Traderjorge, the anti-capitalist! Why didn't he post "here is a renowned American businessman proposing to risk his own capital to solve America's energy problems for the the world's greatest motivation.....PROFIT. American business to the rescue, Giggity!"
I just opened this thread to read opinions about the T. Boone's Pickens plan but I couldn't get past this major pun ... and no one else noticed apparently. That's too Slim!
Well, he has put his money where his mouth is. Do you see any other entrepreneur doing that -- going all out to change to more environmentally friendly fuels that come from the U.S.? I suppose you begrudge Bill Gates his money even though he has changed the world and is now plowing most of that wealth back into charity. His plan may or may not work, but I thank him for trying. I hope he makes a lot of money along the way.
See lbpman's post on page one of this thread if you actually believe that Pickens gives a flying tinker's damn about the environment. Oh thumbs...you are such a funny guy.
I don't care if he makes barrels and barrels of money, if somehow this spurs some move towards energy independence.
This is how i'm feeling on all of this business - T. Boone has done some weird, greedy things during his life, but if he can get these wind plants built then more power to him.
I just saw T Boone Pickens' ad for wind power and at first I thought it was a Move On ad. I don't know if Pickens' plan will work and have some suspicions regarding ulterior motives on his part but if he can make it work great for him and I have no problem with him making a lot of bucks off of reducing our dependence on foreign energy sources.
Actually you can. Using thermal solar instead of photovoltaics you can store up hot water or even molten sodium and use that for power generation even when the Sun isn't shining. You can also use wind power or solar to generate hydrogen store that and power fuel cells to create electricity other times. Some other technologies out there are super efficient flywheels to store energy from renewables in motion and then generate electricity from those later on.
These only offer very tiny storage capacities -- clearly nothing of a practical size to drive meaningful change.
The Ol' Boone Pickens investment plan. Invest a lot of your own money in an idea. Talk it up really big, and try to get your buddies to invest in the same. Lobby, lobby, lobby for subsidies or mandates. After you sucker a government into picking your plan, cash out before they wise up. Rinse. Repeat.
ross perot-esque video from his site. <embed src="http://services.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f8/1632654798" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" flashVars="videoId=1653634930&playerId=1632654798&viewerSecureGatewayURL=https://console.brightcove.com/services/amfgateway&servicesURL=http://services.brightcove.com/services&cdnURL=http://admin.brightcove.com&domain=embed&autoStart=false&" base="http://admin.brightcove.com" name="flashObj" width="486" height="412" seamlesstabbing="false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" swLiveConnect="true" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash"></embed>
And the Wright brothers plane could only fly about a 100 feet at about 20 feet off of the air. This is a matter of increasing the scale of the technology and the infrastructure to deal with it. The technology though exist.
That's a cute comparison, but in no way valid. The storage of electricity on a commercial scale is something that has been attempted for decades. It's not like we just recently had the idea. Believe me, I'd love to see the ability for electricity to be stored, it just doesn't work that way.
