Earth Hour hopes to shed light on climate
So are the St. Louis Gateway Arch, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Eiffel Tower, Egypt’s Great Pyramid of Giza and many other iconic structures.
The lights will be going out for Earth Hour, organized by the World Wildlife Fund to draw attention to global warming, from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. Saturday local time around the world. That’s when organizers of the event, which began in Sydney in 2007, want everyone to turn off non-essential lights.
About 2,800 cities in 83 countries — including 250 in the United States — had signed up, according to Dan Forman, a spokesman for World Wildlife Fund, an international conservation organization that boasts 1.2 million national members and close to 5 million globally.
Forman said organizers want to send a message to Congress and to global leaders working this year on climate change legislation and a treaty to limit greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming.
“It’s all about the symbolism,” he said. “We fully recognize that one hour does not put a dent in the climate crisis.”
The effort has its critics.
“We think Earth Hour, even if you are super-concerned about global warming, is a little lame, and we are making fun of it,” said Eli Lehrer, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a Washington, D.C., think tank that supports limited government and decries global warming “alarmism.”
CEI has announced a “Human Achievement Hour” to counter Earth Hour. The group says millions of people will participate by turning the lights on, going to a concert or seeing a movie. “It’s obviously tongue-in-cheek,” Lehrer said.
Many companies, however, are serious in support of Earth Hour, Forman said. Coca-Cola, for example, has pledged to turn off its big signs around the world, including a marquee in New York’s Times Square.
Schools and universities across the country are also participating, including the University of Louisville.
“We are trying to change the cultural attitudes and behavior,” said professor Barbara Burns, chairwoman of the university’s Sustainability Council. “And one of the first steps is awareness.”
California Weathers Earth Hour
http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/busted-earth-hour.html
The power load for today for California is shown on the post above, in which may be seen a normal, smoothly decreasing load from 8:30 to 9:30 this evening. I took a snapshot of the grid loading for the day, and posted it on my site. It appears to me that normal functions happened tonight, where people went in to cook around 7:00, watch a little TV, or whatever.
Bill Abbott
I think you may be missing the point that doing the oposite of what we are told to do is an act of rebellion. This is accentuated by our knowledge that we are being asked to follow bad science with all sorts of consequences. Personally I am very careful with resources, which is more than many leaders in the AGW cult are.
Tonyb
News from Christchurch (New Zealand):
“Christchurch failed to match its previous power-saving effort for Earth Hour
Orion New Zealand estimated the electricity saved in the city during the lights-out event was 8.1%, well short of last year’s 12.8%.”
http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/2299022/Christchurch-powers-down
Our neighbour is a real-life Ned Flanders. Get this: he drove his family up to the hills to look down on the darkened city. Yes they all got in a CAR and made an unnecessary journey. They were thrilled about just how dark it looked. They don’t normally go out after dark – so they have no idea that it ALWAYS looks like that.
They truly are post-rational people – they have seen the benefits of science and technology and they want to throw it all away.
The bottom line right now is not so much effective conservation and thriftiness, but to change arrogant and economically disastrous attitudes such as “we have to stop/combat/fight climate change”. Time is of the essence – less than nine months to the Copenhagen conference on the Kyoto succession process. Let’s put our heads together and marshal viral cyber might to mount a broad, post-partisan crusade for alternatives to the consensus doctrine
To be realistic, we can talk about how bad surface stations are all day, and how bad the historical temperature data is, and how daft it is to measure Arctic ice thickness by walking a straight line to the North Pole, or measure cosmic rays, etc etc, but unless we offer up solutions then you’re not going to get much more attention than getting now.
Activists are split. There is one camp that doesn’t care if AGW is real or not. Or even that the credit crisis was caused by government regulation in the first place. They want the end of capitalism and no other solution will do. They have a totalitarian gene that tells them egomaniacal, bearded, cigar chomping tinpot dictators and government control of all industries is good. Many activists want to be the guy with the cigar. You can’t do anything to change these people. When people argue with George Monbiot, leading environmentalist campaigner, on his blog they’re wasting their time. The guy is a maniac who isn’t interested in science (along with Saddam’s friend George Galloway, he helped set up a Marxist-Islamist political party called Respect).
The other camp is made up of gullible daft stoners and soft-hearted limp-wristed couch potatoes who believe what they hear on the TV and in movies and are too lazy to go on the internet to verify facts and figures. These people worry about everything. These people are treated by Alarmists as useful idiots or simpletons who can be used to do the dirty work of voicing their concerns in the media. If you want to change these people you have to offer them solutions to solve the energy supply problems, mortgage payments, clean rivers, etc.
The media won’t give you an inkling of attention unless you come up with the solutions. I suggest setting up something like a competition which offers a ridiculously huge prize to the person or team who can solve the energy supply problem. The money would be donated by the public and each donation will count as a share in the company. But it would have to be a really massive prize. There is no reason why the winner of such a competition shouldn’t become richer than Bill Gates for powering the world.
Or if the US government or the UN wanted it could do it themselves. Instead of throwing billions around on punitive carbon trading or inefficient solar panels and windmills, all they need to do is get all countries together to put $250 billion on the table as a prize. Or even a trillion dollars. That money will form a new, internationally funded power company which the winner or winning team will head. It will be tomorrow’s Exxon-Mobil, but providing clean, efficient, never-ending power to the whole world. We’ll even allow it to have a monopoly position as long as the vast majority of its shares are publicly owned.
That’s incentive. Offer that as a prize and we’ll see scientists get off their arses to brainstorm and fast track the solutions through.
To those decrying the lack Wikipedia coverage, “Yes, but…”- when I just checked, Wikipedia had 6 lines describing “Earth Hour 2009” and 13 line of criticism, with links to CEI, etc. I’m not saying thats the right way to do it, but a look-see for HAH will come up with real content.
Squidly (22:42:57) : is correct
“…Wikipedia..is adamantly refusing to allow an entry for “Human Achievement Hour” (the opposite of Earth Hour).”
There was a page submitted, it does NOT maintain a neutral tone, as called for in the Wikipedia content guide. It could benefit from some editing, too. The Wikipedia editors took it down. A number of people including myself entered complaints that the removal appeared to be taking sides. I sure wish someone would re-write the page to clearly meet the Wikipedia neutrality requirement.
deepslope (19:52:32) :
The bottom line right now is not so much effective conservation and thriftiness, but to change arrogant and economically disastrous attitudes such as “we have to stop/combat/fight climate change”. Time is of the essence – less than nine months to the Copenhagen conference on the Kyoto succession process.
Yes, I do not think there are many rational people against conservation. Just against the hijacking of the earth project by the AGW ship of fools crew.
I think they are getting desperate to get measures agreed in Copenhagen because if the climate keeps cooling by itself for a few years they will not be able to fool the people. If they get strong measures in December, after a year they may be tooting victory over climate, and it will be hard for the average Joe to dispute it. If they loose Copenhagen, their game is lost, the way climate is cooling.
Only one house in my entire neighbourhood turned out their lights. Albeit only briefly. As it happens it was the “family” right next door to me! At precisely 8:25 PST they turned out all their lights and lit candles throughout their massive house. I went and turned on the garage lights (All 850 watts worth) which illuminates most of the area, and and was immediately accosted by them en masse. After a short lecture about my heresy from their titular head of household (the delinquent son) I countered that they were spewing massive amounts of carbon into the air by burning several dozen candles! “And besides”, I said, “I am merely making a statement by turning on all the lights”. (That caused much consternation. LOL) 10 minutes later I heard a loud crash next door that was followed by shouting. Another 2 minutes saw the lights go back on throughout their house. I imagine someone tripped over something in the dark… Possibly someone’s brain. I’ll bet that a vast number of the supporters couldn’t make the entire hour. Thats a long period for those whose attention span is impaired.
Had to add another comment in light of Human Achievement Hour. At 8:30 last night, after going around and turning on every light that would be visible from the outside, my kids (9 & 11) were laughing and carrying on like they’d each just had a bowl full of sugar. They were terribly excited about how every house on the street was completely dark except ours. So, while the sheep in the neighbourhood huddled around their greenhouse gas spewing candles and enjoyed their family time cold and alone in the dark, I took it as the perfect opportunity to teach my kids a little about this subject, which they normally don’t care a rats butt about.
We talked about the science. We talked about the politics of “climate change/global warming”. We talked about how science is not about building concensus, but is about testing hypotheses (thank you Philip Stott for such a straightforward definition – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtPDuZzfzhw&feature=related), and then going whichever way the evidence leads you. You don’t decide in advance what the results are going to be and then manipulate your data to show what you want it to show. And I played them the audio from Anthony’s 2008 ICCC presentation (http://www.heartland.org/bin/media/newyork08/audio/Monday/watts.mp3) and simultaneously showed them the slideshow from surfacestations.org (http://gallery.surfacestations.org/UCAR-slides/index.html).
About 9:15, we got a knock on the door by a young boy of about 8 years, asking us to turn off our lights for earth hour. My kids were literally in tears, laughing so hard. My wife was the polite one, explaining to the lad that we were well aware it was earth hour, and that we had turned all our lights on, on purpose to protest the ridiculousness of earth hour. She told him we didn’t believe the sky was falling, that the planet stopped warming 10 years ago, before he was even born, and that we weren’t going to be turn our lights off until earth hour was over.
First, I’d like to say shame on his parents for getting their son to do their dirty work. Although I didn’t see his parents outside with him (it was dark out there!!), I can’t imagine he was out alone. Why didn’t they have the guts to stand up for their own convictions? I know lots of people have made comments on WUWT about the indoctrination of kids into the “religion” of GW, but this was just downright cowardly, in my books.
What I find most interesting about this entire episode is that I’m seeing a fundamental shift in the idea of “activism.” Left wing activism has a long history (anti-war, anti-globalization, ban-the-bomb, even union picket lines). But now, the left has become the establishment. And this 45 year old, somewhat conservative old fart is teaching his kids to be activists, that they have the right to stand up for themselves as individuals. rather than march lockstep for the collective.
Earth Hour failed in New York?:
http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YjU3MzAwZGZmYjRjNTRkZWMxMjUzZjI2NGQ1NDFiNTQ=
Correction on the link to Anthony’s slideshow that corresponds to the audio presentation: http://gallery.surfacestations.org/watts-NYC-2008/index.html
Oops. I thought it was Friday night. That night we partied under bright indoor lights. Last night the weather turned bad in Wallowa County. The two of us were snuggled in bed watching TV and then the electricity went out at midnight. But we stayed nice and warm ;~).
Bill, I agree with you wholeheartedly! Some crafty person (perhaps from here on WUWT) really should write up a good page for it, then we will see if Wikipedia will post it. If the original was not well written, then I don’t blame them for not posting, but I gotta say, the way Wikipedia “un-posted”, didn’t strike me as real classy (IMHO).
Aron (01:33:47) :
“I suggest setting up something like a competition which offers a ridiculously huge prize to the person or team who can solve the energy supply problem.”
The solutions are here.
http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/renewables-in-outer-continental-shelf.html
the bias is there for EH !
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooler_Heads_Coalition
this is in there but small in comparison.
Bill Abbott (02:21:34) :
To those decrying the lack Wikipedia coverage, “Yes, but…”- when I just checked, Wikipedia had 6 lines describing “Earth Hour 2009″ and 13 line of criticism, with links to CEI, etc. I’m not saying thats the right way to do it, but a look-see for HAH will come up with real content.
Squidly (22:42:57) : is correct
“…Wikipedia..is adamantly refusing to allow an entry for “Human Achievement Hour” (the opposite of Earth Hour).”
http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=AqQA2U9oQ_D6yvuDowTftydG2vAI?p=human+achievement+hour&fr=my-myy&toggle=1&cop=&ei=UTF-8
1 – 10 of 100,000,000 for human achievement hour (About) – 0.22 s |
http://michellemalkin.com/2009/03/28/leave-the-lights-on-celebrate-human-achievement-hour/
My daughter and her husband went to my home for preparing 500 burgers for a political event, so all lights remained switched on until 2:00 A.M. The city worked as always, and only two streets at the downtown were deprived of “nasty polluting” light.
Roger Sowell
Funnily enough i have just finshed writing a paper on wave and tidal power. Unfortunately the amount of wave power being generatyed is tiny-the big problems are the harshnes of the offshore environment, the nature of the wave devices and getting the power onshore to where it is needed. It is 10 yeatrs behind wind and is unfortunately as variable as wind in as much the waves tend to be best when its windiest. In the medium term waves and tidal will be great but that is ten years off unless we pour in resources.
Tonyb
There’s a part of me that is angry that the environmental version of Ramazan or Lent has been forced upon people without them being aware that they are being made to follow a New Age religion. That’s theocratic.
Roger
Sorry for all the spelling mistakes in my last post but I was rushing to get it finished as I was called for dinner 🙂
You might be interested in this link
http://www.emec.org.uk/
I am very interested in wave and tidal power but many are big projects and the latter medium in particular always giant ones- with all sorts of environmental and cost implications -so often take time to get up and running.
If they are to be genuine contenders we need to spend much more to get them from the mostly developmental stage into actual production, and to recognise there is scope for smal projects-such as several generating buoys moored just off shore which would be the equivalent of the oil industry’s nodding donkeys.
Tonyb
I should add that I had every intention of ignoring this latest AGW/CC marketing ploy, but when I saw my neighbours lights go out I couldn’t help myself…
(Insert “raspberry” sound effect here)
Tonyb
Re wave power machines: I have been following this area for many years, and what strikes me is the lack of knowledge of land-lubbers who design and build a device, install it, then are amazed and crestfallen when the sea obliterates their device. They should really talk to some men of the sea, particularly those who design and build offshore oil platforms. The ocean has power that landlubbers cannot fathom (no pun intended). As a life-long sailor and oil veteran myself, I have infinite respect for the sea. Sixty-foot waves driven by 70 mph winds are not unusual. And those are not the big ones.
For those interested in such things, offshore California (near Santa Barbara) there is an oil platform around 4 miles from land that has an undersea power cable to the shore. This is Platform Irene, currently owned by PXP. It is one of the items mentioned in the MMS proposed 5-year plan for renewable power in the Outer Continental Shelf. There is great interest in installing wave or wind power there, as the power cable already is in place.
I would like to read your paper when it is published.
never knew about it..
AKD (16:26:48) :
“I hope you sequestered that bunny carbon in your belly.”
Unfortunately when rabbit meets .270, the majority o the rabbit is atomized.. but one hare just lost its head, so yea its been sequestered! But these hippies loved it eh, got right into it and forgot all about earth hour 🙂 Ive managed to convert one to a skeptic too.
Roger
I think you have hit the nail on the head-artificial islands-such as rigid oil platforms- have the capability to utilise wind, wave, and tidal devices. In that way one of the three mediums will almost certainly be generating power at any one time. Whether that will overcome the power expenditure in building the platform in the first place is another thing!
The difficulty in getting power from a device, then onto the shore and into the grid should not be minimised. In the UK we are installing something called a wave hub that will take power to a close by connection into the National grid-but the number of places that can happen will be very small, thereby requiring new power lines with all that entails-cost and controversy.
Tonyb
TonyB,
There is much opposition in California to using existing offshore oil platforms for renewable power, because the enviros want the platforms removed once the oil is gone.
Also, to me it demonstrates how economic oil is, knowing that running a power line four miles from platform to shore was not even a minor consideration in whether or not to build the platform and drill for oil. As you wrote, it is a major consideration for the renewable energy forms, wave, wind, and tidal.
Still, there will be offshore wind and wave systems soon. Maybe not in California due to all the opposing stakeholders, I am guessing off the shore at Corpus Christi, Texas will be done first.
For all the enviros that may read this, Texas allows oil platforms, gas platforms, LNG import terminals, and their beaches are beautiful. Texas also does not have a $42 billion budget deficit, either, as California just had and likely will have again soon. There may just be a connection there.
Roger
The enviros can not have it all ways. For years they have opposed conventional power station and have despised nuclear. That leaves us with using the much more marginal sources of generation that come from renewables, of which wind is one.
To fulfill our own needs (the UK) we need tens of thousands of turbines-and hope the wind blows. Most will be on shore, as building off shore is still in its infancy. Our finest windy lansdcapes are our beautiful uplands. You don’t save the environment by trashing the countryside.
I don’t think people have any conception as to the amount of power a modern economy needs, and to replace it only with renewables-whilst laudable-has many problems, especially in the short to medium term.
I can’t see the objections to using suitably located off shore platforms as the base for an array of renewable devices.
IMHO it would do our legislators a lot of good for each be provided with a generator for a week and cut off their mains supply. They would come to realise the enormous amount of power needed for even the most simple task like boiling a kettle.
Personally I like electricity. I don’t want to sit in a cave knitting sheep whilst my children count their rock collection by the light of glow worms
Tonyb