Free Republic

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently called congressional Republicans who want up-or-down drilling votes "hand maidens of the oil companies." Let's call Pelosi what she is: House girl of the Big Wind boondogglers.

T. Boone has re-invented himself as a green wildcatter. Can he finish what Al Gore started? T. Boone Pickens can't read his lines. Squinting at his teleprompter, he is posing in front of a mile-long ribbon of wind turbines, churning against an endless Texas sky. Pickens is in Sweetwater, a town of 12,000 that bills itself as the nation's wind-energy capital, to shoot a commercial urging Americans to put themselves on a new energy diet: cutting out imported oil—which costs $700 billion a year—in favor of domestically produced sources such as wind and natural gas. "Our dependence on foreign oil...

Ah so! It seems T. Boone Pickens is not the disinterested environmental pioneer that his ads make him out to be. Michelle Malkin exposes the grand scale corruption that is behind Nancy Pelosi’s desire not to drill for more oil. It seems that she has stock in companies that create and run wind farms – T. Boone Pickens companies. Though she seemingly backtracked on labeling drilling a "hoax" this week, Pelosi refuses to consider GOP energy proposals that don't include massive government subsidies for so-called eco-alternatives that have never panned out. Which brings us to Madame Speaker's 2007 financial disclosure...

TV commercials touting a new clean energy strategy and an environmental ballot measure in California both have one thing in common: if they succeed, they'll make investors – from "big oil" to the U.S. Capitol – a lot of money. The ads champion Texas oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens' "Pickens Plan" to move our nation from foreign oil dependence to domestically produced wind power and natural gas fuel for automobiles. The plan is touted as a cleaner, more eco-friendly alternative to our current reliance on coal power and gasoline. The ballot initiative is California's Proposition 10, known as the California...

eek, Pelosi refuses to consider GOP energy proposals that don't include massive government subsidies for so-called eco-alternatives that have never panned out. Which brings us to Madame Speaker's 2007 financial disclosure form. Schedule III lists "Assets and 'Unearned Income'" of between $100,001-$250,000 from Clean Energy Fuels Corp. -- Public Common Stock. Clean Energy Fuels Corp. (CLNE) is a natural gas provider founded by T. Boone Pickens. Yep, that T. Boone Pickens -- former oilman turned wind-power evangelist whose ads touting a national wind campaign are now as ubiquitous as Viagra promos. Pickens and Pelosi share the same talking points downplaying...

One of CLNE’s underwriters is WR Hambrecht and Co., owned by William Hambrecht, a leftwing activist who has given, on average, around $80,000 per year to liberal candidates and causes. It is probable that such a heavyweight in the leftist movement is also well known to Nancy Pelosi and to Harry Reid, who will be partnering with the Center for American Progress Action Fund and UNLV to host the National Clean Energy Summit on Aug. 19 with such notables as President Clinton, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Gov. Janet Napolitano of Arizona, Gov. Bill Ritter of Colorado, and Texas entrepreneur...

Nancy Pelosi says that she is trying to save the planet and prevent global warming, but the reality is that, according to disclosure statements, in May 2007 she invested in T. Boone Picken’s clean energy fuels corp., CLNE, which is the sole sponsor of a proposal in California to funnel $5 billion in state funds and $5 billion in Federal funs to this corporation which will indirectly help them create a giant wind farm in the Texas panhandle. An overlooked story in November of 2007 shows that the T. Boone Pickens plan involves the private control of water, which Pickens...

When cocaine prices shot up last year, White House Drug Czar John Walters touted it as "the best evidence" that the War on Drugs was working. So when gas prices were shooting up this year, we ought to have heard cheers from those who claim we're addicted to oil. They should have pointed to those record gas prices as a sign that we're winning the war on oil addiction. But instead of celebrating, they've been gnashing their teeth. President Bush isn't leaping for joy, even though he gave the oil-addiction phrase its highest imprimatur when he used it in his...

It’s what conservative bloggers are buzzing about: the financial relationship between Do-Nothing Nancy Pelosi and Big Wind pusher T. Boone Pickens. #dontgo reports that according to disclosure statements, “in May 2007 she invested in T. Boone Picken’s clean energy fuels corp., CLNE, which is the sole sponsor of a proposal in California to funnel $5 billion in state funds and $5 billion in Federal funs to this corporation which will indirectly help them create a giant wind farm in the Texas panhandle.”Follow the money.Get the whole scoop here and here. Know your eco-cronies.***Flashback: See-Dubya asks, “Why is T. Boone Pickens...

At first glance, the energy proposals of Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens for wind power and increased gas usage sound good. "We can't drill our way out of this crises"; I happen to disagree with this statement. We still need to drill to make ourselves "independent from foreign oil." But the real issue is what is behind the clamor to expand wind power in lieu of increasing oil drilling. To understand this you have to read between the lines. Not only does Pickens' firm, BP capital, have significant investments in natural gas, but last June he announced plans to build...

Pickens Gives New Meaning to "Self-Government" By Steven Milloy The more you learn about T. Boone Pickens’ plan to switch America to wind power, the more you realize that he seems willing to say and do just about anything to make another billion or two. This column previously discussed the plan’s technical and economic shortcomings and marketing ruses. Today, we’ll look into the diabolical machinations behind it. Simply put, Pickens’ pitch is “embrace wind power to help break our ‘addiction’ to foreign oil.” There is, however, another intriguing component to Pickens’ plan that goes unmentioned in his TV commercials, media...

What we like most about T. Boone Pickens' grand scheme for meeting America's insatiable energy appetite and reducing the reliance on unfriendly foreign sources of oil is his willingness that all alternatives should compete. Whether it's drilling for oil offshore, or processing natural gas shale from the heartland or capturing wind that blows from who-knows-where, Mr. Pickens is all for it. "I'm for everything that's American," as the billionaire Texas oilman put it Tuesday when he met with the Register editorial board and news reporters. What we like least about his grand scheme is that to pursue the parts of...

I was just looking at the task of providing wind power to according to T Boone Pickens Plan. It is not a pretty picture. But here is a try at it. TX power Requirement (MW) 104,754 MW Amount of Wind Power Desired 20.00% MW of Wind 20950.8 MW Area per Megawatt 0.02 MW/Acre Efficiency 35.00% percent Sq Miles Wind Power 2992971.4 Acres Acres / Sq MIle 640 SqMi/A Actual Sq Miles Req 4676.52 sq miles Distance from Minot ND to Big Bend TX 1300 miles Width of Corridor 3.60 miles Watts per Tower 1.5 MW Quantity towers 13,967 units Cost...

T. Boone Pickens has a series of commercials running so often on TV and radio that you can’t avoid them. The basic idea he is selling is to replace gasoline in cars with natural gas, and replace natural gas in electricity production with wind farm produced electricity. The idea won’t work, but Pickens will reap more millions from government subsidies until America figures that out, just as we have figured out that Biofuels made from foodstuffs was a very bad idea.

Boone Pickens may be a fine man, and has played a colorful and useful role on the American stage for decades. But his "energy plan," which he's spending a fortune to promote on cable TV, is not a plan. Asserting that something would be good to do is not "a plan." Saying how to do it is "a plan." By this standard, what the legendary oil man is devoting $58 million to pitch hardly amounts to a decent slogan. He would replace natural gas in electricity production with wind, and use the natural gas to power cars. He fails to...

Al Gore said the other day that "the future of human civilization" depends on giving up fossil fuels within a decade -- and was acclaimed as a prophet by the political class. Obviously boring reality doesn't count for much these days. Even so, when Barack Obama wheels out an energy agenda nearly as grandiose as Mr. Gore's, shouldn't it receive at least some media scrutiny? On Monday, Mr. Obama said that the U.S. must "end the age of oil in our time," with "real results by the end of my first term in office." This, he said, will "take nothing...

It was two weeks ago, that Al Gore challenged Americans to "move quickly and boldly to shake off complacency, throw aside old habits and rise, clear-eyed and alert, to the necessity of big changes" by jumping on his alternative energy bandwagon. In a much-hyped speech July 17, the former vice president urged the nation "to commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years." Gore acknowledged that achieving his ambitious goal would be difficult: "To be sure, reaching the goal of 100 percent renewable and truly clean electricity within...

Before Congress spends billions to build public schools that meet "green" environmental standards, it should review Washington state's experience, which shows that green buildings have higher than expected costs, and the energy savings and other projected benefits are either small or nonexistent, says Todd Myers, director of the Center for the Environment at the Washington Policy Center and an National Center for Policy Analysis E-Team adjunct scholar. Several pilot schools in the Olympia, Northshore and Spokane school districts were created to test the effectiveness of green building strategies. By the summer of 2007, all but one of these schools had...

...developers are looking to build more than 100 wind turbines taller than the Statue of Liberty, side by side, on 18 miles of the George Washington National Forest. FreedomWorks, a company with projects in four states, wants to generate electricity for the power-hungry Washington area and beyond, despite concerns about disturbing wildlife, spoiling untouched lands and creating noise and light pollution. As the United States searches for ways to lessen its dependency on foreign oil, wind energy is getting a second look in states such as Virginia that had not embraced it. The national push, along with new state financial...

COMMENTARY: T. Boone Pickens is being lionized for his efforts to legislate a transformation to "eco-friendly" wind energy. We need to "overcome our addiction to foreign oil," he insists, by harnessing wind to replace natural gas in electricity generation, and using that gas to power more cars and buses. If Congress would simply "mandate the formation of wind and solar corridors," provide eminent domain authority for transmission lines, and renew the subsidies for this energy, America can make the switch in a decade. Mr. Pickens' $58-million media pitch makes good ad copy, but his policy prescriptions would bring new energy,...