I'm not sure what "necessary background" anyone would need to understand how the Pickens Plan works- it is a very simple and I think viable step towards reducing our dependence on foreign oil. Although I will admit, my previous post did not appropriately focus on a response to the Pickens Plan. I apologize for diverging from the thread. I just meant to provoke some brief consideration for our energy situation today (with freed up funds) if the Iraq war never occurred. I did not mean to raise issues about whether we should have gone to war/be in the war/get out of the war (liberal talking points).

The Pickens Plan is a good step towards alleviating some of our foreign energy dependence. But ultimately, we will need to heavily invest in the development of existing alternative energies, and the research for new technologies. Merely replacing natural gas with wind power as a power source, and using that natural gas for automobile consumption may be a useful step, but (as Pickens admits) more will need to be done to reclaim a certain amount of autonomy lost in our dependence on foreign oil. In the interest of expediency, I think this investment needs to come largely from our government, hence my reference to a huge government expenditure in the Iraq war (a potential source of future funding).

__________________
"Before the United States invaded Iraq, there had never, in the seven-thousand-year history of that nation, been a recorded incident of a suicide bomber killing random civilians. After a year of sporadic electricity, no clean water, constant strife, and the heavy foot of a foreign occupier, suicide bombers suddenly became relatively common in Iraq"
-Thom Hartmann, "Cracking the Code"

The Pickens plan will take 15 yrs to implement and billions to build enough infrastructure to make it viable.

Drilling is what we have now. We can increase our supply in less then 6 months increase our production over a 5 year period and remove foreign oil from the American market and this will buy some time till the Pickens Plan is put in place. The reason I say this is the Pickens Plan isn't ready now and it needs to be. In the meantime we can reduce our dependence on other countries and eventually transfer over to the alternative sources slowly and more affordably.

__________________


"We can't screw it up any worse than they have." - Barack Obama

Wanna bet?



"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste...." - Rahm Emmanuel

Well, you talk as if the only person that can help is Jesus...

Sure Pickens is in this for the money... he doesn't deny that.
He doesn't care about the enviroment... he just want's some of the 700 Billion US dollars to remain in the US... in his pocket at best.
What is wrong about that? It's the american dream isn't it?

In no way the US could drill enough oil to supply their demand... not even for a single day...

But what the hell, perhaps the US could simply do both... but just acting as if there is nothing wrong about a trade deficit and the outflow of money is suecidal.

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It's not as bad as it appears.

The Dems are doing nothing and by doing nothing the price is rising.

They have no intention of allowing drilling because they want us to have to pay higher prices.

The Dems have been grabbing thousands of acres of land.....land that has a ton of oil under it. They did the biggest land-grab in history the last couple of months under the Clinton Administration.

Now why would the Dems grab all of that land that has oil in it?

They fully intend on drilling for it once they nationalize the oil industry. That way they can use the cash for whatever they want. Save Social Security and Medicare....which they have neglected, and pay for their handouts to their special interests. Other countries are doing the same thing. Problem is they fully intend on misusing the funds. Corruption is part of any nationalized oil program. 95% of the world's oil supplies have been nationalized. The Dems want to make it almost 100%.

__________________


"We can't screw it up any worse than they have." - Barack Obama

Wanna bet?



"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste...." - Rahm Emmanuel

My god... My personal believe would simply be, that such oil reserves would make a formidable US national treasure... just imagine how much easier WW2 would have been for Germany if we had some untouched oilfields for an emergency...
Eccological worries aside, it's a strategic reserve... if the uses it for regular consumption, it will never come back....
And as it will not do any good to ease the US dependance on oil... why waste that domestic oil for a short political boast in the coming election?

But you seem to be totally filled with the Dems vs good idea... very unobjective...
Look at me, I totally dislike Bush... perhaps his idiotic idea of invading Iraq was the reason I am on this board...

But now, I am actually not decided who is better, McCain or Obama...
McCain has some crazy notions and seems very non-straigth talk currenty.... but Obama, who knows what we get...

I don't have to decide, but as it seems it will be a victory for the US and the world anyways... whoever wins

McCain has at least a good sense of humour and can laugh about himself... and I mean even before his campaign started....

__________________

Obama is bad news.

No convictions, not back-bone. He'll be a blank-check for the Dems and he'll act as a swinging door to every silly political bill they want to pass.

__________________


"We can't screw it up any worse than they have." - Barack Obama

Wanna bet?



"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste...." - Rahm Emmanuel

In one regard you are correct. It doesn't take an Einstein to understand how substituting natural gas for oil can help ease our dependence. But let me point something out. Our Congress has been bickering about this problem for as long as I can remember, and they haven't been able to come up with a solution yet. What we did get from Washington was an ethanol remedy that was really nothing more than a political payoff to the folks in Iowa. Let me remind everyone that the ethanol solution really did nothing but raise corn prices and cause food shortages. So even though you and I can understand the Pickens Plan, 100 senators who consider themselves the elite of America couldn't figure it out.

Enough of my abuse of Congress. It isn't nice to pick on the mentally weak, disabled, and infirmed. The best approach to energy independence is to take stock of what we have and allocate it accordingly. It will mean we have to change, rebuild, extend, or invent new infrastructure to use these resources. But ya gotta do what ya gotta do. And it it takes 10, 15, or 25 years then so be it. In 25 years you'll still be 25 years older. The question is if you want to be 25 years older and still dependent on foreign oil or energy independent?

Right now we have a lot of talk about using electric cars or ethanol fuels. These are false choices because to get electricity we still have to burn fossil fuels in our electric plants. In fact, only about 30% of what you burn can be turned into useable energy after you deduct transfer loss and other inefficiences. And it takes more energy to produce the mileage equivalent in ethanol than it does to import foreign oil. You have to use nitrogen from fossil fuels to fertilize the crop, then transport it, refine it, and then distribute it. Even then you can only blend so much into the gasoline product. So it is like trying to reduce your dependence on hamburger by blending it with T-bone steak.

As you can see, every BTU of energy we extract from wind directly, saves us 3.33 BTU's of energy burned at the power plant. But the story gets even better. Electricity stored in a battery and then converted to mechanical work is also very inefficient. So by using natural gas in our cars we do several things to improve our energy situation. First, we deny the dependence on foreign oil. Next, by bypassing the burning of natural gas and turning it into electricy (inefficient), and bypassing the loss due to transmission, and storing it in a battery (also inefficient) and extracting the energy directly from natural gas, we make maximum use of this resource. To me, it is a win-win except for the Arabs for which it is a lose-lose.

RJ

I like Pickens idea, but I don't know if it goes far enough, still its better than what congress has come up with in the past 20 years. We should be doing everything in our power to gain independence from foreign oil, but I don't see biofuel as the one true solution anymore than I see electricity, or hydrogen/fuel-cells at the moment. Still, its better than nothing, but it still falls short of a real solution when it comes to replacing oil.

The only real solutions in his plan are the ones that have nothing to do with oil, or any foreign fuel source for that matter. As they deal with replacing coal.


Of course whether anything gets done even with Pickens plan is yet to be seen, I'd love to see real solutions instead of feel-good/pandering policies. Right now we should be doing anything and everything in our power, I mean we landed on the freaking moon and your telling me we can't solve this problem? Not to mention our lack of leadership in the world. For instant, Germany is leading in solar power, Germany! I mean do you think of sun when you think of Germany? There has been for too long a willingness to do nothing or close to nothing when it come to energy policy.

Local fishermen/women are on the brink of quitting the industry (which of course leads to even more dependence), and its just a matter of how high it goes until the airlines are completely run out of business (Not that I I'm saying it'll ever get that high). What I'm saying though is that our economical way of life is threatened, and we've done diddly squat.

Well if we did become energy independent, which industry would see it's currently record high profits reduced?
Who does the current administration currently work for?

__________________
“ The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state.”

Adam Smith , The Wealth of Nations 1776

"We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics"
FDR's second Inaugural Address

I don't understand, why do you think we are somehow compelled to keep making the same mistakes we see others make instead of learning from them? Also, the USA is not Mexico or Venezuela, we don't, for one thing, have an 800 lb gorilla looking over our shoulder and jumping on us whenever it suits them.

I've heard something like this, has to do with a lot of the oil already being found and pumped but then shut off, or something like that. Do you have links that explain how the timetable is so much faster than anything else?

I know you won't agree (in fact you may become apoplectic) but seems like a plan to me. Big Oil has made all the money they're going to in a strictly entrepreneurial/capitalist sense and has been almost quasi-public for a long time anyway, what with all the govt subsidies; time for the people to take some of that money back before they run out of the last oil that's generating it.

So you agree with the plan. A plan that they are lying to us about. Big Oil sucks ass so they deserve whatever the Dems have in store for them.

They tell us they are trying to change our habits and trying to clean up the environment but instead they are just trying to frustrate us to the point where we allow them the take over the oil industry and use it for their own purposes. This is dishonest to the core on their part and tells me you feel that their being dishonest about it is OK. What else do you think is OK?

Is there anything underhanded that the Democrat Party does that you don't think is just hunky-dorry?

This is what corruption is...............telling people lies just so you can get what you want. Their motto of "How can we fool them today" really fits and anyone who goes along with it is a facilitator to their corruption.

__________________


"We can't screw it up any worse than they have." - Barack Obama

Wanna bet?



"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste...." - Rahm Emmanuel

uh...what are these mysterious 'purposes' you think they have? If those purposes ARE to change our habits and clean up the environment then what's underhanded, where's the lie? They're just using a different method.

Telling people lies so you can get what you want is called politics if those things you want are things you think will do the public good. (We may disagree on what will do the public good, that's called politics too).
It's called corruption when the things are like yachts, swimming pools, large Swiss bank accounts for yourself etc.

And I'd still like to see those links explaining how drilling will give us more oil in 6 months

The plan is a few posts back.

Telling people lies isn't politics, it's lying. Calling it politics is a rationalization.

Politics isn't supposed to be about lying, it's supposed to be about serving your country to the best of your ability.

I know that sounds foolish to you but the only way we will ever get any change in this country that we can believe in is by insisting that our politicians be honest. Otherwise you're just placing a big "I'm an idiot" sign on our foreheads.

Willful ignorance by the voters is the problem in politics, not the lying politicians, because if they felt that they would pay a serious price for lying they would resist the urge to do so. As long as you accept their lies they will continue to lie to you. When they lie to you they're saying "They're too stupid to really care ether way".

__________________


"We can't screw it up any worse than they have." - Barack Obama

Wanna bet?



"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste...." - Rahm Emmanuel

I said politics is about lying, but I think what I probably should have said it is about the appearance of lying. I didn't say the Dems WERE lying. In fact, my post pointed out exactly how they WEREN'T lying but might be, in fact serving the country to the best of their ability and telling the truth about what they were trying to accomplish. It appears to be a lie on first glance because the goal is accomplished as more of an indirect consequence of the original action than a direct result.

The Pickens Plan was the only thing I saw a few posts back. You specifcally rejected that as taking 15 years. I was looking for a link that had to do with drilling giving us oil in 6 mos. I believe you were right on that, or at least one source somewhere is since I saw the same thing myself, I just can't find it again.

Listen to the Pickens commercial. He says the plan will take 10 years. We don't have 10 years. Who knows what will happen between now and then. We have to drill. The Dems won't allow it for a couple of reasons:

They want to change our habits. What gives them the right to subject Americans to the hardships we're currently going through? This is bad enough. But they can't bring themselves to trust the market enough to let it develop alternatives on it's own without this artificial rise in gas prices caused by their neglect. They claim that oil executives are to blame or speculators. Nether is true. Their neglect has caused this. We could be drilling in Anwar today if not for their obstructionist tricks.

The other reason is because I suspect they intend on drilling but only after nationalizing oil production in America. They want to keep this hush, hush, but the cat's out of the bag after it was revealed that they intend on taking the oil industry from oil companies.

The acquisition of millions of acres of oil rich land, their desire to take over the oil industry, their habit of hiding their true intentions in many of their bills since taking over Congress leads me to believe that the Democrat leadership isn't thinking about Global Warming but their main concern is paying for their programs.......and grabbing our oil and taking all of the profit for themselves. They figure this will solve all of the problems they have caused over the years because of their neglect, Social Security, Medicare, energy independence, etc.

If this becomes public they will be in big trouble with their special interest groups, but this isn't the first time they have been caught lying to them. They lied that they would get us out of Iraq and they continue to fund it time and time again.

__________________


"We can't screw it up any worse than they have." - Barack Obama

Wanna bet?



"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste...." - Rahm Emmanuel