T. Boone Pickens writes: World oil production peaked in 2005. Despite growing demand and an unprecedented increase in prices, oil production has fallen over the last three years. Oil is getting more expensive to produce, harder to find and there just isn’t enough of it to keep up with demand. The simple truth is that cheap and easy oil is gone.

America is in a hole and it’s getting deeper every day. We import 70% of our oil at a cost of $700 billion a year - four times the annual cost of the Iraq war.

What’s the good news?

Studies from around the world show that the Great Plains st ates are home to the greatest wind energy potential in the world — by far. The Department of Energy reports that 20% of America’s electricity can come from wind. North Dakota alone has the potential to provide power for more than a quarter of the country.

Today’s wind turbines stand up to 410 feet tall, with blades that stretch 148 feet in length. The blades collect the wind’s kinetic energy. In one year, a 3-megawatt wind turbine produces as much energy as 12,000 barrels of imported oil. Wind power currently accounts for 48 billion kWh of electricity a year in the United States — enough to serve more than 4.5 million households. That is still only about 1% of current demand, but the potential of wind is much greater.

A 2005 Stanford University study found that there is enough wind power worldwide to satisfy global demand 7 times over — even if only 20% of wind power could be captured.

Building wind facilities in the corridor that stretches from the Texas panhandle to North Dakota could produce 20% of the electricity for the United States at a cost of $1 trillion. It would take another $200 billion to build the capacity to transmit that energy to cities and towns. That’s a lot of money, but it’s a one-time cost. And compared to the $700 billion we spend on foreign oil every year, it’s a bargain.

I’ve been an oil man all my life, but this is one emergency we can’t
drill our way out of. But if we create a new renewable energy network,
we can break our addiction to oil. (07/17/08)
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Environmental News Agency — J. R. Pegg reports: This year’s dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is likely to be the largest
on record and growing U.S. corn production is a primary cause of the
worsening conditions, federal and state scientists said Tuesday. The research team predicts that the dead zone - a stretch of water
without enough oxygen to support marine life - could cover some 8,800
square miles this summer, an area roughly the size of the state of New
Jersey. The forecast was announced today by scientists with the U.S.
National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, Louisiana
Universities Marine Consortium and Louisiana State University, LSU, who
predicted the dead zone would be the largest since official monitoring
began in 1985.

The dead zone forms annually off the coasts of Louisiana and Texas, fed by nutrient heavy water from the Mississippi River. The country’s largest river drains some 40 percent of the United
States, including much of its agricultural heartland and its corn belt. From as far north as Minnesota, runoff water laden with fertilizer
nutrients nitrogen and phosphorous flows into river and into the Gulf,
stimulating an overgrowth of algae. When the algae die, they sink to
the bottom and decompose, depleting oxygen levels in the water and
choking out marine life.

“The strong link between nutrients and the dead zone indicates that
excess nutrients from the Mississippi River watershed during the spring
are the primary human-influenced factor behind the expansion of the
dead zone,” said Rob Magnien, director of the NOAA Center for Sponsored
Coastal Ocean Research. Last year’s dead zone reached some 7,900 square miles, but the
record came in 2002, when the area totalled nearly 8,500 square miles.

Record corn harvests throughout the Midwest are clearly adding to
the problem, according to Eugene Turner, a scientist with LSU, and
leader of the research team. U.S. farmers are planting “an awful lot of corn and soybeans,” he
told reporters, adding that both crops leach nitrogen easily into soil
and groundwater. Corn production in the United States has shot up dramatically in
recent years, driven by demand for corn-based ethanol. The U.S.
Agriculture Department estimates some 87 million acres of corn were
planted this year. “The nitrogen is undoubtedly coming down in larger amounts because
there’s more planting of corn this year than there has been in a very
long time,” Turner said.

Some 817,000 tons of nitrogen, roughly 35-45 percent above normal,
seeped into the Gulf between April and June, according to the U.S.
Geological Survey, USGS. …

Turner warned that the economic impact of the dead zone would again
ripple through the Gulf’s lucrative commercial and recreational fishing
industries. “The fish and shrimp have left this area and it is inconceivable
that you could have that much change on the bottom and not change the
fisheries in some way,” Turner said. “This area is about 25-30 percent
of U.S. fisheries - it is a pretty big fishery that is under threat.” (07/17/08)
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