What did you do for Earth Hour? The (yawn) reality

Spain, about 1,7% drop during 20 minutes. (It was 0,6% in 2010)
http://plazamoyua.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/la-hora-del-idiota.jpg

Here in the Netherlands they called it a success when 29000 people turned off their lights.. the other 16 million could not be bothered with it.

I put a load into the dryer at 8:30 and set the timer for sixty minutes, switched on all the lights and opened the curtains. Every little helps.

Darn, was busy arranging my sock draw, forgot to turn the lights out.

Lesson learned? More hype, shorter period. Next year…… Earth Minute.

I had do deal with some of life’s little realities: laundry, bath time, a full dishwasher, an electric oven in need of (self) cleaning, a hockey game on the HDTV, and email in need of answering. Isn’t it interesting that all were engaged at around earth hour. ;-> I certainly wasn’t in the mood to light several dozen CO2/CO emitting fire-hazard candles for show. A quick look around the neighbourhood showed that few of my neighbours were interested in this silliness either.

[snip -inappropriate]

Compared to previous Earth Hours here in NZ. I noticed the majority of people in the neighbourhood kept their lights on this time. A few years ago I was one of the very few people who still had the lights on.

I went out to eat with the lights on in the house (to keep burglars away) and a load of laundry and the dishwasher running. Oh, and the computer was on.

Here in the university city of Uppsala, Sweden (just north of Stockholm) nobody really cared. Here is the Sunday morning edition of the local newspaper UNT complaining that the Town Theatre (stadsteatern) had its lights on when it had promised to turn them off during Earth Hour.
http://www.unt.se/uppsala/fullt-ljus-pa-teatern-1295895.aspx
Their “patrolling reporter” was not a happy bunny 😉
I went patrolling too. Out of 144 apartments in my block only one had candles buring during Earth Hour, the rest had their lights blazing away merrily. My balcony had coloured christmas lights twinkling away happily too 🙂
Another “rebel” in the next block had just white xmas balcony lights on. But I later noticed a party inside. Heathen!

Propaganda and it’s followers. What a joke. I do my best all fricking year to conserve and the ring in nose types click off a few lamps for an hour and THINK it is enough. Stupid is as stupid does. I turned on all the light i could, Ran my electric heater, Plugged in my car and turned on every computer i have and watched a movie on the projector in protest. Stupid WWF hot air. Worse than Gore. Next year i am going to get a bigger heater and more 100 Watt light bulbs.

I did what I said I would do…….nothing. But I also forgot about it, too. Fortunately, if you plan to do nothing and then forget, you’re still covered:<)

We turned on all the lights, cranked up the A/C and dehumidifiers, baked some goodies in the oven, and celebrated human achievement hour. Nearby St. Petersburg, FL celebrated Earth hour today with the running of the Indycar St. Petersburg Grand Prix car race.

I had a bit of an battle with my other half. I grew up in a house without electricity and hate being in the gloom. She has Scottish blood and hates waste of any kind. We had lights going on and off all evening. Same as most nights really except more lights involved.
I reckon if any of these green wacko’s spent a couple of harsh winters in a remote Scotttish farmhouse without the benefit of electricity and the internal combustion engine then a permanent state of “earth hour” would be their worst nightmare (it’s certainly mine).

Here in British Columbia we have a load of 9 gigawatts, the utility said there was a reduction of 117 mw’s, be still my heart. Now I am a retired power system operator from that utility and I know it is pretty much impossible to separate that little change in load from the noise. I smell politics.

I actually participated. Although I did turn off every light and appliance in my house (I went one further and just killed the main breaker. Much easier) I did NOT sit in the dark and cold and worry about the earth. Rather, I sat under a blanket on the sofa with my wife. We discussed energy and electricity use, as well as more broadly our own personal resource usage. Our discussion was actually quite interesting. We concluded that we could probably reduce our resource usage slightly with little disturbance to our personal lives.
I don’t understand the hatred here for Earth Hour. I am an avid supporter of this website. I am a skeptic. Not only with regards to climate change, but all things. I am skeptical of our political leaders motives, skeptical of the oil companies, skeptical of the green washing, skeptical of modern medicine, skeptical of spiritual healers, and so on. I am even skeptical of the skeptics that post here. I expect their information and thoughts to pass the rigor that we expect the ‘warmists’ to follow. I am skeptical of most things I hear until I have had the opportunity to dig and validate them.
There is one thing that puzzles me though. An event which can’t possibly impact anyone but oneself such as Earth Hour is causing such a stir with everyone. I mean, how can turning off my own breaker on my house possibly impact those of you that choose not to? Why is it that everyone is so against this? It seems people here are more up in arms about a voluntary symbolic gesture known as Earth Hour than they are about things that actually impact their lives daily in a negative way.
I find all of this especially odd because Mr Watts himself has even said he has done things to reduce his resource usage: His solar panels as one example. Do those of you ridiculing Earth Hour also ridicule Mr Watts pursuit of solar power? How about his putting lights on timers? Insulating his house more? He even has an electric car!!! Do you ridicule those who elect to take transit to work rather than drive their car? Does it bother you that people participate in symbolic gestures for things besides ‘global climate warming change anomalies’?
I have some other pointed questions. Does it irritate you when you see a cross on someones rear view mirror? How about the little fish on the back of someone’s car? What about someone wearing a turban? Or perhaps a wedding ring. Those people are simply participating in a symbolic gesture to show that they care in some particular idea or concept. Do you ridicule them and their ideas? These aren’t things that can be right or wrong. They are simply ideas and beliefs that people can have and, as such, aren’t open for ridicule. Unless of course, each of us wants to open up ourselves to ridicule over every little thing. Why don’t we spend our effort and attention on things that matter instead.
Of course, much of my post is tongue in cheek, but I hope it gets the point across. There are things we should get up in arms about. There are also things that quite frankly don’t matter. Earth Hour is one of those things that doesn’t matter. It is the equivalent of people who pray before going to bed. We don’t get all cranky about that.
Now how about we get back to science and climate rather than poking fun of symbolic gestures that have little to nothing in the way of consequence.
Ian

I watched 3 deer graze in my front yard…with the help of my yard lights

Well I did turn my lights off at 8:00 PM and immediately I almost got in an accident! That was the end of Earth Hour for me.

Being your basic cheapskate, I conserve electricity when and where I can. I think this sort of stuff is truly stupid.

We turned on all of our lights and celebrated the great human invention – electricity – and thought about all of the people in the world without it.
What a selfish, elitist thing to celebrate.

nc, what? How can you think that BC Hydro be playing politics? No… you must be dreaming. /sarc off

Talk about a death spiral . . . . . . .

We had to go out last night to a wine tasting. I too left the lights on (turned more on in fact before leaving). I even switched on the xmas lights before heading out, but here in Calgary where it’s been snowing for the last week that might have just been interpreted as being festive.
Oddly enough, at the wine tasting we were interrupted by an annoying sound around 9:00. The fire alarm in the building started clanging. After the fire dept arrived they found a fire from an overturned space heater in a daycare within the strip mall. Thank goodness for electricity which powered the smoke detector, alarm, and phones to contact the fire dept.

Earth what?

Hawaii failed to even acknowledge the silly non-event this year after Mayor Hanneman urged Honolulu citizens to observe it last year and absolutely no one did, including Hanneman himself.

Well, I feel guilty. I completely spaced it off this year. In years past I turned on every light in the house. My girlfriend complains that when all the lights I’ve put up in the garage are on it looks like daylight (she’s right) yet she still wants more light in the kitchen beyond the 650 watts of halogen already installed. Next year I promise I’ll do more to emit more CO2 and consume more electrons.

“I did what I said I would do…….nothing. But I also forgot about it, too. Fortunately, if you plan to do nothing and then forget, you’re still covered:<)"
I followed your plan to a T, Bob Barker. 🙂 My results were the same.
Ian, in answer to your pointed questions, my comment above is instructive. Earth Hour is so meaningless that I forgot all about it. But I think the ongoing bad reaction to it is evidence of the obnoxiousness of AGW proponents in general and of the initial Earth Hour campaign in particular. The first year (or at least the first year it went international) it was a full court press of moral indignation. It went from being a fun idea to an obligation that proved your moral worth as a human being. But it’s so stupid, it’s hard to take the campaigners’ seriousness seriously and their “we’ve got the moral high ground attitude” is off-putting. Especially, as many believe, if it’s much ado about nothing. And don’t get me started on the whole “let’s light a bunch of candles” thing. Candles are dangerous, polluting, inefficient (how much light do you get for each unit of carbon dioxide produced?), need to be transported (which uses energy), and just epically symbolic of the ridiculousness of this whole thing. What is the point of acting completely differently for one hour in a way that has nothing to do with any possible future energy scenario, except one which might follow a complete collapse of our technological society? People here are reacting to the triumph of irrationality – and it’s no surprise if they get a little testy about it. People accuse AGW skeptics of being anti-science, when what they are in reality is anti-fantasists. They don’t buy the malarkey, or even the symbolic malarkey, that the Greens are trying to force on us. And, as we’ve learned in the past in other areas, if you give them an inch you are in danger of giving them a mile, and so we are standing firm.

It was dark, so I turned on all the lights, it was a bit chilly, so I turned on the electric heaters, I had laundry to do so I had to put on the laundry drier to make room in my washing machine. Then I went to my room and played on my electric guitar with the amp up quite loud.
Times like Earth Hour really brings home (no pun intended, really!) what a wonderful thing electricity is. I hope one day all the world gets to experience it.

Today, Sunday 27th March, I telephoned my 89 year old Mother who still lives in Luanshya in Zambia. She’d just got back from a trip down to the Kafue River, where our somewhat extended family has what we term a ‘shack’: it is, in fact, a brick-built bungalow. Apart from going fishing for Kafue Yellow-Belly bream, she’d taken paraffin and candles to our caretaker and his family. There’s no hope of ever getting any electricity supply to their location in my life-time.
They didn’t blow out any candles or lamps for this fatuous idea of Earth Hour, they ate their evening meal in the gloaming of the evening, not in the darkness of the night. Their day ends at 2000 hours as they cannot afford to burn their lighting fuel beyond that time. After 2000 hours, they rely on what meagre light they get from their fire, for which wood has to be collected every day.
And yet our caretaker counts himself to be one of the fortunate Zambians; he has a job which pays, his children (and those of his now-deceased brother and sister-in-law, both victims of AIDS) are both fed and educated and he is grateful that his wife now knows how to regulate and moderate the arrival of more children, courtesy of my Mother having had a ‘girlie-talk’ with her and introducing and supplying her with The Pill.
He has four children of his own and now has his late brother’s three children as well. Now he does not want any more children as he does not need them. His present family is guarded against malaria by both prophylactic drugs and DDT-impregnated mosquito-nets (supplied from China and re-sprayed with Chinese aerosols every month) under which he and his family sleep.
Willis Eschenbach was correct in stating that improving the life of a man and his family reduces the size of that family; I know, I have seen it work and every month I still make my own financial contribution to make sure that this state of affairs continues. I’m paying towards the up-keep of a family I haven’t seen in ten years and I’m glad that I can do so.
I celebrated Earth Hour by adding up how much I’d paid over ten or more years towards making life a trifle easier for one man’s family but regretting that I was not able to do more. I just wish that the Greenies would do the same for many more such families. It would make much more of an impact than just switching of some lights for a moment or two.

“As a HumanKind communications company dedicated to putting a brand’s purpose at the center of everything we do, we are honored to bring awareness and activation to this very special cause.”
PR people always bring a smile on my face. They are such lovely, cuddly creatures.

You can just see a tiny wiggle in the UKs energy grid at 2030 this evening if you look closely. http://www.bmreports.com/bsp/bhttp:/

“Honestly we still think it’s successful, we think it’s a great program,” said Jennifer Link, a spokeswoman for Toronto Hydro, who added that cool temperatures likely had many people using more heat than this time last year.
Was I the only one who saw the irony in that quote?

Forgot all about it.
Didn’t turn on all my lights.
Then again, I didn’t turn anything off either … while I hopped in the car and ran out to the store and got back home after the whole silly thing was over.
I suppose the limo libs were gushing over each other about how wonderful they were in caring for the planet.

Ian, I understand what you’re saying, but let me ask you this. Did you really turn off your breaker during Earth Hour to save energy — or was it to save face with your neighbors so they wouldn’t tut-tut you the next day?
Did you feel any pressure from your neighbors to do as they do or suffer the scorn? If not, that’s wonderful. But in some neighborhoods things are different.
As for being offended if someone has, for example, a religious symbol on their car, I’m not. But I AM offended if someone tells me I should have one, too. Especially if they imply that I must not care about God if I don’t have a religious symbol on my car. That’s the way I see Earth Hour. I happen to conserve energy as a life-long habit. I just don’t feel the need to prove my personal conservation efforts to anyone.
You took Earth Hour as an opportunity to reflect on your own energy use and that’s great. You put the exercise to good use. (In my house we happen to have that discussion pretty much every time the electric bill arrives, as things are a bit tight.) But the way it often goes with people, Earth Hour is just as likely to be a time when people feel pressured to “fit in” with the rest of the neighborhood and cut the lights for one hour, and then they’re done conserving until next year. It’s the potential to be a meaningless gesture that elicits the mockery, in my opinion.

Bugger ‘earth hour’ let’s have ‘earth week’ turn off all power except renewables for a whole week.
If that doesn’t cure the idiots nothing will!
It would be worth the sacrifice just to hear crying and moaning.

Ian at 1:51
Going the “one step further” of turning off the main breaker would have been catastrophic had there been an undetected fire in your house last night. The “pointless symbolism” of Earth Hour would have turned into a Darwin moment.
I can’t speak to why so many on this blog protest against Earth Hour, but I can speak for myself. I find it damn annoying when someone suggests that you do something that you don’t really believe in, or that you adamantly believe is untrue.
Do I think any less of AW that he has solar panels – no. Would I think less of him if he suggested that I get solar panels – YES.
Does it bother me that people wear crosses or turbans – no. Would it bother me if someone suggested that I should wear them – damn right.
Does it bother me that the WWF tells me that I should turn my lights off for an hour to show that I support them and their ideas around global warming? Hmmm…

I had mentally prepared to use lots of energy during earth hour, but forgot about it completely 🙁

Kept every light, appliance, and electrical device normally on, on.
(Although someone, who shall remain nameless, fell asleep with everything left on ’til around 4:am or so should make up for whoever is counting this silliness; as for me, the sleepy one stoked the fire with a couple of logs at that time, so all was good and cozy here.)
Couldn’t care less about who participates or not though.
Cut costs as much as possible to save OUR money ALL the time.
But do make a choices NOT to support a lie that I’m forced to pay false charges through fees & taxes already.
Hyped up hydro bill motivated us to turn to wood to heat instead of paying 60% more of what we actually use to this lie. Think I want to use my hot water (hydro) to clean out gooey/sticky cans and jars for recycling them? If it rinses out easy, fine otherwise-garbage. Desirable cardboard and paper are recycled right at our home, in the woodstove to give us the heat benefit.
I should be careful…next these warmistas will ban fireplace/woodstove homes from having certain cardboard and paper in the dwelling.
More money for the utilities and the the higher ups for their ‘one world order’ via carbon tax plan by the current corrupted UN gang.
Nothing would surprise me anymore in this “corruption rules” world.

I did not participate in earth hour. I took advantage of the efficiencies offered by my dish washer, washing machine and dryer to save the local river bank from the pollution that would otherwise result from more traditional methods. I also look at it as contibuting to a more efficient use of the coal fired power station that would otherwise just be in spinning reserve mode for an hour.
I do however try to maintain basic economic practices instilled since childhood about not wasting electricity or water.
If I am reading them correctly, the power demand graphs for the Australian Energy Market Operator don’t show any unusual drop for the sacred hour in Australia. eg http://www.aemo.com.au/data/GRAPH_30NSW1.html

Everything was on here for good reason…there is no need whatsoever to conserve electricity. If we need more we can make more, simple as that. To try and convince us otherwise is fraudulent and regressive.

I too forgot all about it until an hour after it was supposed to be over. So only half the house lights were on as we were downstairs enjoying another late winter evening in the Pacific NW.

Any Malthusian should not be allowed to preach the gospel of Malthus whilst still alive. They should be forced to pre-record their anti-human misanthropic rants on video, then they have to kill themselves, then and only then are their preachings allowed to be played – anything else is pure hypocrisy and cannot be tolerated. You can’t call for population reduction unless you reduce that population by taking your own life first. Common Sense really.

I threw another shrimp on the Bar-B, metaphorically speaking.

I planted onions.

Well, I forgot too. Actually, I forgot to remember to remember…
At least they didn’t call it “Planet Hour”! I’ve gotten quite tired of people using the word “planet” as a proxy for “Earth”. I think its a way of diminishing the importance of the Earth by implying it simply “just another planet”. Accordingly, I am boycotting the term “planet” when one really means “Earth”…

Gin, red meat, & gratuitously recompiling my operating system.

I live in Amsterdam. But neither I nor the people at the pub were aware that we had to turn off the lights for one hour last Saturday night.

Sorry to report that I couldn’t participate in the anti-Earth Hour festivities. I was camping with my sons, so I really had no lights to turn on. However, the Earth Hour alarm that I had set on my cell (complete with rechargeable battery) did go off. So, had I been home, my lights would have been turned on.
Also, what camping trip wouldn’t be complete without a carbon-burning campfire? We had two at our campsite all day Saturday, and a massive camp-wide one Saturday night.

Texas ERCOT Load by Hour,
Sat 3/19 19:00-23:00 compared with Sat 3/26/2011 19:00-23:00
DateHrMidTxt, AvgTop3Hrs, Total, Chg MW prev Hr, Ratio
03/19 19:30, 34890, 33421, – 757, 0.958
03/19 20:30, 34890, 34134, 713, 0.978 Prev week
03/19 21:30, 34890, 33053, -1081, 0.947 Prev Week
03/19 22:30, 34890, 31292, -1761, 0.897
03/26 19:30, 38696, 36094, -1309, 0.933
03/26 20:30, 38696, 36249, 155, 0.937 EH first 30 min
03/26 21:30, 38696, 34784, -1464, 0.899 EH second 30 min
03/26 22:30, 38696, 32653, -2131, 0.844
There is a bigger electrical load drop during and after Earth Hour,
but it started from a 2673 MW higher load than the previous week.
It’s not the Earth Hour, its just the weather.
http://www.ercot.com/content/cdr/html/20110319_actual_loads_of_weather_zones

We did this one year, at the behest of a roommate. He turned off all the lights and lit oil lamps. We were sneezing black soot for a week.
I didn’t even know there was an Earth Hour 2011. Woops. And to think of all the carbon emissions I could have saved by turning off all of my lights and lighting a few candles manufactured and shipped from China… Dagnabit!

The lead is scientifically illiterate; you can’t “save” megawatts. That’s an instantaneous power level. Energy used is in megawatt-hours.
Stephen Brown says:
March 27, 2011 at 2:40 pm
About the Zambian caretaker: check out the site LUTW.org . Their idea of using a small generator or solar panel to charge up a car battery, then running white LEDs off of that, has saved thousands of families in UDCs the expense of kerosene and/or candles, etc., and vastly improved indoor air quality, and so on The expense is comparatively minor, but the benefits are immense (children able to study schoolbooks after sunset is one.)

Stephen;
Just rechecked the lutw.org site. They now have home individual setups available, complete. Check the site’s ‘Products’ tab, and you can email them: c.shultz@lutw.org for details and pricing (which I don’t know). Or 403-206-5004 if you want to discuss the specific situation and get advice.

Ian says:
March 27, 2011 at 7:41 pm
I guess I have some work to do on the skeptic scale 🙁

Truthfully, I don’t see this as a sceptic issue, but more of a groupthink issue.
I don’t like sports. I don’t understand why anyone would give five minutes of their day to bother finding out the score in a child’s game played by two teams of players they’ve never met, much less actually spend hours watching said games. I find the mentality of such behaviour questionable, at best, and quite possibly indicative of a deep-seated neurosis at worst. Not many men share my view, but some do. Of these, there is a subset whose condemnation of sports, and whose occasional attempts to have them banned or curtailed, ignite in me a strong desire to go out and watch a football game, even if I don’t know what’s happening on the field.
That’s because while I have no regard at all for sports, I have less regard for anyone who tries to curtail the activities of others, or who tries to force others to conform to a particular way of thought.
I don’t know how old you are, but you may remember Leo Buscaglia from the ’80s. He was the “Love Guru” whose message was to go out and hug people. Naturally, not everyone wanted to be hugged. What did he tell his followers to do when that happened? He told them to say to themselves, “Well, that’s too bad for them. Now they’ll never know what a nice person I am.” In other words, in their quest to spread love, his followers were to condemn anyone who didn’t bow to the party line.
Same here. If people wanted to shut off their lights for some symbolic act, I wouldn’t consider it any more, or less, significant than people who light Christmas trees in December, hang a Mezzuzot on the door frame, or wear special underwear. But when these people start condemning everyone else who doesn’t follow their custom — then it becomes a matter of significance to me.

Dang, to be honest, I have never heard of Earth Hour. I read hours a day on the internet and watch plenty of cable news. And notta clue that there was such a thing. Then I had to go to WUWT and find there is something this foolish going on. Dang you, you climate skeptic you, for promoting this. You shall not be forgiven. At least until this post passes onto page two of the blog anyway.

March 28, 2011 at 5:38 am
http://globalwarmingsupporter.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/earthhour-poll-nz.jpg
New Zealanders are thinking less of earth hour. I understand that the response was down 30% from last year as well.
Not surprising as more people are seeing through the AGW baloney.
Cheers
Roger
http://www.rogerfromnewzealand.wordpress.com

POWER CONSUMPTION IN EDMONTON WENT UP DURING EARTH HOUR.
http://www.montrealgazette.com/technology/Power+spikes+Edmonton+during+Earth+Hour/4512360/story.html
Gotta love Alberta.

Typo: I’m so ashamed! “embarrassment”, of course.
\B-{

Hmm I can see the BBC getting a few of the North Korea pics printed up for the office with the tag line =
‘Our kind of democracy ‘
I celebrated “Human Achievement Hour” as their aims better suit my mind set=
‘Green and private conservation are fine. We have no problem with an individual (or group) that wants to sit naked in the dark without heat, clothing, or light. Additionally, we would have no problem with the group holding a pro-green technology rally. That is their choice. But when this group stages a “global election” with the express purpose of influencing “government policies to take action against global warming,” we have every right as individuals to express our vote for the opposite’

Your video clip shows these bozoes burning thousands of candles . Don’t those produce CO2?
I had all my lights ON.

I celebrated Human Achievement Hour as the availability of widespread (once cheap) electricity is a major human achievement. As I’ve done during previous Human Achievement Hours, I’ve turned on all of the house lights and simultaneously tested high load appliances. This event is also a good test for the whole house electrical system.
My preference is to have the house brightly lit up at most times as it does make the short winter days much easier to take in this part of the country. No-one mentioned “earth hour” to me in the days leading up to the “event” and the pattern of house lighting in my neighborhood in Kamloops BC seemed no different than it is on any other night. We’ll know we’re winning when the power usage demonstrates a clear square wave increase during Human Achievement Hour.
As another commenter mentioned, it is hard to get out of the habit of turning off lights when one walks out of a room. Couldn’t do much on the outside of the house as I’ve installed lots of 1 W LED lights which are on 24 hours/day and provide a surprising amount of light at night. They’re also a lot more friendly to ones night vision if you use red LED’s.
While the “earth hour” concept may seem to be a meaningless idiotic gesture, there is evidence from psychological studies that getting people to do something minor in support of a cause makes them far more likely to agree to do something far more involved in the future. Thus, events such as “earth hour” are a means of preparing people for the end to continuous electricity as is happening in Britain. I suspect that if you asked a group of people who never participated in “earth hour” to participate in “earth week” (where one turns off electricity for a week), there would be far fewer takers than if one made the same proposal to individuals who had participated in “earth hour”. Two can play at this game of psychological warfare and we should all be promoting Human Achievement Hour.

I went walking in the city, looking at the lights and crowds, eating a little food, enjoying the company. Brisbane Australia ignored the great event. Then we went back to the Hotel and turned every light on.
I have lived in PNG and Indonesia. I have seen how the real poor live. Even getting wood the a fire can be a problem.
And the Green/Labor coalition lost Government in the NSW state election, with carbon taxes a BIG issue. Life is good.

‘To the person insinuating that I was a warmist because I didn’t hump my wife under the blanket I suppose I should let you know that we have a healthy sex life even if we didn’t spend Earth Hour banging like rabbits’
Ian, whilst I don’t agree with some of your ideas about the pointless and patronising Earth Hour, your superb comment about you and your wife’s nocturnal activities made me laugh out loud!
This just about sums up the ethos here at WUWT: ideas and theories are discussed with open-ness, frankness, politeness, and (perhaps most importantly) good humour. Compare this with the censorious, aggressive and humourless attitude at ol’ Joe Romm’s site and you realise why the skeptical camp is the more rational place to be.

What I did for Earth’s Hour? I pinched it!

Right in the middle of Earth hour I was flying to Calgary. Just about to go into Calgary airport and the runway lights went out. We were diverted to Edmonton. It made me happy for 2 reasons.
(1) It exemplified how important electricity is.
(2) We got to spew out even more carbon taking flying to/from Edmonton.
Too bad we were in a little jet instead of a big old 747.

Burned a few old tires to light up the yard.

I didn’t buy a car, I didn’t run my computer and I didn’t eat fruit delivered by airplane, same as I do every hour.
As far as I can tell, that puts my “carbon credit” ahead of 90% of the greenies on Earth.
I may have had Spanish wine with dinner, but I blame the missus.

Does this not sum up the mentality of these people completely? They get to feel all holier than thou and self righteous with such a completely pointless gesture. If they were serious they should go and live with the Amish community, not for an hour but for the rest of their lives. this would involve working like slaves from dawn to dusk with no modern medicine if they should fall ill. That is the reality of the lifestyle that they seem to be proposing.
I grew up in an old farm cottage and during winter the default setting was bloody cold. It had two large fire places and could be made reasonably cosy by lighting two huge coal fires and strategically distributing oil heaters. Now it has central heating, double glazing, better insulation and obviously uses considerably less energy to heat. Not quite sure what my point is apart from the fact that such improvements seem to be ignored by the green zealots.

How many CO2 is produced by burning that many candles starting at 0:12 in the video?
http://www.stubbornmule.net/2009/03/burning-candles/
here’s your answer..

British Columbia Hydro utilities is fostering eco delation:
http://www.el.bchydro.com/mediabulletins/bulletin/community/earthhour2011
Under the guise of community, the utilities is in fact fostering a mentality of delation, dressing people, neighborhoods, towns against each others in order to achieve their totalitarian goals. What’s next? Offering rebates to the “good” neighbors and taxing the “bad” guys? Get a WWF donation and get a rebate off your bill?

I went out into my front and back yards and couldn’t see any dark houses. (And not because they were dark and couldn’t be seen, mind you.)
I didn’t want to be a light-turner-offer, but I also didn’t want to blend in with my neighbors. (Why be normal?) So on the spot I created Pre-Civilization Hour and an official chant:

Hell no, we won’t grow!
Hunting/gathering’s the way to go!

I pulled all the breakers and went light-free, landline-free (electronic phone), furnace-free (electric thermostat), and refrigeration-free.
I put on a jacket (symbolic buffalo robe) in case the temperature dropped in the house (symbolic cave). I brought in my Siberian Huskies (fairly convincing symbolic primitive dogs) by bribing them with chicken jerky (symbolic wild-turkey jerky).
I laid down on the carpeted (symbolically hide-strewn) floor with my beasts intending to be fractionally normal by messing with my rooted Nook Color (symbolic painted rock?), but one of the dogs came over and licked my face for about 10 minutes. Then another started jealously woofing and barking and demanding her own personal attention.
When everydoggy settled down, I accidentally drifted off to sleep (non-symbolic after-dark, home-alone activity). I woke up at about 10:00, flipped on the breakers, and let the dogs out.
So that’s how I spent Earth Pre-Civilization Hour.
[Ed, I added the missing f to “woofing.” I’m sure you appreciate that.☺ ~dbs, mod.]

[Ed, I added the missing f to “woofing.” I’m sure you appreciate that.☺ ~dbs, mod.]
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Hahaha! My bad. I used technical jargon without explaining the term.
In the scientific field that I just invented known as Cynolinguistics (where cyno- is a legitimate combining form related to Latin canis and English canine), woo is an informal, shortened version of woowoowoo or (especially among older researchers) woo-woo-woo.
Scientific consensus holds that woo was chosen as the representative sound over wah, wuh, and other Husky vocalizations such as barks and growls because it is the most common.
Frequency deniers, however, counter that the data are incomplete, poorly documented, and globally inconsistent. Instead, the skeptics say, woo was selected for its euphony. (It sounds nicer.)
Recorded examples can be found by searching YouTube with the terms husky and woo. Following are some of the shorter, more clear entries:

Siberian Husky Talking – 26 seconds
Husky wooing – 44 seconds
Husky Tantrum – 54 seconds
(Note that this lay observer mislabels the example, which is technically representative of backtalk; a tantrum should include The Siberian Death Scream.)
Two Siberian Huskies talking…. – 2 min., 2 sec.

N.B. that there is not a one-to-one mapping between wooing dogs and Siberian Huskies. Other breeds can exhibit this vocalization, though not as frequently nor as consistently as Huskies. As well, not all Huskies woo.
Among those I have lived with, only 37.5% could definitively be classified as wooers. Another 12.5% was believed to have been observed wooing on one occasion.
Additionally, 12.5% growl when wooing behavior would be appropriate. (This is the dog that licked my face for 10 minutes, so the growling is not aggressive or defensive.) Another 12.5% enthusiastically barked instead of wooing; 12.5% gave a Siberian Stare on at least one occasion when wooing might have been employed; and a final 12.5% has no similar observations recorded.
(The numbers add up to exactly 100% because it is hard – though admittedly not impossible – to foul up the arithmetic when N=8.)
The dog mentioned in my previous post (“Then another started jealously wooing and barking and demanding her own personal attention.”) can be seen in this photo and in this album. A champion wooer that is no longer with me can be seen in this photo.

[Jennifer Link, a spokeswoman for Toronto Hydro, who added that cool temperatures likely had many people using more heat than this time last year.]
Um, well, yes, that kinda is what energy is good for, isn’t it?