In case you missed it, Boone Pickens on 60 minutes last night talking about himself and his plan ..

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Don't forget to tune in to see the Pickens Plan on 60 Minutes this Sunday ..

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Boone Pickens on CNN talks about alternative energy solutions including natural gas ..

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"Panel debates wind power" ..

Mike Sawyers of the Cumberland Times-News reports on a recent panel discussion on the merits and drawbacks of wind power. Some familiar names were part of the panel discussion including David Friend of US Wind Power and Jon Boone of Garrett County. Eric Moore, a physics instructor at FSU and a PhD graduate from UMBC, also gave the objective view from the university's perspective. Dr. Moore's contention is that all options should be considered and the residents of western Maryland should think about local electricity generation and as well as sustainable living. I applaud Dr. Moore and the renewable energy team at FSU for their efforts.

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Here's an ad you won't see on TV .. well at least not on NBC because they refused to air it ..

Also refer back to the posting I made at the beginning of June suggesting to the people of Garrett County that natural gas could be used as a transportation fuel. I never really got around to addressing that issue as completely as I had planned but I think Boone is doing an adequate job of doing it for me now.

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Another interesting ad urging us to take back our energy future ..

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USA Solar Store coming to DCL ..

The Deep Creek Blog is reporting on a ribbon cutting and grand opening scheduled for this Saturday August 23rd. This store is much needed addition to the area in my opinion. Check out the link for more details about the store and the planned festivities. I hope many people make it out to the grand opening and this business becomes a great success story.

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"Mayor Bloomberg proposes putting windmills on bridges and rooftops to help power NYC" ..

Read the full AP story here or see a few higlighted quotes below. It sounds as if Mr. Bloomberg is the think globally act locally type as opposed to many in Garrett/Allegany County who would prefer to think locally and act globally (i.e. push your problem off on someone else as the folks in today's Cumberland Times-News article would suggest).

"In New York, we don't think of alternative power as something that we just import from other parts of the nation," he said.

Smaller eggbeater-like models could be used on rooftops. "You can make them so small that people think they are part of the design," Rohit Aggarwala, director of the city's Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability, told The New York Times.

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Google invests nearly $11 million in geothermal energy ..

Watch the video below and read more at Google.org.

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Southern California Edison announces a 20-year contract to buy 909 megawatts of wind power from Oregon ..

Read more on the environment and technology blog at Fortune .

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New Pickens ad suggests we take back our energy future ..

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Allegany College goes geothermal ..

Read the full story in the Cumberland Times-News.

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"Wind power: A reality check" ..

Another piece from CNNMoney.com discussing the pros and cons of some of the ideas being put forth by Boone Pickens and Al Gore for example. The author seems to agree with Joe Lieberman in that while optimistic the Pickens Plan is not completely far fetched. Here's to more "can-do optimism" from all Americans.

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Pickens testifies before Congress on plan to curb dependence on foreign oil ..

See the full story from CNNMoney.com on Yahoo! Finance. A few select quotes:

"Our country is in a deep hole and it's time to stop digging," said Pickens, founder and principal of BP Capital, in testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., the committee's chairman, praised Pickens' plan, calling it a "classically American message of can-do optimism."

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Update: The Pickens Plan ..

Earlier this week, I commented on oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens launching an effort to promote wind energy development and natural gas as a transportation fuel. At the time, I did not realize the magnitude of the scale of his plan or the lengths to which he was willing to go to spread the message. If you've been watching television at all over the past two days you may have seen one of his commercials. He also has a fully functioning website up and running to further detail his plan. An overview of which can be seen in this video (also embedded below).

Maybe he's gone senile at the age of 80 or maybe he has a point that we can't continue to ship our wealth overseas and leave our children and grandchildren nothing but the debts of their greedy ancestors. I'm sure the "it will never work" (and especially not in my backyard) crowd will be out in full force though, just as they were when gasoline first powered the automobile.

A new source of power... called gasoline has been produced by a Boston engineer. Instead of burning the fuel under a boiler, it is exploded inside the cylinder of an engine.
The dangers are obvious. Stores of gasoline in the hands of people interested primarily in profit would constitute a fire and explosive hazard of the first rank. Horseless carriages propelled by gasoline might attain speeds of 14 or even 20 miles per hour. The menace to our people of vehicles of this type hurtling through our streets and along our roads and poisoning the atmosphere would call for prompt legislative action even if the military and economic implications were not so overwhelming... [T]he cost of producing [gasoline] is far beyond the financial capacity of private industry... In addition the development of this new power may displace the use of horses, which would wreck our agriculture.

- U. S. Congressional Record, 1875.

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"Oil billionaire Pickens puts his money on wind power" ...

Read the full story from CNN.com.

It should also be noted that Pickens' companies have been investing heavily in wind energy and natural gas as a transportation fuel so he does have something to gain here, but it is telling that he appears to be a "reformed" oilman. Last year on a trip to China he was quoted as saying something to the effect that if the Olympic 100m dash was run on that day it would have been a relay race because no one could have run 100m in polluted air of that poor quality.

It's certainly an ambitious plan that should raise a lot of eyebrows across the country and world, not to mention Garrett County.

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There seems to be a disconnect in the thought process of some Garrett County residents ..

as I saw exhibited once again in reading some of the latest happenings on The Deep Creek Blog. It seems one of Becky's readers is convinced that news of potential natural gas exploration in Garrett County is "negative" and in her opinion not welcome news. Just a few weeks earlier the editor of the Republican was crying foul over high oil and gasoline prices. Well folks, I'm here to tell you that you can't have it both ways. You can't be for lower oil and gasoline prices and against all alternatives, sources of new supplies and conservation at the same time. Personally, I'm in favor of all four, but it remains to be seen if we have the collective political will or foresight to make even one happen.

I also believe that natural gas is something many people are overlooking in the ongoing energy debate. Few recognize, for example, that we have significant reserves of natural gas right here in North America including the Marcellus shale reserve which according to some sources is the third largest reserve in the world. It can also be extracted with relatively little disturbance to the land and is a much cleaner burning resource than either oil or coal. I'll talk more about this at a later time including how it is also being used as a transportation fuel, specifically in a number of airports and city fleets around the country.

For now though, let me see if I have this correct, the people (or perhaps just some people) of Garrett County are against high energy prices, against wind energy, against natural gas exploration and I've even seen some comments indicating nuclear energy was a bad idea. The question I have is what exactly are the people of Garrett County for? The way things used to be when most of the world was dirt poor and energy was plentiful and cheap for those of us lucky enough to live in the United States? Or are they for energy just as long as it comes from somewhere else and is cheap?

If people are truly interested in lowering energy prices, maybe it's time to consider some of the benefits of alternatives, new supplies and conservation. Otherwise, we could continue to get our energy from the backyards of others while they demand higher and higher prices to provide it to us. The choice is ours.

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