Don's Tuesday Column

      THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson   Red Bluff Daily News   3/12/2024

Lessons on energy and dam irony

It may not be “Tehama County local” but it was local enough for a rally a few years ago in Anderson. That would be the newsworthy, to Northern California and Oregon, destruction of dams on the Klamath River.

Long story short, our local, state, and House representatives made valiant efforts in Washington, DC, to oppose removing the dams that provided electricity, and water for crops, to tens of thousands of neighbors to our north. The solid case was made to retain the dams for the “renewable” (Good energy, right?) electricity they provided at virtually no cost, since the infrastructure was long since built.

Aside from the ideologically driven anti-dam-ers, the benefits of power, flood control, and reliable water deliveries has been a mark of civilization: using technology and engineering to improve the lives of humans. Sensible supporters of modern life agree.

Those warning of unintended consequences, from the built-up sediment now unleashed from destroyed dams, are vindicated as the oxygen- and fish-destroying mud spreads downstream. At the time of the debates, dam supporters said that the half billion-dollar cost could have created a perfectly functional tunnel/fish ladder while leaving the dams in place.

Look up: “Klamath Dam Removal: ‘It’s an Environmental Disaster’—‘They purposefully made a disaster and are leaving taxpayers and the locals to clean up their mess.’” Congressman Doug LaMalfa: “Environmentalists and the State of California are celebrating the world’s largest dam removal on the Upper Klamath River, while their work kills endangered species, destroys roads, threatens homes with bank collapse and is already seeing drinking water wells go dry. They purposefully made a disaster and are leaving taxpayers and the locals to clean up their mess.

“Dam removal advocates refused to see the big picture, trusting a questionable Master’s thesis over the locals who knew better. Now, we see the results that are being ignored by the media and environmental groups—utter devastation of an ecosystem, and death. Dam removal advocates simply ignored the immense amount of sediment behind each dam, and how releasing it would impact water quality and river health.”

Deluded enviro-nuts’ dreams of free-flowing rivers now extend to the previously unheard-of concept of removing dams on the Snake River (but not the Hetch Hetchy supplying SF water). They’re incapable of balancing the dam benefits against the lofty feel-good, quasi-religious fanaticism that drives a number of foolhardy goals, like “net-zero” carbon, and reliance on wind and solar energy.

On that topic, local farms and grocery stores will not escape similar unintended-but-foreseeable consequences from “net-zero” policies. See: “Biden’s Net-Zero Agenda Spells Trouble Down on the Farm and at the Supermarket” (theepochtimes.com). While the confrontation over fertilizer-free agricultural mandates is centered in Europe—with farmers reacting forcefully to E.U. policies that spell the literal death of their livelihoods and existence—American farms and food supplies will not escape the devastating results.

Just like how the irrational, counterproductive EV mandates spell transportation doom for citizens, the 2022 “Inflation Reduction Act” contains regulations favoring battery-powered agricultural machinery. Between 1) that ludicrous, utterly impractical concept, 2) the assumed reliance on intermittent wind and solar energy, and 3) an obsession with so-called “greenhouse gas emissions”—our (primarily) Democrat officials are oblivious to the real-world failure of such policies to allow sufficient food production to keep people from starving.

Federal agencies see an open-ended mandate to impose unrealistic “net zero” policies, absent Congressional authorization; federal courts are not likely to agree, and will rein in regulatory overreach.

Worth reading is “The Renewable Scam,” by John Stossel (townhall.com), wherein the hypocritical, impractical plans for a “clean energy future” of “carbon-free power” is deconstructed for the pipe dream it is. While solar and wind have minor roles—our flexible solar panels keep our RV batteries topped off without hours of generator usage—it should be obvious that they have little-to-no role in our mass industrial energy needs.

“Just to produce one turbine, we have to extract 900 tons of steel 2,500 tons of concrete, and 45 tons of non-renewable plastic…Between fuel-burning transit and wear and tear, nothing about it is renewable” (M. Tuttle).

In “Transition? What Transition?” (J. Hinderaker, powerlineblog.com), energy expert Robert Bryce is cited. Bottom line: This obsessive transition to a decarbonized energy grid “is posing material, adverse challenges to electric reliability…[needed] every hour of the year.” The only non-fossil-fuel source of electricity that is “scalable” for varying power needs is nuclear; even honest environmentalists agree.

The included chart says it all: “What Energy Transition? From 2004 to 2022, Global Spending on Wind + Solar Totaled $4.1 Trillion, Yet Hydrocarbon Use Increased 3.4x Faster.” The world used 36 percent more energy in 2022 than 18 years earlier. Hydro, nuclear, and biomass kept pace with the increase, at 13 percent of the world’s energy. Wind and solar = 5 percent and cannot increase much beyond that. Hydrocarbon sources increased nearly 30 percent, supplying the balance. The numbers don’t lie; no fossil fuels=no civilization.

Elsewhere, an angry, unhinged, deluded old man yelled at his political opponents to get off his democracy.