Energy

Air?

The sun.

But if you're talking power sources: nuclear power.

I think in the next five years or so we are going to make some strides into quantum mechanics and the energy within nothingness and finding ways to harness and control this form of energy.

Coal as that where most of our electric power come from and we have a few thousand years worth of supply in the US.

The sun comes to mind to me... But gravity and atomic energy are very close seconds.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2010/08/20/2987657.htm

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2010/08/22/dnt.mo.electric.car.cnn?hpt=C2

As the bulk of electric power is generated by burning coal in this country and will be for many decades into the future any plug in electric cars are in effect coal power cars.

Somehow I find that amusing.

I hope someday day solar cells will become 100% efficient. This would also by collecting the sun's rays prevent a good amount of the sun from hitting the earth (considering how many cars are on the road) and raising global temperatures. Thus an electrically efficient car could come into play.

Lord with even 100 percent efficient in solar power you still have the same amount of heat on the earth surface as when you used the power for any purpose such as moving cars the energy will end up back as heat.

See physics 101...............................

Aren't there different kinds of heat like radiant heat and others? Maybe the earth can handle certain kind of heat better than direct sunlight. Using excess sunlight is better than using oil (refined gas) from within the earth and just letting the sunlight go to waste. And what kind of energy is used to refine this oil and what pollution is caused in the refinement process?

Energy is energy and all energy ends up in the form of heat sooner or later.

Given a unit of energy and given the same material, such as the mass of the earth, you are going to end up with the same temperature.

Frankly before you can talk about the subject in a useful manner you need to have a far better understanding of physics then you seem to now be in the possession of.

Bill it is not just physics it is the earth's biology too, the earth can deal with certain kinds of energy waste better than others...

For instance co2 is one form of energy waste as nuclear radiation is another form of energy waste... Carbon monoxide is another from of energy waste as is formaldehyde the waste from another form of energy.

Burning wood produces a particular kind of waste, carbon and smoke from wood as burning coal has its own waste chemical composition. Heat is not the only consideration here. I don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand that. And if heat is the only waste from utilizing the sun's energy then I would say that is an optimum energy form. Heat sinks have been deployed for many years to absorb heat so it does not readily dissipate back into the atmosphere. Instead of saying I can't possible understand, why not try and explain what it is you are saying rather than under estimate me? I may not understand all of the laws of thermodynamics and entropy but I do understand when an energy form gives off a certain kind of waste AND heat... And heat can be used to, err, heat things it does not always have to be a negative.

What I was saying was that utilizing the sun is cleaner than utilizing coal and oil... I may not be Mr Wizard but I am also not Mr Ed.

My mother used to have a small greenhouse attached to the side of our house and we could sit in the middle of winter here in Maine with snow on the ground and freezing temperatures and be nice and comfy in the greenhouse. We grew plants all winter and there was no negative energy waste to contend with. She kept giant black plastic drums of water to absorb the heat during the day so at night they kept the green house moderately warm.

And the plants (biology) in the greenhouse converted the sun's heat into their own energy. A perfect little balance between biology and the sun. Or we could have bought a bunch of grow lights and utilized oil or coal to grow things in the winter but the results would have been pollution rather than a relatively green approach..

Nothing is every simple first it take energy to manufacture solar cells and to move and install them and small plants normally need some form of energy storages devices and most current battery technology is hardly green.

If you are going to feed the power onto the power grid instead that will take a lot of extra hardware also.

Take the same amount of resources, build nuclear or even convention power plants, and in term of pollution per kilowatts you could and likely will end up being better off.

Teach me I want to learn... I promise to be humble.

To start with look up the list of heavy metals that are needed to produce those solar cells.

Will do... I will respond again after I have done so.

Is there any expense to great for clean perpetual energy?

If the metals are here on the earth lying around and the sun is giving us free energy sounds like a match made in heaven.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39521200/ns/us_news-environment

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39525429/ns/us_news-the_new_york_times/

Solar energy. The sun's heat would be magnified shining through crystal. Now, who will expound on that idea and find ways to harness that heat to create energy, power.