http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2010/02/19/how-al-gore-wrecked-planet-earth/

“The climate change movement now needs to regroup, and at some point it will have to confront a central, unpalatable fact: the wounds from which it is bleeding so profusely are mostly its own fault. (…)
“Foundation staff, activists and sympathetic journalists cocooned themselves in an echo chamber of comfortable group-think, and as they toasted one another in green Kool-Aid they thought they were making progress when actually they were slowly and painfully digging themselves into an ever-deeper hole.”

From February 19, 2010, post-Climategate and pre-inquiries – I think it’s still worth a read.

In the IPCC “report” is the statement that the right level of investment in renewable energy can displace fossil fuel based energy production. I don’t see how a minor comment on the economic prudence of a displacement strategy vs. adaptation – is OT.

I have been more than 45 years in the hydro industry. I have done studies on real pumped storage schemes. They store enough water for 6-10 hours and they have losses of 25%. The storage is vey expensive.

For it to be useful for wind/solar, we need to store energy for days weeks and even months. There are very, very few sites in the world that will allow you to do this. And if there were there are still major problems. To provide all the power for a 10,000 MW load from wind requires 30,000 MW of wind and 20,000 MW of pumped storage. 50,000 MW of capacity for 10,000 MW of load. Guess the cost!

But the BIG problem is that you can’t find sites with ~700 m head difference capable of storing huge amounts of water in a head pond and a tail pond. Or the water required to makeup for evaporation.

http://catb.org/esr/jargon/html/K/Kool-Aid.html

snip – if you have to ask the question, it probably does.