T. Boone Pickens talks energy on CNN in May

Pickens has an astounding track record at anticipating U.S. energy demand — including a prescient warning a few years back that oil was going to be mighty costly about now. Like the old E.F. Hutton ads, when he talks, investors listen. And if he says wind is in, investors will line up.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on his plan.
To start off, here’s my own two cents (bear in mind that I could be out buying one-third of an ounce of gasoline with those two cents):

1. Pickens is neither an altruist nor a treehugger trapped in the body of an oilman. He sees money in this, and has been perfectly transparent about that.
2. It’s a plan — at least a partial one — which is pretty much more than we’ve got now.
3. It may be a plan from a shrewd, battle-tested business tycoon, but it’s probably not as easy as it seems. Wind energy gives out when the wind stops blowing, and there’s no existing technology to store it in large quantity. Wind-dependent power plants would need a robust backup system. We’d also need a much better electric transmission infrastructure than we have right now, in order to move the wind power from the Great Plains, where it’s available, to the population centers, where it’s needed.
4. Wind as a main power source would have an uneven impact in replacing natural gas. About half of California’s electricity comes from natural gas. In Ohio, it’s about 2%.

Your turn — blog away: Is T. Boone Pickens a genius, or is he just spittin’ in the wind?

Peter Dykstra Executive Producer CNN Science, Tech & Weather

Of all the issues on Earth, the values of clean air and a healthy environment aren’t where you would expect to find a broken government and political gridlock.

Concerns about global warming, endangered species, energy and water supplies are mounting and many see the environment as the staging ground for a great train wreck between science, politics, money and ideology.

CNN’s “Broken Government: Scorched Earth,” examines tangled policies and ambitions and finds that the federal government has often stood in the way of environmental solutions. And, in some cases, well-intended programs have made problems worse rather than better.

In the Badlands of South Dakota, rancher Marv Jobgen is less than thrilled to share his federally-subsidized grazing land with prairie dogs, which are competing with his cattle to graze on grass. One federal agency hopes to expand a prairie dog poisoning program — on the same land where a rival federal agency is working to save the prairie dog.

The rodents may be competition for Jobgen’s cattle, but they’re dinner for the highly-endangered black-footed ferret. The ferrets are staging a government-backed comeback from the brink of extinction, but it all may be imperiled when the same government begins poisoning their food supply. Jobgen’s frustration is shared on all sides: environmentalists, government biologists who oversaw the ferret’s recovery, and ranchers.

“That’s what happens when you get agencies where nobody talks to anybody,” says Jobgen.

“Scorched Earth” also takes viewers to Iowa, the so-called “Kuwait of the Midwest,” where an estimated 30 percent of the nation’s corn crop is now grown — not for food — but for fuel. Corn is being touted as a “green” alternative and an antidote to America’s addiction to foreign oil.

But a backlash is building as some researchers find growing corn for fuel may actually cost more than it saves. Some experts have also blamed the corn crop for the explosive growth of the “Dead Zone” thousands of miles downstream at the mouth of the Mississippi River, where this nearly oxygen-free ocean area is wreaking havoc on the catches of Louisiana fisherman.

We also traveled to El Paso, Texas, where a century-old copper smelter stands amid a bleak landscape of lead pollution and health impacts, which some medical experts have linked to pollutants from the smelter.

Shuttered since the late ‘90s, when copper prices hit rock bottom, ASARCO recently got permission to reopen the plant. Even though ASARCO declared bankruptcy two years ago, citing “environmental liabilities” which may total $11 billion, the company recently received clearance to reopen. Some bankruptcy experts, local residents and city leaders are crying foul and say federal laws are protecting the company from paying cleanup costs.

- Miles O’Brien, CNN Science & Technology Correspondent

Watch “Broken Government: Scorched Earth” on Thursday, February 21, at 11 p.m. ET, immediately following the CNN Debate live in Austin, Texas.

Yesterday, CNN was fully focused on the biggest day of the Presidential Primary season, with all-out coverage from 24 states, when another drama quickly unfolded, bringing tragedy to six U.S. states.  

In the midst of the Best Political Team on Television was meteorologist Chad Myers, bringing in rapid-fire reports of tornadoes — North of Little Rock, on the southern outskirts of Memphis, in Kentucky; Jackson, Tennessee; and more.

As rescue crews poke through the wreckage, the final death toll still isn’t in.  CNN crews that were hustling on Super Tuesday coverage yesterday have already changed gears to covering the aftermath.  There’s also a “slight” risk of strong storms and tornadoes today as the storm system moves east, with the area of greatest risk covering much of the state of Virginia.

Yesterday, CNN’s weather team followed the advisories from the Storm Prediction Center, citing a “high” risk of severe weather centered around Arkansas and Western Tennessee.  Mid-afternoon, the SPC extended the high risk zone almost all the way up to Indianapolis.  “High” risk days generally only happen five or six times a year, according to CNN Weather Producer Sean Morris.  And rarely do they happen in early February.

But virtually no area of the U.S. — or any part of the calendar year — is absolutely tornado-proof.  In 2007, a weak tornado became the first ever recorded in Brooklyn.  Alaska has a tornado history, but not a very long one.

A website called The Tornado Project has an amazing list of every reported tornado to hit the U.S., broken down county-by-county, since 1950.  Check it out.

Covering the ruin and misery in the wake of a tornado isn’t any fun, but it’s essential to what we do here.  Even in an awful story like this one, there’s a moment where we can feel good about our jobs.  When a political leader starts a sentence with the words “The news media….” we’ve come to expect that we’re in for some criticism.  But this morning on CNN, Arkansas Governor Mike Beebe said “The news media saved lives” by getting out the word about severe storms.  Better forecasting, intense media coverage of weather, and the advent of home “Weather Alert” radios are three reasons that deaths from tornadoes are way down in recent years.

– Peter Dykstra, executive producer,  CNN Sci-Tech (and Weather, too)