lobachevsky on Rely on renewable energy sources

I agree with Sam, renewable energy cannot and should not be relied upon right now. For one thing, it would do terrible things to the economy. Renewable energy costs a lot more than most people understand. It is another one of those things that sounds great, but has many drawbacks. For example, solar and wind power are both extremely innefecient, ethanol and "corn oil" require so much essential energy to produce that the net gain is minimal and the cost is through the roof. Don't get me wrong, I believe that we must make the change from expendable energy sources, but it cannot all be done at once. To me it is simple economics - we have known about these alternative sources of energy for years, and if it were economically advantageous to rely on them we would have already made the switch.