Saturday 28th March is “Earth Hour” – a time to sit in the dark and appreciate the benefits of our cheap reliable hydrocarbon-energy.
[Like these candles, for example, from the WWF sponsored Earth Hour home page – Anthony]
Guest essay by Viv Forbes
We should spend Earth Hour giving thanks for warmth.
Just thirteen thousand years ago, Earth was in the grip of a deathly ice age. Sea levels were indeed much lower but much of the land surface was covered by thick sheets of ice. Life struggled to survive and many species were extinguished by the sterile suffocating ice.
Without any help from humans, Earth escaped from the ice. And as the oceans warmed they expelled part of their dissolved carbon dioxide which nurtured an enormous increase in plant and animal life.
But the ice still lurks near the poles, and Earth has suffered several cold relapses. The most recent “Little Ice Age” just released its icy grip about 150 years ago.
The modern warming phase ceased around the turn of this century – there are teenagers today who have never lived in a phase of rising global temperatures. And our sun is showing disturbing signs of reduced activity, which may presage a new cooling phase.
Earth is on a climate see-saw between a warm green globe and a frozen white wilderness. Unless you are a penguin or a polar bear, you should spend Earth Hour celebrating today’s warmth and giving thanks for our cheap, abundant hydro-carbon fuels which will help humans to survive any return of Global Cooling.
Earth Hour – we need to celebrate Coal not Candles:
http://carbon-sense.com/2012/03/31/earth-hour/
[Note: Personally, I plan to turn on all my lights tonight, meanwhile, the Dark-Earthers are asking for your opinion about it, see below and click if you wish to add your opinion. There’s lots of opportunity for write-in answers – Anthony]
I think I’ll just keep the lights on and do something productive.
On second thought, I’ll just keep the lights on.
For a more complete experience, serious Earth Hour celebrants could always migrate to North Korea where is it Earth Hour twenty four hours a day, every day of the year.
wish we could have printed our responses.
said I think site is retarded, said climate change is real and when -28f here it sucks so more warming please.
said I hope their end result is lawsuits and foreclosures on their homes.
these hippies piss me off.
lol +1
************
Actually, those poor dupes are pretty pitiful… they are SO EASILY FOOLED… over and over and over….
Okay, dear envirocultists, we will now turn to hymn number 71…
(organ, even!)
“Won’t Get Fooled Again” — The Who (youtube)
GREAT MUSIC… just a sad significance to their defiant, misinformed, determination to defy The Man.
“… get on my knees and pray we don’t get fooled again.”
Yeah.
Pitiful.
They did get fooled again by the enviro-wackos.
Forgot to add to Foreman’s rant: Prevent growing and distribution of food so if exposure, due to lack of housing doesn’t wipe out the human race, starvation will.
I’m pretty sure that is on the list of approved methods to cull the herd.
I saved a hell of a lot of energy this warm winter, by being able to keep the heater turned down.
Sure, celebrate Earth Hour, then jet to your vacation spot and party with all the lights on. I’m 100 percent for conservation, but Earth Hour is a hypocritical farce.
Earth Hour — a 60-minute period I celebrate each year by turning ON every light in the house!
Earth Day was one of three things that made me a climate skeptic. Where I live, the electricity is all hydro – falling water generates no CO2 at all – so for me as a scientist it just seemed incomprehensible that David Suzuki would encourage us to switch off the CO2-free lights and burn candles made from deep-earth carbon.
A lot of CO2 is going to be produced (from cement manufacturing) as the Site-C hydro-electric dam is built over the next 10 years.
Gary, I do not know where you get your electricity from but the benefits from Hydro over the length of time it is there far outweighs the initial costs. I also wonder how much CO2 your parents spend to get you (and survive) on this planet in the first place, so you can always blame them I suppose
asybot, 10 billion dollars will be spent over the next 10 years before the first watt of electricity is produced from the new dam.
My electricity comes from existing dams such as the W.A.C. Bennett Dam. My provincial government apparently needs to find new sources of electricity to replace the current fossil fuels that run most of the transportation in this province as well as replacing all the fossil fuel heating (mostly natural gas) during the winter, spring and fall months. That’s a lot of new electrical power producing infrastructure that needs to be found from none fossil fuel sources and solar panels just isn’t going to be able to replace winter heating fuel. Windmills will probably destroy the multi-billion dollar tourism industry so that isn’t an option.
I think it’s crazy to shut down the Burrard Thermal Station as a backup source of electrical energy generation during a winter cold spell.
As to my parents, who are in their 80’s now, I fondly remember huddling above the heat register (fueled by natural gas) during the cold winter, spring and fall days as child.
I have a very low carbon footprint which I shall spare everybody an itemization of and yet I have woken up every day for the past 5 years with my first thought being what shall I do today to help rid this world of the Global Warming / Climate Change scam. It’s usually the last thing I think about before I go to get too, though I find a few rounds of Wordament helps me transition to sleep mode 🙂 .
Right now I am hiding my clocks so that I don’t know if Earth Hour has started or ended yet, cause I really hate the concept.
@ur momisugly Gary, your 5:09 comment:
“A lot of CO2 is going to be produced (from cement manufacturing) as the Site-C hydroelectric dam is built over the next 10 years”
You just sounded as if you were opposed to site C..
So maybe I replied a little negative earlier. But then in your other reply @ur momisugly 9.11 march 28 you actually said the same thing I would have if anybody asked me about Climate Change etc as far as BC Canada’s hydro’s proposals are, as far as concerning the Site C Dam? It should have been done years ago when the infrastructure was in place, you know the people that knew how to build the dams from the excavator guys to the r-bar crews etc. What they learned at Revelstoke and other dams would have made site C a piece of cake.
There is only one thing that bothers me and that is we in BC are selling our water to the US for peanuts ( I am not sure if that is a by product of the Columbia River Water treaty back in the 1950’s). Cheerio Gary and I would like to continue the conversation.
I remember the first Earth Day 45 years ago. I was a senior in college majoring in mathematics. I became embroiled in an argument with a physics major. The argument went from rational reasoning to a heated, emotion-laden debate. It started around 10 pm and ended sometime in the wee hours of the morning with neither of us conceding an inch.
That’s when I knew I was a skeptic; and that’s when I knew non-skeptics – no matter what their educational background – were just plain genetically different.
It’s rather funny then that, here in Australia, one of the, supposed, top 250 “carbon polluters” was none other than a company called Hydro TasMANIA (HT). In the first year of the “carbon tax”, HT made a cool extra ~AU$50mil for doing sweet FA! I wonder if the now retired “politician” Bob Brown had anything to do with HT? After all, it was he who said “…we could have new rail, new roads, new hospitals and new schools etc…with a carbon tax…” or words to that effect! So we had the carbon tax, the most expensive in the modern world, and industry is being sent offshore. We had the carbon tax and we still do not have new rail, new roads, new hospitals and new schools. What am I missing here?
I like that survey.
I told them that my goal was to emit as much CO2 as possible, to warm the earth and increase crop-yields.
R
Indeed. I had a nice bottle of red wine for tonight, but I think this calls for a switch to a Prosecco.
Off topic. Do I recall correctly that you once mentioned you’re an organic chemist?
Kind regards.
Hi, Babsy,
In case Phil (in California) doesn’t see your question (oh, I’m sure he would respond if he did (smile)…):
1. He is a “Ph.D. chemist” per this comment: (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/26/sea-cucumbers-dissolving-coral-reefs/#comment-844111)
2. On this thread, http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/29/the-greens-worst-nightmare-a-co2-to-oil-process/ , he comments several times advocating biofuels in an intelligent, but unpersuasive in the end (Bart refutes him, imo) manner.
You had a good memory!
And you and Philincalifornia write many worthwhile, intelligent, comments (I can remember THAT).
Janice
LOL — You HAD??? a good memory? Oh, brother. HAVE HAVE HAVE HAVE HAVE.
#(:))
i am indeed Babsy. Molecular Biology too, but that’s just organic chemistry with bigger molecules.
Thanks Janice. I must’ve missed “Bart refuting me”. I usually agree with him.
Always a pleasure to meet someone with a Persistent Hypothesis Disorder. Where would we be without them?
🙂
Ok, just did the survey.
My earth hour goal is to demonstrate burning a candle produces more CO2 (excluding my breathing) than driving my BMW 25 miles; and it takes longer, too.
I did not hit the “donate” button, so don’t know if my results will make it into the database.
(sigh) I need a hug.
((HUG))
#(:))
Thanks. Made my day.
#(:))
Anytime.
Sorry to be a contrarian. My lights will be out. Won’t need them in the glow of my spring clean up bon fires with all the winter wood blow down. Wood burning is carbon neutral isn’t it? Marshmallows and hot dogs may be in order. Think I’ll throw some logs in the fireplace and sit in my fully windowed tub by the glow of the gas flare a mile away across the valley and stare up at the stars over my trout pond with flames reflecting off the last of the ice and snow in my pastures. 😉 wink.
Dang, Wayne I need you to re-organize my priorities, ( thanks for the visual although I’d eliminate the gas flare).
All the lights will be on in my place (small though it is) tonight. And, Phil, I will definitely be joining you with a bottle of something…Prosecco sounds like a good choice, since despite all the CAGW hysteria, winter is definitely hanging on here in NYC…oh, gee, sorry….forgot that warming now causes cooling.
Maybe I’ll move to North Korea tonight so I can righteously celebrate Earth Hour.
They do composting in North Korea. They call it “kim chee.”
Kimchi is food, they don’t have that in North Korea.
They just have Kim. 🙁
http://www.valuewalk.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/kim-jong-un.png
(standing in front of the North Korean Air Force)
Hi Janice!
Better than turning on all the lights I’d say let’s fire up those 426 Hemis.
Hi, Tom!
GoooOOOOOOOOO for it, Tommy boy!
Wish I owned a muscle car to fire up (I just drive a muscle car wannabe, sort of embarrassing, but I don’t have the mechanical knowledge (or the cash to pay another) to keep a Chevy 427 (a 350 would be fine, too) with a 4-barrel, dual-overhead cam, in good condition).
Hurrah for the internal combustion engine — Freedom rocks!
Janice
If they’ll let you in! They hate sharing the “Good Life”.
“Earth is on a climate see-saw between a warm green globe and a frozen white wilderness.”
Viv,
Not quite. Most of the last 3 million years Earth has been cold. Only short periods of a warm, green globe. You should know that.
BTW, I bet the whales are sure glad we use those evil fossil fuels instead of whale oil.
Done that survey now. In my case, only 80% of the questions was possible to answer …
I’m at work right now and it’s 8pm local time now, so I have to get home and turn on all electrical stuff like computers, tv, battery chargers, all lights, fix late dinner in the oven and so on …
Go, Sasja L! (glad to see you post……I know, I know you’re okay… I just didn’t see you for awhile (smile)) Have a nice dinner. I’m going to go have lunch!
Tnx! There’s reasons why I have not been so active. Alot to do at work, which is why I have been there today (increases my income quite good though …) in between all work, a so called non housebroken collegue (age 40+!) gave me an (airbourn) virus and as a a result, I have been stationary with high fewer for about two weeks burried in my bed, only capable to get up to eat something simple and to the bathroom for short moments.
Following and responding on blogs and other stuff on the Internet? No, no time and interest respectively … This week, I’ve been just about on my feets (and when at work cursing my so called “collegue”. Face to face …)
Oh, it’s 8.30pm now! Lights on and action! ☺
Get (completely) well, soon! Parumph! Some “colleague,” indeed.
Done the questionnaire maybe not the answers they were looking for but there you go.
Had an email from an organisation I have contact with wanting me to get involved, sent a reply bursting a few of their bubbles and a link to one of your posts on the temp over the last couple of decades.
James Bull
http://www.catholiclane.com/wp-content/uploads/Earth-Hour-2014.jpg
Where?
Holland celebrate Earth hour yesterday, one million people had their power cut of due to a grid failure. Nobody was happy.
http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2015/03/train-chaos-after-massive-power-failure-in-noord-holland/
Dumb & dumber! From news story:
“On Thursday, it emerged the government has fined the NS €2.75m for poor performance.”
The railway company is 100% state owned.
Want to have a real carbon footprint just grow a kilo of pot. Equivalent to running 3 million cars.
I suppose someone ought to post a link to Ross McKitrick’s great essay:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/17/earth-hour-a-dissent/
+++
Excellent
Thanks, Canman. I was reading through all the posts to see if anybody had mentioned McKitrick’s essay because I would have if you hadn’t. It’s such a wonderful defence of electricity and the benefits it has brought to the poorest people on the planet. That ignorant rich people in the West object to cheap coal-fired electricity in the third world is evil. They are condemning people to poverty and ignorance.
Speaking of which my husband has twice volunteered with Rotary to help a local Aussie gal – Gemma Sisia (nee Rice) – build her school in Tanzania. Her motto is “Fighting Poverty Through Education”. Please look her up and help if you can: http://www.schoolofstjude.org/ because she’s a modern saint.
Her school only accepts one child from the brightest of the poorest families because she expects that privileged child to help his or her siblings.
I predict a jump in the hippie population once the lights go out.
Nine months from now, Sully? ;o)
It’s science, eh?
I will spend ‘earth’ (energy) hour thinking about the billions of people in developing countries that do not have access to electricity and must cook with biomass as well the hundreds of millions of people who must struggle daily with rolling blackouts.
http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/resources/energydevelopment/
http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21637396-rolling-power-cuts-are-fraying-tempers-unplugged
India and Pakistan are undergoing blackouts, but both these countries have succeeded in developping atomic bombs with the aim to destroy each other nextly. Since they prefer to use the skills of their nuclear physicists for military purposes instead of building pacific nuclear power plants, I would recommend them that they install hundreds of thousands windmills on their respective territories. So they will avoid undergoing blackouts at least when there is wind enough (or not too much!).
Just jokin’…
Thanks for mentioning Eskom and the rolling power cuts. Seems the gov’t has realised that the country loses about R3 BN each time this happens. That is about $300,000,000.
The power station would be on track if 30% wasn’t going sideways.
I hope they work it out soon. A coal-fired cell phone is really hard to find these days. (That was E Germany’s contribution to reunification.)
Just put on the outside lantern to celebrate the victory of humanity over the darkness… Be it a small contribution of three 5-Watt LED bulbs, but nicely visible in the street…
The hypocrites of the WWF fly from one climate conference to the next, using more energy than a household needs for a whole year of light at home…
Good for you, Mr. Englebeen!
Take care, over there.
(Salbyisright)
Janice
#(:))
Actually, maybe we should go dark, especially if we have clear sky tonight.
Go dark, take out the binoculars (or telescopes if you have them) and enjoy the splendors of a dark sky.
And then go back inside and turn the lights back on, read some books on what you just observed.
I’m celebrating by turning ON all of my outdoor lights so that my green neighbors in the “People’s Republic of British Columbia” don’t get lost in the dark.
… or run into your house in their little Dumb Cars with just enough juice left in the battery to make it home at 15 mph with headlights of about 1 candlepower…
And then plug them in so you can “save” power and be a greenie (weenie).