(Update: see the trend graph I found on Earth Hour popularity below.)
Otherwise, we celebrate living in North Korea:
The Earth Hour stunt wants people to turn off their lights from 8:30-9:30PM local time. I plan on having our lights on.
Bjørn Lomborg writes on his Facebook page:
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1.3 billion people in the world live without electricity. Celebrating darkness at Earth Hour sends the wrong message.
Unfortunately, Earth Hour tonight is nothing but an ineffective feel-good event. It does little for the climate in terms of reducing CO2 emissions and distracts us from the real problems and solutions — especially giving light to those in the darkness.
Read my new column in USA Today: http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/03/27/bjorn-lomborg-earth-hour-electricity-column/6975265/
And watch a 2-minute video by the Copenhagen Consensus Center: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SVVADAX_cU
Lomborg: Earth Hour just a feel-good campaign
Instead, give light to the 1.3 billion people who still live without electricity.
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UPDATE: It seems sanity is starting to take hold and the global interest in Earth hour is falling off significantly. Here is the Alexa Internet traffic plot for this year plus 2013 and 2012. I’ve added the trend arrow aligned with the peaks of the Earth Hour events over those three years.
Source: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/earthhour.org
The idea of a rolling blackout??…….well the result of that is usually an increased birth rate or will all the Earthy ‘s abstain to prevent their heads exploding? As all I get from them is too many humans, so Jimbo we can help by turning the spotlights on for Non non hour..
I switch lights on only when I need them, but today. Well…
You never have a good set of anti-aircraft search lights when you really need them. No, I won’t be participating in “Earth Hour”. However, if the eco-feelgoods want to go all the way and pull the plug on all of their power-using devices and lights I sure wouldn’t stand in their way.
Hey, walking everywhere, going to bed when the sun goes down, communicating either by direct word-of-mouth or by the old-fashioned method of hand-carried letters– it’s worked for thousands of years, and it would limit the WWF’s efforts to get word out because next time, they wouldn’t be able to use electronic media. You know, those computers and TV cameras and radio transmitters have just got to be producing CO2, and of course we can’t let that happen now can we?
I will leave extra lights on outside in case anyone gets lost in the “dark”.
Hugh Winkler says:
March 29, 2014 at 11:00 am. Hugh, you can show solidarity with the 1.3 billion people that you and your colleagues have denied any form of cheap electrical power by your essentially selfish, egotistical anti -human actions. Spend 2 hours thinking about the millions of untimely deaths you have helped to bring about. I’m turning on the backyard floods.
“Hate to pile on”
No you don’t, PMHinSC . 😀
I’ll have ALL my lights on, inside and out.
Won’t run the generator this year – it’s raining outside and I have to pull the generator out of its small shed to run it.
Also, at the price of gas, I won’t be running my car, either.
But, according to the Warmies, it’s the thought that counts, isn’t it ? So I’ll think good thoughts about a running generator and car for that hour. 😀
wonder what the impact on the grid would be if millions suddenly turned lights on at the same time..
What tgmccoy said.
I remember my grandparents, who were born in the mid-1880’s and married in 1905. No way in HELL would I want to live the way they had to, even after WW II, when everything improved immensely (from their point of view, not mine).
I’ll take this century, thankyouverymuch.
Gerald Machnee on March 29, 2014 at 12:25 pm
The people of consern are already lost and in this case no light will help. They’re too blind to see …
Also, their parasitic activities depends on honest working peoples money and can’t act without it, so why “bite the hand that feeds you” …?
Anyway, all lights are on now and most of all other electric stuff are running too. (<The kitchen is running warm though due to the stove and soon the rest of the flat will be warm. Time to open some windows …)
Oh, that’s today? This morning I replaced the exterior lightbulbs by the front door with a pair of 11 watt LED bulbs my wife got for only $3 each at a Home fair last weekend. Look like nice Philips bulbs, but I can’t find quite the match at the Philips web site. They may be newer (880 lumens instead of 800) or maybe they’re just mislabeled.
I’ll have them on!
I plan to put a space heater in my fridge and wait to see who wins.
In all seriousness, here’s my take on “Earth Hour”:
http://diehardempiricist.blogspot.ca/2012/03/22-march-2011-earth-hour.html
Yeah, it’s symbolic all right. I also plan to contract cholera from my drinking water, let my kids get polio or smallpox or rickets, and allow my wife to die from childbed fever to similarly symbolize my contempt for a few of mankind’s other awful planet-killing triumphs.
Earth Hour is ritualistic behavior rife with symbolism and meaning for the True Believers. It’s real purpose is to “send a message”, (to whomever), and pump up the convenient idiots who still hang desperately onto their cherished cult-like Warmist religion. Part of their original plan, I believe, was to try to shame people into participating, since non-participation could be construed as meaning a lack of concern for the Earth. Sadly for them, their plan seems to have backfired. In the not-too-distant future they will be relegated to the status of Flat-Earthers, to be pitied more than anything else.
For those who want to watch, California’s ISO (Independent System Operator) has an almost-real time display of power demand. See link below. In previous years, there has been absolutely no noticeable dip in the power demand from 8:30 pm to 9:30 pm (20:30 hrs to 21:30 hrs on the graph). There very likely will not be any noticeable dip tonight, either.
http://www.caiso.com/Pages/TodaysOutlook.aspx#SupplyandDemand
For what it’s worth, the City of Los Angeles will turn out the lights at LAX (the international airport) but only for the “iconic” light pylons located between the runways and straddling Sepulveda Blvd. From the LAX website:
“The 100-foot-tall LAX Gateway pylons that illuminate the entrance to Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), will light solid green one hour before Earth Hour on Saturday, March 31. Then, during Earth Hour, from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m., the pylons will be turned off as part of a coordinated worldwide effort to raise public awareness of climate change and the need for energy conservation.”
I will have on every light at my place. And sending a big Thank You to all the engineers out there who bring the power to us, every day. Electrical engineers are special, they actually take the square root of minus-one without breaking a sweat. They do this daily, routinely.
I would like to remind all of you that March 29th is Carbon Belch Day!
Take the pledge, beer helps:
Yes! I will increase my CO2 output on March 29th! I am joining people from all walks of life in taking the Carbon Belch Day Pledge! On March 29th I will do my best to increase my CO2 output and unleash a Carbon Belch on the planet. I do this with no fear or concern that I am destroying the planet, but rather to show the absurdity of the “going green” wackos who want to make something out of nothing.
http://www.carbonbelch.com/
george e. smith says:
March 29, 2014 at 11:47 am
“Shouldn’t we be converting as much coal fired thermal (heat) energy into high quality SWEMRE, to beam out into space, as we can.??
After all, it is that nasty solar SWEMRE coming in, that is causing earth to heat up.”
Try to patent it; “method and apparatus for the balancing of the radiative exchange at the top of atmosphere” or something; could become a great subsidy milker. Make sure it works only marginally, this way you can cry for more subsidies to improve it for years. When receiving subsidies, don’t forget the 10% kickbacks to the politicians.
If the radiative imbalance is the claimed 5 W/m^2 AND insolation at TOA is 1200 W/m^2; AND surface area of the Earth as seen from the sun is equivalent to the area of a circle with 12,000 km radius, or about 113 million square kilometers, then placing a mirror at TOA with an area of
113 million square km / 240 = 470,000 square km or a square of about 680 km edge length would suffice. Some big piece of aluminum foil with Helium balloons at the edge or so.
Start with smaller ones and work your way up.
MarkG says: March 29, 2014 at 11:08 am
“North Korea has 12 earth hours every night all year around.”
I was going to say that. I’m always surprised these people don’t just move to North Korea, …
Sorry, North Korea has standards.
yirgach says:
March 29, 2014 at 1:21 pm
I second that ..buurrrppp!
Meh.
I’m going to wait for “Earth Decade” coming to the UK soon courtesy of the EU’s insane energy policies.
Ric Werme says:
March 29, 2014 at 12:51 pm. I didn’t realise you needed a match to light up LED illumination!
The Texas grid demand can be followed here:
http://ercot.com/content/cdr/html/loadForecastVsActualCurrentDay.html
Donald A. Neill says:
March 29, 2014 at 1:01 pm
Yup. It’s hard to improve on that, or Ross McKitrick’s essay.
How about spending “Earth Hour” researching one of the relatively unknown heroes of electrification and sharing your results? The biggies like Edison, Tesla and Westinghouse are well known, but what about Inman and Thayer? (from Florescent Lamp Invention).
From ancient times darkness has been a metaphor for ignorance, suffering and death. It is not at all coincidental that God’s first act of creation was the command “Let there be light”.
Turning light off just to make more of the world dark is pointless and silly.
yirgach says:
March 29, 2014 at 1:21 pm
Unfortunately, alcohol is off limits, I’ll have to make do with a Dhal and cabbage curry, washed down with a bottle of carbonated water.
Actually I had my Earth Hour earlier this month when the cutout on a pole serving the neighborhood blew. We were without power for about two hours, which I guess means I’ve also already observed next year’s Earth Hour. I do not recall that I had any virtuous feelings about saving the planet during that time. I do remember hoping all my network and server gear would come back up as I only have UPS capacity for about 40 minutes.
If the Nobel committee get to see that photogaph they’ll be handing out a Nobel Peace Prize to the North Korean dictator.