Oil man conversion, says Global Warming is real

Sarge over at One Angry Zebra has for the last two years embraced T Boon Pickens's plan to convert America's trucks from Diesel to Natural Gas.  I have had some trouble accepting this, didn't trust TBP, but, I saw him with Ted Turner on PBS last night and he convinced me.

Now I must clarify, I don't think TBP is totally on the level, or suddenly and totally a "green".  But, he is most the way there, and I can accept his residual oil man's "sins" and welcome him into the flock, he will make a difference, to some extent, in moving this nation to a slower rate of killing the planet.

Two years ago he launched a project to build the largest wind farm in the world in the panhandle of Texas. He ordered 500 wind mills from GE, but his enemies, the Kochs (he said are no friends of his) and others fighting any and all alternative sources were able to block the transmission lines.  He still had  those wind mills on order, quickly he found a place in Canada to put most of them and Minnesota takes the rest.  His second project was convert trucks to Natural Gas.  I didn't buy this because first he wants government to help start the project for him, and I oppose drilling more wells.  Also I have a burr in my britches that he is buying water rights in the panhandle of Texas, Oklahoma and the far southwest corner of Kansas, once he has enough capacity bought he will pipe it to Dallas, reducing some of our food production capacity in so doing.

Well he convinced me with his pitch, first we are paying for both sides of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, our side, and by our using 25% of the worlds energy, we drive up prices which benefits some who help fund our enemies, this can be reduced if we use less oil.  Yes, Natural Gas is a fossil fuel and it's burning as transportation fuel adds CO2, but a small percent compared to Diesel, and with virtually no particulates, sulfur and so on.  The impact is very small.  I do have a problem with fracking wells in the east, in the west it appears to be less an issue, due to the geology and locations of gas and its relation to water.  Anyhow, I wish they can stop or limit the fracking, but, we have lots of natural gas, the prices are down over the last few years in half or so which would lower freight costs that impact everything we do.   TBP's model is California, many cities have bus systems on natural gas and garbage trucks, and some freight terminals, the improvement in air quality is significant, replace a diesel garbage truck with natural gas and it's like taking a couple hundred cars off the road in pollution levels.  TBP says, I it's probably a stretch, but says we could cut oil imports by almost 1/2 if all trucks were NG.

TBP said he accepted global warming as a true and real event after a number of recent trips to far north Alaska.  He saw in only a few years the ice totally melt off some mountains for the first time ever, and the loss of ice in the Arctic Ocean, and he was convinced, he said he truly worries the polar bear is in danger now.  He decided we have to do something now, if one day it proves we were wrong it won't cost much to have taken these actions, but if we do nothing we will soon be past the point of no return.   He also is excellent at playing the patriot and security card, why wouldn't the Kochs and other oil and coal companies want to save the US money and help the environment.......easy, they are multi-national corporations dedicated to profit, not to a country, if hosing us and making our long term prospects worse profits them in the near term, there sure as hell going to do it.  He went after Bush for using multi-national energy company execs so heavily in his administration, dumb he said, that was dumb to use people who have no real interest in America's future.  By the way, he ended saying, get those boys on a plane, get us out of Afghanistan and Iraq, now, we could have rebuilt America for what we have wasted there.  And he pointed out that Germany spends a lot of money on solar and wind rather than rely so much on Russian natural gas, they are concerned as we should be on supplies from unreliable vendors.