Duke Energy (NYSE: DUK) has to wonder if Al Gore knows exactly what he is talking about when it comes to global warming.

This morning, the power company announced that its second-quarter profit fell to 21 cents per share from 28 cents per share a year ago. Excluding items, the company would have earned 26 cents per share, which is a penny better than the consensus estimate. Revenue for the quarter fell to $2.91 billion from $3.22 billion a year ago and far short of the consensus estimate. The blame for the year-over-year profit decline falls squarely on the shoulders of mark-to-market losses on economic hedges.

Over the past few months we have seen the price of gas fall from about $4.00 per gallon to under $2.00 per gallon in most locations.

The price of natural gas has also fallen 25% over the same period. Good news for homeowners, right? Wrong. Homeowners who heat with natural gas saw an increase of 5% in their heating bills. Customers are angry and rightly so. Complaints are pouring in to utility providers and regulators. Some homeowners have had to turn down their thermostats to save money.

Now, if you have electric heat, it's even worse. One third of the home owners in the Northeast use electricity to heat their homes. They have seen an increase of 5% blamed primarily on the cost of coal.

Heating oil prices have dropped by 13% but this affects only 7% of home owners.

By the time all these complaints are filed and investigated winter will be over. Meanwhile, a large population of homeowners will have been held hostage by the energy companies.

This post is part of a series on some of the most memorable companies that have disappeared.

Although the name Lionel, synonymous with electric model trains, is still the hallmark of that toy genre, the current Lionel LLC, is in no way directly connected to the original Lionel Corporation.

The root stock of Lionel trains, Lionel Corp., was founded in 1900 by Joshua Lionel Cowen and Harry C. Grant in New York City. However, that company did not originally set out to manufacture toy trains. At the outset, Lionel was in the business of manufacturing small electrical devices, including fans and light fixtures. Lionel's first model train was in fact a window display designed to attract customers to other Lionel products. The train display was an immediate hit with customers, who then wanted similar sets for themselves, and thus the toy train business was set in motion.

Lionel had a bumpy yet upward ride from the time of its incorporation until 1957. In that year, a convergence of factors quickly brought trouble upon the company. A shift in consumer preference from Lionel's classic "O" gauge trains to the smaller "HO" scale cut deep into Lionel's sales. Toy buyers also began taking greater interest in the automobile, which compounded the company's troublesome decline. Then began a series of critical yet unsuccessful business moves that finally drove the company to bankruptcy in 1967. In 1969, Lionel acquiesced to the reality of its financial troubles and its toy train legacy was sold in its entirety to General Mills (NYSE: GIS).

Venture capital is flowing, engineers are chomping at the bit and layman sources claim that mechanical components of the Chevy Volt are already being road tested on the streets of Detroit. General Motors (NYSE: GM) is not letting anything get in the way of its plans to place a successful electric car on the streets of America and the world by 2010. A report by RedHerring outlines the broad and powerful collection of top tier companies which are coming together to help GM bring its mission to fruition.

Two new research projects targeted towards electric car development were recently announced by General Electric (NYSE: GE) and are specifically geared towards the needs of the Chevy Volt. GE has been asked to design high density electric capacitors and hybrid drive train components in pursuit of our first generation of truly plug-in electric cars. It would seem that GM, GE and the Department of Energy are not willing to settle for an automobile with simple hybrid status. The goal would appear to be full blown electric automobiles at a price within reach of the public. Once the car is built, add the current advances in solar technology and you'll have an automobile that can be charged from a solar powered battery array at home.

Although united in their stance against government dialog regarding Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards (CAFE), General Motors Corp.(NYSE: GM) and Toyota Motors (NYSE: TM) are squaring off in a head butting match over just exactly how the new vision for hybrid automobiles will take final form. A WSJ.com report (subscription required) briefly examines the differences between the two companies and their visions for target travel range for electric-only vehicles.

Toyota representatives indicate that their tolerance level for electric only travel range is settling into the 10 to 20 mile range while GM executives claim that their target range is closer to 40 miles. The debate seems to be taking place around lithium-ion batteries and the many questions which still remain as to the long term viability of that power source technology. Pointing to the alleged tendency for lithium-ion batteries to overheat, Toyota leadership appears unwilling to state that the technology is fully road ready. GM, for its part, is still investigating its battery options also.

GM executives are a bit perturbed at the apparent lack of media coverage regarding the fact that many of the vehicles which Toyota has leaned upon for its surge ahead of GM in total sales actually have mileage ratings below those of their General Motors counterparts. GM feels that Toyota is simply throwing up a smoke screen to the facts and is muddying the common waters in the pursuit of a viable electric vehicle. GM also seems to believe that Toyota is simply attempting to obscure the facts regarding actual over the road mileage performances of both companies.

We are still a long way from seeing effective electric vehicle deployment but all parties involved are to be commended for their efforts. There are an abundance of options and opportunities to be exploited now in the electric vehicle arena and given the steep increase in crude prices, those opportunities shall only become more lucrative. It is of major importance now that the big players refrain from corporate politics and simply stick to the business at hand.

Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. (NASDAQ: NSANY) really wants to come out with new hybrid and all-electric vehicles in the next few years. However, throw out the terms biodiesel and ethanol at the Japanese automaker and you'll probably receive a scornful look back. Does Nissan want to bet on the all-electric vehicle instead of mixed-propulsion methods like combustion based on ethanol and biodiesel? You bet.

As many critics have pointed out (and there is quite a bit of validity to this), the economic returns on the uses of those two alternative fuels are not that good, even with foreign oil prices being at the level that they are currently. Nissan officials said this week that designing an ethanol or biodiesel car is fairly straightforward in a technical sense. Yet, the cost of the fuel and the resources needed to distill it into a form usable by these alternative-fuel engines would outpace regular gasoline with all variables considered.

Are you ready to actually pay more to travel in order to use a non-oil form of fuel? That's what Nissan execs are hinting out here, even as E85 vehicles continue making inroads with competitors like General Motors Corp. (NYSE: GM) and others. The costs of using cropland for fuel production instead of food production are also on the minds of many (in the case of ethanol). But electric cars -- today -- are nowhere near close to replacing internal combustion vehicles in terms of performance or cost. Nissan, though, hopes that they will be in the next decade or two. Right now, the automaker sees its first mass-produced electric car in 2011 or 2012.

Although hybrid vehicles like the Toyota Motor Corp. (NYSE: TM) Prius are all the rage among the eco-happy jetset (hybridset?) these days, they're getting some legit flak from those who don't even drive: blind people. The problem? The virtually noiseless hybrid cars run on electric power that can't be detected by those who use their ears to determine if it's safe to cross the street or walk through a parking lot.

Hybrids are so quiet because they shut off their internal combustion engines at city speeds as the electric motor takes over. While this feature is probably admired by those who oppose noise pollution, it can wreak havoc for the blind. So what to do?

For starters, the blind are advocating that while hybrid cars are great for the environment, they need to make some noise, if only a little. In fact, the National Federation for the Blind is asking for a minimum noise level output for hybrid vehicles. Toyota is said to be studying the issue internally, but the automaker did state that one of the features of its hybrids is a lack of noise pollution along with the lack of air pollution.

I suspect that if there is a delicate balance to be found here, it won't be found soon.