The WWF sponsored Earth Hour has already come and gone in the Korean time zone, and the North Korean proletariat has claimed a stunning victory over its evil capitalist neighbor, South Korea.
Oh, wait.
Seems it is always that way.
I like this line from Alan Caruba at the link above:
Like fire, electricity is truly a gift of the gods. It is the difference between the Dark Age and the present age…
I know WUWT carried this photo before, but it is always good to regularly remind ourselves how much we have to be thankful for.
It also reminds me that if we could get our hands on North Korean surface temperature records, we’d be able to get a minimally UHI polluted signal. – Anthony
Be sure to check out this post:
Tracking Earth Hour in the Greenest State
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CBS TV News in New York just reported a billion people took part in Earth Hour while showing a backdrop of a very well lit NYC.
Pat Moffitt (21:44:23) :
Yes, and lots of images of people holding lit candles.
The backdrop of a well-lit city is par for the Utility Co. course.
They make money off of all residents through the Street Lighting Act, which has been around since the 1910’s. It’s figured into your bill, and they are not about to turn that stuff off. It’s hardwired. There is no separate circuit.
How come there are numerous lights in a line about 20 miles ‘offshore’?
SQUID fishing. It’s done at night and uses the brightest lights one can imagine.
A squid fleet has much more glow at a distance than a city. Not because there is more lighting as such, but because the lack of walls and roofs and reflection off the water means it gets beamed at almost 100%.
David Segesta:
“I guess this goes without saying but that map is a classic illustration of the success of capitalism vs the dismal failure of socialism.”
Just scroll up and you’ll see another “socialist” country, China, which should render your comment a bit questionable.
P.S.
There’s a big difference between socialism and social democracy, btw, the former being the favorite straw man used in U.S. political discussions and the latter probably being closer to the ideas that democrats/Obama are trying to push.
harrywr2 (12:16:23) :
Steve Goddard (11:15:52) :
“North Korea has universal health care, but not universal electricity.”
If there is no electricity 12 hours a day then one doesn’t have agonize over whether to ‘pull the plug’ on life support equipment.
———————————————————–
…. And North Korea really does have Death Panels.
Yes, I know that earth hour is symbolic, but as a measure of effectiveness, it is virtually worthless and is a red herring. Earth hour demonstrates the hypocrisy of the warmists. They are demanding action against climate change, but most are not doing anything of any substance to reduce their own emissions. The math says earth hour is a joke, in terms of energy savings. There are 8,766 hours in a year. Cutting your lights for one hour per year is only 0.0114% of the total hours in a year. What about the other 99.9886% of the time? The average energy savings for a residence that observes earth hour is less than the annual energy consumed by a single neon pilot lamp built into an illuminated light switch. Why aren’t the organizers of earth hour encouraging persons to make an effort to reduce their electricity usage by 10% to 20% on an ongoing basis? Perhaps they are too busy rubbing their hands together in anticipation of the riches that will be reaped onto them in the future with their carbon trading schemes?
@Mikael Lönnroth (22:23:22) :
P.S.
There’s a big difference between socialism and social democracy, btw, the former being the favorite straw man used in U.S. political discussions and the latter probably being closer to the ideas that democrats/Obama are trying to push.
– – – – – –
Pls. explain the difference between socialism and social democracy. Don’t both use the same methods, i.e. taxing the wealth of persons who earned it and transferring a portion of that wealth to persons who did not earn it? BTW, the USA is not a democracy, it is a constitutional republic.
Re: davidmhoffer (17:13:20) and rbateman (17:27:36)
Looks like we went right by each other in the moderation fog. 😉 Hope I addressed enough of you concerns in kadaka (17:13:18).
If you’re going for durability over absolute efficiency, you can’t beat an inverter running off a car battery. Add in a battery charger and call it a UPS. Deep cycle would be better, and sure, we have better sealed units, like the ones used for home-based “renewable” power, but both of those types can be rather heavy and there is that shipping issue… Once you have that system, you can charge the battery off a running vehicle with jumper cables or just some electrical wire that’s large enough. However they also sell the mentioned inexpensive “battery charging” 12V solar panels that simply plug into the cigar lighter, excuse me, the “power” outlet. After a quick trip to either an electronics or auto parts store for a “wire to outlet” hookup for the final connection (if you don’t want to cut off the plug end which might have electrical stuff inside), you have about the lowest-maintenance most trouble-free system you can get, suitable for third-world use or in your own backyard. Just keep the inverter from getting wet and you should be fine.
Mikael Lönnroth (22:23:22) :
(…)
P.S.
There’s a big difference between socialism and social democracy, btw, the former being the favorite straw man used in U.S. political discussions and the latter probably being closer to the ideas that democrats/Obama are trying to push.
Today’s Republicans are similar to Kennedy-era Democrats, while the current administration and allies are a good deal further left…
However, while Googling around for those specific terms you used, I found something that is making my brain lock up and shut down for self preservation.
Will someone please confirm the following is a joke? The overwhelming contradictions are about to make my head explode!
Oh no, I couldn’t resist. I clicked on the “Platform” link, read their environmental goals and plans. The WWF should be very happy with that part of their agenda.
Please, someone show me why that site is not to be taken seriously!
Mikael Lönnroth (22:23:22) :
P.S.
There’s a big difference between socialism and social democracy, btw, the former being the favorite straw man used in U.S. political discussions and the latter probably being closer to the ideas that democrats/Obama are trying to push.
Lenin’s party, pre-revolution, was the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party. The Bolsheviks (majorityists) and the Mensheviks (minorityists) were just rival factions.
By the way, Hitler’s party was the National Socialist Worker’s Party of Germany. Pick the bones out of that. John Ray of Greenie Watch wrote a good essay arguing that Hitler was a Socialist.
I am waiting for the “Green” team to jump all over Christmas lighting and try to force people not to celebrate the hoilday as all that extra cooking and extra lighting must drive them crazy.
Wife loves decorating the house and all the extra baking.
Even if the entire world switch of all the fossil fuels and all the pollutants, and if the entire world stop deforestation, if the entire world stop using chemicals for food production, house cleaning, washing, etc, the greenhouse effect and planet warming will not go away. The whole lot is now in a self-destruct mode, and it will take hundreds of years to recover. Me think.
Bamboric.
tonyb: those are fishing fleets and stuff
me being a college student we the boarders of hall 9 in the national institute of technology durgapur,india observed earth hour by switching off all electronic appliances between 8:30 to 9:30 pm IST.
View from the Solent (16:50:47) :
That’s strange. At 2030 the steady demand decline (almost) stopped. I wonder if that is typical for a Saturday evening ?
They can’t account for the decline, and I think that’s a travesty.
The World Wildlife Fund’s poster child is North Korea…
Of course Hitler was a socialist – so was Mussolini. Facism (National Socialism) is a left-wing doctrine, believing as it does in centralistation – the power of the state over the inddividual. the British National Party is a left-wing organisation. Mussolini spoke in Soho Square, London at the Scoialist International of 1912 iirc, and that was a Soviet-led meeting.
Re IK poiwer usages last night:
“That’s strange. At 2030 the steady demand decline (almost) stopped. I wonder if that is typical for a Saturday evening ?”
I would guess it’s typical. Working class people eat early but many middle class people would be cooking at that hour – I was; also some having just got back to the pub and some before going out! And many more sitting down to prime time telly – esp if there was “Match of the Day” or some other big Sky Sports fixture showing. After that some go to to bed early – others go out on the town, so it’;s lights off (though like many singletons I tend to leave lights on esp when I’m out – for the burglars, or for anyone who follows me home. Or I did in London; it’s not such an issue in the country
I’m probably very unusual on here in having spent much of my early life living as the Warmists would like us to, on various Mediterranean islands or in the S of France, with no running water nor electricity, and no car. By the time I was farming in Tuscany we had the luxury of 1KW which came across the hills on a rickety line festoooned on poles: to use the washing machine we had to turn off the freezer. And all the water from the washing machine was channelled down into the veg garden in a system of buckets and runnells. I didn’t learn to drive til I was 40 when I returned to England. I’ve always bought 2nd hand, used every scrap of food (I was born in the days of rationing) and mended rather than thrown out stuff. So my carbon footprint has been mnimal (and I was an ‘environmentalist’ in the late 1960s, before it was any kind of fashion).
One thing I can tell you is, unless you have servants, living like that is a full-time job and leaves you neither energy nor time for art, writing, social life etc – and you’re too damn tired anyway for much besides the basics of living esp in winter. It’s tiring and fairly soul-destroying after a few years, even in a warm climate; in a colder climate it would be pretty hellish.
Man did not rise above the brute until he started to harness energy through technology. At that point, the ‘elite’ began to emply servants… or those lower in the pecking order of the tribe did the manual work. Go figure.
We had the Earth Hour Poster plastered all over the workplace – “See the Light, Switch Off”, is the punchline. I kid you not.
Now if that ain’t a religious statement….
I did my best, turning all the lights on, not just to protest the fake green religion, but because even on my modest salary, light is an essential, not a luxury.
WWF should stick to wild life.
High-larious.
Earth Hour in North Korea a stunning success
Well, it definitely is a stunning success for at least one hour each year. Like a broken timepiece that correctly shows the time twice-a-day.
Bill Tuttle (16:22:57) :
TonyB (13:14:48) :
How come there are numerous lights in a line about 20 miles ‘offshore’?
Fishing boats — thousands of them.
Some of the lights may be fishing fleets but Ullung-Do Island is the main lights that you can see. Try a Google Earth.
By the way, Earth Hour Shanghai……..zada, zip, nothing, zero! Nobody knew about it !
That title and picture are funny !
It defines the link between killing capitalism and desires of the wacko greens.
Pete H (21:52:47) :
Bill Tuttle (16:22:57) :
TonyB (13:14:48) :
“How come there are numerous lights in a line about 20 miles ‘offshore’?”
“Fishing boats — thousands of them.”
Some of the lights may be fishing fleets but Ullung-Do Island is the main lights that you can see. Try a Google Earth.
Ullong-Do is just peeking up from the bottom-center of the pic, Pete. Look for the thin yellow outline.
The huge blob — the main lights — is a large concentration of boats. They extend mega-candlepower lights on outriggers and produce a much larger “footprint” when viewed from above. Or, rather, below, since what they’re trying to attract is below.
darthskywalker (06:26:57) :
me being a college student we the boarders of hall 9 in the national institute of technology durgapur,india observed earth hour by switching off all electronic appliances between 8:30 to 9:30 pm IST.
How did you know when it was time to turn them back on?
Any answer other than looking at the luminous dial of a stem-wound watch may make you want to think some more…