Slim Pickens Picks a Plan Out of his Nose

The man’s a billionaire, so he must be smart, right? Then why is he putting forth such a stupid plan? T. Boone "Slim" Pickens, oil man and international financier, is spending a few million of his pieces-of-eight to publicize his “Pickens Plan� for energy independence. In a nutshell (actually, there’s not much more to the plan than a nutshell), the “Plan� calls for increasing the U.S. windpower generation capacity to 20% of all electricity generation and then taking all the natural gas that is saved to power our cars.

Reasons “The Plan� is destined for “The Trashcan�:

*The federal government is calling for 30% windpower generation by 2030. You can’t call your plan a plan if somebody else already planned it.

*Natural gas peaker plants are the only method we currently have to level out the stochastic patterns of windpower production. Eliminating them makes windpower drastically less effective and more costly.

*If we start using natural gas to power our cars, prices will rise dramatically, causing further pain to poor homeowners who rely on the already expensive fuel to keep their children from freezing in the winter.

*Adding natural gas compression, storage and combustion to a car costs at least $10,000 and could be as much as $20,000. That’s CHEAPER than an electric plug-in hybrid.

*Switching from gasoline to natural gas is somewhat cleaner, but it’s STILL A FRIGGIN FOSSIL FUEL, SLIM!