A German academic has sent me the following note:

The Bavarian SPD leader Franz Maget, in a TV debate with Ministerpräsident Beckstein, referred to Al Gore’s proposal to be 100-percent renewables in ten years as evidence f the fact that this can be done!
I have heard of the intellectually slothful “appeal to authority” when one cannot make an argument of one’s own. But I have to say that this one takes the cake: “It can too be done — Al Gore has called for it!”