Dear Editor,
We have read with interest this headline article (June 22) by Natasha Donn on the refusal of the electricity supply company, Iberdrola, to respond to reasonable requests for local consultation on their plans for mega electricity farms in East Algarve. We would like to help with some scientific facts that entirely justify the Faro-Tavira local residents’ protests.
Since 1970, the biosphere global warming index (GWI) has been increasing by 0.0175ºC per year and now is 0.85ºC since the 1950s. All energy consumption, including both the production by whatever means, and consumption, of electricity puts heat into the atmosphere by an amount calculated by the 1st Law of thermodynamics. Since we know accurately the atmosphere’s heat capacity, the global annual energy industry output, including electricity usage from ALL sources, would heat the entire atmosphere by more than seven times the current GWI. Classical thermodynamics debunks the IPCC greenhouse-gas hypothesis.
Moreover, professional chemical physicists know that CO2 absorbs all the Earth’s surface emission photons at a single IR wavelength, and that doubling the CO2 just decreases the height at which the same amount of energy is all absorbed in the lower troposphere. The term “greenhouse gas” is a misnomer. The nearest analogy is that increasing the thickness of the glass will not change the temperature in a greenhouse. The scientific truth is that CO2 increase in the atmosphere acts as a global coolant as all photosynthesis processes in the Earth’s biosphere are endothermic.
Since solar panels are only 20% efficient, the other 80% solar energy that could be used in photosynthesis, of biofuels for example, actually heats up the atmosphere. Producing electricity by solar panels on the land biosphere adds to global warming!
A standard size solar panel costs 1 boe (barrel of oil equivalent) to produce and delivers 0.5 boe of energy in its 20-year lifetime. Ergo, a 0.5 boe loss. With public funding subsidy of 1boe per panel this can be changed. We are talking about taxpayers’ money now: it’s a swindle! 1.5 boe-money return, so a 0.5 boe-money profit. This wheeler-dealer relationship between interventionist career politicians and energy industry swindlers reduces their investment cost of solar panels. This motivates them to spend even more on lobbying politicians and publicity stunts.
For example, in this week’s (June 29) Resident follow-up article, we see a photograph showing sheep grazing in between layers of solar panel. This absurdity is a cynical ruse. Notwithstanding the solar panels, the average number of sheep sustainable by a grass farm anywhere in the Algarve is around 0.1 sheep per hectare. Subsidising sheep-grass farming in the Algarve would far outweigh even the cost of solar electricity subsidies.
Finally, we would like to summarize the long-term effects of the C-net zero policy advocated by IPCC pseudoscientists in 30+ countries worldwide that now fund it with more than $100m annually of their taxpayers’ money. It will lead to shortages of food and electricity on a global scale, more devastating than sustaining a GWI of 0.0175ºC per year. Some countries, e.g. Brazil, are already installing diesel generators for electric cars at gasoline stations. You couldn’t make it up!
Igor Khmelinskii, Peter Stallinga and Leslie Woodcock:
Faculty of Science and Technologies, University of Algarve, Faro, Portugal.
Disclaimer: personal opinions of the authors are not necessarily of the University of Algarve.
 by Natasha Donn on the refusal of the electricity supply company, Iberdrola, to respond to reasonable requests for local consultation on their plans for mega electricity farms in East Algarve.){kind=link}