I've got your BP Deepwater Horizon, your Exxon Valdez and your XL Pipeline RIGHT HERE!

Some people call it skin cancer, some people call it premature aging of the skin.

On average the sun only shines on half of the world at any time.

How many solar cells will it take to get your car home at night?

Typical Democrat.

When there's a huge solar energy shortage, it's called "clouds".

Yeah mon! Lets get rid of the sun!

Idiots!

I'm not sure what you're trying to say (like this time is any different). Isn't the sun responsible for global warming?

In the past 100 years, we've gone from a simple airplane flying less than 100 yards, to exploring other planets in our solar system. Why the hell are we still using fossil fuels to power our machinery?

We know there are better options out there, but the fossil fuel and power companies own a lot of politicians. Ask yourself, why did the FBI confiscate Tesla's research right after he died?

There is no need for fossil fuels. There is better technology out there.

Sounds great, so what is the technology that is cheap enough to put the fossil fuels out of business and how will you use it to make all of the things that are based on crude oil.
I ask because I am very curious. I have a friend that comes to see me every so often and we discuss a lot of the different ideas of capturing energy or utilizing the existing energy that is all around us to produce something that will actually perform work.

The primary energy that we use world wide is electricity or what we call electricity. Currently, we create electricity by converting one form of energy into another.

There are a lot of people out there that still think about the perpetual motion machine and even more that are trying to figure out how to get something from what appears to be nothing.

There are some that believe that Tesla or other created a means for harnessing the inherent energy around us and it could be converted into useable power for free once you had obtained his device or built one for yourself.

So what happened to Tesla's work and why do you not request it through a freedom of information act request.

It's all about volume, T2Nutlickers, all about volume. We could take away all of the breaks and whatever is the current version of the oil depletion allowance from the oil companies and give them to alternative sources. Of course, that would totally fu*k up the current artificial pricing of gasoline. Maybe Oil Companies should speed up becoming Energy Companies - and not just in TV commericals.

I'm just saying that energy technology should have advanced farther than it has over the last 100 years. Every other type of technology has, but we are still burning oil and coal, with a nuclear reactor here and there. Even nuclear is 50 years old.

There's something fishy about this. That's all I'm saying. We should be well beyond that technology by now. And as far as Tesla's work is concerned, I doubt if the energy companies would allow that information out, if it really worked. Free energy from the atmosphere? Think of the money the oil and electricity companies would lose if that was the case. They would have a tremendous incentive to not allow that technology to be developed.

I don't know. But I do know that we should be far beyond fossil fuels and nuclear by now. I'd like to know why we're not.

Randy you are irritating dense. Those breaks that oil companies get are the same tax breaks that other companies get for hiring Americans. Those tax breaks are also for the smaller and mid-size oil companies. A tax break is not a gimme either. It is we let you keep more of what is yours.

I realize that Tesla was some kind of freakish genius but if we KNOW what is possible then how come someone else has not come up with the same thing?

Well, if dense is irritated - rub it. Far be it from me to irritate poor ol' dense. But, your arguement for allowing those to keep what is "theirs" is somewhat strange coming from someone whose pay, if we are to believe that you really instruct at the college level, is generated 100% from either taxes or reducing taxes (contributions and endowments). Of course, you may work for one of the august for-profit institutions of "higher" learning. Oops, they depend on student loans to collect for their overpriced, questionable product. So much for your alleged intellectual prowess. The "J" in your handle does stand for Jane doesn't it, you ignorant slut.

Anyway, back to the subject at hand, even if it did spew forth from the bowels of COsFb, and my reply to T2Nutlickers concerning volume. Without the internal combustion engine there would have been significantly less need for gasoline and other allied lubricating products. Also, the auto industry was in its infancy and rightly seen as a vehicle (hee hee) to drive employment and prosperity. Hence, the volume I was referring to. As it now stands, alternative energy is in the unenviable position of trying to supplant a well entrenched part of the economy. But, much like that other "expensive" game changer, the space program, the benefits will come from government making the initial huge investment which the capitalists will subsequently take advantage of after the heavy lifting to get it off of the ground is done - and then take 100% of the credit. Of course they will have fools like you, JDB, to step up and shill for them.

At one time our economy was based on railroads.
The government gave them land in exchange for building them and railroads became the largest land owners other than the federal government.

Whale oil was a driving part of the economy too and now it is all but dead.

Energy is the driving force behind our economy. Generating power from various sources and converting it to useful work is what has made our nation what it is. The idea that we can artificially inflate the cost of one source over the others to kill that source is not the job of the government but the job of a functioning economy. Oil companies don't get any tax breaks that are not afforded to any other company.

A functioning economy will drive the research and development that will be needed for our future.

Energy for the atmosphere, perpetual motion machines, capturing the cosmic energy that surrounds us, are all great ideas that have yet to show viability. What form of energy will it be and how will you use it and distribute it? Remember that as of now, we are heavily invested in electicty and combustion.

Trains and railroads were built to move people and goods efficiently and then came the Interstate system that has allowed a much more efficient method of getting people, and goods to a much greater expanse of locations. Yet, we still have the railroads. We have a system of pipelines that crisscross our nation delivering liquids and gases to the places they can be utilized at an fraction of the cost of overland transport yet we still see tank trucks and rail cars with tankers.



The idea that there is a panacea that is going to replace the forms of energy as we know it is still in the dream stages. Windmills are a step backwards, even solar is a step backwards. We all thought that nuclear energy was going to be the end to all other forms of power generation yet it is not.

I think that if there was a way to capture energy from thin air that we would have seen the electricity generating companies jump on it.I put this in the same category as the carburetor that will get 200MPG but the oil companies and the car companies are conspiring to keep it out of the hands of the people. The fact is that we all know it is the government via the EPA that will not allow those things to happen. In today's competitive market for car sales and the demand for fuel efficient cars, dont you think that at least one of them would have come up with sometihing by now. Can you imagine how well a vehicle like that would sell?

Randy4Candy, let me see if you can grasp a simple concept. I think that solar power is a great thing and yes I believe that with the ability to produce a greater volume that the price will come down, some. The rare earths that are used in solar cells are still expensive to obtain and in limited quantity. This will make it very difficult for the cost per watt to decline in a significant enough amount to make them cost effective. The second part of this is the sheer amount of real estate needed to produce a significant amount of useable power. Third, soar cells do not like shade and are only efficient when facing the sun directly. This is why the space station has such huge arrays of solar cells and the ability to keep them facing the sun. Very difficult to do this and be efficient on a large scale. It takes power to move the cells to face the sun

Now Randy, Have you ever done the calculations for how many solar cells you would need to power your home, the quantity and size of batteries you wold need to store enough power to get you through the times that it is dark and or cloudy. How much larger your solar array would need to be to charge the batteries and still power your home?

It really does not matter what happens as there are those of you that will never be satisfied and will rail against the destruction of the earth that comes from mining rare earth minerals, the damage to the habitat of some sort of desert lizard because of the installation of acres and acres of solar arrays, the killing of birds from the rotating blades of the windmills, the blight on the landscape, and on and on and on.

Necessity is the mother of invention and as ideas become more feasible you will see change but, the idea that we should cripple one industry in favor of another is not the responsibility of the government and should not be allowed to occur.

T2Nutlickers, the same statements you have just made were used in the past to justify any status quo. Current technology isn't where it needs to be. Everyone knows that. However, incremental advances should be made where they can be made. But, as you have stated, it has to take huge investment that can only be made by government, whether it used to be in land grants or artificial cost reductions or the propping up of profits. Those aren't concepts, they are historical facts.

Originally Posted by Little Stevie

It's called a solar flare, one big enough could knock out
the larger part of the worlds electronics plus most of
the satellites as well which would be the start of
a world wide panic and depression on a scale never
seen before.

Libtards would probably be all for it.

Randy4?, I am all for developing alternative power sources. I am for NASA and all that they dowith full knowledge of what they have contributed to society, incliding both benefit vs cost.

What I cannot understand is the idea that we must force one or two forms of energy that is currently in use to benefit another.

Things progress not because we take from one and give to another, but because there is a need that creates the demand. The idea that energy producers have some sort of conspiratorial agenda to thwart new ideas is laughable at best. The same people that rail against them and the corporations that are so greedy with making a profit yet you think that they would not jump on something that could make them even more profit. From the standpoint that it should be the governments responsibility to fund the search for the next great means of capturing and using energy, why do we get to pick the winners and losers. Why do we artificailly favor one and hinder the other?

So far,what I have seen in this thread is the idea of capturing power from solar energy yet the simple fact that it is dark about half of the time places an obstacle that is almost insurmountable.
There are reason that we continue and will continue to use the same types and sources for energy that we have used for thousands of years. It is cheap, and abundant.