Picken's $700 Billion Plan

[UALjan15]

Oh . . there will NEVER be a hydrogen distribution system. To say otherwise IS ignorant. No point haggling over details, but hydrogen as anything other than a specialized energy carrier is a fantasy.

NEVER is such a strong word! If what you claim is true, then there are legions of engineers (smarter than me and you) that are making their life's work pursuing a "fantasy." How ignorant!

Hydrogen will come. The distribution system might not look like what you expect, however. I don't anticipate going down to the corner Chevron and pumping hydrogen out of one of the old gas pumps. What I do expect is perhaps in 10 years, we have something like what natural gas looks like today. A few specialized stations providing hydrogen, and a growing number of home and office stations that use solar panels to produce enough energy to power the electrolysis. Honda is pretty far along in developing a home station that uses natural gas to generate hydrogen, as well as heat and electricity for the home.

Many of these alternative fuel strategies are viable around town, when you have access to your home station and a network of known stations. The challenge is making them work for a long distance trip. For this reason, many folks will either just go with a gas hybrid (soon to be gas plug-in hybrid), or keep one gas/diesel vehicle for longer trips. Still, there's no reason most families couldn't go hydrogen on one of their cars a few years from now, making it much more than a "specialized energy carrier."

Oh, and it's definitely worth haggling over the details. It's all in the details, man!

 

[Jet41]

Will it work? I don't know, but if I find a way to convert my car to natural gas, I'll do it today.

/

Go ahead, where you going to find the gas to fill your car?

 

[atpcliff]

Hi!

If you have natural gas heat, like I do, you can lease a device from Honda that sits in your garage and fills your car with natural gas, via the pipes that deliver it to your furnace, overnight while it sits there. They sell a Civic that is ng.

cliff
YIP

 

[Poahi]

Go ahead, where you going to find the gas to fill your car?

I found a source, but I haven't found a company that converts cars to natural gas. I did find LP conversions.

 

[rajflyboy]

Jim,
I've ALWAYS said drill ANYWHERE and EVERYWHERE and to do EVERYTHING including nuclear, coal to oil, etc.

Pickens thinks the same way like you pointed out. Why?

Because he knows the scope of the problem.

He's been saying we're at PEAK OIL for the last three years. He's one of us you know doomsdayers that are trying to wake people up so we can have a great future.

I hope he can help us have that great future!!

Again:

Pickens is using Taxpayer dollars to do this. The guy is an ASS.

 

[Poahi]

We need relief Today.

Okay, what's your short term solution?

 

[coolyokeluke]

Again:

Pickens is using Taxpayer dollars to do this. The guy is an ASS.

Oil mogul and corporate raider T. Boone Pickens launched an energy plan and social-networking campaign on Tuesday that calls for replacing Middle Eastern oil with Midwestern wind.
The so-called Pickens Plan would exploit the country's "wind corridor" from the Canadian border to West Texas to produce 20 percent of the country's electricity.
Transmission lines would be built to transport the power to places in the U.S. where the demand is. The natural gas, now used to fuel power plants, would instead be used as a transportation fuel, which burns cleaner than gasoline and is domestic.
He proposed that the private sector finance the investment, which would result in a one-third reduction, equal to $230 billion, in the U.S.' yearly payments to foreign countries.
Pickens has already invested heavily in wind, notably a planned 4,000-megawatt wind farm in his native Texas.

So where's the taxpayer dollar part come in? And you already subsidize coal, oil, and nuclear.

 

[atpcliff]

Hi!

I haven't heard of Pickens using Public Financing.

His advertising campain, website, etc. is coming directly out of his own pocket.

The windmill farm in TX is being paid for by investors.

Maybe the transmission line system to get the electricity from the farm to the cities it will serve is public money???

Normally, utilities using private and/or public money build the lines, as it benefits the companies customers and the public.

We ARE now, and have been, heavily subsidizing oil, coal, utilities, gasoline, airlines, aircraft production, highways/trucks, waterways/shipping, etc., etc.

cliff
YIP

 

[OHGOON]

We don't build that type of design - not safe enough.
Those who really understand Nuke power also know that it can be very safe.
Consider this - was Three Mile Island really a "disaster" (as the ignorant media and enviro wackos would have you believe)? Perhaps if you took a more careful look at what happened there you would view it as proof that the containment strategy and safety systems designed into our nuke plants actually work.

Yup those ignorant enviros and their loathsome media.......

Ever check into the cancer rates around nuclear power plants. It is not a pretty picture. Off course it can't "conclusively" be tied to the plants but hey, I am sure you would welcome one in your neighborhood right?

Never mind that the waste, fission technology generates, is the bigger issue. To this day many existing plants store their waste in local water pools because no one wants to roll that stuff away through their neighborhoods. No one has ever addressed the waste issue other than burying it in Nevada or elsewhere, which is no solution because no one can scientifically guarantee that any storage solution will outlast the half life of that stuff.

Yup lets keep doing what we've been doing. We should drill everything, everywhere and use "nucular" That way we could ignore reality for at least another month and then we could...........oh whatever as long as we don't try anything new because we 'know' that won't work because the current energy industry said so!

 

[JimNtexas]

More people died in Ted Kennedy's car than at Three Mile Island.

It is interesting to me to hear the Al Gore types telling me that I have to drastically lower my standard of living because the world is going to end in ten years because of anthropogenic global warming and then turn around and tell me nuclear power is too dangerous to consider.

The same folks also tell me that we need to be more like Europe, but Europe is building nuclear plants as fast as they can.

There have been huge advances in the design of nuclear reactors in the over 30 years since we've opened one here in the U.S.

We need more drilling, more nukes, more wind, more solar.

No of this is mutally exclusive. Unless you are a liberal Democrat who wants to see the U.S. taken down a notch or five.