(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:
===========================================================
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.
===========================================================
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
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ABC (Australian) Radio presenter, Ian McNamara annually celebrates the Earth Hour farce with this little country ditty from Trace Adkins. Macca must be the only moderate working at the ABC these days!
Enjoy….
Andy, I agree, children do absorb their parent’s world view, unfortunately that is a fact of life. But – as one gets older often the social environment changes and we change. Being English and coming to Australia I knew nothing about Aborigines. The average Aussie tended to resent what they got and pointed out they were a load of drunks, etc. I had never even seen one until we saw one rolling drunk along the road in Taree. “There’s your Abo?” my ex told me. However, when I went to UNE, and did Australian pre-history my attitude changed completely. Learning about Australia’s treatment of Aborigines in the 19th and 20th Century I could understand some more that was left out of my so called education. Also my youngest son went to school with some Aborigines and I met their parents. We used to have a laugh together about racism. And I was considered a non racist person because I knew what they had gone through. There are some really bad asses in both cultures I am afraid, and hard to generalize that people who have prejudices tend to do. Well you had the same in the US of A, with the deep south particularly and KKK.
Well when I saw the Congolese where getting on the gravy train, it is a corrupt government and very backward. The trouble is that most of the money goes into the wrong people’s pockets. I had a late friend who was a prospecting British geologist and I can tell you living there was like being in a hell hole. Canary jumping avoidance was a national sport for some residents. The local police wore yellow and would try to stop motor vehicles on isolated jungle roads. To get bribes or rob the passengers. Those cops new to it, were in danger of being run over, because cars would not stop.
Earth Hour, here in Australia on MSM channels, is being hailed as a stunning success with 2 billion getting in on the act to save the barrier reef. It’s laughable, really really laughable. By far the greatest threat to the reef is the crown of thorns starfish!
Hey, there, Mac. Thanks for that great music. I smiled for 9 minutes straight — needed that. Nope. It quit raining around 4pm. Heh, heh, all those Hempfest slobs in Seattle must have had a little shindig and all the hot air they exhaled (THEY inhale, BOY do they!) created a little low-pressure zone in Seattle and all those clouds headed south. I guess.
“the drought is broken… ” LOL.
Bummer that your lawn is soaked (so what’s new), but… it will help you get the boat you’re building in your basement launched! Won’t even need to hook up the trailer!! (and get that stupid license renewed)
Here, this for all the sunshine you shine into my life via the “Leave a Reply” box on WUWT,
a mini-vacation for a rain-weary Washingtonian:
With aloha,
Janice
(thanks for calling me “Sweet Pea” — (blush) — I like that)
*************************************************************
@ur momisugly Patrick — Yes, lol, I NOTICED that you are ignoring me.
#(:))
P.S. Mac, the FULL SCREEN is great.
On the bright side (pun intended), we managed to use 13 kWh during Earth Hour.
But, according to Ontario Power Generation, all of our power is currently coming from nuclear and hydro generation: http://www.opg.com/generating-power/Pages/generating-power.aspx
So if we’d shut off every electrical device, and lit a single candle, we would have increased our CO2 emissions. Which I guess shows the silliness of Earth Hour.
Didn’t our president state he was going to raise energy prices? (I forget exactly why he decided having us shivering in the dark was a good idea.)
How illuminating, Brad R.. #(;))
I noticed as I checked in to Frasier Place for my two week stint of work in KL, that they had an advert for earth day in the reception…
Sure enough, after I took a wander to get my bearings and entered a lift in the very *dark* lobby, two bemused, mature Americans – assuming my accent radar was accurate – remarked that it must be some kind of power cut or electricty problem at the hotel… I put them straight and let them know it was in fact the earth day ridiculousness – and I did use that term – in aid of saving the planet. Their response was very polite indeed to my provocative interjection: “It just shows how out of touch we are”. I departed while we were all grinning at the fatuous gesture that is earth day.
The only lights that should be going out are at the EPA and the DOE.
WRT hydro, as I recall a regular postee here at WUWT, The Pompus Git, posted that here in Australia, Hydro Tasmania is involved with a Chinese company in coal-to-liquid (CTL) programs. I cannot find anything to support that, but I didn’t try too hard. Hydro Tasmania is in the list of the top 250 “carbon” polluters and received a windfall profit last year of ~AU$50mil, as a direct result of the “proice ohn cahbohn” that the “Gillard” said would not happen.
“Janice Moore says:
March 30, 2014 at 12:26 am”
I am not ignoring you however, there is a time and a place for that.
It was candles all the way in our home last night….and natural ones too…made from Whale fat.
I found a more current and comprehensive site for Ontario’s power generation: Gridwatch. http://live.gridwatch.ca/home-page.html According to it, we’re getting 5.7% of our power from gas right now, for a net CO2 emission of 30g/kWh. So our 13 kWh extravaganza emitted 390g, roughly the equivalent of four tea candles.
And at the same time the countries that “celebrate” Earth Hour tell emerging third world countries that they can’t mass produce cheap electricity because “OMG! CO2!” White countries scream at non-white countries. This entire agenda comes across as pretty racist to me.
It’s the same perversion as the push into solar and selling it as “green” energy. The raw materials for European (especially German) environmentalists to feel good with their solar panels are brutally harvested in China.
Destructive exploitation of resources in China for “green” energy in Germany.
Thumbs up to my right-wing governed hometown. Not only were the street lights on, the local police office was exceptionally illuminated during the ‘Earth Hour’. I feel now so safe, secure and so proud of my hometown.
Perhaps it’s also because the spring has arrived here early, cherry trees blossom and the sun shines from a bright blue sky in perfect temperature. Don’t really know, but what counts is the smile on T-shirt wearing passers-by.
I’ve got a bonus reason to smile. On the eve of the ‘Earth Hour’ my country of origin took a major leap towards a brighter future. The left-green hard-core change resisters (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_Green_Left_Alliance) walked out of the coalition government into the opposition.
Things are now looking bright indeed.
Discussions of Earth Hour always remind me of the “What have the Romans done for us” conversation in Life of Brian.
“The Danish energy industry is no longer producing enough energy for its citizens, according to a recent report published by energy authorities Energistyrelsen.
The report revealed that the level of self-sufficiency dropped to 93 per cent last year – the first time it has fallen below 100 per cent in 18 years.
Last year, the production of natural gas and raw oil dropped by 17.7 per cent and 13 per cent respectively, although there was an increase of 2.2 per cent in the amount of sustainable energy produced compared to 2012. However, sustainable energy currently accounts for nearly a fifth of energy produced by Denmark and a fourth of total energy consumed.”
http://www.icenews.is/2014/03/28/denmark-not-self-sufficient-in-energy/
Denmark not so green as they want us to believe.
bernie1815 says: March 30, 2014 at 3:56 am: “Discussions of Earth Hour always remind me of the “What have the Romans done for us” conversation in Life of Brian.”
Applies to Earth Hour inventors’ logic and also beyond. You know, those who dreamed up EPA, UNEP, IPCC, FCCC etc aiming to get us back to stone age from the grips of the evil capitalists.
I admit to a good chuckle every year for earth hour.
I help a local beekeeper out,
we refine the wax for use as candles, and sell some for commercial use in makeup pharmas etc
etc.
it takes 2 days of fairly high heat, and a further day of slow simmering a huge vat to separate and prepare it. far more power than we would like…when it comes to the bill.
then its refined further in small batches for the candles.
so the very clean burning wonderfully fragrant pure beeswax candles they buy for earth hour..
actually take a fair bit of human and coal power to become the objects they so desire to display green ideology..
its a nice boost in sales for us..but ..we all laugh at why it is 🙂
Would love to have joined in, but our power was out because of cables downed by strong winds. Still, fired up the generator to keep the freezer running.
Earth hour… phhphhtt!
Wait ’til the zombies come for them and then we’ll see if the un-armed enviro-bedwetters still want to turn off their lights.
I see lots of people above reporting that they turned on their lights and none of them have reported any problem with zombies. OTOH, I figure the zombies got the people who turned off their lights, because none of them have posted in comments.
ozspeaksup says:
March 30, 2014 at 4:41 am
“I admit to a good chuckle every year for earth hour.
I help a local beekeeper out,”
Nice story. But, even if the candles needed no extra energy during production, the Earth hour people would still be committing a crime against humanity – Candle light, light light from incandescent light bulbs, is blackbody radiation, therefore about half of the photons emitted are not contributing to the light, but are dreaded, planet-killing infrared photons – exactly why they outlawed incandescent light bulbs; and during Earth Hour, this IR radiation is supposed to SAVE the plane?
Leftists, their brains.
bushbunny says:
March 29, 2014 at 11:15 pm
“Andy, I agree, children do absorb their parent’s world view, unfortunately that is a fact of life.”
You would prefer they’d absorb the worldview of UNESCO or UNEP? Then we would be living in hell.
¿Earth Hour? (yawning)
So many groupies and so boring . . .
John