Earth Hour in California – Success or Bust?
Guest post by Russ Steele, NCWatch
At our house we set the timer to remind us to turn on all the visible out side lights. We have multiple security lights on the garage and the barn that come on when the sun goes down. My friend George Rebane has evidence that he turned on his lights for Earth Hour at Ruminations. I should have done the same, but was working on a sea level issue in R and forgot. I am glad I set the timer to remind me to turn off the outside house lights at 9:30.
The real question is did it Earth Hour make a difference one way or the other?
Roger Sowell had a good idea, he download the the graph below from www.caiso.com, the California Independent System Operator. CAISO is in charge of receiving power from power generating plants, and distributing the power throughout the state grid to the various end users.
Now compare the graph from Saturday 3/28/09 to the one on Sunday 3/29/09 shown below, note the similar slopes during the same time period. Note that annotations were added by Anthony Watts on both graphs.
Roger notes:
There was no apparent decrease in the power load throughout the state, from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. No step changes, nothing, nada, zip, zilch.
There you have it, scientific data showing that the Earth Hour was a total bust in California. If you look close, you can see a little bump up above the forecast demand, which tracked very closely with actual power consumed prior to the witching hour 8:30 to 9:30. But, it is clear that power consumption did not drop, it stayed up. Maybe all those protesters forgot to turn off the lights.
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Bob (09:06:04) : Stephen–conservative Democrat is a non-sequitur. Did you vote for Obama?
Straying a bit … but … It isn’t really a non-sequitur in a historical context. While the present Democratic Party is essentially the People Socialist Party of old, it is also true that the present Republican Party is more ‘liberal’ than the Democrats of old. John Kennedy’s platform of economic actions would be deemed too conservative by many mainstream Republicans today. Yet…
We still have the Southern Blue Dog Democrats… My Texas Uncle is a registered Democrat. Has been for about 50 years. He makes Bush look like a bleeding heart liberal. (This is the one who is a retired prison guard / worker…). see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Dog_Democrats
So please remember that your Democrat brothers and sisters can be conservative at times, and just like AaahNold, our Republican Governator, Republicans can be RINOs (Republican In Name Only) leading a socialist charge…
So there is hope to take back the Democratic party for beer drinking pickup driving football watching fiscal conservatives. Maybe even as much as there is for doing the same with the Republicans …
Jason A. (00:07:42) :
“Richard Heg: so what, are you trying to say that leaving the lights on at night makes you live longer? That’s a pretty silly conclusion to draw, but I can’t think of any other point you could be trying to make, other than just linking to random graphs.
“Anyways, I seem to think that people who thought earth hour was about making any kind of significant impact in energy usage are missing the point by a mile. Anyone who thinks leaving the lights off for one hour a year is an energy solution needs to sit down and shut up while the grown ups talk. And I don’t think much more highly about those who thought that was the point of earth hour, even though they knew it wouldn’t ‘work’.
It was an educational/attention-getting exercise, and ‘8,000 articles’ seems to indicate success.”
OK, Mr. Grownup, thank you for putting all of us who think that “consensus science” is an oxymoron and who think that the promoters of “Earth Hour” are a bunch of watermelons (green on the outside; red on the inside) in our place. Now, while we sit down and shut up and listen to you talk, would you mind explaining to us why the facts on the ground are so at odds with what your models predict? Or perhaps you could explain how President Obama, whose only previous experience outside the legislature was being a community organizer, will do a much better job running GM than Rick Wagoner? Or why cap and trade will mean the largest wealth transfer in history?
Oh, that’s right, when you grownups speak it’s all about shouting down anyone who disagrees with you, not about honest debate. Sorry, I momentarily forgot.
/sarc off
[snip]
No use posting where what you say is edited out for stating the simple truth.
Reply: Believe in any conspiracies you like, Anthony is simply trying to maintain civility ~ charles the moderator
3×2 mentioned here a Guardian article whose author can’t wait to see a strictly rationed society full of deliberate limitations and obstacles. 3×2 called it communist.
Weell…it’s not exactly true. I would say, that the Green vision is much more misanthropic than the original commie approach.
At least since 70’s our (Czech) commie government would have gladly let us ordinary people consume more, if only our economy would have allow that! If there were shortages of electricity it wasn’t because they planned for it. If there were bananas available only before Christmas, it wasn’t because “keeping it local”, but because of shortage of convertible currency. We weren’t limited by ideology, but by it’s economical impact.
Nope, that wasn’t the point. The point was that societies that have access to cheap power tend to have longer life spans.
Anyways, I seem to think that people who thought earth hour was about making any kind of significant impact in energy usage are missing the point by a mile. Anyone who thinks leaving the lights off for one hour a year is an energy solution needs to sit down and shut up while the grown ups talk. And I don’t think much more highly about those who thought that was the point of earth hour, even though they knew it wouldn’t ‘work’.
Again, it’s clear that you’re the one missing the point of this post. Which is that people just didn’t participate. So all it did was generate more CO2 for a hyped up non-event.
Oops, the third para should have been in blockquotes… The second and fourth are mine.
Spathirin (04:08:53) :
I agree with jason. Humans don’t need to see in the dark. Why would we? It’s not like seeing in the dark is beneficial to our health. What, are we walking down stairs now? Are we living in places filled with poisonous night-active animals? No!
If there were no street lights – anywhere- there would be more crime and more road accidents according to many governments. That’s why so many freeways and other roads ar lit during the dark hoiurs.
Al Gore is now claiming — against photographic evidence posted on this site — that he turned his lights out for Earth Hour: click
I would, but my 10kw Propane generator would kick in, and I’d be forced to use the power. 😉
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John Thiel
REPLY: Obscenities don’t really do much to make points here. – Anthony
As anyone will tell you earth hour isn’t about saving electricity it’s about raising awareness. In that light could we all start a humanitarian hour? This would be like earth hour but instead of everyone getting together and drinking expensive wine and having a gourmet candle-lit picnics people would burn a cow pat to cook their dinner in a crowded hut and drink dirty water.
I hope you’re right, but the ability of the sheeple to meander about blindly with the wool over their eyes is really extraordinary. Here we have flooding amid ice dams in North Dakota blamed on ‘global warming’ by our disingenuous President, and no one says a word (except on blogs like this). We have the chief Alarmist ‘scientist’ demonstrating against a coal plant in Washington, DC, in a snowstorm, and no one says a word.
Two cold winters do not seem to have diminished the zeal of the ‘greens’ whatsoever, nor of the politicians who want to seize the ‘climate crisis’ to further nefarious agendas of their own, nor of the clueless media, who continue to create completely wrong-headed and phony stories about ice melting, seas rising, storms increasing, species vanishing, and ‘the Earth in crisis’. Are they completely dishonest, or insufferably stupid—or both?
It is indeed likely that if the current cooling continues for a few years, that reality will sink in, but how much damage can these zealots and aggrandizing fools do in the meantime?
/Mr Lynn
Roger Sowell (11:45:50) : A question I have is about the sudden dip and bounce back shown on the March 28 graph, at around 10:45 a.m.
Up on a Saturday, breakfast cooked and dishes in the washer, every one showered and ready, weekend party / play plans in hand, and out the door at 10am or so! Long pause while “mom” checks everyone’s out, lights off, stereos off… pours cup of coffee and kills the pot, kills the dishwasher for some peace and quiet and puts up feet for a break well deserved 😉
More or less matches my home pattern…
Does anyone have an idea what caused the dip? […] Did the women all stop blowdrying their hair right about that time?
Not the blowdrier…
Second, California just passed a new regulation aimed at inflating vehicle tires, as part of the AB 32 Global Warming Solutions Act. In this one, the service provider (oil changers, mechanics, smog testers) must measure tire pressure and adjust them. One can only hope that the testers do not let the air out of a hot tire, so it meets the pressure stated on the sidewall.
Oh Gawd! So now I’m going to have to explain to every single high school dropout at the mandatory smog station or service that I have 50 psi H rated special sized sport tires that DO NOT get the placard pressure off of the door pillar (28 psi) or they feel like flat sponges and that I really really want them at 40 psi where they perform perfectly and no I do not want them at 28 hot since that will be 23 or so cold and the sidewalls will be flat / overflexing and damaging my expensive tires… and I only put them at 50 psi cold when I want a brick–house ride with extreme performance…
Exactly how many non-tire service providers really understand the physics of tires and their proper tuning / pressure setting?… clearly the law makers did not. The placard on the car is for a tire size that is no longer made (25+ year old vehicles) and I’m sure the law does not let the service provider deviate from the placard by actually thinking… and realizing that a 175/80 bias ply or 185/75 SR tire is not run at the same pressure as a 205/70 or a 195/70 H or V tire.
So every time I go to a service provider (will that include car washes?) I need to allow 1/2 hour for my own personal tire pressure check and for my (always in the car kit) mini-air pump to put my tires back where I want them making a heck of a racket in the parking lot. Sigh… Wonder how many of my special metal valve stem caps will end up being replaced with generic black plastic when I’m not watching …
California is going to injure us all with these regulations
Too late, my Malox bill has already gone up 😎 But look on the bright side, since I’ll likely skip the car wash, oil changers, etc. and just do more myself to avoid the hassle or go to my local friend mechanic who has clue, think how much (of the newly made higher) sales tax the state won’t be collecting! (Tax beatings will continue until business morale improves…) They’ve already talked me out of ever buying a new car, now they’ve talked me out of going to ‘fast service’ places too. Eventually the death of 1000 cuts to the economy will be over and we can start to rebuild a sane economy in the state… What is California at, 10+% unemployment and rising?
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/03/11/csd-california-socialism-disorder/
Every day of the week power demand starts dropping off around 8pm. Nothing unusual about earth hour. Do you think they wanted to make sure earth hour fell on the downslope?
Here is a graph of the last 7 days of power consumption by the Bonneville Power Administration in the Pacific Northwest. It updates every 5 minutes.
http://www.transmission.bpa.gov/business/operations/Wind/baltwg.aspx
I participated!
I turned on every light in the house. Then I went out on the patio, smoked a cigar and puffed out smoke and co2 and farted methane.
The most notorious environmentalists in history were the German Nazis. The Nazis ordered soldiers to plant more trees. They were the first Europeans to establish nature reserves and order the protection of hedgerows and other wildlife habitats. And they were horrified at the idea of hydroelectric dams on the Rhine. Adolf Hitler and other leading Nazis were vegetarian and they passed numerous laws on animal rights.
I REFUSE to be a Nazi! We already have the start of a facist government in the US with the ‘Man-Child’ in charge. Why do I call him the ‘Man-Child’? Because he physically has the body of a man but the brain capacity of a child,”You have more pudding then me!” “You need to share your pudding!” “It isn’t my fault!”
All the things a child would say.
Reply: Political events such as “Earth Hour” necessarily spawn political discussions. And even though the Nazi comments above may even be accurate, this moderator would prefer avoiding the chants of Nazis! Nazis! Fascists! Fascists! etc. and where those discussions would lead. I don’t know how to set this out as an objective rule for moderation, but I’m hoping you all get my rather vague and porous point ~ charles the moderator
Jason 07:42
It certainly did get attention. Now the AGW crowd and their fellow travelers look even sillier. Publicity is obviously not their forte. Maybe they should stick to long boring slide shows. BTW, everyone “got it” that it was just a symbol, except some of the AGWers. Theat’s the funny part.
Nice to see another load graph. Being an Australian we had to go through this nonsense before you guys. Same result.
Mind – there were MSM outlets touting a ‘billion people were going to turn off’, ‘50% of various states populations had switched their lights off’ etc
As one other blogger put it : “Its now Global Yawning’ see :http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/its_now_global_yawning/#commentsmore
Hmm : graphs http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/now_thats_a_real_earth_hour_or_two/#commentsmore
Roger Sowell (11:45:50) :
Thank you for your understanding of what I said,
Hope that others will take heed!
One last thing I forgot to say is that I have my new tires installed using nitrogen instead of regular air… so any tinkering around with my tires makes me mad!
letting out my nitrogen and then replacing it with air is just stupid!
**Nuclear fusion is coming sooner than most people realize.
If that is true, this entire flap is moot.**
Unfortunately not. It takes very little goading to provoke an extremist environmentalist (not the only kind of environmentalist on the planet, but the only ones you seem to hear from these days) into telling you that there would be NOTHING WORSE for the planet than abundant, clean and inexpensive energy. Give it a try, you’ll see.
The point of Earth Hour was to vote by turning off your lights. Each vote counted. I voted. Did you?
>Can someone please help me out here:
>If an electric power company normally uses 10 tons of coal during a >particular time period on a particular day, and they anticipate no changes in >demand; then the power company will still use 10 tons of coal even if >everyone turns off every single electrical device. Where is the reduction in >CO2. (?) How long does it take a power company to adjust fuel usage to >demand (downwards)?
No, the vast majority of coal fired coal plant use pulverized fuel, which allows for fairly quick response times. It takes longer for the utility to send the load change dispatch (tell the plant to reduce load) than it does to make the load change. A typical coal fired plant can ramp output up/down by 5 or 6 megawatts per minute. All bets are off with a nuke plant however, *if* they do a load change (not likely), that requires pre-planning.
Interesting to note, in Ontario, Canada, the only units that shed load during “earth hour” were hydro-electric….all the CO2 producing natural gas plants (about 1000MW online at the time) stayed up.
>Or am I just missing something (probably). Wouldn’t it make more sense to >ask the power generating companies to reduce power by some % for some >length of time so we all get a good dose of the effect of reduced >consumption and feel good about reduced CO2? Oh wait, that will happen >enough this coming summer I guess, with rolling blackouts.
Power companies produce exactly the amount of power that is required at any given moment. This is how the frequency is maintained. Too little generation, and the grid frequency goes down, too much and the frequency goes up. It’s not negotiable 🙂 If a power company was to decide to just reduce load by some %, *all* the lights go out as all the generators start tripping offline….like the North American wide blackout a few years ago.
E.M.Smith, re tire pressures and adjusting them
The regulation does not apply to car-washes, but does apply to oil changers, mechanics, and smog-checkers.
Also, the tire-checkers and adjusters are to read the tire’s sidewall for the proper inflation pressure. What is not clear is how they are to adjust the pressure on a hot tire.
If anyone is interested in this 100-plus page document (produced at tax-payer expense), it may be found at
http://www.arb.ca.gov/regact/2009/tirepres09/tireisor.pdf
“Bogeymen of the C02 hoax losing ground
By Dr. Tim Ball
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you. Eric Hoffer
James Hansen, head of NASA Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS), and Andrew Weaver, lead author of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Reports, made statements clearly designed to frighten people.
Both men are politically active in climate change and at the forefront of the attempt to convince the world that CO2 is a problem. Their remarks are intended to scare people by threatening impending doom – nothing new – except there is increasing urgency and fear because their message is failing. As Andrew Weaver summarized, ”All those fossil fuel emissions need to be eliminated. And we must do so quickly if we are to have any chance of stabilizing the climate and maintaining human civilization as we know it.”
Hansen increases urgency for action claiming we are on the verge of a tipping point, defined as follows. “Tipping points can occur during climate change when the climate reaches a state such that strong amplifying feedbacks are activated by only moderate additional warming.”
We’re reaching a tipping point, but it’s not the one Hansen anticipates.”
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/9746
Re: Julian Gall (23:37:57) :
“I think this post misses the point. Earth Hour wasn’t about saving energy, it was a symbolic act to generate publicity and get people talking about it. This it has obviously done :)”
Nothing like moving the goal posts when the experiment fails.