We want to Invest in the Pickens Plan

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Comment by Paul on June 3, 2009 at 10:30am

Good grief! A question for: Bruce D. Bongardt

Bruce, has *anyone* made use of the silly calendar? At first I thought it was a joke -- A National Lampoon or SNL spoof of a strange engineer's idle musings... Do you honestly think a company would pay a $5/worker royalty for an idea that *NO ONE* would be happy with? (then again there is always government)

Do us all a favor, stop using "Send Message to Group"! Use the effort to create a NIST grant proposal... or something else equally productive.

Comment by Paul on June 2, 2009 at 5:18pm

I can't even say I hate politicians... I loathe politicians, I despise politicians, I maintain ultimate contempt for politicians.

Business people are bad, politicians are worse!

Comment by Paul on June 2, 2009 at 5:14pm

Whoops! I forgot to say my last posts were "Calls to action".

Comment by Paul on June 2, 2009 at 5:13pm

I hate "Business People" (Capital "B") and I'll tell you why.

Do businesses "need" electricity? I think the answer is an obvious yes.

Do they 'need' cheaper electricity? Apparently not. Therefore I have fialied to define a need that would motivate a "Budiness[sic] Purson[sic]" to buy my product.

What's worse is that since I apparently know how "Business" defines "need" I'm not working hard enough in their not-so-humble opinions.

Well, I'm sick of Business People. I'm sick and tired of their superior attitude. I'm sick & tired of the way they expect all eyes in the room to gravitate towards them.

When my parents went to school a 'business education' (small "b") was the path for the2nd rate students, the ones that couldn't handle the rigors of the sciences, but were a little too smart for shop class, or lacked the manual dexterity.

Thanks to the Business Students of the 70's, 80's & 90's we're now into the second great depression. US assets are being liquidated and nationalized, not because of bad engineering, but because of bad business decisions.

Bonnie, now I'm confused. I thought your post was an adequate example of a 'lead follow or get out of the way' banner both to the Pickens Army, and the Washington bureaucrats. It contains some brief analysis(review) a number of action items.

I'm sorry I tried to use is as a commercial rallying point. Since we're all on our way to hell in a hand-basket, I figured why not.

For those that don't know the S&T approach is to put a Concentrating Solar Power "Genset" on any of 95% of the commercial buildings in the US. The reason is to provide the buildings with the "cheap electricity they do not need" for the life of the building, for a one time capital investment of equipment. But I'm only a foolish engineer.

The Light is Green! -- Perhaps the "Business People" will open their eyes.

Comment by Bonnie S on June 2, 2009 at 4:44pm

Paul: A couple other things... We need some country-wide leadership on this. As I mentioned, Chu seems to be out in la-la land. Obama seems to want to go straight to that "free" and "non-polluting" electricity without a clue that we're a ways off from that and that his assumptions are wrong. Although I know he changes his mind often and is not afraid to do so. By the way, I did not vote for him, but I admire his learning capacity and ability to do this as he finds out the truth about things. This I really like about him.

Comment by Bonnie S on June 2, 2009 at 4:36pm

Paul: I don't know what you mean. There is no focus to anyone in my message concerning lead, follow or get out of the way. I was hoping to connect with someone with some capability to communicate with the so-called decision makers. Our overall problem is quite complex and may, in fact, may not be solved unless people can treat it as a complex engineering problem and solve it in a rational manner. In my experience, the thing to do is break the problem up into bite-sized chunks and eat it one chunk at a time. Don't know what you mean by the S&T approach. If its pure S&T, it won't work. I think the biggest problems are politics and economics. S&T doesn't define need and and it doesn't pay for it. It is certainly the answer though.

Comment by Paul on May 30, 2009 at 10:48am

Hey Bonnie,

I'm thinking that was essentially a "lead, follow, or, get out of the way" poster? But I'm not sure which one you are leaning towards?

I'm trying to lead the S&T approach, I'd appreciate any support you might be willing to give... even if it's just a good word or two :^)

The Light is Green!

Comment by Bonnie S on May 30, 2009 at 3:54am

Guys and Girls:

I haven’t visited this site for a while because there’s simply not much to visit, but thought I’d drop by and provide a note on our country’s energy policy – from what I can tell, there is none! If there is something comprehensible and reasonable, it should certainly be published for us citizens to see.

Our Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, is certainly a smart man, but he is not an engineer capable of modeling a system of mass transfer, energy transfer, economics and politics. Rather, he is a brilliant (but a little crazy) physicist who’s Nobel prize was won by cooling and trapping atoms with laser light. Not exactly applicable to the macroscopic problems we face.

I would think our energy department should be focused on the bigger picture and focus on ways to optimize our use of our energy resources (whether that be wind, solar, waves, geothermal, oil, NG, nuclear) and ways to reduce this use. Rather, Chu is focused on ways to reduce global warming through nutty ideas (which means he’d make a great member of this site). His latest is to have all roofs in the world painted white and to change the color of all roads in the world to a less absorbent color rather than the typical asphalt black. The claim is that this would reflect enough energy back to space, thus countering all warming caused by “us”. Maybe so. But is this reasonable? Does it save energy? Does it produce energy? Is there really global warming? Doesn’t this guy have something better to do? Geez, I would hope so.

Now, I could personally model the energy situation. But my research, knowledge and funding sources are limited. And the people that should have this model wouldn’t look at it anyway, nor would they understand it. Is there anyone among those 550 or so people in DC capable of understanding anything technical? Most probably depend on others to just balance their checkbook.

I would suggest that we as US citizens communicate with our reps and ask some hard questions about energy policy. Currently all I see are “pie in the sky” ideals and ideas that are not reasonable. They all want to jump immediately to electric cars and windmills without any idea about how to get there and with the idea that electricity doesn’t pollute. Come on! How is electricity produced anyway? Sounds like coal, NG, oil, nuclear or hydro. They all want electricity, but won’t approve the plants required to produce it. The interim answer to our problem IS the Pickens Plan, but few embrace it. Boone’s plan is simple, elegant, cheap and immediately doable.

Whats the problem??

Bonnie

Comment by Steve at work on May 28, 2009 at 7:09am

Hey Guys;
I'm back.took a couple of months off to really concentrate on my wind farm project. It is really going well except for the big problem. No money. Does anyone know where to get accurate information on the stimulus plan money? Or who is really looking to invest/develope a project? As usual I can use a little help.

Comment by Arno Lundin on May 27, 2009 at 11:10pm

raise the price of wheat

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