UPDATE: EcoSnoop responds – see below.
Now, you can rat on your neighbors, your company, even your friends and family. Thanks to EcoSnoop, there’s an app for that.
This can also be useful for catching those who talk the talk, but don’t walk the walk. This might just backfire on more than a few people. But since the green movement started this Stasi-esque information gathering campaign on “eco-offenders” [their word], that makes it OK to snap photos of green activists too, right? I could see some examples. Bill McKibben leaves lights on after leaving a room? Joe Romm takes his car instead of the bus? Monbiot lets his car idle at a stoplight? Jim Hansen uses electricity generated by coal? William Connolley leaves his computer on after a frenzied all-nighter of Wikipedia editing? Gore uses the elevator to his penthouse suite in SFO rather than take the stairs? Lots of opportunity there.
Now before the usual suspects get up in arms about my satire, let me say that I’m a fan of energy conservation. As many readers know, I walk the walk with my own energy saving measures. In fact just last week I upgraded part of my office to LED lighting, and I’m so impressed with it I’m going to showcase the product here. I’m not, however, going to turn in my neighbor because he left his porch light on one night or forgot to turn off his sprinkler when it rains. Yet you’ll find examples like that on the EcoSnoop web page. [Update: EcoSnoop has now removed those, saying they were “demo images” – see their note below -A]
Here’s what they say about the iPhone app campaign:
EcoSnoop for iPhone is an activism tool that allows green-aware users to assist and encourage corporate green initiatives.
What’s the big deal?
It has been estimated that as much as 30% of the energy consumed in office buildings is wasted.
This suggests a significant opportunity for energy use reduction, cost savings, and the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions through cost-effective energy efficiency opportunities.
To help identify the best opportunities, both from the perspective of the building owner and the utility, it is important to examine how, where, and when energy is used and the savings are likely to occur. (Excerpt taken from the National Action Plan for Energy Efficiency Sector Collaborative on Energy Efficiency Office Building Energy Use Profile)
Q: How can I help using my iPhone?
A: Users locate and report on eco-offenders by submitting pictures and descriptions of blatant abuse and misuse issues.
Q: What happens with my pictures?
A:The EcoSnoop website and iPhone applications are a centralized repository of environmental awareness and a tool for actively promoting energy conservancy and green awareness. By using the EcoSnoop iPhone application, the user becomes an important link in the chain of helping to report and mediate green waste (energy, pollution, etc.). Additionally, by going yourself and encouraging friends to utilize the website to add as much information as possible about the picture (address information, responsible party information, etc.) you are giving the EcoSnoop community the tools to encourage positive change!
EcoSnoop: We need your help saving the world…1 picture at a time.
Online: EcoSnoop.com
Twitter: @EcoSnoop
*An Appency Press Video Promo Reel – www.theappencypress.com*
h/t to WUWT reader Steve Keohane
UPDATE: A response from EcoSnoop who called me personally via telephone. Since their message seems to have missed the mark, I offered to elevate their message here. I believe this to be a sincere and reasonable response, and certainly nobody among us likes to see government or corporations waste energy. But the implementation here invites abuse. They ask for suggestions, let’s offer them some. – Anthony
{Anthony, for a posting to all users}
All,
Thank you for very much for the spirited conversation. We clearly have a lot of work to do to get EcoSnoop tuned into a constructive tool.
EcoSnoop is aimed at helping Government building owners understand when they are wasting energy. Energy efficiency hopefully is a non controversial solution in that it saves money, emissions and enhances national security. Our current policy is to prevent the posting of any information about ones residence. Unfortunately some old demo pictures are on the site, and they will be removed.
Our objective is to educate people on energy waste, not call them out. Our newer version which is still in work masks the location to all but the person who submits and the person who owns the building.
EcoSnoop is an evolving social community. As community, we need to maintain a certain decorum to assure everyone benefits from the “networks” observations to eliminate waste. As such, we ask that everyone follow some basic rules:
•Respect the Views of Others – EcoSnoop is not a political platform. EcoSnoop is about using technology and social networking to help people, companies and communities understand how awareness can eliminate waste, reduced CO2 output, and save money.
•No Personal Attacks – Do not use EcoSnoop to single out and attack people or companies. The best way to help people understand is through better information and cooperation. In taking pictures and making notes on the EcoSnoop site, think about what information will help a person or company understand how energy efficiency and waste reduction can help them improve profitability and community appeal.
•Avoid Mentioning Company Names – It is helpful to identify opportunities and describe ways to improve, but EcoSnoop finds the property owners take action quicker if they are not threatened or attacked. Sometimes when lights are left on at night it might be a simple instance of light night maintenance rather than persistent waste. The EcoSnoop community assumes everyone is well meaning, so given them a chance to take action. If they take no action, assume there is a good reason or work to better educate.
Since we are evolving, we are open to your ideas and suggestions. Please feel free to send your comments to us at snoop@ecosnoop.com.
Aaron,
No the app will never be used on individuals. These [snip] will never resort to such tactics, they will never want to push their agenda on anybody else. Sheesh.
Stalin would be so pleased. What bugs me is the young woman probably knows nothing of the big brother state that was Stalinist Russia. How many “snoops” sent people to their deaths in the Gulag I wonder? Will their be a Gulag for us enviro-offenders?
OT, but important news : the french “taxe carbone”, which was to come into force on january 1st, has just been cancelled by the Conseil Constitutionnel. For French readers, see here : http://skyfal.free.fr/?p=468
@Jabba
You mean the kind of person dumb enough to walk around snapping pictures of smoke stacks to alleviate their eco-guilt?
Would someone turn in EcoSnoop.com on EcoSnoop.com for all of the offices, servers, routers and monitors left on 24/7 for a worthless cause please. Waste, waste, waste!
iStasi?
iNformant?
As for Stacy The Newsreader, I don’t get the vibes from her that she thought this was good, rather that this was a particularly distasteful part of her job. It would be interesting to compare her talking about other apps.
ahhhh there’s no fascist like a progressive econut greenie fascist.
They are so much smarter, so much better, so much right . . . we should all just bow down to their superior wisdom.
When the great book is written about the global warming hysteria of this era, they’ll be the pigs in the eco farmyard.
Just talking to my 27 year old son about this and we have come up with a plan. Every time one of us releases methane into our immediate atmosphere we are using his iphone to record the offense and offender, mostly him. Incidentally we live right across from a dairy farm. Should we report every time a cow farts!
It has been estimated that as much as 99% of all factoids stated on environmental websites are made up.
rbateman: Clever. . .
but eco-warriors do not use gadgets like ipods anyway, do they?
it surely must be against their religion?
but if they did they would be commiting a sin, no?
if they use a gadget like an ipod they then must report them selves right?
self regulatory in the end I think
Ah, when do the public denunciations begin? Oh, already.
How about the public confessions?
I appreciate the Stasi references, which are perfectly appropriate, but this reminds me more of the Chinese Cultural Referendum. I had a friend who lived through that — she told me that you had to have very few friends, but you trusted them absolutely, literally with your life. Anyone outside that circle, you didn’t trust at all. She was shocked that in North America our friendships are so casual. How could that be, when choosing in whom to confide is a matter of life and death?
I was expecting Stacy to ask me if she could take my order. Instead, she went on talking about some foolish iPhone application. I’m hungry and disappointed.
SSam (12:26:08)
Google maps satellite view excellent, even has a Hansen ‘death train’ in the bottom left corner.
[snip]
Well,
You guys have a lot of energy and anger. You make many relevant points that we can use to make the site serve its purpose.
Though we have seemingly failed in the message, EcoSnoop is focusing on helping people eliminate waste that they are not aware of. Folks like Al Gore want us to waste Trillions to change our economy to eliminate CO2 emissions. Would you like a constructive alternative?
We could get a quick payback and save money if we simply knew when we were wasting energy. The 30% in energy savings for buildings quoted in our material and questioned in this message trail is a well documented and proven fact (See research by Texas A&M). EcoSnoop is intended as a business application, but as you point out we seem to have missed the mark.
I personally am keen to help people save money through energy efficiency, and as a second benefit reduce emissions as a hedge. No one should be using EcoSnoop for personal attacks, stalking or any other invasive purpose.
You can direct your thoughts to snoop@ecosnoop.com. We are happy to listen to rational suggestions.
doing a little snooping of the MSM and found this fascinating:
28 Dec: Wash Times: EDITORIAL: Biased reporting on Climategate
Associated Press coverage raises eyebrows
To judge by recent coverage from Associated Press, the Fourth Estate watchdog has acted like a third-rate pocket pet. Case in point is an 1,800-word AP missive that appeared in hundreds of publications, many carrying it on the front page of their Sunday, Dec. 13 issue with the headline, “Science not faked, but not pretty.” AP gave three scientists copies of the controversial e-mails and then asked them about their conclusions. The wire service portrayed the trio of scientists as dismissing or minimizing allegations of scientific fraud when, in fact, the scientists believe no such thing.
The first scientist quoted in the article, Mark Frankel, is director of scientific freedom, responsibility and law at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. AP quotes him as concluding that there is, “no evidence of falsification or fabrication of data, although concerns could be raised about some instances of very ‘generous interpretations.'” While the article mentions that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and some Republican lawmakers are calling for independent investigations, AP doesn’t note the views of the scientists they interviewed.
When The Washington Times talked to Mr. Frankel, the scientist gave a quite different impression. The e-mails, he said, are not sufficient to reach any judgment at all on whether the data or science was faked or misleading. “You can’t do that on the e-mails alone, you can’t do it on the e-mails or the program,” he concluded. For that reason, Mr. Frankel supports investigation of East Anglia and related allegations of fraud at Pennsylvania State University.
There’s a big difference between saying that there isn’t sufficient evidence to determine if falsification of data occurred – and that there should be an investigation – and saying, as AP did: “Science not faked.”
Mr. Frankel also believes outsiders to the two schools should be asked to take part. “You should be willing and open to going to outside people to be part of your inquiry,” he advised. “If I were Penn State, I would certainly be advising them to be very open to the possibility of bringing in one or two people who have impeccable credentials, well-respected, to join in ….”
Arizona State University professor Dan Sarewitz is quoted by AP as saying, “This is normal science politics, but on the extreme end, though still within bounds.” However, Mr. Sarewitz wasn’t speaking about the validity of the climate science; he was discussing his belief that politics infects how most scientific research is conducted. While AP used the quote to suggest that there was nothing terribly wrong that had been revealed in Climategate, Mr. Sarewitz was trying to issue a warning that politics infects too much science and that reporters, politicians and the public are naive about that reality.
As he told The Washington Times, “When the human underside (of science) gets revealed, then suddenly people are disillusioned and they say, ‘Oh, how shocking!’ But it’s not particularly shocking.” Indeed, Mr. Sarewitz suggests that reporters ask scientists about their political views. (For the record, he is a liberal Democrat.) He also is skeptical of the university investigations, particularly if they don’t include outsiders. “I think they should have external people [involved in the investigations]. Certainly. … The challenge here might be, can you find people who are independent but also understand the science well enough to really tell (if there was wrongdoing)?”
The third scientist interviewed by AP, professor Gerald North at Texas A&M University, joined Mr. Frankel and Mr. Sarewitz in hoping that climate data would be more readily shared in the future. He told us he also thinks it is important that investigations proceed at the two universities.
The Washington Times tried to raise these issues with the reporters and editors involved, but Jack Stokes, AP’s manager of media relations, said that none of the five reporters who worked on the article nor their editors had time to answer questions.
If AP refuses to explain how it could have given readers across the planet such a distorted view of Climategate, maybe an explanation can be found buried in the article itself. One of the reporters, Seth Borenstein, the AP science reporter who writes on global warming and who is the lead author on the piece, is part of the Climategate story himself. In the last sentence of the article, the authors note that the archive of disputed Climategate e-mails “includes a request from an AP reporter, one of the writers of this story, for reaction to a study, a standard step for journalists seeking quotes for their stories.”
But Mr. Borenstein’s e-mail was hardly standard and far from neutral. In it, the reporter disparages Marc Morano, a critic of man-made global-warming claims, as “hyping wildly” the study that Mr. Borenstein asked scientists to comment on. The e-mail almost makes it appear as if Mr. Borenstein were asking those involved in Climategate to help him discredit critics of man-made global warming.
East Anglia and Penn State are not the only two institutions that need to answer questions about what is going on behind the scenes.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/dec/28/biased-reporting-on-climategate/?feat=article_top10_read
At my end of the wood, the hysteria concerning the next “Millenium bug” has started to show it’s ugly head (the “Year 2038 bug” will cause all seconds in computers to “run out” in 2038 at 03:14:07 ).
oh, save us all from journalists…
I can’t wait for the first trials. A smart lawyer would be able to turn them around and have the eco-idiots put in jail for harassment.
Flood the site with pictures of hypocritical greenies like John Travolta with his fleet of jets, and Al Gore with his mansion. Shove the truth down their throats!
I’ve already tried the app to take a photo of this horrendous waste of fossil fuel
As people cut their utilization of electricity, water, gas, etc., just watch the utilities and other energy providers boost the rates to pay for the infrastructure. Increasing utilization is the only way to keep it cheap. Besides, do these people really think Brazil, India and China haven’t already evaluated every bit of the CRU whistleblown data?
In one uber green analysis over at one of the lefty blogs, the author *seriously* stated he thought China was just using Cop-15 as a ruse so they could leapfrog the rest of the world in installing super clean energy technology. I’m betting China is realizing how beneficial their own CO2 has been to their agricultural efforts and will be laughing all their way to the bank (especially if they can get the industrialized nations to fall on their eco-swords). TaDa! Enter…. EcoSpy! The first step in self destruction.
“We are happy to listen to rational suggestions.”
How about changing your basic premise that somehow CO2 is harmful or the cause of any problem at all? And if it is, why not advocate the replacement of CO2 generating power production with power production from sources such as nuclear power with recycled fuel that would generate practically no CO2 and would result in such abundant energy supplies that “conservation” would no longer be an issue. In fact, rates would plummet and incentives would be given by producers for users to increase their consumption, not decrease it.
It is in our power with technology available right now to create that reality. It isn’t some technology that relies on unicorns, rainbows, fluffy bunnies and butterflies.
@ur momisugly crosspatch (13:21:05) :
So here in the USA we plant more trees which makes us feel better, and in the dirt-poor countries they end up deforesting with slash-and-burn agriculture to get enough food to survive, which makes us feel better since we are greener than they are. “Being green” is all about doing what makes us feel good. So what’s the downside?
SSam (12:26:08)
Is that Highway 61 to the west?
Now the rovin’ gambler he was very bored
He was tryin’ to create a next world war
He found a promoter who nearly fell off the floor
He said I never engaged in this kind of thing before
But yes I think it can be very easily done
We’ll just put some bleachers out in the sun
And have it on Highway 61.