra transmission lines.
Then the utilities don’t care about the cost of wind power..they will just roll it into their rate base and you will pay. Plus pay for the subsidies. It is all about money nothing else.
You jest, but the flat-earth lobby is already worrying over whether the huge wind farms operated by Denmark and the Netherlands are affecting Europe's climate.
‘Apparently hurricanes are not an issue because the turbines are just below the surface. “
Hurricanes could definitely have an impact on these. 3-4 years ago one of the hurricanes moved a ship down in the keys. The ship is 510 feet long and was laying on its side. The hurricane moved it so it is now resting on its bottom. That ship ranged from about 70 at its highest point to about 130 feet on the sea floor.
yes I jest but my point is the wackos will not be happy with alternative energy. Their goal is to get us to stop using energy period.
In all seriousness wind is an important part of our weather. If you remove the energy from the system in significant (whats significant?) amounts it would probably have some impact. Not to mention all the dead birds.
We need oil!!
Keep supporting our congress heros that are still in Washington!!
We need a vote
Nazi Pelosi AmericanVoices@mail.house.gov
We need emergency session
President Bush comments@whitehouse.gov
202-456-1111
John Boehner invited McCain to join them
McCain needs to get his a$$ to Washington where he belongs
It will bring the much needed media attention
http://www.johnmccain.com/Contact/
and “if” is the biggest word in the dictionary...
With nuclear, you have electrical power generated 80-90% of the time. While at the best of circumstances, with wind, heck you don't even get any power generated HALF of the time...so you need a backup...
Hey, I don’t need convincing. I’m with you.
I was just curious what the federal subsidy would be for 4000 MW running at full tilt.
I don’t trust Pickins. I want nuclear.
So the government dollars go away and suddenly no one is interested in putting up windmills anymore. But I thought windpower was the wave of the future...would save the planet...would make its investors megabucks...couldn’t miss!! Interesting how tax dollars make everything more attractive...AIN’T IT!!
okay...
WOW! $665 million a year in federal subsidies!! No wonder T. Boone PICKINS is spending all that advertising money, there's a big payoff in taxpayers' money.
Amazing how the lazy reporters of this nation are silent as sleeping sheep.
“Wind gets a very small chunk of the DOE budget?”
as it should...I agree with the author, wind power is a lot of “hot air!”
However, I think there's another reason...a more important reason. The timing of his ads running incessantly 24/7 is extremely revealing....i.e., right before election.
Folks listening to and being led by this clone of snake-oil salesman, Jimmuh Cahtah, just OUGHT to believe Obama's equally-incessant message of alternate energy replacing oil which is SO possible and SO imminent right?
Why, this famed billionaire isn't even talking about that evil product, oil, is he? So why should we little people even be talking about drilling NOW?
T-Bone is a stalking horse for Obama, no doubt about it. Why else these endless, red-herring spot ads on radio and TV about something that will never replace or even come close to replacing oil?
T-Bone is in the barrel for anti-drilling Barak despite his down-homey, twangy lingo pitching a magic elixir which will certainly cure all that ails ya.
Leni
Actually, if you dig a bit deeper you'll discover that T.Boone's wind plans are secondary. The real reason he's pushing these wind farms is water, as in the Ogallala Aquifer. Transmission line corridors also make great places to put water pipelines. T.Boone has been buying up water rights in Texas like they are going out of style and is planning to make his next billion being a water Barron......and he'll use the power of eminent domain, courtesy of the Texas State Legislature, to achieve his goals......
well if Pickens is hitching his wagon to Obama;
he’s picking a loser...
Obama has two chances of winning on 11/4...”slim & none”
and “Slim” just left the building. LOL
He's putting up a ton of advertising $$$$, and gets fawning brain-dead interviews in primetime. ----Maybe the networks have been "bought."
I have to smile when I read how “wonderful”wind power is....but what happens when the wind fails, behind every wind generator, there is a fossil fuel electrical generator, ready to assume the power load the second the wind slows/stops...
The other issue is, how much fossil fuel is required to make a wind generator....and, how many years of wind generation is required to pay back the energy required to make the wind power generator...I suggest it would require 20 to 30 years to pay back the fuel consummed in the fabrication of one wind generator....
The real story here is the water. Over the past decade T. Bone acquired a huge piece of the Oglalla Auquifer under his much-expanded Roberts County ranch. The windmills and their power line are basically P.R. cover for the water pipeline he wants to build to Dallas. Even though Dallas is, at present, uninterested in buying his water, he anticipates they will be in the near future.
Through legislative sleight-of-hand, he sneaked through a law that let him set up his own Roberts County Fresh Water Supply District No. 1 with several employees, having been given several of his acres to qualify as the necessary five landowners. In this extraordinary abuse of the law, he now has the power of eminent domain to steamroll his neighbors and the right to issue tax-free bonds for his water and power lines across the 250 miles from his hacienda to Dallas. The definitive story can be had here:
http://www.sierraclub.org/committees/rivers/documents/There%20Will%20be%20Water.pdf
From the articles on the Sierra Club website, Pickens did a great job of romancing Carl Pope—Sierra Club Director—who wrote a gushing blog entry about his weekend with T-Bone and his windmills, but the membership brought him up short. Others have crunched the numbers regarding just how much taxpayer subsidies he can potentially mine from our pockets. You may well ask what a bilionaire octogenarian would want with more billions, but, after seeing “Batman Returns” I adapt the quote “some men just want to watch the world burn” to “some men just want to make things happen”; a usually admirable trait that has everything to do with our national greatness but here involves a man wanting do do something big with other people’s money and other people’s land.
Tie this man close to Obama, NOW! Then 527 the crap out of this idiotic monstrosity in October.
Wind power has been used for a long time. Nothing against using it again. The only issue is cost.
Favorable publicity may be a big part of the reason for his little project. Most people of a certain age have a vaguely distasteful memory of Pickens as a Gordon Gekko corporate raider-type from the eighties. Among other things, I thingk he’s in full legacy mode and wants to buy his way into heaven.
Here's a link to a story from a different source from a few days ago about Pickens' water plans:
http://www.junkscience.com/ByTheJunkman/20080731.html
Isn't the Texas Legislature controlled by 'Pubbies now?
Looks like 'ole T. Bone has some friends in high places.....
Oh, NO!
No encores of Una Paloma Blanca
T. Boondoggle!
Can't take credit for it. Some other FReeper posted the story a couple of days ago. I'm just reposting for discussion. It is very interesting, though, particularly the connections Pickens has in the Texas Legislature......
With zero knowledge of the whirly gigs and just the opinions of others to go on all I can say is that in the Panhandle of Texas there are a gazillion of these things up and or going up ! None of em belong to T.Boone so far....... they are spinning 24 & 7 just like the reporters on all sides of this pro con issue.
guess it’s a wait and see......for me !.....:o)
Have you ever heard how loud these things are?
Plus the bird bodies littering your back yard would change your opinion.
I think they should put them off the coast of every state. Start with Ted kennedy’s back yard!
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