Why Earth Hour Is a Waste of Time and Energy 466
An anonymous reader writes "Next Saturday from 8:30PM to 9:30PM EST is 'Earth Hour' (0:30 to 1:30 UTC on Sunday). Millions of people will be participating by shutting off their lights for an hour to show they care about the environment. However, according to this article in Slate, Earth Hour is simply 'vain symbolism,' and it won't actually save any energy — quite the opposite. Quoting: 'Notice that you have not been asked to switch off anything really inconvenient, like your heating or air-conditioning, television, computer, mobile phone, or any of the myriad technologies that depend on affordable, plentiful energy electricity and make modern life possible. If switching off the lights for one hour per year really were beneficial, why would we not do it for the other 8,759? Hypothetically, switching off the lights for an hour would cut CO2 emissions from power plants around the world. But, even if everyone in the entire world cut all residential lighting, and this translated entirely into CO2 reduction, it would be the equivalent of China pausing its CO2 emissions for less than four minutes. In fact, Earth Hour will cause emissions to increase. As the United Kingdom's National Grid operators have found, a small decline in electricity consumption does not translate into less energy being pumped into the grid, and therefore will not reduce emissions. Moreover, during Earth Hour, any significant drop in electricity demand will entail a reduction in CO2 emissions during the hour, but it will be offset by the surge from firing up coal or gas stations to restore electricity supplies afterward.'"
Re: How about this? (Score:5, Interesting)
Only a politician would think you could cut a foot from one end of a blanket, sew it to the other end, and have a bigger blanket.
Are people still paying attention to this guy? (Score:5, Interesting)
First, I can't believe anyone takes Lomborg seriously anymore. His rantings are not based on science, and the only reason anyone noticed him in the first place was because he styled himself an "environmentalist", which he clearly isn't. Second, as other posters have pointed out, Earth Hour isn't meant to actually save any energy, it's to build public awareness. He's erected a strawman and is trying to knock it down without regard to what is real.
Re:Nuke gay whales for Christ (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's go shopping!
Re:How did this moronic submission make it here? (Score:5, Interesting)
I experience low-shedding 1 hour every second day.
So you get electricity 47 hours out of 48? That too in a country that is chaotic and just underwent a revolution?
Then I in Pakistan can only envy you, we have load-shedding of 6 hrs minimum daily, often more for random reasons. And this is in spring, with no fans or other cooling equipment running... In summer it easily becomes ~14 hrs or more daily.
We just had our first democratically (for a certain value of democracy) elected govt to actually complete their term. So much for democracy...
Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas (Score:5, Interesting)
but as a society we've decided that you're not allowed to shove your problems onto other people like that
Unless you're adding trillions of dollars of brand new, stifling debt to those other/future people's paycheck burden. Then it's OK. Those people are temporal neighbors, not geographic neighbors. Screw 'em, right? We've got some overpriced lab tests to subsidize so that a doctor can fend off spurious malpractice suits surrounding the impending death of a 95 year old cancer patient.