Earth Hour This Saturday Is a Colossal Waste of Time and Energy.
Bjorn Lomborg
-No Lights to Turn Off-
On the evening of March 23, 1.3 billion people will go without light for the rest of the night—just like every other night of the year. With no access to electricity, darkness after sunset is a constant reality for these people.
See Copenhagen Consensus Center’s YouTube video http://youtu.be/9SVVADAX_cU with a different message for Earth Hour.
Earth Hour teaches us that tackling global warming is easy. Yet, by switching off the lights, all we are doing is making it harder to see.
Electricity has been a boon for humanity. And the cozy candles that many participants will light, which seem so natural and environmentally friendly, are still fossil fuels—and almost 100 times less efficient than incandescent light bulbs.
Read the full commentary on Slate . Translations in 6 languages are distributed worldwide and available at Project Syndicate http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/earth-hour-s-counterproductive-symbolism-by-bj-rn-lomborg
-Electric Cars Have A Dirty Little Secret-
Is the electric car green? Not really.
It easily emits more CO2 than a gasoline car, because its production (especially the battery) is so energy-intensive.
Even in an optimistic scenario, the electric car barely differ from conventional cars as measured by their carbon emissions. Read the full op-ed in Wall Street Journal http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324128504578346913994914472.html
-“Zero emissions” vehicles-
Bjorn Lomborg shows how electric cars are anything but “zero emission”. Electric cars are hugely carbon intensive to manufacture. Their driving distance is extremely short, so most consumers have not been interested in purchasing them (even with a generous tax credits of up to $7500). Lomborg joined Jenna Lee at Happening now to elaborate on the WSJ piece, see the interview on Fox News here http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/happening-now/index.html?playlist_id=86919&intcmp=features http://video.foxnews.com/v/2223634871001/zero-emissions-not-so-fast/?playlist_id=86919
He also explained the environmental impacts of electric cars to Melissa Francis on FoxBusiness http://www.foxbusiness.com/on-air/money-with-melissa-francis/index.html #http://video.foxnews.com/v/2226612790001/the-dirty-little-secret-behind-electric-cars/?playlist_id=1671716501001
-Cost of Feel-Good Energy-
In 2012 Germans paid €20 billion for green energy that otherwise could have been produced for about €3 billion. The extra cost is because of green subsidies that will have almost no effect on Global Warming even a 100 years from now. If all that money was spent on energy research instead, Germany would actually help solve Global Warming.
Lomborg’s article is listed as “Most important this week” in “Der Spiegel” in Germany behind paywall https://magazin.spiegel.de/reader/index_SP.html#j=2013&h=12&a=91568151
Snow Shut Down Congress
Lomborg was scheduled to testify for the US Congress on “How we need to think about global warming and what we need to do”, along with Dr. Judith Curry from Georgia Tech and Dr. William Chameides of Duke University — but ironically Congress was shut down because of a snowstorm that failed to materialize.
It was a bit puzzling for a Scandinavian native – we’re used to dealing with a lot of snow! The hearing has been re-scheduled for April 25, and in the meantime you can read his summary here http://lomborg.com/sites/default/files/Congress%20testimony%20March%202013.pdf
-Propping EU permits?-
The European Union should not approve a proposal to boost the price of carbon permits.
“The carbon price is low because we have had a big economic crisis so actually we are doing what the EU has promised to do, which is cutting the carbon emissions by 20 percent,” Lomborg said. “Wanting a higher carbon price is wanting to cut more than 20 percent. It is just pushing the policy goal which seems a little bit arbitrary at best.”
Read the full Reuters interview where Lomborg points to smarter solutions. http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/03/14/us-eu-carbon-lomborg-idUKBRE92D1DB20130314
-Australian Climate Damage-
When it comes to property damage in Australia, the climate has not produced an “angry summer”, but clearly this point is a thorn in the side of the Australian Climate Commission http://climatecommission.gov.au/media-releases/correction-misrepresentation-the-angry-summer you aren’t allowed to make that point.
A graph produced by two Australian commentators http://theconversation.edu.au/weighing-the-toll-of-our-angry-summer-against-climate-change-12793 shows this is clearly not the case. The graph uses peer-reviewed data that reflects changes in dwelling numbers and value, and an adjustment in the building code.
Follow Bjorn on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/bjornlomborg and read this and other commentary.
MODs the first Youtube link doesn’t work
Thanks, D.B.
While they are at it, perhaps they will only use one sheet of toilet paper per sitting.
The candles are perfectly green and non-fossil fuel if you make them from whale blubber 🙂
The UK may be “celebtrating it’s own version of earth hour, or earth day or earth week. It turns out they don’t have a lot of natural gas storage capacity and they are running very low on supplies. http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/03/21/uk-britain-gas-supply-crisis-idUKBRE92K0T120130321 Unfortunately, winters seems to want to hang on until at least the end of the month ane possible the middle of April. If they have any incadecents bulbs left, perhaps they can use them to warm their hands.
>>(http://climatecommission.gov.au/media-releases/correction-misrepresentation-the-angry-summer/) you aren’t allowed to make that point.
A graph produced by two Australian commentators (http://theconversation.edu.au/weighing-the-toll-of-our-angry-summer-against-climate-change-12793)
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Bad links
I’m finding hardly any of the links working.
Don’t forget Ross McKitrick’s excellent essay from 2009:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/17/earth-hour-a-dissent/
“Earth Hour celebrates ignorance, poverty and backwardness. By repudiating the greatest engine of liberation it becomes an hour devoted to anti-humanism. It encourages the sanctimonious gesture of turning off trivial appliances for a trivial amount of time, in deference to some ill-defined abstraction called “the Earth,” all the while hypocritically retaining the real benefits of continuous, reliable electricity.”
Who would want a climate scientist or environut near them when the lights go out, it would be just an excuse for them to produce a hockey stick. I hope universities produce guidelines for students on how to stay safe once the lights go out.
By now, the mods have probably already been alerted, but just in case … every one of the links has the close parenthesis tacked onto the link’s URL. Until the mods fix this, click on the link, then backspace over the close parenthesis and hit enter to view the link.
[Thanks, parentheses removed. — mod.]
“Yet, by switching off the lights, all we are doing is making it harder to see.”
And by switching off our brains, all we are doing is making it harder to think for ourselves. But that’s exactly what the “consensus” crowd wants us to do. Consensus is good because it promotes conformity. Thinking is bad because it promotes skepticism. Skeptics must be ridiculed, shamed, and shunned until they conform to the consensus and support “the cause.” This is an old political strategy that is now being used in the name of science.
They just want us to turn off the lights to keep us in the dark.
Dave says:
March 21, 2013 at 1:08 pm
While they are at it, perhaps they will only use one sheet of toilet paper per sitting.
*
Dave! The waste! At the very least, they should use both sides.
😀
I will only turn off the lights if it looks like my wife is in the mood.
I’ll turn up the heater, the forecast is a day below 0 C (that would be unprecedented for march 23rd in Holland)
The close parens have been removed from the text but not from the actual URLs. The links still don’t work by clicking on them.
[Reply: Thanks, parentheses removed. — mod.]
For us it here, will be the Hour of Power, as usual. The purpose of Earth Hour is to keep us all in the dark for just a bit longer.
Dave on March 21, 2013 at 1:08 pm
While they are at it, perhaps they will only use one sheet of toilet paper per sitting.
May I kindly recommend that perhaps most of our climate alarmists, environmental rent seekers, lawmakers, and bureaucrats will actually have to use at least a whole roll of toilet paper for each one per each sitting.
On a slightly different topic I find it interesting that, as a society, we used to abhor censorship, police states, and the insidious practice of book burning, yet we are heading in that direction and if we are not careful we may very well find out that they are us. May I suggest that turning out all the lights on ‘Earth Day’ is, in the end, really not all that dissimilar from the same brand of darkness that is book burning.
Do all the people who got hit by Sandy have to do this, or can they charge against the time that they were without power?
I turn all my outside house lights on.
I have Enlightenment Hour 🙂
Didn’t we just have one of these exercises in futility? I’ll probably be watching basketball with all the lights I need on.
On the Earth First, flat earth, know nothing cult of light switch witches of east anglia university.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_factor
Down page to:
Importance of Power Factor in Distribution and Transmission Systems for Electricity.
When you turn off lights you raise the power factor and that uses more energy.
Fools need to spend 90 days without electricty and then make fool choices like this.
Every time I hear a Republican talk about the burden the national debt places on our children, I cringe. We’re heading for an economic crisis that will make the ’80s pale, and long before our children reach maturity. Besides, we never pay off our national debt. And when I hear Bjorn Lomborg chastise the warmists for their little fantasy about electric cars, I cringe. He believes in the CO2 model for warming, and endorses that nonsense by nit picking it. Earth’s climate follows the Sun, and CO2 follows the warming or cooling! It’s time to turn out the lights on Dr. Lomborg.
Smokey, smokes them out 🙂
I thought that earth hour was the hour to make as much light as you can so alien life forms can see it. If you can’t see it from space, you didn’t try hard enough.