Video follows.
On the evening of Saturday, March 23, people around the world are being asked by activists to switch off the lights for an hour to observe “Earth Hour”. Bjørn Lomborg says this gesture will do little to help the planet, and gives people the wrong impression about how to address climate issues. (See related WUWT post here)
Earth Hour is not the answer. Taken to its logical conclusion, if switching the lights off for one hour is a good idea, why not for all the other 8,759 hours of the year?
Electricity, and affordable, plentiful energy, is the lifeblood of modern civilization and prosperity. If you do switch off the lights, do it in solidarity with the 1.3 billion people in the world who live in cold and misery because they lack access to electricity. Do it to celebrate the benefits of innovation and technology.
Electricity has been a boon for humanity. And the cozy candles that many participants will light, which seem so natural and environmentally friendly, are still fossil fuels (paraffin comes from petroleum) —and almost 100 times less efficient than incandescent light bulbs.
Fundamentally, cutting emissions in the short run is no easy task. Today, green energy is too costly to be a viable solution. Real breakthroughs in energy technology will only come with more investment in research and development.
Read the full commentary on Slate . Translations in 6 languages are distributed worldwide and available at Project Syndicate http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/earth-hour-s-counterproductive-symbolism-by-bj-rn-lomborg
Here is the official Earth Hour video. Note the use of candles along with other imagery, designed to tug at emotional heartstrings.
The triumph of seeming over being.
Why struggle to solve real problems and work to understand how things really work, when you can make yourself feel morally superior with an empty and meaningless gesture?
There are good power factors,
There are bad power factors,
There are bad actors,
There are bad
Bad
There are good power factors
There are bad power factors
There are good actors
There are bad actors
There are no lights
There be bad
Bad
Off Topic, but get a load of this loony from the UK Met Office.
“4C or more global warming being possible by the end of this century, with local warming higher in some places, up to 15C in the Arctic an extreme but plausible case”. http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/people/richard-betts
Dr Richard Betts is Head of the Climate Impacts strategic area, which includes climate impacts research and also the climate change consultancy unit.
The Met Office’s climate change consultancy area works directly with end-users in a wide range of sectors, to ensure climate change information is used effectively for decision-making.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/people/richard-betts
I believe this is actually an insult to those in need, as the auction itself does not give them any real help!. Sympathy helps no one, only genuine actions …
The auction itself is an indicator of how many people still believe in the scam … (Is it worth continuing …?)
Lights ON please!
The UK might get more Earth Hours over the next 7 days. 😉
Only suffering will open the eyes of people as to the great benefits of fossil fuels.
OT, sorry, been off line for a few days.
Where did CG3 go?
Feels like I wound up on a fake WUWT web site.
Sorry, but this falls right in the middle of Hockey Night in Canada. A guy’s got to have his priorities, after all! Maybe I’ll celebrate it at about 2:30 a.m.
Nothing is more “green” or “environmentally friendly” than using fossil fuels like petroleum and gas for energy. It is “recycling” in every sense of the word, drilling tiny pin-pricks into the ground, barely penetrating the surface of this giant ball of matter, to suck out drops of fossil remains of long dead plants and animals.
When burning fossil fuels, all of it still remains here on earth where it has always been, we merely reorganize the elements into different compounds and relocate it to a different altitude, from below ground to the surface with a tiny portion of it winding up temporarily in the atmosphere until it gets sequestered yet again into more plants and animals, a cycle that shall repeat and renew.
That’s quite a ballet of true recycling. The alternative is ugly, and was ugly for all the hundreds of thousands of years we humans practiced it. In the past both long ago and very recently, we killed every plant and animal in sight, on the surface and in the seas to generate our warmth. I think our current way is infinitely better, and so do the plants and animals that remain alive thanks to our more civilized modern stewardship of the environment.
Earth Hour – What a load Sh*te.
Never even had it mentioned here in Brisbane.
Many of these activists have never experienced regular power outages. Those who have lived in developing countries, like myself, have experienced regular power outages. One minute you are on your computer and quick as a flash the power goes out in the evening. Often street lights will go out at the same time. Driving can be difficult. People have died. Houses catch fire due to candles. Solar panels are too expensive, wind is intermittent.
For may in developing countries they will look aghast at this exercise by the wealthy and wonder what went wrong with Western civilization.
“Taken to its logical conclusion, if switching the lights off for one hour is a good idea, why not for all the other 8,759 hours of the year?”
But surely this is the plan? And as Jimbo tells us the UK is leading the world in this respect. Apart from running out of gas the UK is shutting down 10% of its generating capacity. Still as any warmist will tell you the planet is so hot its almost on fire so we hardly need it anyway.
Gads that earth hour video is so stupid, I couldn’t watch it all. Concerts performed with lights and electric guitars to bring awareness to turning off light, and even more meaning less gestures like free yoga classes if 500 people support Earth Hour, or even worse dying his beard green for 10,000 people supporting it.
Well, WUWT community I have really symbolic and stupid challenge for you, I’ll donate $5 to charity if 5000 people donate $5 to me. Come on I will if you will, it is only $5 you can afford it.
Typo:
“For many in developing……”
I think this is an insult to all those in need, as the auction does not give them any real help. Sympathies doesn’t help, genuine actions does!
The auction itself is an indicator of how many people still believe in the fraud …
(Is it worth to continue …?)
This will undoubtedly be interpreted the wrong way …
Lights ON tonight, please!
Reblogged this on ausgang.
Lysenkoism is used metaphorically to describe the manipulation or distortion of the scientific process as a way to reach a predetermined conclusion as dictated by an ideological bias, often related to social or political objectives.
– Wikipedia
“Lack of electricity in Gaza leads to deadly fires” and “The Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (KJIA) was faced with the third power outage in 36 hours”
http://youtu.be/wXf64A0qXak
http://youtu.be/-LP-yEGddqs
We’ll be doing what we’ve always done about the Earth Hour silliness; ignore it completely.
These are hard times for our warmist friends. We shouldn’t deprive them of their warm and fuzzy moments. It is complimentary to their warm and fuzzy logic. GK
Grizzled Bear says:
March 23, 2013 at 7:04 am
Sorry, but this falls right in the middle of Hockey Night in Canada. A guy’s got to have his priorities, after all! Maybe I’ll celebrate it at about 2:30 a.m.
===========================================================
Hey, I’m really dedicated to “Earth Hour.”
I do it every night 10pm-6am
So if I turn off the lights I have burning during “Earth Hour”, that’s 22w (22w in an hour at 47c kw/h), I somehow save lots of money on power AND save the planet too?
More lunacy from the UK Met Office.
http://people.virginia.edu/~rtg2t/future/gcc/UK.Met.quick_guide.pdf
Here in my home town rag there are two articles side by side today. The first one is about Earth Hour and the minions at City Hall urging you to participate (altough they aren’t setting any goals this year lol). The second is about the electric vehicle plug in stations the minions at City Hall are installing downtown and they want you to use……sigh.
BTW, green is he color of radical Islam too… 🙂
Reblogged this on Climate Ponderings and commented:
DO I really want to show solidarity to / with nutters?
Earth Hour will be white in Boulder, CO where proof of global warming is piling up.
http://ucblibraries.colorado.edu/webcam/index.htm
Another excellent example of muddled thinking…Right up there with those yobs who recently started breaking the windows of the offices of paediatricians in the sublimely-stupid belief that paediatricians were the same as paedophiles.
I think Earth Hour is a good thing.
If you have kids, turn off all electrical devices, including the heating, TV, internet, lights, mobiles, toys etc: Then, as you shiver under duvets and play cards by candle-light, explain that this is how the Greens want you to spend every day and night – and to imagine what it would be like, in the very middle of winter.
That would be a jolly good lesson for the pampered children of the 21st century.
.
To those in the developing world, switching off proves that we in the developed world have choices. We have the choice to prove what idiots individuals can be. Those in the undeveloped world won’t even know. Prosperity and advancement should rejoiced, not demonised.
jr
so it’s hockey night in Canada, and here in the US we are in the middle of March madness. Yeah, i’ll worry about earth hour later, too. Go Jayhawks.
Its been imposed here without choice, as vast swathes of the UK are without power due to heavy snow drifts
http://t.news.uk.msn.com/uk/uk-endures-more-horrendous-weather
Here you go Ron Richey.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/13/climategate-3-0-has-occurred-the-password-has-been-released/
Spent a couple of hours clearing snow from our street early this morning. Later, I watched others do likewise. Puny is the strength of man compared to machines. They worked to clear tiny amounts of snow with each shovel, until at last, small patches of tarmac were revealed.
I called my son (age 10) over, and asked him to imagine a bulldozer working to clear the same road, and how the whole job would have been completed within a couple of minutes, to do that which several humans would take a day to do.
I thought this was a good illustration of how our use of fossil fuels has leveraged the power of humans to give us everything we see around us, and how miserable our lives would be if we were armed only with shovels.
Earth hour! Give me a break. Today’s eco activists are the spoilt children of an energy based system that has coddled them with such comforts, embued their lives with such safety and ease, that they exhibit not gratitude but contempt.
As with every year, I shall be celebrating Human Achievement Hour tonight. Perfect time to use the self-clean feature on the oven, do some laundry, turn on some lights….and hell, I might fire up the outdoor hot tub for a soak. The sheeple can have their Earth Hour. Me? I choose civilization.
“On the evening of Saturday, March 23, people around the world are being asked by activists to switch off the lights for an hour to observe “Earth Hour”. ”
For us D-worders, I plan to turn on extra lights, including 12 pairs of outside flood lights, from Dusk to Dawn.
Save a tree, make more CO2.
I’ll utilize Earth Hour by having all my lights on in honor of Nikola Tesla.
Reblogged this on News Avalanche.
Well, I just did a quick scan, and didn’t see anything on CNN, Reuters, or Google News front-news pages, so if even those perveyers of news didn’t highlight it, what does that tell you?
BBC did have this though.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21909619
I think the headline misspelled “dims”. I think it should be spelled with a “u” instead of an “i”.
Tell the bozos no more Rock n Roll or any other uses of electricity in the creation of music….. Rap and Hip Hop, all musical styles of the past 50 years which utilize electronic sound amplification, mixing, etc.
Because once more people understand how much they love the outputs of electricity there may be more understanding of how silly it is to demonize electricity.
Three cheers for electrical power…which I have needed all day here in North Yorkshire in order to read and see enough in the kitchen to cook the lunch (in an electric oven). I just hope there are no real power cuts, as have been suffered by others in parts of the UK thanks to the snow and gales. Not much snow just here but it’s very cold. It’s beginning to feel like Narnia!
We had a nearly 12-hour string of “Earth Hours” not too long ago here in NH during one of several Nor’Easters which dumped lots of the white stuff on us. We were without electricity all day (fortunately, not very cold), and until about 9PM or so. So yeah, we’ve already done our penance to the Greenie gods for living in a developed country, with all the trappings of a modern life, and then some. We did the whole candles and flashlights routine, even cooking (lighting the gas stove with a lighter) and eating by candlelight. It got a little chilly, but not bad (about 59F). We had no way of knowing when the power would come back on though, which was troubling. To be safe, we emptied the freezer part of the refrigerator into a cooler, putting that outside, and transferring the ice blocks we keep in the freezer into the lower part. Although I’ve considered getting a generator, this sort of thing doesn’t happen very often, and power is usually restored within a 12 hour period. I’ll admit, it does make you really appreciate electricity after being without it for a while. The price of electricity has been going up (with a fairly big jump recently), though, and we all know whose fault that is.
It would be interesting to compare the CO2 from a bunch of candles to that of a regular light bulb. Then again, if some fool burns down their house because of the candles, they will emit a lot more CO2.
Back when I was in High School long ago, student who was hard core environmentalist was telling everyone not to use an electric toothbrush. He said, “It may take longer, but you’ll save energy!” Then I pointed out that the motor in an electric toothbrush was only 10 watts, BUT the bulb in the bathroom was 100 watts.; you burn more energy by taking longer. He wouldn’t believe me because you can’t fix stupid.
Earth Hour
Bah, humbug.
Idiot Hour is what this really is.
Why do these people always like to take quotes from mass murderers such as the guy that put fuel in tires put them around people’s necks then light their heads on fire such as Nelson Mandela?
I see them with Che shirts and Mao shirts. When did we start celebrating mass murderers?
Our family will be celebrating electricity tonight by turning on every light, watching a movie on our big screen TV, and baking cookies in our electric range!
Will the power generating stations stop generating electricity during Earth Hour? How does Earth Hour save on electricity?
Snow has been falling for two days. It’s deeper than your mukluk tops as far as you can see… can’t get out of your cave without snowshoes, and the wolves are howling in the forest. But if our smoke and light bothers them, we’ll put out the fire tonight. Throw an extra joint of meat in the coals, keep the spear close.
The Neanderthals in the cave next door say they’ll keep their fire burning no matter what. They are in the pocket of big kindling. The Great Gore needs to give them a good whop upside the head. Let them suffer like the rest of us in our flea-bitten skins and hides.
Well, best stay awake. Stay watchful. Good night. And good luck.
I should imagine that fewer people are turning off their lights each year as dissatisfaction grows. I don’t know if that can be measured or not, but to me, if the green extremists are screaming louder that we should do this and if they are laying on more guilt and more emotional manipulation, it probabaly means they’ve noticed we are losing interest in everything they say.
Imagine your lights go out and you havent got enough money to pay for them to come back on again
If they want me to participate in “Earth Hour” they better start planning it when the college basketball tournament isn’t on. The opening weekend in “March Madness” is the best weekend in college basketball. Right now I’m watching VCU losing to Michigan and I’m seeing why Michigan was ranked so highly earlier in the year.
Candles? You mean those prehistoric purveyors of paraffin pollution? Yeah, we have a few, but they’re just for emergencies, you know, those rare occasions when the real lighting is temporarily unavailable.
Wait, you’re saying some people will deliberately choose to darken and pollute their dwellings for some nebulous “cause”? My, that certainly sounds…er…quaint.
Um, they’re not by chance residents of an…institution, are they?
Stonyground:
I live in the UK and I’m old enough to remember the power cuts of the nineteen-seventies that were caused by striking coal miners. I worked at an agricultural engineering garage that had a petrol station. During the power cuts we had to insert a handle into the pumps and raise the fuel by winding, it was very slow but it got the job done. In our accounts office, invoices were produced on manual typewriters. At home we could boil water on a paraffin stove, we had torches, candles and stable lamps for light. We had open fires for heat, luckily for us we had access to logs.
How well will we fare if government incompetence leads us to power cuts in the twenty-first century? Do modern petrol pumps have manual handles? What about cash machines? Traffic lights? Barriers at level crossings? In my current workplace, almost nothing will get done without computers. At home we have a small genny which will help us to get by. A generation ago my parents could never have afforded a genny. The thing is, we can, and at work, if power cuts become a real problem, it is pretty likely that we would install one. Still, I suppose the problem of CO2 emmissions is a bit moot considering that it is late March and it is still snowing.
Skiphil says:
March 23, 2013 at 9:14 am
“Tell the bozos no more Rock n Roll or any other uses of electricity in the creation of music….. Rap and Hip Hop, all musical styles of the past 50 years which utilize electronic sound amplification, mixing, etc. ”
yuk-yuk. Not to mention the limos and jets to get there.
I can strum my Martin in the dark. I won’t though. Every light I own will be on.
Fight the power by using power!
That video of linking visuals and emotions is the perfect example of where science is going in education in order to involve the senses. It makes the belief memorable and thus influential even if it is patently false. Oberlin Prof David Orr calls it fostering Biophilia. He says the reason for all this “hands-on science” emphasis that we see most recently in the New Common Core Next Generation Science Standards and especially in the planned assessments is to link “sensory knowledge with the emotions that make us love and sometimes fight.”
I explained it here http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/targeting-how-students-see-the-world-so-they-will-feel-an-irresistiable-compulsion-for-change/ using actual documents from Education for Sustainability degree programs. With syllabi chock full of readings of disproven theories being taught to future teachers anyway.
So they will keep hyping CAGW and Earth Hours whatever the actual facts or likely consequences.
“Bob Diaz says:
March 23, 2013 at 10:00 am”
I would not say idiots, I would say poor. Many NZ’ers die in winter due to energy poverty and resorting to using candles.
I am planning to fire up my charcoal fueled Weber and sear some formerly flatulent beefsteaks. MMM. So my outdoor lighting will be on as well.
Be interesting to watch what happens in the green state of Calif: http://www.caiso.com/outlook/SystemStatus.html. This plots projected and actual electricity generation daily.
Snowing all day here with a bitter wind, in East Anglia. I’m a pensioner living alone and had to shovel the snow off my steps this morning, to get out to buy some logs. I’ve been without oil for several days due to miscommunications – luckily my power didn’t go off so I could use my electric blanket upstairs, and heat food and kettles. Making a fire and keeping it going sufficiently to heat the place in this weather is a pretty full time job.
I was glad I have a car to fetch logs in this emergency. I was very glad indeed the oil man made a special trip our for me at midday, and very grateful to a local handyman who came in the bitter snow and cold, to bleed my outside boiler when I couldn’t get it to fire.
Earth hour? – sit in the dark and strain my eyes with a candle? You have to be joking. I lived like that in my youth on various Mediterranean islands – been there, done that. In this country, I wouldn’t last long without heat and power, given my history of respiratory disease.
If the Earth Hour proponents are really serious why don’t they follow it to the logical conclusions.
For one hour shut down all power generating plants, shut down wind farms [of course the solar is shut down automatically at sunset], no power to subways, goevrnment buildings, no phones [landline or cellular], no emergency hospital power allowed, no tweeting for the twits, no Internet, etc. The list would be very long.
Sheesh!
Sod that, there’s snow on the ground outside and I’m going to use what there is before they K.O. the energy supply completely.
@Ron Richey – It’s under March 13th in the sidebar calendar.
There are currently 35,000 houses in Northern Ireland, 4,000 in North Wales and at least 18,000 houses in Scotland “celebrating” Earth Hour – their power has been cut due to the heavy snow and high winds across the UK.
Cars and vans have been completely buried by snow throughout the UK, this is snow which our children were promised “they would never know what snow is like!”.
Well they know now!!
Dear Anthony
I beg leave to inform you that Alder Towers proudly flies the Sceptic Flag tonight and is Illuminated like a Christmas Tree. Let it cast the Probing Light of Truth and Wisdom into the Darkness of Superstition and Mindless Alarm.
Long Live Rationality!
I Remain, Sir, Your Humble Servant
LA
Anthony, surely the green opera house was for St Patricks Day, the only green that matters.
Although the headline picture shows an embarrassingly grren Sydney Opera House being involved in the worst tokenism, some of us in Sydney celebrated the Hour Of Power. I turned on all lights and appliances in honour of the advantages such devices reap for modern society and as a single finger raised in salute against the green fascists whom wish to deliver us back to the 19th century.
A fine BBQ was had with local Porterhouse steaks and imported chorizos and bourbon.
If you look at the EH website this morning only 6919 of 23 million supported it so it was really effective, eh?
Amos McLean @ 12:45 pm:
It is very cold here and we have had snow showers; however, our roads here in our part of North Yorkshire are clear (and dry for once too). I think there is plenty of snow not far away, in the Dales and along the A66 and into Cumbria where it is really bad. The A595 is where there are cars buried in snow drifts.
We are celebrating warmth and light indoors but mindful of those who have lost power in this cold weather.
Programs like this are a part of ongoing research using MSM to perfect a mass mind manipulation system a la Pied Piper,…or if you like…the 666 beast…
Best of all, we did not notice, at all, that yesterday was Earth Hour and just carried on regardless. There was little press coverage here, as people have tired of that gimmick and passed on to the new curiosities. I would say that Earth Hour is now stone dead as it shows no sign of life. Not even mouth-to-mouth resuscitation by the Greenies will revive it
“Using the equivalent of one and one-half planets!” What’s the problem? Latest from NASA is there’s trillions of planets out there. We got spares. 😉
But they fully lost me with the fellow who’s gonna ‘cross-dress’ for a week at his “university” – that’s pretty specifically forbidden in the Bible, sorry. Definitely wouldn’t want to have a hand in encouraging THAT!…. 😉
Timely post though, as I would have forgotten I intended to open all the curtains and turn on every light in the house from 8:30 to 9:30 (and maybe a flashlight or two) (and maybe candles, too! {For the ’emotional appeal’, and general ambience})>
Y’know, to Celebrate, with Gratitude, our wonderful world and Blessings, and the ( – sorry, Atheists – ) Help we’ve gotten to carry ourselves as far as we have, technologically – despite all our challenges, which some days seem endless….
Tom Trevor says:
March 23, 2013 at 7:10 am
Gads that earth hour video is so stupid, I couldn’t watch it all. Concerts performed with lights and electric guitars to bring awareness to turning off light, and even more meaning less gestures like free yoga classes if 500 people support Earth Hour, or even worse dying his beard green for 10,000 people supporting it.
Well, WUWT community I have really symbolic and stupid challenge for you, I’ll donate $5 to charity if 5000 people donate $5 to me. Come on I will if you will, it is only $5 you can afford it.
OK Tommie. I’ll bite. All you need to do is to convince 4999 other souls to give you the 0.1 cent each and you should be set. BTW what charity are we donating to? I’ll need that for the 1040 form thingie.
The power outage stories remind me of a funny one. Years ago I lived in the mountains of Tennessee and had a terrific wind storm that blew limbs down on power lines for miles around. I was chilling out cooking for folks on the big coleman stove and just having a good old time. my neighbor across the street decided he needed to go get some dry ice or he was going to lose all the food in his big chest freezer. (this was after about 4 days without power) So the neighbor treks all the way to Johnson City (30 miles) and got some dry ice in a cooler. He brings it back and opens the lid of the freezer and notices that the light was on.
“Nicholas Tesdorf says:
March 23, 2013 at 3:37 pm
Earth Hour and just carried on regardless. There was little press coverage here, as people have tired of that gimmick and passed on to the new curiosities.”
Pretty much the same here aswell. Very little media coverage here, Compared with previous events. We never do take part in the tripe. Could Never understand those people who would happily pull the switch on electricity for an hour, while stinking out their homes with lighted candles or have big outdoor bonfires to celebrate it. Seems to be counter productive to save Gaia from the AGW/CC or ‘evil’ air pollution. 🙂
Of course the local WWF were still promoting it.
http://www.wwf.org.nz/earth_hour/
“Cars and vans have been completely buried by snow throughout the UK, this is snow which our children were promised “they would never know what snow is like!”.”
Don’t worry. The fanatics on a UK forum I frequent are busy telling everyone who questions the ‘consensus’ that the UK is freezing and buried in snow because of Global Warming.
Personally I’ll be glad to see the end of the Global Warming this winter, here in Canada we must have three times as much Global Warming piled up in our yard as we did last year (or any other year since I moved here in the mid-2000s).
Just a follow up.
I see yahoo.nz. Has a poll on did you take part in Earth Hour.
So far 6% said yes.they switch the lights off for an hour. 42% said No they forgot about it and 44% said Think it was pointless.
So that is indeed a big drop in support for it here. 🙂
I love the Earth, I love the forests, I love the Oceans. I love all life forms, I have always cared and left as small an imprint as possible. I don’t like Earth hour, I don’t like liars, data fudges, crooked scientist, blind and lousy politicians and the mindless watermelon class. I do like WUWT and the the other warriors of science and that includes all skeptics.
Tonight my home is a beacon of truth, light and heat!
I question the “1.3 billion” without access to power.
Quoting TonyfromOz over on joannenova.com.au replying to a comment of mine:
“Or in China, hundreds of millions of people playing the game every day, as barely one home in five to seven has electrical power connected to it, with any power, let alone a constant and regulated supply. In the major cities, well yes, some do have power, but elsewhere, nothing.
There’s where that crock, per capita emissions falls down. In China, barely 9% of all generated power goes to the Residential sector, Australia 20/21%.
That residential power comparison sees China power (to residential) only 9.1 times Australia’s, while China’s population is 61 times Australia’s.
It’s not that they use less power. It’s because most of them have no electrical power.
The green solution is to stop them having that access to power, and then, on top of that, to send us back to living without it also.
The same also applies in India as well.”
So, if Tony’s most optimistic figure is correct, doesn’t that mean over 1 billion people in China alone who do Earth Hour 24/7/365 ?
If the 1.3 billion was correct, it would represent real progress. Unfortunately, it can’t be correct.
I’ve just switched on ALL the lights in my house for the coming hour — I want to celebrate the technological miracle of having much power and convenience mere flicked switches away….. I think I’ll go fire up a few extra appliances too, just to celebrate the hopes for POWER and ENERGY for all.
Ok… well I have a 300 amp service here in Ontario and it’s just turned 8:30 pmTime for my annual electrical system stress test!
Who has more fun than skeptics 🙂
I’m burning every light I have, in the central time zone.
Ever wonder what would happen if enough people actually suddenly switched everything off at once and then an hour later tried to turn it all back on at once? Electricity supply and load should always be balanced. A large demand step function up or down could pose a serious problem. Hmmm. These greenies should know better, being self-proclaimed energy experts. And maybe they or at least their leaders do. Anarchy in the 21st century. Won’t that be fun
The Green Display on the Sydney Opera House may have tied in with some silly hour, but initially had more to do with the Irish St Patricks Day. Even the worlds only 7 star hotel the remarkable Dubai Burj got in on the act with the addition of an Irish Shamrock. 20 pictures from around the World here;
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/in-pictures-millions-celebrate-st-patricks-day-around-the-world-8537972.html?action=gallery&ino=18
We had a pizza party both ovens maxed-out, got the hot tub warmed-up for the ladies, did some laundry, while dad and I went into the heated shop to do some welding with the three phase TIG.
To be pedantic, 365.2425 days × 24 hours = 8765.82 hours (using the Gregorian calendar’s approximation)
So if we are using 1.5 Earths, as the video claims, how is any of that helping?
If the USA uses a quarter, then can someone do the math? What American is going to give up 90% of their resource usage?
Seems a bit propaganda like to make a feel good passionate dance youth party video whilst not mentioning the inevitable conslusion?
Why, they are just fighting Communism, aren’t they?
One hour will not save the planet, however, it is start. It also raises awareness to the important issue. Like the story of the starfish :
http://www.ordinarypeoplechangetheworld.com/articles/the-starfish-story.aspx
Every little gesture will help !!!!
To celebrate man’s triumph over darkness I left all the lights in my barn burning last night while I slept. I noticed my neighbor left all his outside lights on, including the Victorian style street lamps that line his very lengthy driveway.
[snip] – Ad Hom.
if you wish to comment here please learn courtesy, especially to other commenters. Go and look up the meaning of ‘Ad Hominem’ and realize that its avoidance is part of the comments policy ~Mod.
As always, I celebrated Earth Hour by putting my lights on.
Here, close to the English south coast, so far we’ve escaped the latest bout of global warming, but much of the country has ground to a halt due to heavy snowfall, the heaviest March snowfall for many decades. And to think that just a few years ago the Met Office were telling us that snow was becoming a thing of the past!
I was greatly heartened by the editorial in today’s printed Sunday Telegraph. They are actually calling for the Climate Change Bill to be scrapped. For most of my life I voted Conservative, but no longer. I’m a UKIP man now! I will never vote for a party whose policies are designed to push up the price of energy. Recently I added a new condition: I won’t vote Conservative until the Climate Change Bill is scrapped. I’m not holding my breath. But who knows?
Christopher Booker also has an excellent piece on the climate change madness. As he tirelessly points out, the sheer stupidity of our ruling classes – with a few honourable exceptions – is breathtaking.
Chris
Ha… It looks like in Ontario there was a very significant upward spike right at about 8:30 pm… eyeballing it looks like the actual demand was about 15% above the predicted demand. To see this, go to http://www.ieso.ca/, then double click on the graph and then on the more detailed graph that shows up, you can click on ‘yesterday’ to see what it was last night.
It looks like I wasn’t the only one doing my annual electrical stress test during this timeframe!
Damn! I forgot all about it, (again).
This is the Swedish electricity consumption last night and nothing out of the ordinary (not everyone stays up all night …).
17.00 – 18.00 — 18704
18.00 – 19.00 — 19379
19.00 – 20.00 — 19612
20.00 – 21.00 — 19177
21.00 – 22.00 — 18657
22.00 – 23.00 — 18174
(values in MWh/h)
[snip – vile language – obviously from Calgary’s finest – mod]
This year, I did nothing special during Earth Hour. Next year I will celebrate Earth Hour by turning all lights ON in my home, like many other commenters here.
Kon Dealer says:
March 23, 2013 at 7:57 am
“More lunacy from the UK Met Office.
http://people.virginia.edu/~rtg2t/future/gcc/UK.Met.quick_guide.pdf”
Perhaps the “boffins” at the Met Office could explain which of these various global temerature records leads them to believe in “Global Warming.”
Global Temperature Record
CET 472 years
http://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/14.jpg
600 Years Arctic Temperatures
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/images/arcticbg.gif
1,100 Years Ljundgqvist et al
http://www.co2science.org//articles/V15/N28/ljungqvistetal2012b.gif
2,000 years – J Esper et al
http://www.uni-mainz.de/eng/bilder_presse/09_geo_tree_ring_northern_europe_climate.jpg
2,400 years
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/Climate%20Change/Subatlantic_Had.png
3,000 years
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/Climate%20Change/Sargasso_GISP2_Moberg.png
4,000 years – GreenWorldTrust
http://www.greenworldtrust.org.uk/Science/Images/Main/Warm_periods.jpg
10,000 years Greenland GISP2 Ice Core
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/lappi/gisp-last-10000-new.png
10,000 years GISP2 (Greenland) Ice Core
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/gisp2_10ke1.jpg
10,000 years Vostock (Antarctic)
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/vostok-10kd1.jpg
10,000 years Greenland (GISP2) Ice Core
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/easterbrook_fig5.jpg
140,000 years Vostock Ice Core Data
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_cHhMa7ARDDg/SmDoZBIkB3I/AAAAAAAABAc/KkUzrz2abwI/s1600-h/Vostok-140Kc.jpg
400,000 years Vostock Ice Core Data
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/temp/vostok/graphics/tempplot5.gif
5,500,000 years Vostock Antarctica Ice Core
http://www.oocities.org/marie.mitchell@rogers.com/climate_files/Five_Myr_Climate_Change.png
How do you know that Earth Hour is done? When none of Canada’s National papers even mention it the next day. Even the Red Star has nothing!
As another commenter above mentioned it looks like Ontario celebrated the ‘Hour of Power’. Usage spiked sharply around 8:30 and dropped again an hour later.
It’s the day after Earth Hour, so this posting is late, but I can give some figures from Nova Scotia. This year the reduction in power consumption during Earth Hour was down 5 MW. Last year it was down 11 MW, and the year before 18 MW. That 5 MW is about 1 per cent.
IanM
WTF….the fact that no papers mentioned it (or any other media for that matter with the exception of Sun News who pre-emptively discussed and denounced it) is the first clue of what a pathetic and dismal failure it was. What I want to know is how the organizers themselves will explain away the significance of the increase in demand right at 8:30 pm. Incidentally, I have friends in Kitchener who seem to have an unofficial policy on their street of leaving all their Christmas lights up instead of taking them down when the Christmas holiday period is over…the reason? So they can all be turned on for ‘earth hour’. What a delight it is to see the lights all on for that one hour and by 9:30, they are all switched off. The day after ‘earth hour’ is the day the lights can finally be brought down and stored away for the winter. Now THAT’S a tradition I can support! I was telling my friends that they should close the street down and have a great big street party to celebrate… they could call it the anti-stupid party’.
Here’s my 2013 sit in the dark for an hour challenge then:
If all the ecotard slacktivists around the world can be pursuaded to disconnect their PCs and stop wasting interweb bandwidth verbally jacking off for a year; then I shall connect a webcam, catch a pixie, a leprechaun, a gnome and a goblin and telecast them all physically jacking off every day for a year.
Imagine the electrickery that could save!
Earth hour is dirt dirty dirty..
The power companies that are in up to their eyeballs, (wind and solar) are also the polling company that reports on public support (savings over the hour)..
Like all things political green there is nothing ever left to chance..
The power industry has taken and run with Billions upon Billions of our tax dollars in the name of green.. Its been their only source of growth for the last 20 years.. This is fresh and free money that they can splash around as they see fit as long as they tow the line..
The idea that they are fit to report on Earth Hour and treat it as some indication of public support is CRIMINAL..
The term.. CONFLICT OF INTEREST comes to mind and rightly so…
dirty dirty dirty..
What I want to know is how the organizers themselves will explain away the significance of the increase in demand right at 8:30 pm.
—–
Clearly its the very very small % of redneck flat earth deniers who moved a few loads of laundry to Saturday night..
Rent seeking alarmist greens have nothing to fear, except maybe a snow storm in April..
Sydney Opera House green for Earth Hour?
Sorry tree huggers but the “greening” was for St Patrick’s Day.
Earth hour- I always listen to “Every Light In the House Is On” by Trace Adkins to amuse myself.
the European weather celebrated earth hour by sending europe one of the biggest March snow flurrys in living memory. With just 2 days of snow, we got lots of 8 foot snow drifts in North England. Never seen snow drifts this high in my life before around where I live, not in March and not for any other month.
Was Al Gore visiting Europe?