Earth Hour comes to every time zone at 8:30 PM today. Will it make a difference?
Their website says:
On Earth Hour hundreds of millions of people around the world will come together to call for action on climate change by doing something quite simple—turning off their lights for one hour. The movement symbolizes that by working together, each of us can make a positive impact in this fight, protecting our future and that of future generations. Learn more about how Earth Hour began, what we’ve accomplished, and what is in store for 2010.
As many WUWT readers know, I’m all for energy efficiency and conservation when applied in a meaningful way. For example, a few months back, I retrofitted my home with some very cool LED recessed lighting. You can read my About page to see some of my other energy saving projects.
WUWT readers also know that I’m against Catlinesque stunts. Earth Hour, while born of good intentions, is one of those stunts that really doesn’t amount to any long term meaningful energy savings. In fact it doesn’t really even amount to any short term savings.
For example, last year, according to the California Independent System Operator (CAISO), Earth Hour made zero difference to the California power consumption. Zero, zip, nada. Have a look at the graph:
Big Hat tip to Roger Sowell for the graphs:
Some greens were quick to point out “but look the power dropped then”.
Yah, it does that every day about that time:
If there was a big effect from Earth Hour, you’d see a step event as everybody turned off their lights in Califonia. Plus, the greens don’t seem to realize that no power plants get switched off, so there’s really no CO2 savings. The power plants are run based on demand forecast. Short term spikes from well intentioned stunts really don’t make a blip of difference to Co2 emissions.
For WUWT readers that wish to track this year’s California Earth Hour impact in real time, you can visit the CAISO tracker:
http://www.caiso.com/outlook/SystemStatus.html
Have fun. Let us know what you did for Earth Hour.
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UPDATE: Thanks to a commenter challenge, I was obliged to look for some other real-time power monitoring locations, this one in Ontario Canada for example:
http://www.ieso.ca/imoweb/siteShared/demand_price.asp?sid=ic
For a fun project, WUWT readers can find their own local power reporting website and post up results here, and I’ll do a new post showcasing the effects of Earth Hour worldwide.
To post images or screencaps in comments use http://www.tinypic.com/ or a similar service and just paste the full image URL in the comments, no tags needed. – Anthony
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I recall “the big blackout’ in the 60’s.
A town resident hereabouts recalls hearing shots fired and the sound of running feet….civilization is a thin veneer.
Re: barry (Mar 27 19:09),
Turn it up Bazza. Nothing of the sort lies behind this event.
If, leading up to Earth Hour, wealthy nations had installed base power grids to some impoverished African villages, and the power was turned on whilst the rest of us turned off, THAT would show the goodness of the human spirit.
You’re right about the “symbolic” gesture. Not a single CO2 molecule was stopped from entering the atmosphere. Just like the various carbon taxes, trading schemes etc not a tenth of a degree of warmth will be removed from the earth energy budget but it will cost an arm and a leg. All the less to be able to help the impoverished of this world.
They can stick their symbolism up where the sun don’t shine.
The Ontario graph doesn’t seem to show the real time use, just the projected use.
The California graph, although not a step decrease does show the decrease starting at 8 pm instead of the predicted 9 pm, so people were turning off, however the actual use was much higher than projected, so I call it a tie.
Here is a wonderful short article by Ross McKitrick regards Earth Hour.
via Donna Laframboise nofrakkingconsensus
Full article in pdf (single page) here
Did people actually just sit in the dark for earth hour? or did they move around using battery-fueled torches, thus contributing far more to CO2 generation than they would burning one or two electric lamps? Or did they burn candles that produce far more CO2 for the emission of far less light than even an incandescent electric bulb – oh. and where do they think the wax came from to make the candle (assuming it wasn’t very expensive bee’s wax)? – that dreadful ‘ fossil fuel’, oil. I suggest that if these people are real they try to get by with no use of electricity – including batteries – and burning no fossil-sourced fuel – for a week.It may remove that rosy glow of smugness.
paullm (09:37:30) :
Hmmmmmmmm……by the response here at WUWT it occurred to me that it would be very amusing if electricity demand INCREASED for “earth hour”! Now, that would REALLY make my day.
Calgary, AB, Canada – 2009 earth hour…. we actually used more energy. The temperature dropped as per our chaotic (ok unpredictable) weather, but more importantly a hockey game was on. I’m a hockey fan, so I can relate. I am all for saving energy, if it in fact saves me money.
If you think that is interesting, try reading this article about how a televised hockey game is somehow exempt from Earth Hour in AGW friendly British Columbia:
http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Earth+Hour+affect+essential+Canucks+game/2726181/story.html
Anthony, here are the East Coast of Australia results for Earth Hour:
http://www.aemo.com.au/data/price_demand.html
For each states Graph got to the section labelled CURRENT DISPATCH INTERVAL PRICE AND DEMAND GRAPHS and click on each in turn. Note there were no big dips in power usage (green line in each) and in both Victoria and SA there were large spikes in usage at about 11pm.
In the country that invented it, it was a big failure despite their claims to the contrary.
Another exciting and meaningful reduction in electricity use … Earth Hour is shown by the red rectangle, thick red line is electricity usage …
REPLY: Yep, and I just finished a new post saying the same thing. – Anthony
Sydney has a “massive” drop in power that made it to the front page of the Herald … a 6 % drop … from what looks like mostly public structures.
Perhaps the public is starting to wake up to the AGW scam ?
Light Rain, this site shows real Ontario power use.
http://www.sygration.com/gendata/today.html
Willis Eschenbach (22:56:45) : edit
Of course you did … way kul. Congrats on the forty million, and best wishes for many more.
“DirkH (16:48:10) :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_environmental_dates”
Which just goes to show you this is a religion heavily based on Catholicism’s numerous holidays, centralised power, abuse of power, purchasing of indulgences, etc
No wonder they hate the church so much and ally themselves with Islamists and Marxists. It’s envy.
I did my part. One of the 100 watt floodlights for our backyard burned out sometime between 8:30 and 9.
I also managed to get through the time leading up to “Earth Hour” without giving the kids in the commercials the finger this year, although there was the one time when I did blurt out “The polar bears don’t give a crap, you little commies”.
All in all, “Earth Hour” went well for me this year.
@kwik (09:08:37) :
A better approach might be to just turn off power in all of Norway for, say, a week every year
—————————————————————-
Pllllease! – dont even joke about it!, we need your support on the grid for our wind-farms
http://www.energinet.dk/Integrationer/ElOest/ElsystemetLigeNu/energinet1.swf
What would be better would be to b;ow the power lines to Gore’s palace, it would take time to restore power, maybe days if enough utility poles were down, that would save more power than Norway. Earth hour is pointless and unhelpfull, normal people who pay for their own power use it wisely so all this green shit is just that.
earth hour 2010 in Belgium …
http://i44.tinypic.com/2ir0ieq.jpg
I did an analysis of the first Earth Hour in Sydney. Enough people responded as to have a noticeable effect. However, the effect was counterproductive. There was a significant spike in electricity use in the hour before 8:30 as everybody, it seems, got their cooking and air conditioning done, then a significant drop in the hour itself. Total electricity consumption change was insignificant, in the 0-2% range, but here’s the thing: the spike in use the hour before 8:30 was large enough to produce a daily peak in electricity use in Sydney that day. Networks, of course, are not configured to average use, but to peak use. By creating a daily peak, Earth Hour is stressing the network and, other things being equal, bringing forward the day when new investment in generation and transmission has to occur. Peaky use of electricity is not environmentally friendly. Earth Hour fails by actually achieving the exact opposite of helping the environment. There isn’t a way Earth Hour makes sense – at least to anybody who cares about helping the environment.
You americans are really like big-headed morons. THE EARTH HOUR EVENT IS NOT SUPPOSED RESULT IN ANY DROP OF ENERGY CONSUPTION! It’s more like a publicity stunt to wake up people to care about our nature and climate. Please don’t make yourselves look like idiots debating against this event. It reminds millions of people to care about our nature.
And to be honest I don’t personally take part in any eco-stunts or act for the nature and that’s not because global warming isn’t “a real deal” but because I don’t care cause it does not affect me (yet) ( And yes: I’m stupid like other regular people but not as stupid as you who debate over whether the Earth Hour event actually saves power.)
PS. Go to school and get some education (or better pray for God for some intelligence…) not only because of this article and its comments but some other things you americans have so proudly said and done.
A Guy from Finland.
The best use of Earth hour would be to turn off all television transmitters for the full hour. The world would be a better place.
I like 05:35:41!
It’s like the brick in the toilet thing to save water. Too many bricks and the sewer system doesn’t work correctly anymore to wash the poop downstream!
At 8:30pm on 3/27/2010 I was sitting next my campfire with 29 other folks after a beautiful day of paddling. We burned some nicely split oak logs in celebration.
I’m happy to say that during Earth Hour I celebrated the human achievements that have given us the lifestyle that we can enjoy. I had all the lights in the house on, I was listening to music and working on the computer. My daughter was watching a DVD and we were using the dishwasher to wash our dishes. Earlier in the evening my wife and I drove to a local restaurant where we dined on food that was brought to our little corner of the world from much further than 100 miles away
Until they turn the power off at the source for that hour I will continue to use the power that human ingenuity has supplied for our daily use.
I also plan to continue to expel CO2 and methane for the rest of my life and long after I am dead.
Well thought out, but not very effective, since people are aware of the AGW scam. Some may even recall the line from the ’70s tune “Shiver in the dark”.
Rather than be brainwashed into flocking to the sheepfold of the eco-tyrants, they chose liberty.
Yes, Americans can be dumb, 52% are simply fooled but us english ,perhaps started the stupidity when after 6 years of fighting socialists we voted in a socialist government, who now have wrecked the place. Speaking of manipulative fascists we come to earth hour, just plain stupid/see who are the sheeple thing. I just ignored it and had a laugh at the sheep!
If you really want to help earth stop buying from India and China (stop for a month or so and then they will go skint)