A couple of comments have mentioned the global “turn off your lights” night. Lubos Motl at the Reference Frame has a suggestion
Earth Hour: turn your lights on at 8 p.m.
Tonight, at 8 p.m. local time, you should turn on all the light bulbs you have for 60 minutes (it will only cost you 3 cents per light bulb in average for the whole hour) to fight global obscurantism. You should look how many lights are on around. Every light bulb you see will be a sign of the audacity of hope, as Jeremiah Wright would say.”15 years ago, I would have done this. Now, I plan to turn all my lights on as my silent form of protest against the likes of Gore and his Enron like carbon credit scheme. I’m going to “Watts Up” my house!
If you want to learn about the event, here is the web page:
Of course if you are simply interested in saving money and using less electricity (something I’m for, especially here in California since the state has hamstrung itself for future power generation) then get one of these:
I have several. They work great. And, buying one via this link sends some help back to me for keeping my www.surfacestations.org effort running.
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I prefer the old petroleum lamps.
Solar powered light so you can shine a light on the Sun Hehe
Good on yer!
This was the same thoughts I had when I heard about the 60 minutes that we are supposed to turn our lights off. Personaly, I am currently replacing all my burnt out bulbs so that I can have extra on tonight. I am also generaly using more electricity today (TVs on, doing several loads of laundry, running the dishwasher without a full load etc.)
Throw a roast in the oven, and a few extra loads in the dryer too!
This can’t be a good plan for lowering my $150 PG&E bill last month. I wish more could be done to counter the Goreian AGW movement then a turn your lights on counter protest during a turn your lights off protest.
Yep. The lights will be on…. heh : )
“only cost you 3 cents per light bulb ”
Nope.
A 60 watt lamp burning for 1 hour used 0.060 kWh
A kWh of electricity costs 9 cents (average US price…higher in CA)
So it only costs 0.54 cents.
REPLY: I think Lubos was using European electricity prices when he calcukated that.
Slap a few handfuls of water buffalo dung on the side of your house.
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Tonight my wife and I shall be watching Tombstone, while this comp will have been on for a good 12 hours +. And since we like to be comfy we shall have the heat cranked all the way up to 22C. And my wife has a habit of leaving lights on all over the house, so tonight I shall just forgo that….
I am curious though. They are doing this the night before the goreacle goes to spout his lies and demonize the increasingly large group of skeptics (including a growing crowd of former IPCC scientists). I have to wonder if any portion of that farce is going to be broadcast live, so they can point to the (likely minimal) success of this event?
By the by, I just came across a blog by someone called Astroprof. I don’t think it is the same person as the troll astroturgid, as he sounds reasonably intelligent and gave a very good explanation of the overlap of solar cycles.
I dunno. There’s something deliciously strange about a solar powered light. Sounds about as useful as a motorized aerobics exercise machine. Or kinda like the solar heating in my house — works best in the summer months. 🙂
(Yes I know about solar charged batteries. I couldn’t resist though)
I wonder how many people are actually aware of “turn off your lights” night. Little point in protesting by doing the opposite if it could just be chalked up to not knowing.
I had a bit of a go-round with a customer recently about “earth hour”, and will paste our correspondence, as I it shows how they tend to think (if it can even be called that). I’ll put hers in italics.
It started with a question: How can we inspire people to take action on climate change? The answer: Ask the people of Sydney to turn off their lights for one hour. On 31 March 2007, 2.2 million people and 2100 Sydney businesses turned off their lights for one hour – Earth Hour. If the greenhouse reduction achieved in the Sydney CBD during Earth Hour was sustained for a year, it would be equivalent to taking 48,616 cars off the road for a year.With Sydney icons like the Harbour Bridge and Opera House turning their lights off, and unique events such as weddings by candlelight, the world took notice. Inspired by the collective effort of millions of Sydneysiders, many major global cities are joining Earth Hour in 2008, turning a symbolic event into a global movement,Please join me in signing up to turn your lights off for one hour on March 29 from 8pm – 9pm, and in spreading the word.
http://www.earthhour.org/user/hkCa
Thanks,
Karen
Karen, Saving energy is great, but it has nothing to do with climate change. Check out the article below, written by scientist James Peden.
http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/global-warming-01.html
Bruce
Yes, thanks, I’ve heard it both ways. “Global warming” and “greening” are the concepts du jour that get people moving in the right direction. I’ll take whatever works to get people thinking about gross overconsumption, and I always prefer “better safe than sorry.” Do you think “peak oil” is a hoax, too?
Karen
Did you even read the article? I doubt it, because nowhere in it does he mention peak oil, which has nothing whatsoever to do with global warming. So, “whatever works” is fine, as in, the ends justify the means? Science be damned?
Bruce
She never responded. Sheesh!
Ted Longmann
9 cents!!
Here in Germany it’s 20 euro cents a kwh, i.e. about 30 US$ cents, and rising. So Anthony wasn’t joking!
Gasoline here is about $8 a gallon. To fill up a normal car, you have to shell out about $150.00. Let this be an indication of what’s to come should we fail to
make our case.
Earth Hour and similar events remind me of when European royals such as Marie Antoinette played at being common folks such as milkmaids, giving the impression of wealthy people pretending to be energy-paupers just for an hour, a day or other short stretch of time. I think they’re an insult, really, to the world’s poor who currently have no choice other to scrounge firewood for their cookfires, or nations such as South Africa who are struggling to maintain a decent supply of electricity to their people.
Well, it’s going to be a dark, rainy Saturday evening here in London, so yes – my lights – and my heating – will be on as usual.
The Cult of Darkness
Our enemies are worshipers of a Cult of Darkness. From my home I have a clear view of the skyline of New York City, nine miles to the East. On September 11, I watched from the front steps of my home as barbarians murdered almost 3,000 of my fellow human beings.
Other may choose darkness, but I will not go gentle into that good night, I will rage, rage against the dying of the light. Tonight all the lights in and around my home will be on.
Mike
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged 1957
New York City rose in the distance before them, it was still extending its lights to the sky, still defying the primordial darkness, almost as if, in an ultimate effort, in a final appeal for help, it were now stretching its arms to the plane that was crossing its sky. Involuntarily, they sat up, as if at respectful attention at the death bed of what had been greatness.
….
The plane was above the peaks of the skyscrapers when suddenly, with the abruptness of a shudder, as if the ground had parted to engulf it, the city disappeared from the face of the earth. It took them a moment to realize that the panic had reached the power stations and that the lights of New York had gone out.
Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night
http://www.bigeye.com/donotgo.htm
Years ago I read that it takes about a hundred watts to run a human.
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In that case, Anthony better have a Looooot of relatives!
Bruce, by that reasoning she should never leave the house, not eat food prepared by anyone else (this means slaughtering her own meat/growing her own food completely), not use anything manufactured, etc. Which means, as I’ve stated, going back to a hunter-gatherer subsistence existence. NONE of these pro-alarmist are doing this, therefore they don’t REALLY believe there is an emergency.
That’s because of increased taxation, is it not?
Pierre Gosselin
Yes, it varies here as well… 8 cents/kWh in CO, ~24 in CA, 32 in HI. ***
It amazes me that very few seem to know what their rate is. As an engineer and physicist, most of my friends are technical…but they don’t know either.
Gasoline prices here are approaching $4/gallon and people are going nuts…not realizing that the rest of the world has been paying $6 to $8 for years.
Of course, these same people “happily” buy milk (or WATER) at $5-6/gallon
*** rates generally vary with usage. These numbers are for moderate usage from friend’s actual electric bills.
Here in Omaha one of the local Universities had an annual “thing” where the PLRKs camped out around campus in refrigerator boxes and such (on a warm spring) to show solidarity with the homeless. Unless it was unseasonably cold.
I note that at 8:00 P. M. CDT, it will still be quite light out.
Unless it is overcast and snowing.
Lights ON!
Now, I plan to turn all my lights on as my silent form of protest against the likes of Gore and his Enron like carbon credit scheme. I’m going to “Watts Up” my house!
This attitude is the epitome of ideological thought — screw the other guy regardless of the expense to yourself, just for some measure of self-satisfaction. Pardon me for saying so (and I want to be very clear that I want to separate the thought from the person — hate the sin, love the sinner), but I think the idea of juicing up the juice in such a self-defeating manner is crazy. Better to ignore the event entirely. To do otherwise is simply shooting yourself in the foot.
I already have a spotlight ready to illuminate a sign that says Al Gore is a GREEDY HYPOCRYTE. OTOH, I’m looking at the plug-in hybrids so I don’t get stuck with another 50 cents per gallon increase every time Hugo Chavez acts like an adolescent punk.
Wow – nice house Anthony! I didn’t realize you lived in the Beverly Hills section of Chico. That tip jar and the residuals from solar lighting sales must be paying off handsomely. Either that or the checks from Exxon-Mobil have been exceedingly generous. Speaking of that, I just cashed mine this morning.
Tim Blair has links to the Australian power consumption during the Lights Out hour. Since this was an Australian idea that has spread around the world you would have thought the impact would be significant. Turns out, if anything, power consumption rose. But at least it made people feel good and isn’t that what’s most important?
http://timblair.net/ee/index.php/weblog/sparkage_boosted/
I too live in California and agree it’s important to conserve energy. But we do it to prevent getting hit with $300 monthly electric bills and to do our part to prevent rolling backouts during the Summer. California’s incredibly timid and short-sighted leadership scares me much more than the threat of AGW.
REPLY: Its a stock photo, not my house. -Anthony