Altrav,
"... I would like someone to explain to me why it's not a moronic idea to use power to pump water up a hill, just so it can be allowed to flow down and power a turbine.
I'm only employing basic technology, but as I remember you cannot get more power out of something than you put in, if not just through friction and other losses.
So spending money to supply the power to pump water up a hill just so it can flow down through a water/turbine powered generator.
It's ridiculous"

I believe that the water is pumped uphill during times when there is less demand for power, and the available power is, therefore, worth less than the energy obtained by pumping the water up and creating a reserve of water power.

ALTRAV,
By all means question the science - but don't ignore the answers! And don't assume the scientists to be ignorant of what you know - if you investigate further, you'll almost certainly find either that the scientists have known about it for decades, or the reason why what you think you know is wrong.

And remember, the scientists were not the ones scaremongering.

I suggest you watch a documentary on the nuclear power industry if you've no memory of them overpromising and under delivering - it's been that way from the start, and tends to repeat every time a new type of reactor is developed.

If you look at http://www.aemo.com.au/Electricity/National-Electricity-Market-NEM/Data-dashboard#price-demand you'll see there are huge variations in electricity prices throughout the day. Pumped storage consumes electricity when it's cheap, and produces it when it's needed. You could say it turns cheap electricity into expensive electricity while making the expensive electricity much cheaper!

The Vale Point coal powered plant, built in 1978, is still making a profit; it has a capacity of 1320 MW. People in the know say that a $750 million makeover would see it still producing electricity in 2049.

In South Australia, however, Labour blew up the last coal powered station, and spent $650 million on a solar that produces a mere 150 MW SOME OF THE TIME.

It's not hard to pick the idiots.

ttbn,
Unlike Vale Point, SA's coal fired power stations were economically marginal, and the coal mine had reached the end of its economic life. And it was Alinta, not Labor, which blew up the last one. Labor's big mistake was failing to get a solar thermal power station built at Port Augusta before the last coal fired one closed.

And where did you get the $650 million and 150MW figures from?

Kidston Schmidston, a hugely subsidized rent-seekers' paradise with hundreds of K's of transmission lines required to get electricity anywhere. Its projected success is also predicated on higher peak power prices to be brought about by base-load closures. If viability depends on gullible public policy, and a nuclear ban, Kidston's a winner. Furthermore, Kidston's happenstance through mining and topography, is not a template for mass application.

Not one renewables project, but for a bit of solar on rooves of sufficiently wealthy enthusiasts and/or the isolated, would get past first base on viability grounds but for the taxpayer and cross-subsidies.

Dear mhaze,

You wrote;

“But not once do they compare with satellite records which aren't even mentioned.”

What on earth are you talking about?

Here is a comparison of surface and satellite data that Carbonbrief did.

They are hardly hiding anything.

http://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-how-surface-and-satellite-temperature-records-compare

Their graphs appear to have hover data points which is something I never see on denialist sites.

Nothing I have read so far reveals them to be anything but straight up.