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Earth Hour

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Lauren8211

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http://www.earthhourus.org/

My work has been sending emails out reminding us about earth hour, which is tomorrow.

Everyone is asked to turn down or dim their lights during this time to help bring awareness about climate change.

I just heard on NPR that some ice cream shop in Pennsylvania is purposely turning more lights on, and putting up extra lights during this hour, because he doesn''t support the climate change movement. Found that a tad annoying, but to each his own.

Participate if you can!
 

monarch64

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Yay! I did this last year, and if I''m remembering correctly, I was reminded because it was posted in hangout on PS. Thanks for posting this Elledizzy...and hey, I''m an NPR fan too--listen to it every day on my lunch and when I get home from work.
 

Lauren8211

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NPR is fantastic! So much better than the crappy emo-kid music that''s on the radio all day.
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monarch64

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Date: 3/27/2009 2:12:53 PM
Author: elledizzy5
NPR is fantastic! So much better than the crappy emo-kid music that''s on the radio all day.
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Yes! The "All Things Considered" theme song is what I grew up listening to while my mom was making dinner, and every Saturday she still listens to "A Prairie Home Companion."

Sorry for threadjacking!
 

princesss

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Continuing threadjack:

I <3 NPR. I''m a huge Wait, Wait, Don''t Tell Me! fan, plus This American Life. Are you guys going to see it in the theater?

Also, what time is Earth hour? I have to pack, so I need light, but if the weather cooperates, I should be able to just open the curtains.
 

Skippy123

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Thanks I saw this on yahoo too!!! I appreciate the reminder and will shut off my computer and the lights.
 

Selkie

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Date: 3/28/2009 12:26:45 AM
Author: princesss
Continuing threadjack:

I <3 NPR. I''m a huge Wait, Wait, Don''t Tell Me! fan, plus This American Life. Are you guys going to see it in the theater?

Also, what time is Earth hour? I have to pack, so I need light, but if the weather cooperates, I should be able to just open the curtains.

We''re going to see it in the theater! We went last year too, but for some reason the broadcast was cut short so we missed the end. Imagine a theater of pissed-off NPR listeners...we were all VERY indignant.

Earth Hour is at 8:30 PM local time.
 

Lynny0780

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i heard a few people also had on extra lights and their cars on and anything else they could do...
i didnt turn my lights off or anything but didnt purposly go and turn everything i could think of on..
 

LaraOnline

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Here's an interesting article about Earth Hour and carbon emissions.
Apparently lighting candles to get through the hour basically nullifies your contribution...
Not that I really enjoy being a spoil sport...

linky



Hour of no power increases emissions

Bjorn Lomborg | March 27, 2009 Article from: The Australian newspaper

THIS Saturday, the World Wildlife Fund wants everybody on the planet to switch off their lights for an hour in a "global election between Earth and global warming", where switching off the lights "is a vote for Earth".

In Australia, where Earth Hour started, it evidently enjoys strong support from politicians, celebrities, corporate backers and the public. The efforts this Saturday certainly will be well-intentioned. Many of us worry about global warming and would like to be part of the solution. Unfortunately, this event - as with many public proposals on climate change - is an entirely symbolic gesture that creates the mistaken impression that there are easy, quick fixes to climate change. One provincial British newspaper wrote this week: "Saving the planet could be as easy as switching off the lights in South Tyneside, green campaigners say."

It will take more than the metropolitan borough of South Tyneside, population 152,000, to solve global warming. Even if a billion people turn off their lights this Saturday, the entire event will be equivalent to switching off China's emissions for six short seconds. In economic terms, the environmental and humanitarian benefits from the efforts of the entire developed world would add up to just $21,000.

The campaign doesn't ask anybody to do anything difficult, such as coping without heating, airconditioning, telephones, the internet, hot food or cold drinks. Conceivably, if you or I sat in our houses watching television, with the heater and computer running, we could claim we're part of an answer to global warming, so long as the lights are switched off. The symbolism is almost perverse.

In Australia last year, Earth Hour's organisers required participating businesses to pledge to reduce their emissions by 5 per cent during the following year. This year, that requirement has been dropped. "We decided we'd actually downplay (concrete cuts)this time," the chief executive of WWF Australia told The Sunday Age. There apparently has been no accounting of whether last year's sponsors lived up to their pledge. The Sunday Age reported last week: "An analysis of the key sponsors of Earth Hour reveals that most have reported increased emissions in their most recent figures."

And it gets worse: the event could cause higher overall pollution than if we just left our lights on. When asked to extinguish electricity, people turn to candlelight. Candles seem natural, but are almost 100 times less efficient than incandescent light globes, and more than 300 times less efficient than fluorescent lights. If you use one candle for each extinguished globe, you're essentially not cutting CO2 at all, and with two candles you'll emit more CO2. Moreover, candles produce indoor air pollution 10 to 100 times the level of pollution caused by all cars, industry and electricity production.

No wonder that even committed climate campaigners are sceptical. Clive Hamilton, author of Scorcher: The Dirty Politics of Climate Change, told The Sunday Age last week that "we are well past the time for feel-good exercises aimed at raising awareness. It's like the band playing on as the Titanic sinks."

He said there was a real danger that Earth Hour convinced people we were making progress on climate change when we were not. And it let business and government off the hook.

There is still no cheap replacement for the carbon that we burn. This is the reason many promises of drastic CO2 cuts remain just empty promises and why past global agreements to cut CO2 have gone unfulfilled.

A meaningful solution to global warming needs to focus on research into and development of clean energy, instead of fixating on empty promises of carbon emission reductions.

It is vital to make solar and other new technology cheaper than fossil fuels quickly so we can turn off carbon energy sources for a lot longer than one hour and keep the planet running. Every country should agree to spend 0.05 per cent of its gross domestic product on low-carbon energy research and development. The total global cost would be 10 times greater than present spending, yet be 10 times less than the cost of the Kyoto Protocol on carbon emission reductions. This response to global warming is a realistic, achievable one.

Fossil fuels literally gave us an enlightenment, by lighting our world and giving us protection from the fury of the elements. It is ironic that today's pure symbolism should hark back to a darker age.

Bjorn Lomborg is the director of Denmark-based think tank the Copenhagen Consensus Centre, adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School, and author of Cool It and The Skeptical Environmentalist.
 

purrfectpear

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More ridiculous feel good play acting
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trillionaire

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I didn''t participate. It was during the March Madness games, which only happen once a year, so I thought that the timing was pretty poor. I also saw all of the ads for Earth Hour, but none of them said WHEN it was. I didn''t know until the day of the time that people were supposed to do it.

Maybe next year...
 

LaraOnline

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Here''s another interesting article, I wonder if we can expect more of this in years to come?

linky to story

Dimwitted vigilante darkens Earth Hour

Margo Zlotkowski, Monday, March 30, 2009
© The Cairns Post



AN elderly Cairns woman is believed to be the first victim of an Earth Hour vigilante after a mystery door-knocker pulled the plug on her lights just after the global power-saving hour started.

The 81-year-old''s furious daughter Madeleine Brandt, who reported the incident to police yesterday, said the thoughtless "do-gooder" left her frail, Bayview Heights mother "to fumble and perhaps tumble in the dark" after going to her meter box and switching off the power.

Ms Brandt said the person had knocked twice on the door of the Lenora Close home just after 8.30pm on Saturday and had perhaps become frustrated at waiting as her mother, who had been watching TV, went to change out of her nightie.

"Then suddenly, plink, out went all her power," she said.

"The real irony is that my mother, a child of the real Depression, wastes nothing in her life and is always very frugal with water, power etc.

"She even buckets the water from her washing-up down into the yard to water her tomatoes."

Police yesterday said they were not aware of any other reports of people turning off the power on their neighbours during Earth Hour.

Ergon Energy spokeswoman Gaylene Whenmouth, who helped organise Earth Hour celebrations in Fogarty Park on Saturday night, said it would be "very disturbing" if someone had taken the sustainable energy use cause to those lengths.
 

GliderPoss

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Each to their own but personally I think it''s a load of bollocks. If people really cared about the environment - they would realise the truth. All that power you''re "saving" gets instantly negated when you have to switch everything back on. For example florescent tubes (like the ones in offices) require a large boost of power to get going then drop to a low level of power to remain on over long periods. That is exactly why they are used so much! So while everyone is quietly patting themselves on the back for being so environmentally friendly by switching off their lights and computer - the enormous surge in power required to switch everything back on after Earth Hour has completely negated any power you saved. I do realise its meant to be about raising awareness but I just hate being told blatant lies for the sake of a cause.
 
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