Green-Gurus

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Comment by Eric Koch on September 15, 2009 at 7:31am

Hey Larry!..glad to have found your group.

i was a half Pickens supporter (wind half) until recently....infarct i'm sure you remember the CNG rumble...i must apologize to you for that..Boone is supportive of other renewable technologies...although i think he's leaving that up to the rest of us....i traded my civic for a '93' Nisssan pickup (new companny vehical) that i intend to convert to a syngas/electric hybrid...if ever i need to extend the range beyond my own fuel production cappabillitys a CNG feuling station would be nice.

an so,
i stand corrected..

methane..

commonly referred to as natural gas...20 times the climate change catalyst as
CO^2..

post combustion,natural gas releases one quarter the CO^2 when compared to
gasoline...

and north america has an ass load of the stuff...some of it is from animals(that
includes humans by the way)...some of it is from land fills,but most of it is in
earth and ocean deposits(some of them unstable)

if you don't drive or ride an internal combustion powered motorized vehicle
that's fine.

if you do, or if you know someone who does....

http://push.pickensplan.com/

Comment by Larry M. Aden on September 8, 2008 at 2:16am

Pickens Plan Posts

My name is Larry M. Aden, 2694 180th Street, Nemaha, Iowa 50567, 712-636-4490, lmaden@frontiernet.net
I am not a blind supporter of Pickens' Plan, but would love to be convinced.
I spoke with Boone at the LeMars, Iowa Townhall, but he did not provide any specifics about his plan, nor seem to be very amenable to tweaking that which we do know about his plan to make it work for anybody but Boone, nor did he want the 'little people' to understand what is problematical about his plan.
Tho’ I believe he is sincere in his concern for our country. I also believe he thinks he paid for and got good information on the viability of this plan, but his researchers were either incompetent, lazy, or too quick to judgment.
I think Boone really believes that the plan can work as is, and will work really well for him, so he is not going to let a little thing like the facts get in his way, now.
None of his organizers had sufficient command of the technical issues to even converse with on the subject, let alone convince any skeptic.
My request for specific details of the Plan were met with “it’s all on the website”, which is a really unprofessional way of running a marketing campaign!
On top of that, there is nothing more to be found on the website than I knew the first day I looked at it over two months ago.
I want Boone to succeed in principle, but he will not succeed, if he takes the attitude I saw in LeMars. We will need to address all the shortcomings of the Plan head on.
He apparently didn’t get the brief on how educated and independent-thinking Midwesterners are. If he thinks we are just dumb hicks that can be led around blindly by the nose, he has misjudged more than the energy field.
I would like to work for Mr. Pickens in organizing scientists, engineers and technicians to support his Plan with a more in-depth elaboration of a comprehensive energy integration plan that truly could work for Boone, for America, for all Americans, and for the Planet.
We need a national renewable energy production and distribution cooperative, so that all Americans can invest at whatever level we are able to and participate in the returns every day with every dime we spend on energy. This will give everyone a stake in the success of the plan, and disarm all opposition.
I would hope that you will all join with me and forward this to any and all persons that might have an interest, so that we might amass our political force, form a grassroots steering committee to duly constitute a national energy co-op and progress toward the goal of universal participation in America’s sustainable energy future.
I would also hope that you will forward this to any persons that might have the ear of Boone Pickens, Tom Seinhorst or Ray Harris, so that we might actually coalesce toward a universally beneficial working relationship.
If I again get no satisfaction from the Pickens organization, I will be forced, by my sincere concern for enacting the most sustainable energy policy for my country and all Americans, to continue my letter writing campaign to challenge Pickens’ Plan, until it either improves or fails.
Larry M. Aden, President
AMASS, American Mutual Association for a Sustainable Society
EDEN Business and Cooperative Incubator, Jolley, Iowa 50551
I submit my following posts on PickensPlan.com to help you understand my positions:

Local non-partisan action is the best way for us to progress in this struggle!
Natural Gas (NG) serves best in large urban areas where access is universal, driving distances are shorter, and its cleaner burning yields maximum benefit.
If we concentrate on big cities first, we can thus make the greatest improvement for the greatest number in the shortest time.
In this political duopoly, our two major parties have always been more of a hindrance than a help to getting the People's business done.
If we look back at our Founding Fathers for guidance, we see that both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were adamantly opposed to organized political parties, and the word 'party' does not occur once in our beloved Constitution!
If we want to progress on energy, or anything of import, we must ban all parties from ballot access, so all ideas have equal access, and the voter must vote for the candidate, not the party.
I posted the below on other blogs to help us better understand the energy problems we all face:

Compressed Natural Gas (CNG, mostly CH4) is much cheaper and slightly cleaner than Liquid Propane Gas (LPG, or C3H8), kits for conversion of autos to CNG, LPG, Butane (LBG, or C4H10), or Hydrogen (H2) are virtually identical except for orifice size, but only LPG kits are widely available, and cheap enough to warrant converting.
No kits, that I know of, are designed to change automatically from one fuel to another on the go, as they well should be.
NG will not remain cheap, if substantial conversion of our transportation sector to CNG occurs without equal increases in production of NG its component, methane (CH4), from biogas, or other combustible gases from every possible source.
We also unsustainably consume increasingly huge amounts of NG making Anhydrous Ammonia (NH3) and other industrial gases that could be more cheaply and sustainably made by electrolysis of water (H2O) and cryogenic distillation of air!
Dr. Paul Curto has the right kind of ideas, except Anhydrous Ammonia (NH3) is only necessary for automotive fuel, not to pipe to generating stations. Hydrogen (H2) gas is perfectly compatible with Natural Gas in our existing Low-pressure pipelines, and saves the energy of the primary process of cryogenic distillation of air for the nitrogen and the secondary reactor process to make NH3.
President Bush has been absolutely right in pushing for H2 in every budget he has proposed for the last several years, but nobody listens to him, because he is just "an evil oil man".
Hydrogen (H2) is the answer and is not expensive to make if we use wind energy and other cheap off-peak electrical power during the nighttime to produce it by electrolysis from water.
This relatively-efficient, low-tech solution is over 100 years old, infinitely renewable, totally carbon neutral and more profitable than reforming CH4 from NG, as two pure industrial gases are produced - Hydrogen and Oxygen (O2)!
H2 can also be metered into the mix in our buried low-pressure NG pipelines at any point where it is produced, eliminating the problems in H2 distribution and the need for huge electrical transmission lines from our wind farms.

Below is an in-depth Letter to the Editor in a series that I had published in several newspapers and magazines, few people can get a nearly 3 page Letter published in several papers, but this one was:

COMMON SENSE ON ENERGY, NOW!!!, Part II
I wanted to discuss how we should make use of wasted local energy resources like that biogas flame at the sewage plant and the algae from Storm Lake for bio-fuels, but the nitwits are attacking on other fronts, so I must rush to the ramparts.
This won’t be short, so if you would rather not learn anything today, or you don’t want your present world view to be confused by the facts, stop reading, now!
I am often fond of saying that God created every person with a special talent and their own little piece of the truth. The real trick is in finding each persons talent to employ them to their fullest, and to recognize their little piece of the truth, so that we can put it in its proper place in the jigsaw puzzle of life to recreate that picture of eternal bliss in the Garden of Eden. Sadly, not every living being is willing to lend their talent and their knowledge to this quest. For this reason, we all continue to suffer.
Texas oil man, T. Boone Pickens, whose talent seems to be making money for himself, made over $1Billion speculating in oil and gas in 2005, again in 2006, $1.5B in 2007, was earlier estimated to be worth $3 Billion, but has since been instrumental in pushing crude oil beyond reason with his very public pronouncements that “oil is going to $150”.
It is now hovering around $145 as he quietly sells the barrels he bought at $50, after all, he’s not greedy; he doesn’t have to have every penny of that $150!
Whenever you hear a speculator say one thing, you should run the other direction!
Just like when George Soros caused the devaluation of the US Dollar, when he announced to the world that he was getting out of Dollars and buying Euros. That should have been interpreted by all of us that Soros had already sold all of his Dollars and bought all the Euros he could buy. He went public, because he wanted everyone else to do the same, so he could get out of Euros near their high and buy Dollars cheap.
Because Soros is rich, every fool listens to him. All the lemmings bit on this one, and rushed to dump their Dollars, stressing our economy and raising the price of food, fuel and everything we buy in the process. George only wants money and a Dem elected President, and he doesn’t care who he has to hurt to get it!
Paraphrasing Josef Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, “If you mix a big lie in with a little truth, and tell it often enough, you can convince everyone it is the truth.”
That is what T. Boone is doing with his very expensive TV ad campaign touting PickensPlan.com to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
Everything he has to say about the harm buying foreign oil is doing to our economy is absolutely true. That we should use more of our own CNG (compressed natural gas) for our autos is also true, and absolutely achievable with technology we have had for decades. That we should make more use of wind and solar energy, of course, but, that we can take Natural Gas (NG) away from electrical generation and replace that with wind and solar power shows he is either extremely ignorant of the fundamental facts about electricity, or he is trying to pull the wool over our eyes for his own profit!
Call me cynical, but I am betting on the latter, as recently, Pickens has heavily invested the profits of his oil speculation into both wind and natural gas!
He has also invested heavily in water rights, what should that tell us about what ‘shortage’ might develop next?
I am all for anyone making money, just do it honestly, without hurting your fellow man in the process, always giving your trading partners equal fair market value.
To see why Pickens’ Plan is not perfectly honest and achievable, we need to understand our energy consuming habits and needs.
Electrical power providers categorize our energy demand as 3 types of “load” – base, intermediate, and peak.
“Base load” is the minimum level of electrical power consumption at any one moment throughout any hour of every day of the year. This is constant demand and requires constant generating capacity, as alternating current cannot be stored, it must be used at the moment it is generated. They use hydroelectric, nuclear, and coal-fired steam turbine generating plants to provide this power, as these are cheap, constant and dependable, but cannot be started and stopped quickly to meet new load.
Geothermal, ocean thermal, offshore wind, wave, and ocean current energy could also be used for this load, and these represent the only safe and inexhaustible supply of renewable energy available to us to address ‘base load’. Why does no one even mention them in this debate on what we should do about energy? Why should we build nuclear plants when we haven’t even sunk one turbine in the Gulf Stream, yet?
“Intermediate load” is the demand that increases from 6AM, when the world starts to stir, to 9PM, when it starts to wind down, getting ready for bed. This happens like clock work every day, regardless of the weather, it can be planned for, so they fire the boilers in those coal-fired plants, a little harder, a little ahead of time, to bring more steam turbine generators on-line, or open another gate on a hydroelectric dam, when you and I want to shower and go to work.
“Peak load” is different every day of every season, depending heavily upon the weather and variable human activity. It is normally between 12 Noon and 4PM, with space heating and air conditioning being the greatest variable in demand. This demand changes rapidly and requires instantaneous response in generating capacity from hot gas turbines, which burn NG. There is no alternative to this gas, except other more expensive gases. If we take this NG from electric companies, we will be constantly plagued with brownouts and blackouts, or see massive increases in the price of our power and fuel, or both.
Wind cannot replace this power, in fact, our need for NG in electrical generation will actually increase with increased dependence on the fickle wind, as it almost never comes when we really need it. Most of the best wind comes at night, when we do not need it at all. The power companies really hate to be forced to buy wind power for 3.5cts/Kwh while shutting down coal-fired generation that costs them 1ct/Kwh. Who could blame them? Likewise, where the best wind comes, from West Texas to North Dakota, we do not have the necessary transmission lines, because there are few people living there to serve this power to.
High tension interstate transmission lines are very expensive, and very intrusive! Nobody wants these monstrosities built in their back yard!
What we could, and should, do is hook every alternative energy source we can find to a local load that matches it.
Solar photoelectric energy is a good match for air conditioning, refrigeration, and water pumping. Demand for these always increases when the sun shines, perfect match! It is expensive, inefficient, and nearly useless for anything else. Solar heating is little better, but should be passively designed into every new building.
Wind is a great match for space heating, water pumping, battery charging and other automated industrial processes that can be run when the wind blows, and shut off when it doesn’t, such as cryogenic distillation of air, hydrogen electrolysis, anhydrous ammonia (NH3) production, and other industrial gas production from these processes.
Huge quantities of our precious NG are spent senselessly in manufacturing NH3 for fertilizer, when it has long been cheaper to return to the original carbon-neutral, and infinitely renewable process of making it from water and air.
We must rewrite the REA charter to cover all forms of rural energy distribution, empower local REC’s to fund, sell and maintain distributed generation systems for their members, and to empower those members to sell all forms of energy directly back.
Then, we must erect wind and water current turbines everywhere we can possibly put them, thousands of big ones, and millions of smaller ones between them, that we manufacture here (not expensive imports). Each can be wired into our present electrical grid without building new transmission lines. Then, we must hook each to a water electrolyzer, and a booster pump, to store the off-peak energy as Hydrogen gas (H2), putting this, along with methane (CH4) from our every hog house, poultry house, cattle feedlot, and sewage plant, into the local low-pressure NG pipelines that serve our houses, farms and industries. Underground low-pressure NG pipelines are cheap and innocuous.
NG, mostly CH4, the very same biogas produced by every marsh, cow stomach, and manure pit, is compatible with both gasoline and diesel engines, and is perfectly interchangeable with propane, butane, and Hydrogen in low pressure gas systems (<300psi). These gases are extremely clean burning and can be used interchangeably in any gasoline motor with a truly flex-fuel system having an adjustable orifice.
H2 and CH4 are perfectly compatible, clean, safe and infinitely renewable; they also store well and liquefy under comparable conditions, but only at very high pressures (5400psi), or very low temperatures (-253C). CNG is normally packed at 3000psi for auto fuel, which is too high to be compatible with other gases, and too low to liquefy.
So, we should standardize compressed gas auto fuel storage pressure with liquid propane gas (LPG) at 300psi, then, use LPG, ethanol, or gasoline, only for long trips, and NG for our every day commutes.
With a small pump, we could all fill our cars and tractors at home from our own NG/H2 pipeline meter for about a Dollar per gallon gasoline equivalent!
When Pickens wants us to do that, I’ll support him, 100%!

Comment by Bill Mollring on July 23, 2008 at 8:01am

Thank you for starting this site. I am very interested in seeing how alternative energy ideas develop across the country. Please include me on your updates and notices. I wish you much success. We are listed on the Pickens Plan as Mariah Power.
You are invited to join our group for updates on the Windspire and
other alternative energy items and ideas.
http://www.push.pickensplan.com/group/mariahpower
To see our other alternative energy sources please go to:
http://www.emsystems.net
Aloha, Bill