As a geologist working in the oil industry I feel that TBPickens is the only one who has a good plan about energy.

Obama has too much focus on renewables and needs understand that for the next 10 years hydrocarbons are still very much needed.
McCain has too few focus on renewables and overstimates the volumes that can be found offshore US.

Pickens really represents a good mix of the two presidential candidates and clearly has great understanding of the issues.

Well, although it sounds good when you suggest Wind power as a major source of energy I'm not convinced that it is all that practical. Even with high fossil fuel costs, wind power is really expensive because of the materials needed to keep the windmill light enough to be efficient and the large ammount of maintenance they require. On top of this windmills are very fragile and tend to have fairly low maximum wind speeds and the reason we don't see a (much) higher failure rate is because they have been placed very carefully in places which rarely deal with excessive wind-speeds; as you try to increase wind power to account for more and more energy, these windmills will be put into more hurricane and tornado zones and a large portion of them will need to be replaced every year (making them more expensive as an energy source, and less reliable).

Generally, I favour the use of Nuclear power as a replacement for fossil fuels as a source of electricity and (in particular) I favour the use of the (Canadian Designed) CANDU reactor ... The CANDU reactor is a superior design because it is cleaner, has a lower risk for any accidents, and uses a lower grade of Nuclear material (which means there is less risk of it falling into the wrong hands); the approach used in this reactor design wasn't used by other countries because it is far larger, and can not be shrunk to put into a Submarine. Whether or not we use it or not, all nuclear fuel is degrading at the same rate and will (eventually) become unusable.

I think compressed natural gas as a trasportation fuel is an interesting idea but I think the benefits of it seem greater at the moment than they would turn out to be. The main reason Natural Gas seems so cost effective is that there is little demand for it ... If you (suddenly) have 100,000,000 cars in North America switch over to Natural Gas the supply and demand of both Gasoline and Natural Gas would change enough that it would (potentially) make Natural Gas a more expensive fuel.

With all that said, it is still a much better plan than I have heard anyone in a position of power suggest ... even though I think there is only limited benefit in his approach there is still a measureable benefit.

@HappySqurriel: There are several countries sustainably using wind power. Denmark has about 20% of its electricity coming from wind. There are many studies which prove it's economically viable.

It's certainly not a silver bullet, and of course you can't put wind turbines everywhere. It still has great potential for many countries though.

That doesn't really negate what Happy was saying, though... Wind works well in areas that meet its specific needs... The problem is that those areas don't appear to be that widely available.

According to wikipedia:

U.S. Department of Energy studies have concluded wind harvested in the Great Plains states of Texas, Kansas, and North Dakota could provide enough electricity to power the entire nation, and that offshore wind farms could do the same job.^[61][62] In addition, the wind resource over and around the Great Lakes, recoverable with currently available technology, could by itself provide 80% as much power as the U.S. and Canada currently generate from non-renewable resources.^[63]

This would require the power grid to be upgraded, but nothing comes for free.

I would like to see that study... How much would it cost and how much of the current infrastructure would have to be relocated or removed to make it work?

Not to mention that almost every wind project meets up with stiff opposition from the locals... They're considered an eyesore by most people.

At least one of the studies is in wikipedia's reference list:

http://greengold.org/wind/documents/107.pdf

Regarding your last comment... I'm guessing they still oppose it less than coal or nuclear power stations, right?

 Wind power will probably never really get above 20-25% of the USA's power supply, b/c the wind comes and goes.  Granted, using things like industrial batteries to give power have been looked at but we are a far way from implementing ( b/c there really isn't a need with wind being mabey 2% of america's electricity) yet.  

We would have to get more transmission lines, with wind power possibly even use superconductors for transmission b/c the economics is a lot better that way.  We would also have to get the intelligent grid much more available to give the utility companies more up to date info so basically, in order to get to the 20% level, we would have to radically upgrade the grid which might be over-reaching.  Google the "intelligent grid", its a new technology just starting to be implemented that basically puts the internet through power lines that will help utilities save labor costs, reduce outage times, reduce power production needs and give completely up to date data on the grid where we really don't have this to nearly the same degree currently.  Cool stuff.  -Dallas

How does he feel about Ethanol. I can't support any energy plan that has us using food or land that could grow food to produce ethanol.

Not really.  Coal and Nuclear stations can be placed in poor areas and other places that can't put up a good resistance.

People would rather have a coal plant somewhere far away then a wind plant ruining their home values.