A few days ago he sent me the Pickens Plan.  Feel free to click on over there and watch him talk about wind power.  I've rarely been a fan of T. Boone Pickens, if only because he was usually on the wrong side of the issues in my view.

But he seems to be getting better, I guess.  I think he's just trying to get in on the ground floor so he can make more money.

I don't really care, though, since he seems to realize that the future is yet to come and he won't be around to worry about it much longer.

On a local note, I live on Minnesota's Mesabi Iron Range.  You may have heard of it.  Bruce Springsteen has:

From the Monongahela valley
To the Mesabi iron range
To the coal mines of Appalachia
The story's always the same
Seven hundred tons of metal a day
Now sir you tell me the world's changed
Once I made you rich enough
Rich enough to forget my name
        "Youngstown"

There are more than a couple of taconite mining operations in the area.  These are huge industries and I couldn't begin to estimate their electricity usage.

It was nice when I started hearing about this plan, then:

Among Iron Rangers, it's known as "the hill." Perched above the city of Virginia, near the Laurentian Divide, U.S. Steel's Minntac Mine churns out about 14 million tons of iron pellets a year.

Beginning in 2008, a project at the mammoth taconite plant will produce something new: electricity.

Minnesota Power officials will announce today that the company intends to build, own and operate the first commercial wind-energy facility in Northeastern Minnesota.

The $50 million Taconite Ridge facility will produce a constant flow of 25 megawatts of electricity from 10 2.5-megawatt wind turbines.

25 megawatts would be enough power for 12-13,000 homes, so it should at least make a dent in Minntac's electricity usage from conventional sources.  Throw in some of Nanosolar's work and things could be getting much better relatively soon.

I'm not one to see any particular beauty in engineering.  A newly-paved road is little different than a dirt one to me for whatever reason.  The sight of 6 out of the 10 windmills turning, however, does give me a bit of hope for that future:

They are, of course, on private land so it's kind of difficult to get too close to them.