Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Social distancing greens worried about whether they should switch off Cable TV or their Internet devices for an hour.
Climate Change: Switch Off Or Save? Protecting The Planet Post Earth Hour
This Saturday it is Earth Hour. The World Wildlife Fund’s annual campaign that asks people to ‘switch off’ for an hour to show their support for protecting the planet.
It has never been more timely. With millions of us practicing social distancing and self-isolation our digital activities have increased exponentially. Streaming services such as Netflix have had to take measures to reduce the bandwidth their services use to keep us connected. The call to ‘switch off’ for an hour now applies to more than just lights.
A recent BBC documentary, Dirty Streaming found that the number one hit single Despacito had over five billion streams online – using as much energy as five African countries in an entire year.
…
Read more: https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikehughes1/2020/03/27/climate-change-switch-off-or-save-protecting-the-planet-post-earth-hour/
I normally switch on all the house lights during Earth Hour, to celebrate mankind’s technological achievements, but this Earth Hour I forgot; from memory I spent most of Earth Hour 2020 figuring out what was wrong with my big freezer.
“I normally switch on all the house lights during Earth Hour, to celebrate mankind’s technological achievements, but this Earth Hour I forgot”
As long as there’s cold beer in the fridge, who gives a rat’s ass!
I forgot about it this time, but what I usually do is switch on all my outside lights in the hope that some Greenie will knock on my door so I can ask a few questions – to which I am sure they would have no answers.
Ah Earth hour! A practice for when the lights go out when we over rely on renewables and the weather gods unkindly decide to switch off the sun and the wind for extended periods.
The UK had such a 10 day period in February. How a renewables heavy system would have coped with everyone home and trying to keep themselves warm and entertained does not bear thinking about
tonyb
Exactly right tonyb, but it didn’t stop some prunebrain on our local town website drooling over the fact that airflights were cancelled, traffic was light and “the Earth is healing”.
This is a fight against stunning ignorance and unicorn fantasies.
So UK had its private renewable-less Earth week without letting everyone know? How unsocial!
“I forgot about it this time”
If the subject had not been brought up on WUWT, I wouldn’t even know it was going on. Obviously, I haven’t missed anything important.
My WeMo switches turn off when the WiFi tells them to. Gee, I’d really like to do something to help out … but all this fancy technology has me baffled. You see, all my “smart” devices make the decisions for me. I’m just a pawn in their game of illumination.
But I do feel so, so, proud when my Nest Thermostat gives me the “Green Leaf Award” … for keeping my home below 64 deg.F in the winter … my wife and I SUFFER for the planet. We are such wonderful people.
Your WIFE? Well. CONGRATULATIONS!
Lower room temperature means higher RH. You are probably protecting yourself from COVID infection. Smart lifestyle.
My room temp is currently 14 degC which is almost exactly the same temp. I am not “suffering”, I dress accordingly. I’m saving the planet, it’s healthy way to live.
I did it in my childhood not from choice but economic necessity and it certainly is not healthy long term. It leaves you very prone to joint problems later in life.
Greg.
…….My room temp is currently 14 degC which is almost exactly the same temp. I am not “suffering”, I dress accordingly. I’m saving the planet, it’s healthy way to live……
Thank you! Thank you!
I was worried I might have to do it myself, save the planet that is.
Besides I’m not sure my A/C is capable of cranking down to 57.2º F here in Florida.
Cheers
Mike
Kenji, you are either extremely poor or an Eskimo. And your wife allows a home temperature of 64 F? Real men do what their wives tell them.
I wonder how well earth hour would be received if the power companies shut off the power for an hour.
The very fact that Earth Hour is only an hour tells us something about out need for electricity and the futility of downsizing our needs. Earth Hour is for weenies, if they really want to impress they should try Earth Fortnight.
If they really want to impress, they should give up everything remotely connected with evil fossil fuels
And also make sure they are vegan friendly as well.
No replacing their nylon produces with animal skins or wool.
Let ’em wear HEMP! By-products of their smoking habits . . .
I’m always tempted to do the same thing with a couple of 500W halogen spot lights. But in the end I can never be arsed.
Very few give a rat’s, except the astroturfers paid by activist NGO’s to churn out this silly propaganda.
It wasn’t working fast enough to bring about Agenda 30, so they threw the cherry bomb in the sheep pen.
You see the results . . .
I did what I normally do for Earth Hour which is do whatever I normally do.
I’m just not into virtue signaling via useless symbolic actions.
Every year, if it wasn’t for WUWT brining up a reminder that Earth Day is going to, or is, or was on a particular day, I wouldn’t know about it at all.
For Earth Hour I just threw a few more logs in the stove and opened the door.
What? Totally forgot about it, not that I’ve ever noted it previously. I’ll make sure to turn a few extra lights the next week or so.
“using as much energy as five African countries in an entire year.”
Oh I feel guilted … there I am over it now.
Heh.
You’re not the one who needs to feel guilty.
The ones who need to feel guilty are the greens who are keeping those 5 African countries from having sufficient energy resources so that they can lift their people out of poverty.
+1!
Greens are also keeping Africa from getting DDT to killing those Fu..king locusts. Thereby the Greens are killing the African people indirectly.
Regards
Climate Heretic
The ones that need to be TOLD they are GUILTY and MUST STOP in order to save the planet are those (millennials?) that streamed some silly song five billion times. Let that sink in. See if they care or change their behavior one itsy bitsy, little bit. Let’s see the WWF go after them. Won’t happen.
Bring it up every time someone cries that we’re killing Gaia.
Forgot. Oh, well. Next year, when my living circumstances have improved (as they will!), I will do my usual, “Take that, envirostalinists!” All-lights-on gesture.
Thank’s for letting us know about this important fact, Eric. On a serious note, hope your freezer is running nicely, soon (or, if that was last year, is STILL running okay).
Kid Down the Street: (dials Eric’s #)
Eric: “Hello?”
KDTS: Is your freezer running?
Eric: No.
KDTS: Well, you better go out and — hey! (frownie face) *click*
He he – yes all sorted now thanks Janice.
I actually managed to use the ‘Is your store running?’ joke on my mother a few years ago while having a phone call.
She was in the middle of attempting to cook something or other for house guests later that evening and was trying to get me to get to the point in the conversation because the ‘stove was on’.
“Oh, so your stove is running?”
“Yes it is!”
“Welllllllll…”
Looking back on that moment now I feel that attempt of humour probably had a lot to do with my parents now going on constant expensive holidays to use up my inheritance.
They are call SKI holidays (Spending the Kids Inheritance)
Or Sends Killers Internationally in Europe.
When we were kids we used to call a store and ask them if they had “Prince Albert” in a can (Prince Albert was a tin of tabacco). When the store person would say yes, we would say, “Well, you better let him out!”
It was funny when we were kids. You had to be there to appreciate it. 🙂
The Africans need to use more energy. Way to many of them are living in an Earth Hour loop. The WWF is chock full of old useless EPA rejects. Professional regulators sitting around the campfire harmonizing “has anybody seen my old fried John” That would be the top EPA guy who made up science and a job at the CIA. Drew his full salary for a year after he retired. Gotta love the EPA
He ended up doing time and had to pay restitution.
I opened the house doors and turned the heating up!
Dumb. That’s not going to be seen from space , is it. Why don’t you just burn $100 note, that’ll show them.
The alarmists should give North Korea some kind of award every year for being the “greenist” country on earth.
They consider it the perfect political system, even better than communist China.
Wish they would all move to N Korea; problem solved!
they appaerently did a multiple missile launch test for earth day
no lights little health care but dandy roclets;-/
hmm
Every hour is earth hour. We’re just passengers.
Which african Countries?
Oh crap! I totally forgot! How can I live with myself?
Unlike previous years when the local media would be full of articles encouraging everyone to participate, this year there was no mention at all. Gee, it would seem that a real crisis supersedes an imaginary one.
“from memory I spent most of Earth Hour 2020 figuring out what was wrong with my big freezer.
The motor start capacitor is usually the first thing to go out. Easy to replace. A repairman will charge several hundred dollars here in the US to make a service call, for a $5 part replacement and a 15 minute swap out.
The internet makes ordering a replacement easy. And you can usually find a YouTube video for your make and model on step by step replacement.
Last night on get gutfeld s show kat said ‘:I boiled water and did nt google it
Hi Joel, thanks for the suggestions, I’ll pull it apart when I’ve got a moment.Its working, kind of, but not very well.
Well Eric if you are in lockdown you should have plenty of time to do these jobs . I am enjoying not having to go out and do shopping or go to meetings , dinner parties , etc . Loads of seeds germinating, first lot of early potatoes in the ground , mended some garden walls that I had no time to do previously, almost finished a report on finds from a dig 3 years ago that I have been putting off, and can spend time catching up with news and gossip on WUWT without feeling guilty.
To celebrate Earth Hour, I turned off the Greens. It felt so good, I have decided to celebrate Earth Year, maybe even Earth Century, if I can manage to live that long – mind you, my chances are better with their yammering turned off. Keeps the old blood pressure in line.
Release the carbon! #EarthLife
Eric: I did my part to help out by turning everything on!
Big GFY to Greens!
Earth Hour. You mean when people drive around to get together and light paraffin wax candles in the wind, wearing their synthetic fibre puffer jackets? Seems to have gone missing in New Zealand this year. And last if I remember correctly.
Last year, here in the UK, electricity demand went UP between 8:30 and 8:35, but then continued its usual decline from a peak around 7pm to midnight. This year there was an even tinier upward blip at 8:30 that could not be seen on the BM reports website, but was just visible on the Nat Grid demand plot of that 60 minute period. Otherwise the effect on demand in both years was invisible.
I’m proud to have delayed putting on the dishwasher until 8:30 and setting off a washload, but this year even the BBC couldn’t be bothered. Not a single story.
Stoves and Laundry Dryers are the biggest electrical load in a typical home. Next year I will try to remember to run both of those during earth hour.
Jeff in Calgary
Rather, Air conditioner/heat pump first (when either is running), then stove and laundry dryer as short-time point loads.
Thus, across the whole summer time months, the AC will use more electricity. During the few hours a week when the oven is running, the oven will use more power – but then be shut off. The stove top heaters are lower energy than the oven. Laundry dryer the same: A few hours of high use, then none for several days.
It.s funny that you should mention “dryers” as one of the biggest electrical load. Here in Colo. Springs, our neighborhood “cookie cutter” covenants ban putting out cloth lines to dry your clothes outside.
Yayyyyyyy! Have toilet paper! Earth what…?!
Yeah, no-one is worried about some CO2 at the moment and if I see anyone bleating on about it, and trying to stop me like the XR crew in London, they will feel my work-hardened fist, behind a 110kg body mass, planted firmly in their faces.
Comment in the Independent (on line) on a report about ‘Earth hour’ by a holier than thou eco loon who clearly had not noticed the real crisis in the real world:
“Bogoff”
And more importantly even given a daily dose of the progress of an exponential curve still these eco loons believe we are a third of the way past the hundred months climate change change tipping point. My heating is still on and we are nearly into April with 1 degree C night temperature in our “Mediterranean winter.”
“This Saturday it is Earth Hour. The World Wildlife Fund’s annual campaign that asks people to ‘switch off’ for an hour to show their support for protecting the planet.”
About protecting the planet ….
https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/03/30/the-humans-must-save-the-planet/
I am getting a bit concerned about the lack of lights on in North Korea. Should someone knock on the door and ask if they are allright They may have all succumbed to COVID -19 and we would only know when we notice that the traditional weekly missile launch over Japan has not materialised.
I am reading this post on my desktop PC in the Chrome web browser.
There is no visible way to “like” comments. The same for Chrome on my phone.
When I view the post and comments in WordPress, I can star them unless I tap on the box that opens the post in WordPress to view the full article in a browser.
Any fix for that? (Other than just reading and liking comments in WordPress on my phone.)
To all that made sarcastic comments, a star. To all those who made comments supporting climate alarmism:
The hospitals should have turned off all the ventilators. That would have helped the WWF accomplish their goal of saving the planet by killing off humans.
And after y’all rage over that, I suggest that the WWF should have acknowledged the pandemic by praising the complete shutdown of manufacturing and wasteful high-rise office buildings and the use of cars to get to them. I’m sure someone here could easily calculate how much energy is being NOT used by everyone self-isolating.
Or, in my usual cavalier tone, I’m betting someone here could “interpret” the energy use numbers to show that the EARTH (not humans) would be better off if everyone went back to work because “saving” humans through self-isolation is harming the PLANET.
This year, I spent Earth Hour the same way as I always do: enjoying cheap, clean and reliable power from the nearby nuclear plant and not giving a damn.
North Korea should be celebrated by the WWF. For Great Leader they celebrate “Earth Hour” 24/7/365. The wonders of a Communist/Dictatorship ruled utopia!
Turn off lights, feel good and no one notices or cares. Missed it again.
Earth Hour was the final straw for me and our local house arrest self help WhatsApp group. Being reassured how much better life was with clear canals in Venice and audible bird song since we crashed the world economy led me to ask the following question. ‘We were assured by Guardian that 130,000 have been killed by ‘austerity’ how will crashing the world economy help? I doubt that millions of women suffering lung damage and premature death from cooking over open fires would agree.’ I invoked the precautionary principle mindful of the beautiful carved misericordes in the parish church.