Sammy Roth is a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, covering energy with a focus on (you guessed it) climate change.

Roth is also a perfect example of somebody so blinded by ideology that he can look at a set of facts so blindingly obvious that only a child could miss the implications and come to the wrong conclusion not once, but every single time.

Roth wrote a story about a totally unsurprising event: once again California regulators voted to extend the life of natural gas power plants that were slated to be closed 3 years ago. The extension was given because…wait for it…California doesn’t have reliable enough renewable power generation and storage to meet the demands for electricity.

Quelle surprise! Who could have guessed that simply declaring that renewables will satisfy demands for electricity would not make it magically appear?

BREAKING: California extends the life of 3 coastal gas plants through 2026. They were supposed to shut down this year.

The 5-0 vote is a reminder of how hard it will be — and how necessary it still is — to stop burning fossil fuels.

My @latimes story: https://t.co/g3z0ARJ0LL

— Sammy Roth (@Sammy_Roth) August 15, 2023

Roth’s lesson, of course, is that the continued need for these power plants is proof that they must be closed down as soon as possible.

Tuesday’s 5-0 vote was a reminder of how hard it will be — and how necessary it still is — to stop burning fossil fuels.

The three gas plants were originally supposed to shut down three years ago, as the Golden State worked to generate ever-larger amounts of electricity from solar panels, wind turbines and other climate-friendly power sources. But after two evenings of brief rolling blackouts in August 2020, the water board decided to give the gas plants a three-year shutdown extension.

Newsom’s appointees initially expressed confidence that California would be able to build enough clean energy resources by the end of 2023 to close the polluting generators in Huntington Beach, Long Beach and Oxnard before the new deadline.

Why? That seems an odd lesson.

His reasoning is simple: Californians need so much power due to climate change. Without climate change warming the planet, nobody would need air conditioning in California, apparently.

Seems plausible. After all, Californians existed prior to the invention and spread of air conditioning. And since air conditioning was invented and installed in so many homes more and more people have decided they need it. Ipso facto air conditioning has made things hotter or something.

Roth, by the way, writes a weekly newsletter called “Boiling Point,” since we have entered the era of Global Boiling.

As somebody who has a slightly less idiotic view of the world, I would like to note a few facts for Sammy the Hippie here:

• Californians would have loved to have air conditioning since its inception; it simply didn’t exist and once it did it spread like wildfire
• The existence of 3 natural gas power plants has precisely zero impact on local or global temperatures
• The closure of these power plants will change the demand for energy not a bit
• All forms of energy production and all forms of human activity have costs and benefits, including renewable energy
• Renewable energy is not reliable

With the 5-year extension of the life of these plants, the total (so far) lifespan will have increased by 8 years. Given the time frame California wants to use to replace fossil fuel energy with renewables, that is a rather large chunk of time.

By law, California is supposed to hit 60% clean energy by 2030, so an 8-year delay in closing these plants is hardly a small thing. And the reason for that delay makes hitting the goal of 100% “clean” energy in the foreseeable future a stretch.

The reason? Renewable energy is neither “clean” nor reliable. One of the largest factors in slowing the deployment of renewable energy projects is environmental delays, ironically enough.

Environmentalists are killing “clean energy” projects and demanding them at the same time. I wrote about this project last May–a “fast-tracked” renewable project that took only 17 years to approve.

A 17-year approval process for a power project shows why some in Washington say the country’s permitting process should be overhauled https://t.co/6TjggHjiCy

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) May 18, 2023

Ironically, natural gas is actually a very clean and low-carbon way to generate electricity and has an environmental footprint that is arguably smaller than solar or wind. It just has the “ick” factor of being a fossil fuel.

As Roth has noted himself, solar power is hardly environmentally benign, and the same environmental activists who demand renewables actually oppose actually building it.

None of this matters, though, because the premise of the article is itself bunk. Californians would need reliable electricity regardless of the existence of these plants. Even if we conceded that the need for power is greater due to carbon emissions, the need itself doesn’t go away by closing the plants. It’s not like the Earth will cool tomorrow, or that California deserts will ever not be oppressively hot. Los Angeles exists as it does today due to air conditioning–it was much smaller until air conditioning made it livable–and dropping the temperature by a degree or two over a century would have zero impact on the need for cooling.

The premise that reducing carbon dioxide output would have a magical impact on climate is ridiculous on its face. Phoenix is the fastest-growing city in America due to air conditioning, and it would be the fastest-shrinking city in America if it went away, with or without global warming. As a practical matter “global warming” would at most have a marginal impact on temperatures in any region, assuming it is having any impact at all.

If the temperature of LA in the summer dropped from 101 degrees to 98, would that change anything regarding the need for power?

No. So quit pretending that warming is causing a sudden spike in power usage.

In a decade or two California will be having an existential crisis over the lead and cadmium leaching out of solar panels, and a new round of environmental reviews and calls for reducing power use.

It is the power that environmentalists really want to get rid not any particular variety of it. They are pushing “degrowth” and depopulation. Global warming is just an excuse.

This sort of spin is typical of the MSM–telling you only half the story in order to push the narrative. That is just one of many reasons why you should sign up for the Hot Air VIP program. We do our best to bring you the rest of the story. If you use the discount code SAVEAMERICA you can get 40% off your subscription. I recommend signing up for the VIP Gold subscription because it gives you access to all Townhall properties, and saves you a bunch of the price of signing up for each of them. And with 40% off it isn’t terribly expensive.