The Pickens Plan: The United States is the Saudi Arabia of wind power
The Pickens Plan is a bridge to the future — a blueprint to reduce foreign oil dependence by harnessing domestic energy alternatives, and buy us time to develop even greater new technologies. Building new wind generation facilities and better utilizing our natural gas resources can replace more than one-third of our foreign oil imports in 10 years. But it will take leadership.
America is addicted to foreign oil. It’s an addiction that threatens our economy, our environment and our national security. It touches every part of our daily lives and ties our hands as a nation and a people. The addiction has worsened for decades and now it’s reached a point of crisis.
As imports grow and world prices rise, the amount of money we send to foreign nations every year is soaring. At current oil prices, we will send $700 billion dollars out of the country this year alone — that’s four times the annual cost of the Iraq war. Projected over the next 10 years the cost will be $10 trillion — it will be the greatest transfer of wealth in the history of mankind.
A 2005 Stanford University study found that there is enough wind power worldwide to satisfy global demand 7 times over — even if only 20% of wind power could be captured. Building wind facilities in the corridor that stretches from the Texas panhandle to North Dakota could produce 20% of the electricity for the United States at a cost of $1 trillion. It would take another $200 billion to build the capacity to transmit that energy to cities and towns.
That’s a lot of money, but it’s a one-time cost. And compared to the $700 billion we spend on foreign oil every year, it’s a bargain.
Join T. Boone Pickens’ effort here at this week’s 5:
“The burdens of global citizenship continue to bind us together”
Barak Obama and 200,000 of his closest German friends in Berlin, Germany, July 24, 2008.
Watch a clip from his speech below:
Facebook Connect
Facebook, the rapidly growing social network, unveiled some new features on Wednesday as it works to broaden its reach online and to recalibrate its sometimes contentious relationship with the thousands of developers writing programs for the service.
In a speech at his company’s annual conference for developers, called F8, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s 24-year-old chief executive, also demonstrated the company’s new design. He predicted that there would soon be a wave of social Web sites built on top of the information users give to social networks.
“We are going to see the big social networks start to decentralize into a series of social applications across the Web,” Zuckerberg said. “I think we are at the beginning of a movement and the beginning of an industry.”
Stepbrothers
Caution on use of Cell Phones
The director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute and UPMC Cancer Centers plans to issue an advisory to about 3,000 faculty and staff today about the possible health risks associated with cellular phone use.
“Recently I have become aware of the growing body of literature linking long-term cell phone use to possible adverse health effects including cancer,” Dr. Ronald Herberman said in the memorandum. “Although the evidence is still controversial, I am convinced that there are sufficient data to warrant issuing an advisory to share some precautionary advice on cell phone use.”
Dr. Herberman believes he is the first U.S. cancer center director to approve the release of such an advisory. And a spokesperson for the National Cancer Institute said officials there were unaware of similar advisories issued by other center directors.
No other major U.S. health care or consumer group has gone as far in advocating for precautions, said Dr. Louis Slesin, editor of Microwave News, which tracks research related to cell phone safety.
Dr. Herberman also has signed on, along with more than 20 other international experts, to a document calling for precautions in using the devices.
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