By "completely wrong" do you contend that using tidal energy doesn't decelerate the Earth's rotation?
(Coastlines already form natural "dams". All we would do is move the coastline inward a bit, so as the tide flows through it it spins turbines. The water gets moved the same. The energy is already dissipated at the coasts, it would happen at the dams. Total dissipated energy is the same this way. Okay, if we start putting 4 km tall dams in the middle of the ocean we might somehow meaningfully change the viscosity.)
The thesis in the PDF seems to be that somehow we can push the brakes more. Maybe. (So if we let the Sun/Moon grab some water then use the Earth to get it moving again, then it necessarily slows down the rotation. But there's already a lot of energy in moving and compressing water itself, sure it's "uncompressible" compared to gases, but there's plenty of molecular stuff to move around where energy can go. There's some tidal heating too.)
It's verbose, but in a bad way, and it's structured in a way that makes it hard to comprehend. (And the whole pro-fossil-fuel framing is just .. huh.)