Why Earth Hour Is a Waste of Time and Energy

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.'"

Comments

I would have been first

[Anonymous Coward]

But I couldnt find my keyboard in the dark

Re:I would have been first

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll be solving that by running every light in the house, opening the windows, cranking the heat, burning tires out in the trash pile, and idling my cars to keep them warm.

I'm going outside to rev my car for an hour.

[Anonymous Coward]

Then I'm going to cut down 6 trees and key 4 people's cars.

Re:I'm going outside to rev my car for an hour.

[MightyYar]

I'm right behind you - I just had remote start installed on my wife's car.

(Though in all fairness, she was just sitting in the cold car for 10 minutes waiting for the defroster anyway...)

Re:I'm going outside to rev my car for an hour.

[Austerity Empowers]

Protip: Open the garage door first.

Re:I'm going outside to rev my car for an hour.

[Endo13]

Some of us don't have garages you insensitive clod.

Re:I'm going outside to rev my car for an hour.

[ChunderDownunder]

Some of us don't have cars, either.

why promoting something is a waste is a waste

[Anonymous Coward]

#IGNORANTHYPOCRITE

The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[ganjadude]

is exactly this. Now I dont know anyone who in their right mind wants to "destroy the environment" yet for the most part, environmentalists work on a knee jerk reaction style of attack. "green" energy is too expensive to compete with proven yet "dirty" tech? well instead of developing the green tech to compete we must artificially increase the cost of the dirty fuel! we cant use plain old light bulbs anymore, that use more power (and give off heat, thus meaning one could in theory keep their heater lower) and now we are stuck with CFLs that are worse for the environment than the old bulbs!

The idea of "saving the earth" is a good one, but on the other hand, the earth will be fine long after humans inhabit it.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[cyborg_zx]

"Saving the Earth," sounds better than "Saving ourselves," even though the later is plainly more honest on any environmental issue you care to name.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[1u3hr]

"green" energy is too expensive to compete with proven yet "dirty" tech? well instead of developing the green tech to compete we must artificially increase the cost of the dirty fuel!

Yes, we should just let everyone burn cheap dirty fuel without any let or hindrance. Why should they pay anything for the health costs to the community from people who killed by cancer, the changes in climate, or anything else? It's only those commie greenies who think polluters should have to pay for the harm they do. We all know that if we just let business make the maximum profit in the shortest time then everything else will solve itself.

environmentalists work on a knee jerk reaction style of attack.

Whereas climate change deniers will just find some silly statement some environmentalist said and try to use it to discredit everything any environmentalist ever said. So they can go back to using "plain old lightbulbs", driving their SUVs, and not giving a crap about the next generation.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[jhoegl]

To be clear, when people say "Saving the earth", they mean "Make sure it supports human life".
To not interpret it as such means you are missing the whole point and concern people have about this issue.
I have heard plenty of people state that they dont care about the environment, which means that they will do nothing to change their habits. Habits that in effect, harm the environment enouth to cause its destruction.
It is ignorant to think that by simply living, we are not harming the environment.
And it is ignorant to think that somehow a "Capitalistic market will save the environment, and everyone from overfishing, increased emissions causing increased heat, which causes drought, asthma, respiratory issues, and cancer."
The fact is, if we rely on money as the driving factor to fixing our worlds declining ability to support human life, we will not be around much longer. As we all know, there is money in fishing and farming when supply is reduced and demand is increased, and there is money in the medical industry with dealing with these issues instead of fixing the cause.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[j00r0m4nc3r]

The idea of "saving the earth" is a good one, but on the other hand, the earth will be fine long after humans inhabit it.

Way to be totally human-centric. I know it's hard to believe, but there is other shit living on this planet besides humans.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[Silentknyght]

well instead of developing the green tech to compete we must artificially increase the cost of the dirty fuel! we cant use plain old light bulbs anymore, that use more power (and give off heat, thus meaning one could in theory keep their heater lower) and now we are stuck with CFLs that are worse for the environment than the old bulbs!

You should have stopped before this sentence.

Insofar as "cheap" "dirty" vs "expensive" "clean" environmentalism is concerned, the problem is that it is difficult to capture (i.e., within a product's price) the cost of all the externalities ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality ). Therefore, we have "cheap" "dirty" fuels, which are actually more expensive than the clean fuels, but the costs of all of their negative externalities have not been included, and therefore only perceived as cheap by the average individual. For example, super-fine particulate matter (i.e., 2.5 microns in diameter), most commonly generated as a fuel combustion byproduct, is a serious contributor to adverse health effects and mortality rates; these health & life effects do translate into costs, though they aren't currently well-reflected in the prices of the products and/or energy choices you can select.

Therefore, we raise the cost of these "dirty" energy sources through artificial means in an attempt to better account for the non-artificial (but hard to encapsulate) externalities.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[h4rr4r]

Keep your heater lower?
Why in the hell would you want electric heat? That shit is expensive. I will stick with my LED lights and gas heater.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[ganjadude]

thank you, for proving my point actually.

no one is saying that we cant ease out "dirty" tech, simply that we do it over time. Instead of inflating the existing costs of enery to make green techs look better now, all while hurting the people at the bottom the most, gas is 4 bucks a gallon, 10 years ago it was 98 cents. instead of trying to make it all happen at once (in the scheme of things) let the tech mature. All technology matures, some faster than others, but let the tech mature and bring the price down to the levels of mature tech. not everyone jumps in to be a early adopter, most people wait for the price to drop, a 10K PC 8 years ago costs a few hundred bucks today.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[h4rr4r]

Without any adoption the tech will never advance.

$4/gallon is still very cheap for gas, last time I was in Europe I paid over $10/gallon.

On top of which dirty tech is often cheap due to externalities. Since you don't pay for the cancer the kids down the street from the coal plant get your light bulbs are very cheap for you and expensive for them.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

"Dirty" in this context really means "externalized costs" - Meaning that the traditional forms of energy shirk the cost of damage caused by the pollution they create.
Forcing users and makers of dirty energy to pony up the costs that otherwise get absorbed by the public allows clean energy to compete more fairly.

The lightbulb analogy isn't perfect, by the way. That extra heat isn't always useful.

In the summer it can drive up cooling costs quite a bit. Not only are you paying for wasted energy, you're paying again to remove that heat with your AC system. Likely more than twice on top of that, as AC systems are not terribly efficient to begin with.
Incandescent bulbs used in households, at their very best, produce about 17 lumens per watt. Cree released new LEDs earlier this year that output 90 lumens per watt.

Even in the winter, you may be creating heat at a time that isn't optimal. It may be cheaper and more efficient to let a well programmed thermostat handle that task.
In my case, I have gas heating that is a lot cheaper than the cost of electric heating. I want my house's heat to come off the gas bill, not the electric.

If you have not, check out the new Phillips remote phosphor LED lights. (Remote phosphor puts the white glowing element away from the LED itself. It makes for cooler running, longer life LEDs and much more diffuse light output. - And yes, all white LEDs are a phosphor excited by a blue/UV LED) If you're skeptical, check out the soft white variety. They have a low color temp glow that's very warm and pleasant and completely indistinguishable from incandescent bulbs. The only problem I've had is that they are /too/ bright for many applications. Really, these things are amazing.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[ganjadude]

dont get me wrong, i use LEDs myself, but im fazing them in slowly, as older bulbs die, and the cost becomes reasonable. I still see some LED options at 50$ a bulb in lowes vs a 150 watt bulb for 96 cents. I cannot for the life of my justify the extra 49$ to do the same job. now there are other bulbs that are cheeper this is true, but if you have say 20-50 lights in your home, 50 bucks to do the entire house or 1000 to do the entire house? if im making the cash its one thing, i know many people who 1000 in a month makes them happy.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[Ghostworks]

While I agree with your sentiments, there are a few ways to read your example on green energy which may be incorrect.

First, all things being equal, cheaper is better... for consumers, for the environment, for everyone. Lower price means less effect on materials resources (from the environment), labor (from people fed by the environment), and profits (which are subject to a money multiplier effect and are then poured into other projects which can have more effect on the environment).

The trouble is, "all things being equal" covers a lot of non-realistic assumptions. To first order, you have the fact that we are arguably under-paying now. Some means of production make use of resources that are not immediately obvious: a factory that produces pollution essentially "consumes" clean air and water, so that there is a delayed cost in the public either cleaning it or paying for increased healthcare. If you cap emissions, you still basically have a subsidy that the government is awarding from the public trust to those industries. This is were the notion of trading comes in: the public decides how much clean air it can afford to lose (or arsenic and mercury it can afford in a gallon of water), it puts that amount up for public auction (the same as we do for electromagnetic spectrum), and the industries can set whatever price is fair by competing with each other to buy that finite resource. (It's actually surprising that this application of free market capitalism, invented by an American economist, applied to the environmental problem most Americans claim to care about has had such a tough time in the American political environment.)

To second order, you get what Edward Tenner once called "the revenge effects of technology". One obvious example: things which are cheap and easy will be done more often because they are cheap and easy to do, eventually causing more time and money to be spent on them than otherwise would. Remember "cruising" when gas was cheap and there was nothing better to do? Or have you noticed that a lot larger percent of your time is spent on spreadsheets ever since software came along and made them "easier"? Similar principle. Applying price pressure can modify behavior in the other direction too. Part of the problem is that power production is inefficient, but a bigger part of the problem is that we just consume too much to begin with.

So the long and short of the above: charging "dirty" energy production isn't necessarily a crazy, horrible idea. If you believe we shouldn't be subsidizing private industry with public resources, and that we need to lower the overall level of consumption, it makes some sense. (Leaving the government to implementing such ideas leaves a lot of room for things to go horribly wrong, of course.)

The approach taken with green hour is similar to the "don't leave the water running when you brush your teeth" approach used in the 80s: convince people that a small change is not hard to make, that small changes multiplied out make a big difference, and that by getting used to these changes we can poise ourselves to make even _bigger_ changes later. It's not meant to accomplish anything in itself: it's a marketing plan for future action. And of course, like every marketing plan I've ever seen, it's overly optimistic, ignores the underlying reality of the situation, and builds up a lot of false expectations in "customers" who will probably never come back.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

thank you, for proving my point actually.

  no one is saying that we cant ease out "dirty" tech, simply that we do it over time. Instead of inflating the existing costs of enery to make green techs look better now, all while hurting the people at the bottom the most, gas is 4 bucks a gallon, 10 years ago it was 98 cents. instead of trying to make it all happen at once (in the scheme of things) let the tech mature. All technology matures, some faster than others, but let the tech mature and bring the price down to the levels of mature tech. not everyone jumps in to be a early adopter, most people wait for the price to drop, a 10K PC 8 years ago costs a few hundred bucks today.

You are working against yourself still. It's the short sighted trolls like you that need to be prodded along with price controls because you insist that if you just take your dollar to the cheapest source of energy, you are doing the right thing and everything will work out fine.

If energy tech (which is guided only by cost per watt and shitheads like you protesting anything that actually conserves) advanced as fast as electronics or computers, yes we would all be living in a utopia. That's now how it works though, despite your numerous attempts to insist that it is.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[Immerman]

You're absolute right. So how about instead we just stop artificially lowering the cost of fossil fuels via subsidies and exemptions from environmental protection laws. Then green energy can actually compete on it's merits rather than being at an artificial disadvantage. Solar for example is already becoming competitive with coal in some areas of the US like the southwest that have good solar exposure - a solar installation can pay for itself in 5-10 years, and with proper maintenance you'll potentially get another 10-20 years out of it. If energy companies had to pay to safely clean up the massive quantities of toxic waste produced when burning coal then far more areas would see solar as a net gain.

While we're at it how about we quit spending trillions of dollars on wars intended to ensure our continued access to cheap oil? Or at least spend a fraction of that on developing cheaper clean energy sources.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[catchblue22]

"green" energy is too expensive to compete with proven yet "dirty" tech? well instead of developing the green tech to compete we must artificially increase the cost of the dirty fuel!

Wrong. In some places, unsubsized solar is already cheaper than coal. And fossil fuels are already heavily subsidized. Why is the parent marked insightful?!

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[ganjadude]

sorry but "think of the children" is an automatic losing argument for me. as I said, let the early adopters pick up the high price tag and let the lower class continue to survive instead of jacking up the costs on their needs

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[englishknnigits]

Money is as much an information delivery system as anything else. It communicates to people what they have to give up in order to get something else. For example, if you apply a pollution tax (such as charge companies per ton of C02 produced) then you communicate to companies that producing C02 will harm their bottom line and it is worth it for them to spend money to reduce their pollution output. You aren't telling them how to do it or even mandating it, you are making reducing pollution in their own self interest. A pollution tax would also have the effect of increasing the costs of goods and services that produce pollution so consumers will choose to avoid products that create the most pollution or pay the price for it.

I'm not arguing for any particular tax or system, I am pointing out that "rely[ing] on money" is actually a sure fire way to alter peoples behavior. Money is not all about greed, it is a useful and necessary tool.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[Teckla]

is exactly this. Now I dont know anyone who in their right mind wants to "destroy the environment" yet for the most part, environmentalists work on a knee jerk reaction style of attack.

Ad hominem.

"green" energy is too expensive to compete with proven yet "dirty" tech? well instead of developing the green tech to compete we must artificially increase the cost of the dirty fuel!

Begging the question.

we cant use plain old light bulbs anymore

Yes, you can.

that use more power (and give off heat, thus meaning one could in theory keep their heater lower)

Incandescent bulbs are obscenely inefficient at producing heat. Promoting them a mechanism to lower your thermostat is idiotic.

and now we are stuck with CFLs that are worse for the environment than the old bulbs!

No, they're not. They're much better for the environment when you factor in the fact that the much lower energy requirements means much lower emissions from power plants, such as coal fired power plants which eject tons of mercury into to atmosphere. The microdrop of mercury in a CFL is nothing in comparison.

The idea of "saving the earth" is a good one, but on the other hand, the earth will be fine long after humans inhabit it.

Who the fuck cares that the Earth will be fine if we genocide ourselves?

You embody everything that's wrong with the "environmental skeptic" movement. Go back to Fox News, leave actually thinking to the grown ups.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[ganjadude]

troll? hardly. think about the people who are barely getting by, now think about how the cost of fuel going up even slightly can mean you might not even be able to afford oil to heat your home. I am not talking about the middle class or the rich, im talking about the people who struggle day to day. these are the people that are hurt by the artificial price increases

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[fermion]

The problem with most fiscal conservatives idea is exactly this. We can't raise taxes because it won't generate enough money to matter. We can't cut the military because it will cost more money than it will save. Congress can't cut it's pay because no one can live on less than $200,000 a year.

It is all hopeless and we should just sit back and wait for a miracle.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[Teckla]

no one is saying that we cant ease out "dirty" tech, simply that we do it over time.

And you, of course, know precisely how much time we have, right?

Instead of inflating the existing costs of enery to make green techs look better now, all while hurting the people at the bottom the most, gas is 4 bucks a gallon, 10 years ago it was 98 cents.

When inflation is factored in, the price of has, on average, not changed very much.

instead of trying to make it all happen at once (in the scheme of things) let the tech mature.

Except nobody is trying to make it happen all at once. You're just trying to smear the opposition by accusing them of an extremist position they're not actually taking.

All technology matures, some faster than others, but let the tech mature and bring the price down to the levels of mature tech. not everyone jumps in to be a early adopter, most people wait for the price to drop, a 10K PC 8 years ago costs a few hundred bucks today.

A pathetic amount of government money is funneled into alternative energy research. What are you bitching about? It's estimated that the Iraq war cost over $3 trillion dollars. How much money did the government spend on subsidizing alternative energy last year? Give me your address and I'll send you a few dollars which should easily cover it, then you don't have to complain about the government spending your money on alternative energy research.

Also, why do you assume we have all the time in the world? Rising oceans will displace millions of people at an enormous cost. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Your lazy approach is shortsighted and foolish.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[bigpat]

I consider myself an environmentalist. But I agree with much of that criticism of main stream environmentalism.

I am on the pro nuclear, pro fracking let's engineer our way out of the worst effects of extreme Global Warming side of the environmentalism. While many of my environmentalist friends are looking towards an agrarian utopian vision of the past to solve all our problems, one that would be a complete Maoist nightmare to try and implement on a wide scale with the size of our existing population and reliance on technology.

Oh and LED bulbs are way better than CFLs.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[h4rr4r]

I never said think of the children.
I was pointing out you are not paying for the externalities of the power you want to waste.

Fine, assume it is any human that is paying for your power. You are socializing the losses and privatizing the profits.

The lower classes are going to be hurt by a high power bill more than anyone, they should have already converted to some form of more efficient lighting. The truly poor I know get CFLs in their public/section 8 housing.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

gas prices aren't done by fiat on high. Its done because the good stuff is getting hard to find and mining from the bottom of the ocean and cracking tar is expensive. Oil will still be around, but it will be too expensive to burn as fuel unless you are stupidly rich.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[SleazyRidr]

One of the reasons "dirty" tech is cheaper is because you're making other people pay for the consequences of your actions. I could save myself some money on trash pickup if I just throw all my trash into my neighbors yard, but as a society we've decided that you're not allowed to shove your problems onto other people like that. We're not artificially raising prices, we're just making people pay for what they're already using.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[Charliemopps]

Yes, we should just let everyone burn cheap dirty fuel without any let or hindrance. Why should they pay anything for the health costs to the community from people who killed by cancer, the changes in climate, or anything else? It's only those commie greenies who think polluters should have to pay for the harm they do. We all know that if we just let business make the maximum profit in the shortest time then everything else will solve itself.

Well, here's your first problem. You don't get to "let" me do shit. I can burn plastic bags in my back yard all day long and flip you the bird as you drive by in your Prius. You can whine and lament it all day long if you want, but you're not going to be able to change everyone on earths fundamental right to do whatever they want with their own property in time to stop Global warming. In fact, it's already too late. So how about you stop pushing that rock up that hill and find a more sensible approach that might actually make a difference. Nuclear power has 0 CO2 emissions... support that, and support Yukka mountain if you really care about slowing global warming. Support upgrading 50 year old dirty coal plants to cleaner more modern technologies. Is a new Coal plant as clean as nuclear? No... but it's a lot better than the local community being crippled into inaction for 20 years due to lawsuits and letting the plant get worse and worse... cause that's what's going on right now.

Whereas climate change deniers will just find some silly statement some environmentalist said and try to use it to discredit everything any environmentalist ever said. So they can go back to using "plain old lightbulbs", driving their SUVs, and not giving a crap about the next generation.

So you've got Environmentalists and Climate change deniers listed there... what about the other 99.999% of the population who doesn't care either way? They don't give a crap about the next generation either. So how are you going to deal with that? Raise the price of Gas? Where? The US? That's fine, China will be happy to burn all the fossil fuels that we don't. This planet is swimming in hydro-carbons. For the majority of it's existence the earth has been a much warmer, wetter place. Humans are greedy, cheap and selfish... you need to appeal to those traits if you want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. There are technologies that greedy, cheap and selfish people would be ok with to provide their power that don't emit as much CO2 as we're emitting now. But you need to get off your high horse and do what you can do... and stop dreaming of the perfect solution. It's not going to happen.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

troll? hardly. think about the people who are barely getting by, now think about how the cost of fuel going up even slightly can mean you might not even be able to afford oil to heat your home. I am not talking about the middle class or the rich, im talking about the people who struggle day to day. these are the people that are hurt by the artificial price increases

It is this exact reason that oil in particular is artificially cheap in the US (And heating oil is subsidized in many parts of the world) so please, keep proving how ignorant you are. You know when it will be impossible for the poor to heat their homes? When oil becomes scarce and no government intervention can keep the price reasonable. Then, sure, "green tech" that provides sustainable energy will be a great idea! But sadly, it will still be 10-15 years away from being affordable. Hope you can bundle up for 10-15 years! Heaven forbid you think for one goddamn second about the future.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[aliquis]

and now we are stuck with CFLs that are worse for the environment than the old bulbs!

Citation needed.

I live in a country where we have this thing called recycling .. Though even here some idiots throw them in the rest garbage and that suck.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[andy16666]

Funny...CFLs are responsible for much less mercury emissions than traditional light bulbs if you count the mercury released during generation in even moderately coal rich generating mixes. They're not in any sense worse for the environment. Not that I'm an environmentalist...I've just taken the time to look into the topic.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

CFLs ???, I use LEDs, they use less power than CFLs, don't have the mercury,have a longer life, and dont have that warm up period.

By buying them out of China I am also getting them for pretty much the same price as CFLs cost in the local shops.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[CrimsonAvenger]

Instead of inflating the existing costs of enery to make green techs look better now, all while hurting the people at the bottom the most, gas is 4 bucks a gallon, 10 years ago it was 98 cents.

When inflation is factored in, the price of has, on average, not changed very much.

Inflation in the USA, from 2000 to 2012 (yes, it's a bit longer than ten years, but I like round numbers) was ~32%.

Adjust that $0.98/gal upwards by 32%, and we get ~$1.30/gal for gas.

$4.00/gal is NOT, contrary to your beliefs, "not changed very much" from $1.30.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[ThosLives]

The trouble with most schemes to "better account for the cost of the externality" is that they don't actually better account for the cost of the externality. They just come up with some arbitrary pricing scheme (even a cap and trade market ends up being arbitrary) because the imposed cost is not linked in any way to the benefit of reducing the perceived unwanted external effect.

If, on the other hand, people had a market where (for example) you could trade health care discounts for increases in energy cost - then you would see a better representation of the cost of the externality. Or perhaps trading tax reductions for higher energy prices. I've never seen a proposal to do this, though. Instead people are asked to "pay more for energy now, so it will maybe reduce the chance you get sick in the future, and so maybe reduce the amount of health care cost increase in the future."

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[CrimsonAvenger]

Why in the hell would you want electric heat? That shit is expensive. I will stick with my LED lights and gas heater.

Hmm, because gas heaters dump CO2 into the atmosphere?

Note that I have gas heat as well.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[h4rr4r]

And electricity comes from magic?

Around here there is a good bit of coal and natural gas power plants. So not getting around CO2.

I wish I could get some district heat from a nuke plant, that would be how to win the NIMBYs over.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[SteffenM]

The people who, as you say, "struggle day to day" take the bus. They don't see $4/gallon gas because they don't have a car. Where's you argument now? Oh, it's supporting the continued subsidization of dirty energy tech for rich people!

How about that.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

Even more "to the point" is the practice of taking corn and turning it into alcohol to use a motor fuel here in the USA. How STUPID can we get?

We are taking food out of the supply chain (making food more expensive for the poor), converting it to fuel to burn in our cars and in the process making fuel both more expensive (Because alcohol is more costly per gal than gasoline) and less efficient (You get lower energy in alcohol than gasoline). Then if you look at the total life cycle of this and include the CO2 generated in the process of growing corn/grain through burning the motor fuel we are producing more of the dreaded problem.

Thanks you environmental wackos for higher food, fuel and CO2 emissions with your crazy ideas...

This "Earth Day" turn off your lights for an hour is another (albeit not as totally STUPID) idea. How about we just turn the thermostat a few degrees or turn the water heater down? Heck, taking a cold shower and riding the bike to work would do more than turning off 300 Watts of lights for an hour...

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

gas is 4 bucks a gallon, 10 years ago it was 98 cents

This couldn't have anything to do with the fact that the oil price went from $23 to $93 by any chance?

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[CrimsonAvenger]

While we're at it how about we quit spending trillions of dollars on wars intended to ensure our continued access to cheap oil?

Which wars would those be? I don't recall us attacking Canada (largest source of imported oil for the USA),Saudi Arabia (#2 - about half what we get from Canada) or Venezuela (#3 - about 2/3 what we get from Saudi Arabia) recently...

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[bobbied]

Last time I checked the ROI on Solar power was well above 10 years (more like 20 which is beyond the useful life of the equipment) f you took away all the tax incentives and price rebates. It does vary by location some, but here in the south west 10 year ROI is about the best you can hope for. If you could do what you claim, you would see companies like Wal-Mart putting up Solar generation on their roof tops as fast as they can import them. So far, commercial power generation is NOT going to be solar because it is WAY more expensive than the electric company.

You couple that with the fact that electricity rates are falling within the United States and you have a serious problem with Solar. It's not cost effective, it doesn't seem like it will be anytime soon. There is a really good reason residential Solar isn't really taking off yet....

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[CrimsonAvenger]

And fossil fuels are already heavily subsidized [priceofoil.org]. Why is the parent marked insightful?!

Your link actually describes the level of subsidies as generously as possible ("any government action that lowers the cost of fossil fuel energy production, raises the price received by energy producers or lowers the price paid by energy consumers"), and yet even they can't come up with more than $52B in annual subsidies.

And that's at their high-end estimate. The range they offer ($10B to $52B) shows that they have no real idea how much "subsidy" fossil fuels are getting.

Note also that your "unsubsidized solar is already cheaper than coal" claim is for "European retail power prices". Last I checked, I pay rather less than your average European for electricity.....

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[CrimsonAvenger]

You embody everything that's wrong with the "environmental skeptic" movement. Go back to Fox News, leave actually thinking to the grown ups.

Ad hominem.

You blow your own argument out of the water by resorting to the same sorts of tactics you decry in your opponents.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[Teckla]

I was not talking about a cherry picked set of years, I was talking over a much longer term.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[WaywardGeek]

Earth Hour is a good idea, and is about raising awareness, not saving 1 hour's worth of lighting. I've begged my kids for years to turn off lights when they leave a room. We probably burn a kilowatt 24/7 just due to these lights. I'm slowly replacing the lights they leave on the most with LED bulbs, but they're very expensive.

If Earth Hour can help a 100 million kids like mine learn to turn off the freaking lights, we'd save 50 gigawatts of power. Now, I doubt there are 100 million kids wasting a kilowatt non-stop, but according to Wikipedia, 1.6 billion people watched coverage of Earth Hour last year. That's a lot of kids.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, here's your first problem. You don't get to "let" me do shit. I can burn plastic bags in my back yard all day long and flip you the bird as you drive by in your Prius.

However, if the next vehicle that drives by is one of those big non-hybrid vehicles from the local Police Department, they'll probably stop and hand you a citation for illegal burning and air pollution. Because in this town, there's a limit on how much you're allowed to piss on your neighbors.

There are an awful lot of people who are all gung-ho about changing things if it allows them to kill somebody, but ask them to consider doing something positive, and all of the sudden, it's waily, waily, we're HELPLESS, HELPLESS, I TELL YOU!

A lot more people are interested in this planet's future than you give credit for, although granted, if it involves actually putting down the Mega-Gulp and doing something, they fall short.

Still, if we can afford to coddle Big Oil, we should be able to coddle up-and-coming green tech just as well. Somehow it always seems to end up more in the either-or category, though.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[Teckla]

Except I also debunked his nonsense in the process. Did you come here to debunk anything I've said, or do you truly not have anything useful to add?

Also, don't worry, it appears my comment is already getting modded into oblivion, for telling the truth. His outright lies and misinformation are still modded insightful. You should be happy about that.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[CrimsonAvenger]

Congress can't cut it's pay because no one can live on less than $200,000 a year.

535 assorted Congresscritters @ ~$200K per year costs us ~$110M per year.

Which is ~0.01% of the annual deficit. In other word, trivial.

Note, by the by, that reducing Congressional salaries would make Congress even more a place for the 1% - costs money to maintain two residences (one of which is in an expensive place - DC)....

As to raising taxes and/or reducing the military, neither is going to have a huge long-term effect on the deficit. The real deficit driver for the foreseeable future is Medicare spending (which is expected to be the majority of the budget within a couple decades).

Note that Medicare/Medicaid(Fed only)/SSA is ALREADY the majority of the budget - it's not going to get any better without a painful revamp of the way we do things.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

Why in the hell would you want electric heat? That shit is expensive. I will stick with my LED lights and gas heater.

Hmm, because gas heaters dump CO2 into the atmosphere?

So do electric heaters unless that electricity was generated via nuclear/wind/solar/etc.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, the upfront cost is high.
The problem is that you're not really buying replacement light bulbs. You're buying high quality pieces of electronic gear that you previously didn't use.

I live in Northern California and we have some really brutal summers here. I switched out all of the incandescent bulbs when I moved in to my new place mostly for comfort (I got the philips bulbs. Did my research. They really are impressive devices and well made. You can find lots of teardown reviews on youtube) Rooms were noticeably cooler. I'm sure once the 110+ degree dog days of summer arrive I'll have gladly paid double.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[Zordak]

Which wars would those be? I don't recall us attacking Canada

Dude, pipe down! The Canada Annexation Protocol (along with Addendum Q, "Continued Access to Inexpensive Strategic Hydrocarbon Resereves") was supposed to be a top secret memo. We don't want those Canucks sending their Mounties to line the border before the invasion force even gets to the secret underground bunker in Wyoming.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sick of this crap. Look, heated air rises, surely they taught you heat induced convection in middle school. If you heat air already near cealing at best it will end up marginally warming whatever is above you and only if there's no proper insulation. Unless you sleep on the top of a bunk bed, you won't really appreciate this. In fact, I live in the north and I can assure you that even 700W PSU and a quadcore CPU blowing hot air below knee hight still makes this room just barely warmer than other rooms and only when compiling stuff and certainly nothing near the level of heat that an LPG powered stove produces as a side effect of cooking a meal. If PC was my only or even merely the main heat source, I'd risk hospitalisation during the most of winter as temperatures below -20C are common here.
Returning to the topic of crap bulbs, not only are they warming what doesn't need warming, it is not comfortable to be near them, especially not with your head, you could even get a heat stroke, I bet. And they burn out quickly while CFCs last so long I would love to replace most of what I have with more modern ones but the old ones are still running even though their efficiency isn't nearly as good as the ones you can get your hands on right now so for now I have only replaced the oldest ones that were getting quite dim with 3x120W incandescent equivelents, yes, that's 330W of incandescent light by consuming only somewhat more than a single 70W incandescent bulb. Together with other power friendly solutions my power bill is so small that I can't even tell others about it because whenever conversation gets to the shit bulbs vs. CFCs people always complain how their power bills are stupidly high "but at least we bought these Edison era bulbs in bulk cheaply" and I would look utterly smug if I replied that my monthly power bill is less than 3 days worth of food despite having powerful and old computer running for hundreds of hours every month and under nearly 100% load for far longer than average person even keeps theirs on at all.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[kbrannen]

> I will stick with my LED lights and gas heater.

I like my LED lights too, but some of us don't have the option for gas heaters. My house is all electric because that's my only option.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[Red Flayer]

Commercial facilities ARE installing solar as fast as they can import the panels. One of the reasons solar prices continue to be high is limited supply, which allows the producers to peg the price pretty much at the breakeven on ROI.

Unfortunately, the high startup costs for solar panel production mean we won't see a huge bump in supply or competition anytime soon... the current producers have no incentive to sell at a lower price, since they are already running their plants at max capacity and selling every unit immediately.

There's no technical reason solar can't produce cheaper electricity than generic electric company electricity... but there are microeconomic ones.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[Red Flayer]

Note that Medicare/Medicaid(Fed only)/SSA is ALREADY the majority of the budget

No they are not. SSA plus Dept of Health and Human Services (which includes Medicare and Medicaid) for 2012 totaled 1.701 Trillion, while the total enacted budget was 3.796 Trillion.

As to raising taxes and/or reducing the military, neither is going to have a huge long-term effect on the deficit.

What? If we reduce spending on the military by 200 billion/year, that will definitely have a long-term impact on the deficit. If we raise revenues by any appreciable amount, the same is true. Yes, there is disagreement about how much extra revenue will be raised by tax increases... but that does not mean its impact would be negligible.

The real deficit driver for the foreseeable future is Medicare spending (which is expected to be the majority of the budget within a couple decades).

Medicare expenditures are currently roughly 3.6% of GDP, in the 500-600 billion range. They are expected to increase to 6% of GDP as the baby boomers age, then level off around 2040... which would make them about 1.2 Trillion on this year''s budget. This is much less than half.

Furthermore, the ACA and the recession have reduced the rate of growth of Medicare expenditures, and now Medicare costs are growing at the same rate as the rest of the economy. The CBO forecast is confident that this decrease in growth rate will last at least a few more years, and many experts think this reduction in growth rate is somewhat permanent.

In short, you exaggerate in order to make the case for entitlement cuts. Boo on you.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[Eugriped3z]

Then think of the future, don't have children, and stay out of the way. No one wants to look back on the kind of world that kind of attitude ends up promoting.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[Immerman]

It depends heavily on where you live - New Mexico for example averages over 300 days/year worth of unobstructed sunshine so the investment pays off very quickly. In Portland the payoff is probably closer to a couple centuries.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[ScentCone]

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.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

gas is 4 bucks a gallon, 10 years ago it was 98 cents

Ganjadude, WTF are you smoking?

https://www1.eere.energy.gov/vehiclesandfuels/facts/2005/fcvt_fotw367.html

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[wisnoskij]

Well this is not restrained to environmental issues. Their is not a single issue out there that does not do more harm towards its issue of choice than good.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[catchblue22]

Here is the text of the Reuter's link. Sorry about the formatting, but I only have time to insert line breaks and not paragraph markers.

Roof-top solar power is increasingly cost-competitive with retail power prices, with far-reaching implications for solar manufacturers, utilities and rival generation technologies.
Data gathered from U.S. installations by the Department of Energy suggests it is cheaper to generate electricity from roof-top solar panels than to purchase power from electric utilities, if applied to European retail power prices.
The economics of unsubsidised solar depends on the balance of self-generated solar power which is used at home, displacing more expensive purchased electricity, compared with the surplus which has to be exported back to the grid at much lower wholesale prices.
Retail power prices are higher than wholesale because of a mark-up by utilities, plus state levies and charges to cover the cost of grid transmission and renewable energy.
A report titled "The unsubsidised solar revolution" by UBS analysts last month estimated that households in southern Germany installing unsubsidised solar power could already make a net saving over the 20-year lifetime of the panels.
The analysts estimated a positive rate of return on investment of 2 percent already, rising to more than 6 percent by 2020.
The economics of solar will continue to improve as the installed cost continues to fall, retail power prices rise and residential battery storage becomes increasingly competitive, allowing households to displace more purchased electricity.
FALLING INSTALLED COST
Prices of solar panels, or modules, have more than halved in the past three years, because of a global glut after manufacturing ramped up in China.
The remaining installation costs, chiefly labour, are often referred to as "balance of system" and vary according to the maturity of the supply chain.
The U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has developed an open project database detailing the combined full installation cost, excluding incentives, of projects based in the United States.
The NREL database can be found here:
openpv.nrel.gov/search
Utilities, installers and the public volunteer the data, which NREL monitors to ensure quality.
"Data validation occurs on each record in the database on a regular basis. The database is continually analysed for corrupt records, bad or invalid data, and outliers such as an abnormal cost to watt ratio. Records found to contain questionable data are flagged and are dealt with on a case by case basis."
As expected, full installed costs have fallen less precipitously than modules, given the labour component.
Median calculations are more meaningful than averages given the non-symmetrical data which includes a minority of utility-scale projects.
The NREL data show median, full installed costs fell 17 percent between 2010 and 2012, and are now around $4 (3 euros) per watt.
That is higher than some analyst estimates.
For example, UBS last month assumed current full installed costs at 1.9 euros ($2.5) per watt, perhaps reflecting a more developed supply chain and lower costs in parts of Europe and especially Germany, compared with the United States.
According to the NREL data, costs fell to a median $3.6 per watt in 2013 to date (sample size of just 7 records), from $4.9 in the last three months (99 records); $5.5 in calendar year 2012 (9,747 records); $6.3 in 2011 (31,388 records); and $6.6 in 2010 (35,906 records).
Regarding size, projects are the equivalent of large residential roof-top installations, with a median size of 4 kilowatts in the 2013 year to date; 7 kW in the last three months; 5.2 kW in 2012; 5.4 kW in 2011; and 5.5 kW in 2010.
LEVELISED COST
Assuming the full cost of a new roof-top installation is $4 per watt, it is straightforward to calculate a levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) using various assumptions.
An LCOE

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[catchblue22]

Here is a better link. It states that in Australia, unsubsidised wind energy is cheaper than coal power for new coal plants if depreciation of the coal plant equipment is taken into account. It seems to me that many of the carefully constructed right wing myths about clean energy are beginning to evaporate.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[farble1670]

I still see some LED options at 50$ a bulb in lowes vs a 150 watt bulb for 96 cents.

the time isn't right for LEDs, yet.

there's a lot bigger savings going from incandescent to CFL than to LEDs. moving away from incandescent to CFL is a no brainer, but LEDs are only about 20% more efficient than CFLs, but cost 5x (at the min) as much. that is mitigated somewhat by the fact that LED is supposed to last 2x as long as a CFL. now there's the issue of mercury in the CFL lamps ...

considering how fast the tech is changing, i have a hard time investing in an LED bulb that is supposed to last 20+ years at 4 hours a day. in 5 years, they are going to have something vastly better, in efficiency, cost and reliability. at that point the LED hasn't even come close to paying for itself in savings over the CFL.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[CrimsonAvenger]

I was not talking about a cherry picked set of years, I was talking over a much longer term.

The ONLY "much longer term" where gasoline prices at beginning and end were ~$4.00/gal is 1918-2013.

Note that over MY lifetime (more than 50 years), gasoline prices have increased by ~60% higher than inflation (and during most of that period, gasoline prices were lower than they were when I was born).

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[CrimsonAvenger]

And electricity comes from magic?

Around here there is a good bit of coal and natural gas power plants. So not getting around CO2.

Around here we have a nuclear power plant. So, yes, getting around CO2 is possible.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[farble1670]

Oh and LED bulbs are way better than CFLs.

they are only ~20% more efficient, and cost 5x as much as a CFL (and i'm being kind there).

they claim to last 2x as long as a CFL, but i'm not investing in any energy saving tech that isn't paying for itself after 10 years of service. in 5 years, there will be LEDs that cost peanuts, are more efficient, and more reliable. now isn't the right time for LEDs.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

Quality of the light given off is much better than most CFLs

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

You're exaggerating. Gas in the Netherlands, where I live, is currently 1.775 euro/liter which is roughly $8.69/gallon. We have one of the highest gas prices in Europe. Only Norway has considerably higher prices, which gets you to the $10/gallon, but they're the exception.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[CrimsonAvenger]

In short, you exaggerate in order to make the case for entitlement cuts. Boo on you.

I was making a case for entitlement cuts?? Didn't know that...

Alas, all I was doing was pointing out that reducing the military budget doesn't help much when you're increasing everything else.

Oh, and that tax increases don't necessarily produce increases in revenue.

The fundamental assumption on the left is that we could balance the budget by reducing military expenditures and raising taxes. Note that if we were to ZERO the military budget this year, we'd have to increase tax revenues (not rates, but actual receipts) by ~17% to balance the budget).

The fundamental assumption on the right, on the other hand, is that we could balance the budget by reducing "entitlement spending". While it is true that zeroing "entitlement spending" would eliminate the deficit (and allow a large tax decrease), it is not practical to do so, since it would leave many people (specifically everyone making use of Medicare and SSA) destitute. Even a significant reduction in Medicare and SSA would be problematic at best, unless done over a period of decades (during which the National Debt would continue to rise at >$1T per year).

Is there a short term solution that is acceptable to both left and right? No.

Is there a short term solution at all? No.

Is any real solution going to hurt EVERYONE? Yeppers. This isn't something that can be fixed by pointing and saying "raise THEIR taxes, cut THEIR benefits!"....

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[bobbied]

I'm not buying this.. If there really was a supply problem then why are solar companies dying on the vine right and left. I know of two companies, both had US government loan guarantees that went belly up and a third "research" project that ran out of money before it could generate a single watt hour.

I know why commercial power generators don't use photovoltaic generation very much. It is the same reason they don't/can't use wind power all that much considering. Even with free fuel, maintenance and up front standup costs are still way to high to get the ROI down to a reasonable point.

Truly the cost per watt hour is still unable to compete with fossil fueled generation when you look at total life cycle costs.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[bobbied]

I'd say "quicker" in the southwest where the sun shines a lot... Sure, if you live in the desert and can take advantage of the sun more often than not, your ROI will be quicker. But the question really is HOW LONG?

If you can show that you can recover your costs in 5-7 years, I'd recommend you think seriously about putting up solar panels. I know that we are NOT there yet in general here in the US. Remember that most systems will only generate their rated capacity if the sun is shining *directly* on your panels. Any angles (like when the sun is rising or setting) drastically reduces output. If your panels are mounted on the roof but the angle of your roof doesn't match the sun's angle during the day and your system will again produce less. In fact, at my location I get on average (clouds and sun angles included) about 70% rated output for maybe 5 hours a day with less than 200 days usable a year (not being in a desert). My ROI was like 15 years on a $25K system investment.

$25K buys a LOT of electricity at today's rates...

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[LordLucless]

It's not as simple as that. Both oil and green energy are subsidised. Oil is (in some countries, like mine) then slugged a "carbon tax". Except that certain activities (individual use) get a tax rebate to compensate for the carbon tax. And the carbon tax isn't actually used to offset the damage caused by emissions (and pollutants other than carbon aren't even taxed), they're just pooled into the politico's slush fund.

The energy market is such a mish-mash of subsidies and taxes, it can't properly be thought to operate under anything resembling ideal/free market conditions, and adding or removing a tax is likely to have unforeseen repercussions due to the interrelationship of all the various rules.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[LordLucless]

For example, super-fine particulate matter (i.e., 2.5 microns in diameter), most commonly generated as a fuel combustion byproduct, is a serious contributor to adverse health effects and mortality rates; these health & life effects do translate into costs, though they aren't currently well-reflected in the prices of the products and/or energy choices you can select.

The thing is, the money captured in this process isn't used to address those externalities. It's all just income for the state, and they'll spend it on whatever vote-buying boon-doggle they're working on this month.

So you end up with expensive fuel and all the negative health/life effects. Unless you simply tax the dirty fuel enough to make it more expensive than the non-polluting kind, but then you're not really pricing externalities are you?

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously? Every poor person takes the bus so they don't have to deal with the price of gas? That's how you try to make a point, by casting wide generalizations that have no semblance of reality?

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[bdabautcb]

You make a good point, however taxing polluters only would work if the revenue went to those affected by the pollution. While I agree with you that higher expenses would encourage good changes for corporate energy, I don't know that taxation is the answer. I am fairly young (28), but my experience has been that taxation sends money to a growing beaurocracy that has good intentions but doesn't adress the original issue. I would be interested to hear your thoughts about increasing regulation, and regulating in a manner where there are real consequences for companies that don't comply.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep your heater lower?
Why in the hell would you want electric heat? That shit is expensive. I will stick with my LED lights and gas heater.

Because electric covers a 100 sqft bedroom and the heat is more geared to a 1000 sqft house. Even if the electric is 3x more in cost, I am heating 10x less (or rather keeping 10% @ 70 F and 90% @ 55 F). An electric mattress pad goes further, keeping ~30 sqft of that bedroom @ 75 F instead of 70 F. The max output is about 100 watts on the blanket which is not dissimilar from a human - like a spouse - at rest. The electric blanket is far cheaper than feeding another person to keep under the covers. Nevermind lawyers, offspring, insurance, etc.... Not there aren't perks, but if expense is your enemy, then electricity ought to be your friend.

In a recent power outage, my generator could not keep my furnace running (something with the cheap generator and the fancy furnace electronics). But it could power my resistive/electric heaters just fine. Might as well ask, "Why in the hell would you want ... heat"? Someday, I want to face that conundrum by having a passive house.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[Immerman]

So did you buy those panels 15 years ago? Prices have fallen considerably since then, while energy prices have on average climbed considerably. I'm trying to think, and in many (most?) cases I've seen panels are not mounted flush on the roof but instead on tilted frames to face the sun more directly - it is a bit ugly, but can increase yield substantially. The payback is also faster if you adjust the angle at least twice a year to more efficiently capture summer versus winter sunlight . You still won't see 100% rated power, but you can do a lot better than 70%. Grid-tied systems are also becoming more common, which can save a considerable amount on battery systems.

As for ROI, using your own case it should be obvious that in NM at least the payoff will be considerably faster: 15y * 200/300 = 10years. And it sounds like you may actually be counting on a more generous scale - when I say 300+ days that's not saying 300+ "pretty good solar days", rather that annual yields are 82+% of what you'd see if every day was absolutely perfect. If I owned a suitable home you'd better believe I'd be getting panels installed.

Oh, also, the 20 year useful life you mentioned in the previous post is very much a technology-based number - early solar panels for example, call them 50 years old now, are still be generating useful power if well maintained, whereas some of the newer technology degrades much faster. The price of lower up front costs. There's also the matter of regulator design - some can handle wildly different yields between panels, allowing you to simply add additional panels as the yield on the existing ones declines. Assuming you have the space of course.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[MtViewGuy]

I think the environmentalists are more anti-progress than anything else.

Look, if you want to improve the environment in a more effective way, do the following:

1. Offer incentives to improve home insulation to reduce air conditioning and heating usage.
2. Offer incentives for people to buy more fuel-efficient cars.
3. Aggressively develop solar and wind power and bring the liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) to commercial operation so we can cut the use of coal-fired power plants and even cut down on the use of natural gas-fired power plants.
4. Aggressively improve battery technology so electric cars could go 500 km or more on a single charge.
5. Develop maglev trains to commercial viability so such trains can replace a large fraction of air travel under 1,000 km in range.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[khallow]

"Saving the Earth," sounds better than "Saving ourselves," even though the later is plainly more honest on any environmental issue you care to name.

I disagree. A lot of environmental issues are harmful to people. For example, extreme standards of water and air cleanliness result in large costs for businesses (and those they employ) and public sanitation infrastructure, but little gain in human quality of life. There's a number of recycled items that don't make sense. They cost more to recycle (especially when you consider the time taken to sort the materials) than they yield, even counting landfill space.

NIMBYism prevents a lot of useful industries from being near people, And the blame-finding that follows major accidents is ridiculous. For example, why haven't they started most of the Japanese nuclear plants yet? There's no safety or technological reason to have shut them all down. I'd go as far as to say that most of the reactors shouldn't have been shut down in the first place. But that is the price of public hysteria.

Then there's AGW and the willingness of a lot of people to impoverish the poor of the world just so that we can avoid some negative effects that might (or might not) arise, if the temperature climbs as expected.

So no, I don't believe at all that "saving the Earth" means "saving ourselves".

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[Areyoukiddingme]

I have mod points, but I can't find the +1 Snark option.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[1u3hr]

Well, here's your first problem. You don't get to "let" me do shit. I can burn plastic bags in my back yard all day long and flip you the bird as you drive by in your Prius.

Try it and see what your neighbours and eventually the police do to you.

Nuclear power has 0 CO2 emissions... support that, and support Yukka mountain if you really care about slowing global warming.

Actually, I do. And in any case, why would my position on nuclear preclude my objecting to burning plastic bags?

But you need to get off your high horse and do what you can do... and stop dreaming of the perfect solution. It's not going to happen.

It's the "anti-greens"/denialists/etc who insist there must be a perfectly clean, cheap solution before they will change their own habits one iota. And they won't pay for research or infrastructure, it just has to "happen".

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing ganja, dude.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

This is FLAG in Florida, home of the highest level Scientology services.

This is the Advanced Organization in Clearwater.

This is Saint Hill Manor, headquarters in the United Kingdom and once Ron's home...

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

Where were you buying gas for $0.98/gallon ten years ago? According to the EIA the national average in March 2003 was $1.69, which is $2.12 in September 2012 dollars. The current national average is $3.70. Even going back to 2000 it was $1.52 ($2.05 in 2012$).

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that unless there are tarrifs or taxes added to your gas price, the price is set by the market.

Crude oil in 1999 was $17 a barrel.

Crude oil 2013 is hovering around $100 a barrel.

There is more demand for oil, more people trading in the markets, and there have been a few issues (wars, etc) in the middle east.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[Gavagai80]

Lights are such a microscopic part of your electricity that they can be ignored. Leave all your lights on 24/7/365 and you can more than make up the energy by turning your fridge up one degree.

Check this table for example: http://www.efficiencyvermont.com/for_my_home/ways-to-save-and-rebates/appliances/refrigerators/general_info/electric_usage_chart.aspx. Lighting is $2 per year on your electric bill. Putting effort into trying to turn lights off more is idiotic when there are so many much more helpful changes you can make to your electricity uses that will hinder your life less.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

Then they should be driving 55mph on the highway with over-inflated tires and stripped down cars to save gas. But I haven't seen that.

And Earth hour is good. Even if it would take more people doing more energy saving to make a difference.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

Inflation in the USA, from 2000 to 2012 (yes, it's a bit longer than ten years, but I like round numbers) was ~32%.

Adjust that $0.98/gal upwards by 32%, and we get ~$1.30/gal for gas.

Utterly meaningless. My pay did not go up by ~32% therefore a $4 gallon of gas is more like an $8 gallon of gas since everything else went up in price too.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

Then there's the cost of listening to an insufferable "greenie" who cares not for the environment but claims like a shaman of times gone by to know what is in its best interest and for other people to do. The cost is too much to bear.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[Methuseus]

Gas was about $1.50 for regular ten years ago. See page 176: http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/archive/038403.pdf. Last time it was 98 cents or thereabouts as a national average was in the 80's. I know in suburban Illinois where I lived at the time, the last time it was under $1 was in the late 90's, I believe 1998. You may be right about one specific locality, that it was 98 cents in 2003, but I don't know that I really believe it.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[Methuseus]

They are also the people who are given stipends every month when it's cold so they can afford to heat their home. Or at least that's how it works in Chicago. Unless I'm remembering wrong, those poor enough that they can't afford the gas to heat have to be given a certain amount every month so they don't freeze to death. Same with A/C in the hot months.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[bobbied]

Like I said, if you can get solar panels with a ROI of 5-7 years looking at total cost of ownership (price + installation + maintenance) then I suggest you invest in them.

Problem is, photovoltaic generation is *not* a cost effective solution for most of the US yet. Panels are too big for the power they generate and the systems are too expensive for a reasonable return on your investment and the sun doesn't shine all the time. You are still going to pay more per watt hour than you would just going out and buying it retail when looking at 5-7 year costs. In the southwest where the sun shines a lot, we might be getting to a cost point that when you include tax incentives it starts to pay you back sooner than 10 years, but that's in ideal conditions.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[tbannist]

It looks like the chart you linked to says $17 per bulb per year.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[tbannist]

The problem is your "artificially increasing dity tech cost" is actually "removing the public subsidies from dirty tech". We subsidize gasoline in many ways with direct subsidies and with externalities which are never addressed. If someone gets asthma from car exhaust who pays for it? The person with the asthma does (or society in general for countries with universal health care). That's a large lifetime cost imposed on an individual that should be charged to oil companies and/or the consumers of their products, but never is.

It's about time that we started making the owners of oil and coal burning systems pay for all of the damage they cause.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[cyborg_zx]

I disagree.

Your disagreement misses the point: the Earth does not require saving.

Regardless of whether or not anything anyone might do in the name of saving the Earth is effective or rational it is better framed in terms of anthropocentric interest, not in gelogical terms.

Hence "saving ourselves."

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[cyborg_zx]

What threat to the geological structure of the Earth does your children's electrical usage pattern pose?

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[Red Flayer]

I was making a case for entitlement cuts?? Didn't know that...

Don't try to walk it back, here is what you wrote:

Note that Medicare/Medicaid(Fed only)/SSA is ALREADY the majority of the budget - it's not going to get any better without a painful revamp of the way we do things.

You directly linked Medicare/Medicaid/SSA with "a painful revamp" required to fix the budget issues.

The fundamental assumption on the left is that we could balance the budget by reducing military expenditures and raising taxes.

That is nowhere close to a fundamental assumption by the left.

You're tilting at windmills, buddy.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[Red Flayer]

Hmm... it appears that my info was outdated. After further research, I see that solar prices have dropped over the past few years. See the news about Suntech today?

Sorry for the error.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[vandamme]

You only have one light bulb? And it's a CFL?

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[bobbutts]

$50 each is vastly overstated price. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16803015216 55 Watt Equivalent 7 Watt A19 E26 Base Warm White LED Light Bulb $11.99 each

I picked up several at a nearby big box hardware store for about $5 each after coupons from the local utility. They also had equivalent bulbs to the one I linked at Newegg for similar prices.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[semi-extrinsic]

You have to keep in mind that "inflation" measures published by the government are kept artificially low by excluding food, energy and other things that have been getting more expensive lately. The technical term is "core inflation", but it's just an excuse for the politicians to goalseek inflation into what they want it to be. Now, gasoline would still have a positive price increase with a realistic inflation measure, but less than your numbers.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[khallow]

Your disagreement misses the point: the Earth does not require saving.

It "misses the point" because I wasn't disagreeing with that aspect.

Regardless of whether or not anything anyone might do in the name of saving the Earth is effective or rational it is better framed in terms of anthropocentric interest, not in gelogical terms.

Hence "saving ourselves."

Again, I disagree on the last sentence. It's rather about "saving Earth from us". Sure, Earth isn't truly threatened, but we, humanity are the villain of a cliched morality play. It readily explains why so many backers of environmental policies are blind to the harm those policies can cause.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[cyborg_zx]

Again, I disagree on the last sentence

But, you're not.

It's rather about "saving Earth from us". Sure, Earth isn't truly threatened, but we, humanity are the villain of a cliched morality play. It readily explains why so many backers of environmental policies are blind to the harm those policies can cause.

I.e. it's nothing to do with the Earth at all, it's all about us and how we feel about the matter which will boil down to "save ourselves".

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

"Since you don't pay for the cancer the kids down the street from the coal plant get"
  - sounds like "Think of the children" to me....

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[khallow]

And as I noted, it's not about "saving ourselves", but "saving Earth from ourselves". That bit of nuance is important.

I just loaded the Google search page and looked at what Google suggested for term completions on "humanity is a ". Google suggested "virus", "plague", "disease", and "failed experiment". That's the most common term completions out there. You might try to save a "failed experiment", but nobody tries to save a "plague".

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

I gave up on training my wife to turn off the bedside lamp ages ago. $50 in parts to install 2 photosensors, an arduino and a relay switch, and I now have a count on how many people enter the bedroom vs how many leave. If there are 0 people in the room, then there is 0 current on the sockets that lights are connected to. When kids come along, I'll wire their bedrooms the same way (hell, I can even use the same arduino, so I'll be down to about $15/room)

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[englishknnigits]

The government needs to collect some money to provide essential services so it needs to have some taxes. Taxes discourage whatever behavior the tax is applied to. If you tax employing people, less people will be employed. If you tax cigarettes, people will buy less cigarettes. If you have to tax something, you may as well tax behaviors you want to discourage instead of behaviors you want to encourage. Pollution is a good candidate because it has negative third party effects that can be hard to quantify and its reduction benefits everyone. Using a tax provides incentives that will drive the market in a direction we want, regulations tend to arbitrarily restrict things based on what a small committee of industry placed people decree.

As long as the government actually enforces property rights, enforces contracts, prosecute fraud, and punishes anti-competitive behavior, regulations are largely unnecessary. Most cases of "but what if an evil corporation does x, y, or z" are actually already punishable by law, regulation generally tries to prevent it from happening instead of punishing those that do it. The problem with that approach is that a regulation aimed at preventing something punishes 999 companies that have been doing the right thing with unnecessary testing, documentation, and standards because 1 company did the wrong thing. We would be better off making an example of the 1 company and letting the other 999 flourish.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[cyborg_zx]

And as I noted, it's not about "saving ourselves", but "saving Earth from ourselves".

Which assumes the Earth needs saving from us in some way for us - whether that be from the perspective that we need to keep things the way they happen to be now or that we are a scourge that needs to be erradicated it's ultimately and irrecoverable tied to a human perspective on things.

You might try to save a "failed experiment", but nobody tries to save a "plague".

You don't save a failed experiment, you use it to refine the process. One might argue evolution is just the result of shifting from one failed experiment to the next. And from the perspective of a plague it's not relevant our opinion of it.

And this is the inherent problem - it's self-serving one way or the other. If one wants to simply admit that they're taking an active stance on geo-engineering then fine. It's the idea that somehow you aren't doing that by taking a specific action you intend to have global consequences that cannot parse. Hence "saving the Earth" is meaningless unless you know what the person saying it wants it to mean.

Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas

[WaywardGeek]

NIce!

Wait, what?

[PhxBlue]

I thought Earth Hour was about reducing light pollution?

Re:Wait, what?

[Anne_Nonymous]

I thought Earth Hour was about reducing time pollution.

Re:Wait, what?

[JeanCroix]

I thought Earth Hour was about reducing thought pollution. But that thought may have been one of the polluted ones.

Re:Wait, what?

[phantomfive]

Good thing there's a website where you can look these things up. You learn something new every day, I guess.

Re:Wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is what I have always heard it was for also.

Of course it serves a purpose

[Kjella]

It's environmentalism theater, just like we have security theater. If I turn out the lights for an hour I can say I've done "my part" to help the environment and raise awareness then go back to ignoring it the rest of the year.

Re:Of course it serves a purpose

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a German saying that translates to "the opposite of well done is well intended". Applies very nicely in this case.

Re:Of course it serves a purpose

[Anonymous Coward]

And at the same time, I can display my 'earth hour candelabra' which consists of numerous halogen bulbs positioned to resemble the outline of a fist with a single finger uncurled and pointing skyward. (hint, it's not a 'thumb up')

Re:Of course it serves a purpose

[BlueLightning]

There's a German saying that translates to "the opposite of well done is well intended". Applies very nicely in this case.

Apt indeed. Similar to the English saying "the road to hell is paved with good intentions"...

Re:Of course it serves a purpose

[Dzimas]

You've missed the point completely. The purpose of Earth Hour is to make us realize how absolutely reliant on technology we are. No electric lights, no computers or phones and no television is a jarring shift for most urbanites. Turning your lights off isn't about raising awareness in others, it's about raising *your* awareness. Hopefully you do a little thinking and realize that (a) an emergency preparedness kit with food, flashlights, water and a few days worth of essential supplies is a very sharp idea in case of a disaster, (b) your house/apartment probably doesn't have an effective secondary heating system. Fix that. And, finally, (c) that we're bloody wasteful and should do something about it. Chances are that you won't get far with (c) because it's bloody hard to wean ourselves from our energy addiction, but you stand a reasonable chance of succeeding with (a) and (b).

Re:Of course it serves a purpose

[Anonymous Coward]

I always thought that was a Klingon saying.

Re:Of course it serves a purpose

[houghi]

No, it is about awareness. Just like wearing a pink ribbon does not stop cancer.

The fact that it works is shown here right on /. We are talking about it.

Re:Of course it serves a purpose

[Zordak]

No, it is about awareness. Just like wearing a pink ribbon does not stop cancer.

The fact that it works is shown here right on /. We are talking about it.

Except I'm not aware of many issues that have been solved by trolling, flaming, bickering, and name-calling on Slashdot. Unless it's boredom. A good troll can be quite entertaining.

Re:Of course it serves a purpose

[Eugriped3z]

It's environmentalism theater, just like we have security theater. If I turn out the lights for an hour I can say I've done "my part" to help the environment and raise awareness then go back to ignoring it the rest of the year.

Nice! All I have to do is remember to turn out your lights?

Re:Of course it serves a purpose

[Solandri]

To me it epitomizes irrational luddite environmentalism. The idea that our modern and technological ways are bad, and the old agrarian ways are good. A good example was when I was up in Vancouver. A restaurant announced that for Earth Hour they'd turn off the lights and use candles instead.

If you figure that each table had one bank of ceiling lights with four 36" T8 bulbs, that's 4*25 Watts = 100 Watts. 4*1950 lumens = 7800 lumens.

A candle on the table is about 80 Watts for 13 lumens. So basically they were burning 80% as much energy for 1/600th the light. Even if you ignore that Vancouver gets most of its electricity from hydro and assume the electricity for the bulbs came from a 40% efficient coal plant, that's less than 0.5% the light per Watt of entropic heat generated (with a corresponding amount of CO2 production). Burning candles for light is just about the worst possible thing you can do for the environment.

The technologically advanced choice is almost always the more environmentally sound choice. The problem isn't technology. It's Jevons' paradox - improved energy efficiency tends to increase overall energy consumption rather than decrease it.

Re:Of course it serves a purpose

[Anonymous Coward]

The purpose of Earth Hour is to make us realize how absolutely reliant on technology we are.

Maybe we should have Luddite Week, where the only thing you're allowed to eat needs to be hunted down or picked off a wild bush yourself.

"Reliant on technology" is a statement as meaningful as "Full of chemicals" and only slightly less retarded than "Vaccines are linked to autism".

Re:Of course it serves a purpose

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the Klingon version is, "the road to hell is paved with the skulls of your enemies and their children."

Re:Of course it serves a purpose

[nojayuk]

The purpose of Earth Hour is to make us realize how absolutely reliant on technology we are. No electric lights, no computers or phones and no television is a jarring shift for most urbanites.

And when the dreadful Hour has passed and you click the lightswitch to return to the 21st century you fervently swear you will burn every ounce of fossil carbon on the planet, and Titan too if necessary if it means you'll never ever have to go through that horrible experience for real.

Re:Of course it serves a purpose

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah I agree, we should just not even bother. Fuck the earth and everyone on it.

That's how you sound.

Re:Nuke gay whales for Christ

[blippo]

Like most, if not all other enviromental efforts, it's all about talk and symbolism, and very nearly nothing about actually doing the math...

It is purely symbolic...

[Anonymous Coward]

Duh.

Why First World Environmentalism Is a Waste

[Anonymous Coward]

There FTFY

Blah blah energy independence. Blah blah think of the children.

Stockpile all the hydro-carbons. Sell back to the Chinese. Use profits to research new battery, transistor and lubricant tech.

Captcha: unclean (yeah no shit)

How did this moronic submission make it here?

[arcite]

The point of Earth Hour is public awareness, to get people talking, thinking, discussing solutions. To experience one solitary hour without electricity exposes westerners to the daily hardship that billions around the world face due to lack of electricity. I'm here in Egypt, they currently have a 20% electricity generation deficit. This means that even though I may live in one of the best neighborhoods in Cairo, I experience low-shedding 1 hour every second day. My Earth Hour is every second day! So, can the hipster who doesn't have a clue who submitted this story, pull his head out of his self-important ass? You're either part of the problem, or part of the solution. Bitching about awareness of the inequality in the world as being a waste of time is being part of the problem.

Re:How did this moronic submission make it here?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bitching about awareness of the inequality in the world as being a waste of time is being part of the problem.

Only if raising awareness leads to somebody actually doing something about the problem. It is otherwise futile and a waste of time.

Re:How did this moronic submission make it here?

[ryzvonusef]

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:How did this moronic submission make it here?

[larry bagina]

It's not one hour without electricity (if you want that, go camping). It's one hour without non-essential lights. Oh, and it's not about awareness of people who lack reliable electricity, it's about awareness for climate change.

But the good news is, the rest of your rant is spot-on and is exactly why Earth Hour is garbage.

Re:How did this moronic submission make it here?

[EmagGeek]

Let's raise awareness for water pollution by all going out and crapping in the river.

Re:How did this moronic submission make it here?

[Anonymous Coward]

This means that even though I may live in one of the best neighborhoods in Cairo, I experience low-shedding 1 hour every second day. My Earth Hour is every second day!

Sounds like California to me.

Re:How did this moronic submission make it here?

[Falc0n]

The point of Earth Hour is public awareness, to get people talking, thinking, discussing solutions.

But it doesn't even do that! At best, a few 'regular people' -might- think about the environment for a few days (or hours), akin to the hype around St. Patty's day this year. But come the day after, those people will forget all about it. And at worst, it just gives environmentalists more to be smug about, sniffing their own asses thinking they are making a difference, when in fact they aren't. We're on hydro-electric here. Our CO2 doesn't change a lick if we turn out our lights in the PNW.

No, Earth Hour is simply a fundraising opportunity for the WWF and other environmental organizations. Its mainly about money, and has little to do about making real change. Similar to politicians and political parties, environmental organizations need to look like they're fixing problems, otherwise they won't make money, or a living. I'd go as far as to say many environmental organizations are also anti-technology (nuclear, GMOs, etc), shooting themselves in the environmental foot they want to fix.

Re:How did this moronic submission make it here?

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I've seen, egyptians generate heat and light by burning American flags.

Re:How did this moronic submission make it here?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

We just had our first democratically (for a certain value of democracy) elected govt to actually complete their term. So much for democracy...

I have friends in Pakistan (Lahore). The problems you guys have got are going to take way more than one term of government. Look at the US, it took us nearly a century of democracy to officially end slavery, and well over a century later we still suffer plenty oif after-effects. Change comes slow. Simply making it to a second consecutive term of democracy is a pretty big acheivement, there are lots of countries that let their first democraticly elected government turn into just another despot. (Crossing fingers that doesn't happen in Egypt right now.)

Re:How did this moronic submission make it here?

[Chris Mattern]

The point of Earth Hour is

...to make people feel good. Because if you make people *feel* like they're helping to solve the problem, it doesn't matter at all that they're actually making it worse! Once you understand this, many Green policies start to make considerably more sense.

Re:How did this moronic submission make it here?

[ganjadude]

what after affects of slavery do we still face today, I am honestly curious on that because I dont know anyone who was a slave or whos father/mother was a slave

Re:How did this moronic submission make it here?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's raise awareness for water pollution by all going out and crapping in the river.

We already do that.

Re:How did this moronic submission make it here?

[Anonymous Coward]

Forget that consumers (you and I) only use 15% of the world’s energy while industry and commerce use the remaining 15%. Ignore that “all electric” cars use electricity generated by 51% coal-fired plants, and that big industry has always supported advertising that makes the consumers feel they own 100% of the guilt. The reality is that the earth has been warming for 40,000 years (Just where did those pesky glaciers over Scotland and Chicago go?), and the difference of our additional carbon is tiny compared with the energy required for that change. The reality is we are all in denial of our powerlessness to run the universe..

We think that somehow we control the forces that melted the glaciers and raised the sea level five meters since Columbus took his first journey. We are not, you will notice, working on plans to cope or adjust; we are, instead performing symbolic acts of defiance against the planet, the Sun, and the universe. (Might as well use the chicken bones as a way to stop the warming.) So, first is denial of our powerlessness, next is bargaining with God or Nature (turning down the lights), then anger at somebody or the universe (environmental activism), and finally acceptance and planning how to live in a warmer world; what to grow in thawed Siberia and Muskeg, and what tropical foods thrive in Manchuria. We are a long way from acceptance.

Re:How did this moronic submission make it here?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like you should quit bitching and get your shit together as a country. I'm not going to be chastised by a country that can't even keep it's electricity running all day. We've been using electricity for what 100 years now?

Re:How did this moronic submission make it here?

[jittles]

From what I understand, there are small towns near Lafayette, LA where they have two Mardi Gras parades every year; one for white people, and one for "people of color." I haven't seen with my own eyes, but I have heard from people who grew up in the area and lived there within the last 5 years.

Re:How did this moronic submission make it here?

[bigpat]

You lost me at "exposes westerners to the daily hardship..."

That is like eating a taco from the Taco Bell drive thru and saying you feel the pain of the drug war in Mexico just because you have some gas.

Re:How did this moronic submission make it here?

[Vaphell]

Earth Hour is nothing more than a crap invented solely for simpletons so they can click Like on their facebook profile and feel like they accomplished something.
Ask them if they *really* want to really sacrifice their oversized houses, 3 cars, airconditioning 24/7 and boatloads of gizmos they don't really need in order to significantly reduce their footprint - now that would be interesting.

Re:How did this moronic submission make it here?

[Anonymous Coward]

what after affects of slavery do we still face today, I am honestly curious on that because I dont know anyone who was a slave or whos father/mother was a slave

You are so right dude, after-effect is just another word for still happening. Those damn ivory-tower intellectucals, always making up fancy-dancy words when we don't need them.

All those animals getting mutated around chernobyl, those aren't after-effects that's because chernobyl is still melting down right now.

Re:How did this moronic submission make it here?

[Anonymous Coward]

To experience one solitary hour without electricity exposes westerners to the daily hardship that billions around the world face due to lack of electricity.

How is this even remotely, tangentially the purpose of Earth Hour? Seems to me that experiencing that hardship would cause people to demand the construction of additional fossil fuel burning capacity to bring electricity to these poor underserved people around the world, wouldn't it? After all, since I understand their hardship, it would be pretty awful of me to then say, "And you have to suffer through it by not building more carbon-emitting plants!"

This would be as sensible as first worlders "fasting for a day to raise awareness of hunger and famine worldwide," and then rebuking the people existing in famine conditions for building a farm & ordering chemical fertilizers so they can feed themselves.

Re:How did this moronic submission make it here?

[argStyopa]

I would have said that Egypt could perhaps jettison it's shitty, tyrannical government and work on joining us in the 21st century....but they already made an effort.

Sadly, they've apparently decided to replace their shitty, tyrannical secular government with an autocratic theocracy, so I'm going to suggest that in 20 years, losing "only" one hour every other day is going to be looked back on with fond nostalgia....

You guys enjoy that.

Re:How did this moronic submission make it here?

[CrimsonAvenger]

Simply making it to a second consecutive term of democracy is a pretty big acheivement

No, they're not "making it to a consecutive term of democracy".

What they are doing is actually reaching the Constitutional limit on the maximum period between elections (five years, unless a vote of no confidence brings down the government first).

Remember, "Government" means something slightly different in Parliamentary systems than it does in the USA.

Re:How did this moronic submission make it here?

[CrimsonAvenger]

From what I understand, there are small towns near Lafayette, LA where they have two Mardi Gras parades every year; one for white people, and one for "people of color."

And in New Orleans we have Zulu and Rex doing parades on Mardi Gras. One group is "people of color", one isn't.

No, it's not that way because we're racist assholes (some of us are, no doubt, but check out the people actually going to both those parades sometime), but because of TRADITION!

Re:How did this moronic submission make it here?

[Anonymous Coward]

The African Americans haven't blended into the American melting pot as well as the German, Irish, Latvian, or other waves of poor immigrants. They're more akin to the Chinese or Jewish immigrants who cling to their communities. While a lot of individuals have blended in the American norm, thug ghetto culture is prevalent, and arguably a self-perpetuating effect of the schism.

Ever heard of white flight?. Omaha Nebraska certainly has. Made a horrible mess of school system. Created the inner-city ghetto schools by essentially defunding them since schools are funded by property tax. All this makes for a badly educated minority class the next generation, which perpetuates the problem.

Ever heard of driving while black? How about the more generic term of racial profiling?

You know how it was highly celebrated that a black president got elected? Why do you think that was a special event?

When you think of poor disenfranchised inner-city angry youth... I'll just give that a minute to set in... what color is thier skin? why?

Finally, just where the hell have you been not to have noticed any of this?

Re:How did this moronic submission make it here?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, you're right. The problem is too big. We should not try to fix it, because we'll surely fail. No matter what we do. Always.

Re:How did this moronic submission make it here?

[Anonymous Coward]

The point of Earth Hour is public awareness, to get people talking, thinking, discussing solutions. To experience one solitary hour without electricity exposes westerners to the daily hardship that billions around the world face due to lack of electricity. I'm here in Egypt, they currently have a 20% electricity generation deficit. This means that even though I may live in one of the best neighborhoods in Cairo, I experience low-shedding 1 hour every second day. My Earth Hour is every second day! So, can the hipster who doesn't have a clue who submitted this story, pull his head out of his self-important ass? You're either part of the problem, or part of the solution. Bitching about awareness of the inequality in the world as being a waste of time is being part of the problem.

Well, I guess it worked and may work in the future (when Earth Hour comes). The logic of the poster/article are completely in-tune with reality. It doesn't do shit (except maybe make it easier to see Jupiter's moons or the Orion nebula with my telescope near Cincinnati). The post got people thinking. Now, when Earth Hour comes and you switch those lights off, maybe you'll be thinking about what a completely pointless exercise it is. It's not addressing the real problem or even the root of it. And hell, face it, those who are concerned about energy are ALREADY concerned. It's not going to get electronics/power junkies to suddenly accept energy savings like Jesus into their life!

Tell ya what - get a teenager (hell, 10 of them) to give up her smart phone for a week and switch to something to occupy their time that uses no electricity (stored or connected) and I'll accept that technological societies can accept change.

Re:How did this moronic submission make it here?

[Red Flayer]

We're on hydro-electric here. Our CO2 doesn't change a lick if we turn out our lights in the PNW.

Umm, bullshit. Hydro produces only about 40% of evening electric supply in the PNW (though at peak demand, hydro is about 70% according to PNWR, an industry lobby group). Fossil fuels are responsible for a higher percentage of evening power consumption than hydro.

At best, a few 'regular people' -might- think about the environment for a few days (or hours), akin to the hype around St. Patty's day this year.

That's not the best-case scenario. Earth Hour a couple years ago is what prompted my wife and I to implement a plan for reducing electricity consumption every day, year-round. This multiplied by thousands (or even millions, in the long run)is the best-case scenario.

Re:How did this moronic submission make it here?

[wisnoskij]

So they are trying to raise public awareness of environmental issues by increasing power plant pollution for a day?

This is why raising awareness is a horrible thing to do. Everyone who might actually have done something is sucked into the never ending treadmill of raising awareness for things that everyone already knows about and will never care about anyways. And the last thing that could ever change anything is awareness.

Re:How did this moronic submission make it here?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you people smell so friggen bad when you move to the west?

Re:How did this moronic submission make it here?

[Anonymous Coward]

You say it's to get people talking, then when someone tries to talk about it you say they should shut up. Great logic, there.

Re:How did this moronic submission make it here?

[ryzvonusef]

True that, it's just...well I won't lie to you, but you would naturally presume things would be worse in a country undergoing a revolution than one without....His comment just brought things into perspective for me just *how* bad things are here.

We need to have stable governments so we can build some infrastructure.

Re:How did this moronic submission make it here?

[Eivind]

Yeah. Purely symbolic. I could turn the lights of for an hour every year for the rest of my life, and the sum total of saved electricity would be comparable to the energy I'd save if I'd swap one of my least energy-efficient bulbs for a modern LED one.

Re:How did this moronic submission make it here?

[Anonymous Coward]

We just had our first democratically (for a certain value of democracy) elected govt to actually complete their term. So much for democracy...

If someone told you democracy was going to solve energy grid problems, they were lying.

If you believed it, you are gullible.

If as a consequence of this, you think democracy is bad, you are an idiot.

If you wanted to use this anecdote to demonstrate that democracy is bad, you are a troll.

So what exactly was your point, really?

Re:How did this moronic submission make it here?

[ryzvonusef]

So what exactly was your point, really?

My point, my dear rustled jimmies, is in the very sentence you quote from my previous comment:

for a certain value of democracy

There is no point of a "democracy" if it's a farce; at least a military dictator is straight forward in admitting they don't give a shit.

We don't HAVE democracy, even if it looks like it; ballot stuffing and poll rigging does not make a govt democratic.

That does not mean *actual* democracy (where "elected" officials can face consequences for their actions, and a re actually answerable to their electorate) is bad, I have no idea where you took that from.

For five years, our govt has been busy:

- making sure their irregularly elected officials are not ousted (irregularities include fake degrees, dual nationalities, corruption case, other criminal acts etc)

- making sure their crooked president is NOT convicted by Switzerland (He isn't called Mr 10% for nothing)

- maintain the unconstitutional National Reconciliation Ordinance, which give Carte Blanche to all previous crimes

In addition to the usual corruption and bribery etc etc

What they *aren't* doing is sustaining and improving a fuel structure, which is what a democratic govt should care about. So we have massive fuel shortages, and factories are closing down and moving to such countries as Kenya and Bangladesh (not exactly top-of-the chart, but at least they give a shit).

Heck they promoted the man responsible for our electrical crises, and made him prime minister!

So my point, my dear friend, is that if infrastructure is better in Egypt than in Pakistan...and where our govt more concerned about saving crooks than factories...then what we have is NOT democracy.

Marketing fail?

[psydeshow]

If it was truly pointless and wasteful, as an American I'm pretty sure I would have heard of it before now.

Re:Marketing fail?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or invented it.

There's already an expression for this...

[Anonymous Coward]

penny wise and pound cheap

Seems to be missing the point

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, Earth Hour does nothing in itself; I thought this was something that pretty well understood and didn't require *another* article written about it. The point of Earth Hour, however, is to build awareness of living in -- and contributing to -- a changing climate. That said, the feel good factor itself might be detrimental as people will feel that they have done their duty for the year. But this is currently, as far as I am aware, unsubstantiated and probably warrants actual research.

Re: How about this?

[cayenne8]

Why can't we just fucking STOP the twice a year transition to/from Daylight Savings Time?!??!

Likely as not, it would save more energy, and certainly help with human internal clocks.

From what I understand, they actually observer statistically distinct spikes in heart attacks and suicides with the time changes each year.

Okay

[Murdoch5]

So how about we listen to this post and just stop caring at all. If turning your lights off wont help then why even try, lets turn everything on full blast and leave it on.

Re:Okay

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a radical idea: turn off lights when you don't need them. Crazy, huh?

Re:Okay

[Anonymous Coward]

How about we listen to this post and spend time on things that would actually help the situation? Step 1: determine what would actually help the situation.

Re:Okay

[Anonymous Coward]

DING DING DING! That's exactly what I **DO** when we have this. I turn every light in the house on and crank up the stereo.

Of course it's still for my convenience, so as I go to bed I turn them all off.

And that's the trick -- I don't leave them all on because I don't want to waste money, "Saving The Earth" is a side-effect.

(Posting anon 'cause I can't figure out my password -- duh.)

Re:Okay

[poofmeisterp]

So how about we listen to this post and just stop caring at all. If turning your lights off wont help then why even try, lets turn everything on full blast and leave it on.

Now that idea makes sense. If you have Humans destroy their living environment, they might just say, "Hey, I can't live like this!" Well, then it's too late but hey.. that's how 'sheltered' societies think. At least the point will have gotten across.

Ain't nuthin' gonna happen until the shit's hit the fan and flung so much poo that we ain't gonna see daylight for 1000 years.

I'm not joking. I'm serious. This is how Humans think.

What this really is about:

[Synerg1y]

Us feeling better, the environment doesn't actually better. But being able to say you did something for 1 hour out of almost 9 thousand in a year, somehow makes people feel like they're taking strides towards saving the environment... Or maybe it's the symbolism involved.

Re:Nuke gay whales for Christ

[I'm New Around Here]

Fuck your "Earth Hour", I will spend it standing in front of my fridge wasting energy.

That's a long time to rearrange the magnets on your fridge.

Re:Nuke gay whales for Christ

[fahrbot-bot]

Like most, if not all other environmental efforts, it's all about talk and symbolism, and very nearly nothing about actually doing the math...

Math is hard.

Re: How about this?

[realityimpaired]

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.

Need more women posting on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

This article and the one a couple below it remind me of those tedious debates in freshman dorms where everyone is trying to prove how smart they are by taking contrary positions.

Look, this wasn't my idea but evidently people want to show that they can act as a community and do something very, very small together, too small to make any difference in itself, but the idea is that at least we can all come together and focus on the problem for a moment. And so maybe we can eventually cooperate more effectively at some point. Isn't that totally obvious? Yes, but not for the sorts of people I mentioned above.

Re:Need more women posting on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Boobies!

Re:Need more women posting on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, your post is blatantly sexist. I don't think that "coming together as a community" to "focus on a problem for a moment" and "cooperate more effectively" has much of a chance if you're going to be a raging cunt the whole time.

Also, you're kinda bitching about people bitching.

Re:Need more women posting on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

We could also do with less sexists.

Re:Need more women posting on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah -- so small it is actually a negative impact on the environment. I don't see how more women posting would be any different -- they are just people after all. Maybe you might think there is a difference between a white skinned person and a black skinned person posting also, but on the Internet no one knows if you are a cat typing on a keyboard and nor should it matter (what should matter is opinion and ideas).

Re:Nuke gay whales for Christ

[Anonymous Coward]

And by 'actively defy' I mean they will intentionally do the opposite to further increase the effect the suggestion/advice was intended to mitigate.

Seems contradictory

[hawguy]

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.'"

So the drop in energy demand won't reduce the amount of electricity pumped into the grid, but after the hour is over, there will be enough extra demand to require new coal plants to be brought online even though they were still producing the same amount of power as before?

Sounds kind of like the logic my power company uses to explain high costs "The high demand for electricity means we need more money to build power plants and our increasing costs mean we need to charge more for electricity. The large number of home solar installations with net metering means that our expensive power plants are running under capacity, thus we need to charge more for electricity"

Re:Seems contradictory

[Maximum Prophet]

Let's run that in reverse. A small increase in energy usage, like my one, 100 watt, bulb, won't increase the amount of energy pumped into the grid, so I shouldn't have to pay for it. (It's only 100 watts)

Let's get everyone to do that! Free energy!! Perpetual Motion!!!

Re:Seems contradictory

[cervesaebraciator]

Yeah, I had to read that part twice because I had the same thought. What the writer seems to mean is that there won't in fact be drop in energy significant enough to step down power production and thereby save CO2. The "moreover" introduces a hypothetical possibility: i.e. even if power consumption decreased enough to step down power production, the energy wasted in stepping production down and up would outweigh the overall savings in consumption. This makes a sort of sense, but I saw no numbers in TFA to back it up, so I'll remain skeptical.

The fact that the author indulges in one non sequitur after another (why is he talking about the benefits of electricity? who's denying them? I thought the point was that our means of generating it has some drawbacks. Who's lighting candles?), often without offering evidence, leaves me even colder. The basic notion that shutting off electric lights for an hour is about making us feel good I can agree with. But I think this guy is just trolling. Maybe it makes him feel better about himself.

Re:Seems contradictory

[RabidReindeer]

Turning off the A/C for one hour is only a net loss if the temperature shifts more than the amount it takes to recover an hour's outage. Otherwise, no post-Earth-Hour surge. Your MIleage May Vary, depending on climate and insulation.

Turning off motors costs an additional amount of initial power surge when you turn them back on. How much, if any, that you save depends on the amount of power otherwise consumed during that hour less the surge.

Turning off incandescent and fluorescent lights has relatively little surge turning them back on compared to what they'd eat for an hour. LEDs have effectively none. Then again, quite a few of my LED lights are solar-charged, so turning them off would be pure symbolism.

Earth Hour is all symbolism anyway. Its prime function is to focus attention on what we're doing and what we might be doing. To THINK, not merely be a passive animal. We don't have to turn the world upside-down (yet, anyway). But we shouldn't just live in the here and now, we should consider where we want to be.

Re:Seems contradictory

[RabidReindeer]

Let's run that in reverse. A small increase in energy usage, like my one, 100 watt, bulb, won't increase the amount of energy pumped into the grid, so I shouldn't have to pay for it. (It's only 100 watts)

Let's get everyone to do that! Free energy!! Perpetual Motion!!!

Has anyone ever explained the difference between "almost zero" and "zero" to you?

I don't know what current local rates are, but several years back, it was 17 cents a KWh in these parts. A 100-watt bulb is 1/10th of 1 kilowatt. Turning if off during Earth Hour would save you 1.7 cents at that rate. It may not be much, but it's still something.

Re:Seems contradictory

[cervesaebraciator]

LEDs have effectively none. Then again, quite a few of my LED lights are solar-charged, so turning them off would be pure symbolism.

And bad symbolism at that. Within the symbolic context of this Earth Hour, a solar powered solution to our CO2 woes should shine the brightest.

Re:Seems contradictory

[wisnoskij]

Electricity produced is all planned months in advance.

Power plans are not just giant batteries, they do not produce power on demand they produce a set amount based on a schedule and give it out immediately. If their is less demand it is not stored

Re:Seems contradictory

[RabidReindeer]

LEDs have effectively none. Then again, quite a few of my LED lights are solar-charged, so turning them off would be pure symbolism.

And bad symbolism at that. Within the symbolic context of this Earth Hour, a solar powered solution to our CO2 woes should shine the brightest.

Sometimes you have to just put up with bad symbols.

Intelligent people are more likely to understand the gesture, empty as it is. Out of the rest, some wouldn't have the wit to see the solar panels just that the lights were on, others would run around screaming that the amount of energy required to produce the solar lighting outweighs the savings. Etc. etc.

Re:Seems contradictory

[hawguy]

Electricity produced is all planned months in advance.

Power plans are not just giant batteries, they do not produce power on demand they produce a set amount based on a schedule and give it out immediately. If their is less demand it is not stored

And that's the contradiction - if the power plants are going to be running and producing a constant power output regardless of the 1 hour "blackout", then why would new plants need to be brought online after the blackout?

Either power plants produce constant output and won't reduce their output even during the output, or they'll throttle back and/or shut down and will need to be brought back online after the hour is over.

How can you have both?

Re:Seems contradictory

[bobbied]

The author is not correct in reasoning, although he is generally correct in the end results.

Electricity must be generated the instant it is used. Power generation is generally scheduled hours in advance based on projected demand plus some safety margin. Fuel burn rates are determined and set in advance at all but the smallest fossil fueled plants and it may be a long time between when the fuel is actually burned and when the steam it generates is used. Throttling up and down a large power plant can take hours and days. So, unless they project an hour with lower demand because of this "Let's turn off our lights" idea it is likely that the amount of fuel burned will not change. What happens is any excess heat that cannot be stored in the system is simply dumped. They have to be ready to generate the scheduled power, and that means they have to burn the fuel.

If you can actually shed enough load, you *might* be able to reduce the fuel burn, but I'm guessing the event won't be big enough and about all you will really do is generate a lot of extra steam.

Re:Seems contradictory

[Anonymous Coward]

There aren't any numbers because its nonsense. The absolute worst case situation is that production doesn't change and no energy is saved. Any action that results in a greater expense of energy is, therefore, poor (and possibly deliberately wasteful) decision making on the part of the energy companies.

Most likely, there's an optimum where production is partly stepped down, and the gains outweighs the cost of stepping down. However, even if that's not the case, reducing use cannot require an increase in energy production (notwithstanding bizarre theoretical network effects that almost never happen in real life).

Re:Seems contradictory

[Anonymous Coward]

Who knows, maybe he's a manager at a power plant.

They loose money when the power is lower. Especially considering the 1 hour time frame makes it difficult to power down and up the load following plants.

They 'should' run dynamic load balancing, but again, that relies on keeping a buffer running which costs more with and become mostly lost revenue.

Re:Seems contradictory

[Maximum Prophet]

From the original article:

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

The article didn't say, "almost zero" emission reductions, it claimed zero.

The reality is that the original article is lying by omission. Yes, if one person turns off one 100 watt bulb, the generating plants don't burn any less fuel, what happens is everyone else's bulbs get a few millionths of a volt more, and put out a few millionths more lumens. No-one notices.

If *everyone* turns off every light bulb in their house, then there should be a noticeable drop in load at the generators, and less fuel should be burned. Energy companies could also shift load from the more expensive generator stations.

Anyway, this is an example of Poe's law.

This complaint comes back every year.

[Anonymous Coward]

And every year, I have to remind people that it's about the social awareness of pollution, not energy savings for 1 hour.

Are people still paying attention to this guy?

[Anonymous Codger]

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:Are people still paying attention to this guy?

[phantomfive]

So are you saying his numbers are right? Because if they are, then you have your answer as to why people listen to him.

Secondly, are there really many topics that have less public awareness than saving the environment? I know I sure had it drilled into my brain since I was a kid with all kinds of training. I'm not sure you can do anything to raise more public awareness by this point.

Re:Are people still paying attention to this guy?

[Anonymous Codger]

Where did I say his numbers are right? I have no idea if they are right or not because I don't have time to go research it, and I didn't express an opinion either way (although given the source, I have my doubts). Even if his numbers in this narrow case are correct, I don't think they're relevant to the real intention behind Earth Hour.

And as to not doing anything more to raise public awareness, I think it's valuable to do so because people are subjected to a constant torrent of advertising telling them how wonderful it is to use all these gadgets and drive all these cars, plus propaganda from politicians and industry telling them that global warming is a hoax and pollution is good for you.

Disclaimer: I've never participated in Earth Hour and may never do so, but I encourage events that make people think about the costs of our energy-thirsty lifestyles.

Re:Are people still paying attention to this guy?

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, my awareness has been elevated and I feel good about it. No need to turn my lights out to prove it anyone...

Re:Are people still paying attention to this guy?

[bigpat]

Second, as other posters have pointed out, Earth Hour isn't meant to actually save any energy, it's to build public awareness

Build awareness of what? I think the idea has completely failed if the objective wasn't to try and get people to save electricity. I certainly thought that was the goal of Earth Hour. As a vehicle to build public awareness it isn't effective if the underlying act is found to be merely symbolic of saving electricity without actually reducing consumption of fossil fuels. Might as well streak naked through Central Park for whatever it is you are trying to promote.

Best to come up with a better idea. Maybe everyone can buy a mink coat and then have a mass throwaway to protest animal cruelty.

Re:Are people still paying attention to this guy?

[oddjob1244]

Earth Hour isn't meant to actually save any energy, it's to build public awareness.

The problem with raising awareness like this is you create the mindset that to be "green" and save the earth you have to make sacrifices, such as no lights or HVAC. This simply isn't true, people could do wonders towards saving energy by installing more efficient lighting, insulating their attics and hot water pipes, and calking their windows. You don't have to remember to turn it on and off, it works when you sleep, and most important to most you don't have to change your current lifestyle or give something up.

Re:Are people still paying attention to this guy?

[cervesaebraciator]

First, I can't believe anyone takes Lomborg seriously anymore.

He represents all that is soulless and wrong! And you slept with him! Wait... you don't mean Bill either do you.

Newsflash: Symbolic gesture is symbolic

[Anonymous Coward]

... and a gesture.
Film at eleven.

Feel good meaningless junk

[onyxruby]

Crap like this is feel good meaningless junk science that does absolutely nothing to solve anything. This is no better than saying were going to boycott the gas stations on Sunday (and fill up on Monday). People need to get real about the environment and as long as we've got crap like this and lunatics at places like greenpeace getting the headlines were going to continue shooting ourselves in the foot. We don't need the Haliburton's of the world do the damage when we keep deluding ourselves by pulling crap like this.

Re:Feel good meaningless junk

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you mean by "junk science"? Whoever is claiming that this is science doesn't understand what science is.

Re:Feel good meaningless junk

[quantaman]

I'm not a big fan but I don't think Earth hour qualifies as meaningless junk science, it's only 1 hour, even if it worked perfectly it would only reduce CO2 by ~1/(24*365)=0.011415525%, the fact that the effect is marginally in the other direction isn't the point, it's a PR stunt about saving energy and reducing light pollution.

Junk science would be "use candles instead of light bulbs", or more realistically "buy a new electric car instead of taking the bus" (not quite, but I'm pretty sure a lot of people feel they're helping the environment when driving an electric car, rather than just hurting it less). I am critical about a lot of the 'fixes' that the environmental movement has embraced, particularly the anti-Nuclear crowd (imagine the irony if it turns out the biggest threat to the environment was actually the environmental movement), but Earth hour isn't supposed to be a fix, just a PR stunt.

Re:Feel good meaningless junk

[onyxruby]

I hesitated to use "junk science" as I don't think it even deserves that title. Unfortunately there are people that actually think they are having a scientific impact in doing what they are doing and benefiting the environment in doing so. When I see comments about the amount of CO2 that will be saved getting tossed around by the ignorant that is where I have to insert "junk science". As for the rest of your comment, I'm in fair agreement.

Re:Feel good meaningless junk

[quantaman]

For the people thinking the earth hour itself is helping I agree that it's junk science.

But for debates like this I find there's often a bad argument 'it helps the environment', and a good argument 'it inspires people to help the environment'. Even if most people make the bad argument I believe the good argument is the one that needs to be addressed.

Re:Feel good meaningless junk

[Anonymous Coward]

So propose something better and get folks to go along with it.

What idiot wrote this crap.

[eddy]

[...] it will be offset by the surge from firing up coal or gas stations to restore electricity supplies afterward.

Sure, because power plants usually shut down for an hour here and there due to lessened demand. What sort of retard wrote this crap?

Re:What idiot wrote this crap.

[sjames]

That's a lot of built up dark they have to dispel after the hour is over, and that takes energy. Who the hell need physics when we can make unfounded guesses?

Re:Nuke gay whales for Christ

[ArcadeMan]

Let's go shopping!

There's a much bigger problem with this

[Anonymous Coward]

The grid is not well-equipped to handle rapid transients in load. You can't change the heat output of a coal or nuclear-fired furnace instantly, and if you try, bad things happen.

If everyone on the grid suddenly opened their breakers at the same time, the resulting backlash would probably cause thousands of steam turbines to overspin and their emergency pressure valves to open, at which point the turbine has to spin down and resynchronize before it can begin producing power again. I guess that would be okay since there is no load, but it would take a long time to get things back in order.

A steam turbine generation system cannot respond instantly to enormous changes in load over a short time interval.

Re:There's a much bigger problem with this

[RabidReindeer]

The grid is not well-equipped to handle rapid transients in load. You can't change the heat output of a coal or nuclear-fired furnace instantly, and if you try, bad things happen.

If everyone on the grid suddenly opened their breakers at the same time, the resulting backlash would probably cause thousands of steam turbines to overspin and their emergency pressure valves to open, at which point the turbine has to spin down and resynchronize before it can begin producing power again. I guess that would be okay since there is no load, but it would take a long time to get things back in order.

A steam turbine generation system cannot respond instantly to enormous changes in load over a short time interval.

Oh come ON, now. Ever heard of the "toilet-flush" effect? Where everybody makes a pit stop at the same time during commercials of a major televised event? Unlike your average office, where everyone has to constantly "give 110%", utilities run with reserve capacity and mechanisms that allow them to respond rapidly to sudden fluctuations in demand.

The Real Benefit

[mellow106]

Forget CO2 levels. This is a helpful excuse to rendezvous with your lady/fellow and figure out *some* way to amuse yourselves for an hour in the dark. "Hey, it's for the good of the planet. Or whatever."

Re:The Real Benefit

[swillden]

Forget CO2 levels. This is a helpful excuse to rendezvous with your lady/fellow and figure out *some* way to amuse yourselves for an hour in the dark. "Hey, it's for the good of the planet. Or whatever."

That's an easy one. Our tablets have backlit screens and the batteries can handle an hour, no sweat.

Re:The Real Benefit

[Anonymous Coward]

And just when I'm starting to enjoy myself, the lights will come on. It's the opposite of google reader.

Re:The Real Benefit

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, most of the fucktard environmentalists who will smugly tell you about how wonderful "Earth Hour" is would ALSO tell you it's completely ecologically irresponsible to bring new life into the world - we're already ridiculously overpopulated as it is!

And you can't use latex or pills, those are created with the dreaded power of electricity and industrial chemicals, which are destroying the earth. So you better just keep it in your pants.

Unless you're gay, then it's cool, fuck away.

Feelings!

[Vinegar Joe]

Nothing more than feelings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q3CZNKgnNE

Moving Backwards

[DTyndorf]

As a kid, I remember scenes of people cheering and celebrating as the lights of a newly completed skyscraper were turned ON for the first time. Nowadays (thanks to a couple generations of brain-washed kids unable to shake off their mindless conformism) people cheer when we turn these lights OFF.

Re:Moving Backwards

[ArcadeMan]

I remember when we turned those skyscraper lights into pixels and played Tetris.

Re:Moving Backwards

[Anonymous Coward]

I plan to implement this idea. When "earth-hour" arrives, every light in my house is getting turned ON in protest of human stupidity.

Re:Moving Backwards

[Anonymous Coward]

Turning lights off does very little these days. Lights are probably one of the lowest sources of usage especially with most everyone switching over to CFL and LED. In a few hours I can use more electricity from my AC than all the lights in my house combined for a month.

Sure I turn them off when not needed... But be realistic where you use your power.

Re:Nuke gay whales for Christ

[Anonymous Coward]

"when given a helpful tip, suggestion, or advice,"

Sorry, I haven't seen any helpful tips here moron. Please try again.

I'm doing the opposite

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm driving my car to the gas station, filling a one gallon container, and then spreading it out to let it all evaporate, undoing the work of billions of dollars of emissions controls.

pedantry

[Anonymous Coward]

There are 365.242 days in a year, so - 8765.81 hours. Not 8760

Translation

[sjames]

Oh woe is meeeeeee! If you're not goint to slit your wrists and pour your life into the ground to feed a tree, you are just SUCH a poseur!

My life sux so much, my parents are SO unfair.

Public awareness?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Public awareness" is a cop-out.... and I say this in general, not intended as an attack on the parent poster. The public has been hit over the head for decades about environmental issues. Recycling is a known concept, regardless of whether or not it is practiced. "Global Warming" is a familiar phrase, no matter which side of the issue one is on. Claiming that more "awareness" is needed is, in my opinion, hand-waving and indicates that the championing organization has no practical plans for implementation beyond distributing flyers and making feel-good commercials.

How I observe Earth Hour

[Anonymous Coward]

I gas up my car and drive it around. It's not warm enough here to actually need the air conditioning, but I turn it on anyway as a symbolic statement.

Re:How I observe Earth Hour

[ArcadeMan]

It's still near freezing point where I live, but I think I'll follow your lead and start my air conditioning system as a symbolic statement too.

And then I'll crank up the heat to compensate.

I'd turn off my heating...

[Anonymous Coward]

But I live in Canada, and I'm not sure whether my water pipes would freeze. :-)

Reality: they'd be fine for an hour, but A) all that means is that the power consumption would go up the next hour to get the temperature back to normal, and B) I wouldn't want to have the heating off overnight. Some days in winter we have lost power for half a day due to heavy storms. It's dicey. Air conditioning is optional. Heating is not. Not if you have plumbing in your house and live in most parts of Canada.

Did anyone *ever* think turning off the lights for one hour would make any significant difference? I never have. But it did make me think about what in the house really needed to be turned on regularly, and if there were things I could leave off rather than keeping them running. Earth Hour is meant as a reminder, not some challenging event that makes a huge difference by itself. In my house there are minimal lights on at night anyway. We're pretty diligent about that.

Worse than that!

[DarthVain]

Even if you did shut off things of significance, it would not make a big difference.

Anyone that understands how the power grid is run and electricity distributed, and power generation is applied could tell you that.

1) The grid itself needs a certain amount of electrification simply to remain stable and on.
2) Because power use is not constant, and various types of generation mix is different, you will have to maintain a baseline of power anyway. That nuclear plant that generates 4GW doesn't just turn off because the need no longer exists. It generates 4GW all day/night all the time regardless. One of the benefits of nuclear.

It would prevent say the usage of say quick spin up generation such as gas or coal to meet specific needs during peek generation. Or the use of potential storage like hydro during peek hours. But again, turning off the lights won't make much difference there either. If everyone turned off the AC during a heatwave, during peek usage, yeah that might make a small difference.

Anyway as pointed out, it is simply a PR campaign and an awareness thing. Anyone who believes they are actually doing something significant should be looked at with an arched eyebrow.

Re:Worse than that!

[Anonymous Coward]

peak not peek

Re:Worse than that!

[bug1]

Anyway as pointed out, it is simply a PR campaign and an awareness thing. Anyone who believes they are actually doing something significant should be looked at with an arched eyebrow.

When a notable portion of the worlds people unite for the same cause, telling the various leaders that YES, WE DO CARE, they are doing something significant.

Re:Worse than that!

[Anonymous Coward]

The unfortunate part is that you are one of the un-informed. Your understanding of power generation and distribution is flawed.

There are base-load generation assets, like nuclear and coal plants, and there are non-firm assets, like wind turbines, and there are load following assets. Together they must meet the demand at the other end of the wire, otherwise there would be brown-outs & black-outs. "Deficit spending" doesn't work in power distribution.

Every day there are "peek" (aka peak) loads that are met by spinning up added generation capacity or pushing the running assets harder.

Would love to educate your further, but I fear I might have a challenge bigger than you realize.

Re: How about this?

[omnichad]

Studies have proven that having DST at all does save energy - artificial lights used fewer hours per day. I don't know if staying on that time all year would negate that savings or not.

Environmentalists

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why I'm not a fan of most environmentalists. I'm all for saving the environment, but taking measures to make an ideological point without understanding the underlying structure of how the energy infrastructure works is simply pointless. There are ways to reduce emissions, but most environmentalists have no idea wat those are and cause more problems than they solve.

Re:Nuke gay whales for Christ

[Anonymous Coward]

So it is all the Tea Parties fault?? A group of people that have had enough with taxation and stood up to the GOP on it and forced them to grow a friggin spine are the big bad mean spirited people in this here game? I thought all you liberals were all for peace and harmony and all the races just getting along and here you are baiting and trolling against the Tea Party. Bet you even agreed with Nancy Pelosi when she called them Nazis. Why is it that the Democrats have this problem? Thankfully I am a Libertarian and hate all of you that are not and since I am not a white person I will pull the race card on you. Sheesh

Participated already!!

[tekrat]

My area was hit by Hurricane Sandy in November and my electricity was out for a week! I think I've given my hour for quite a few years!

Re:Participated already!!

[ArcadeMan]

You're good until 2181, buddy.

Re:Participated already!!

[CrimsonAvenger]

My area was hit by Hurricane Sandy in November and my electricity was out for a week! I think I've given my hour for quite a few years!

Katrina's eye passed over my house. Cry me a river...

;-)

Re:Participated already!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah I know! Personally I donate roughly 8 hours every night.

Re: How about this?

[Anonymous Coward]

So you like having the sun come up at 4:00AM in the Summer? I personally have a lot more things requiring daylight going on at 10:00 PM than I do at 3:30 AM.

Corrupt Culture of Waste

[catchblue22]

Well DUH! Earth hour IS symbolic. So what. In doing this, we are reminding ourselves that the world will not end if we reduce our energy consumption. We remind ourselves of how wasteful our energy use is. It encourages people to make long term adjustments to their energy consumption habits. When I see posts themed "fuck Earth Week", I am reminded of a 10 year old boy having a temper tantrum and holding his breath. That or a paid poster. The simple fact is that an economy cannot thrive long if it is based on a culture of waste. It is deeply irrational to think that waste is a positive practice. Waste of energy. Waste of financial resources. Waste of labor resources. Waste of physical resources. Wasting scarce resources makes us all poorer in the end.

Re:Corrupt Culture of Waste

[Chris Mattern]

It is deeply irrational to think that waste is a positive practice.

You mean like the complete waste that is Earth Hour?

Re:Corrupt Culture of Waste

[dywolf]

So why just do it symbolicly? Why not do it all the time?

that right there is the self-contained hypocrisy of the entire notion of hte symbolic hour of non-use.

You only want to do the symbolic gesture, cause you dont actually want to give up your A/C, your furnace, your comfortable house outside the city the requires a commute, your high tech toys.

In order words, you dont REALLY care.
You just want to feel good for a minute or two, tell yourself you're not such a bad person, tell yourself "i can quit if i want to"...

Re:Corrupt Culture of Waste

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. It's like an alcoholic who goes to the bar every day and has a dozen shots before midnight. Well, one night, he symbolically delays shot #12 until after midnight, saying, "I'm having only 11 today, which is like 1 less than a normal night, therefore I am fighting for abstinence and against alcoholism".

Re:Corrupt Culture of Waste

[Cro Magnon]

Considering that you're posting here, you clearly don't want to give up your computer either, and I assume you're not freezing in your house in the winter.

Re:Corrupt Culture of Waste

[catchblue22]

You only want to do the symbolic gesture, cause you dont actually want to give up your A/C, your furnace, your comfortable house outside the city the requires a commute, your high tech toys.

You are an unethical and dishonest debater, trying to create a false dichotomy. I drive a car that gets 50mpg easily. It is big enough, safe enough and fast enough to serve my purposes and gets me from A to B comfortably. Contrast that with someone who drives a 12mpg suv as a single occupant commuter vehicle and who almost never uses 95% of the space or capability. That is waste.

Consider the CIRS building at the University of British Columbia. It is a net producer of energy, and a net consumer of CO2. Consider passive houses, that consume 90% less energy than a regular house and yet cost about the same as a regular house when components are built in a factory. When such technologies are available, it is waste not to use them.

Re:Corrupt Culture of Waste

[catchblue22]

You only want to do the symbolic gesture, cause you dont actually want to give up your A/C, your furnace, your comfortable house outside the city the requires a commute, your high tech toys.

I live close enough to work to ride a bicycle, which I do regularly. My car get 50mpg and serves my needs perfectly. I keep my house at 66 F when I am home, and wear a sweater. Because of these actions alone, I likely consume half the energy of the average person. My actions are not merely symbolic.

Re:Corrupt Culture of Waste

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not do it all the time? Because muppets like you with a propensity for projection would shit your diapers.

If any western government legislated nightly blackouts, starting tomorrow, _you'd_ be one of the mouthbreathers in the street, standing on a burning car with your shirt off and your hat on backward shouting 'but bro my plasma'.

I really care. My carbon footprint is effectively zero, thanks to independently audited offsets, public transport / biking, vegetarianism and solar. You claim you care so much? Step up, then, and black out your own house every night, you fucking coward, instead of claiming that there's no point because somebody else hasn't gone first.

Re:Corrupt Culture of Waste

[Belial6]

What kind of car are you driving? I have a Prius and it most certainly doesn't easily get 50mpg. The only car I have ever had that did 50mpg was a Geo Metro, but they don't make those anymore.

Re:Corrupt Culture of Waste

[catchblue22]

My Prius does get 50mpg. Others get more. It depends on how you drive. Hint...flooring when the light goes green doesn't help.

Re:Corrupt Culture of Waste

[AmiMoJo]

You don't have to give up your air con or plasma TV, that is the point. This is just a symbolic way to show support, not a suggestion for saving energy.

The anti-green lobby wants you to think green means living freezing cold in the dark eating vegetables you grew in your garden. That isn't what we want at all, we want a better standard of living through technology. Smart air con that saves energy and ddoesn't have the annoying chill of traditionalsystems is all the rage here in Japan at the moment, but tthe US is still stuck on "moar BTUs/watts = better".

Re:Corrupt Culture of Waste

[khallow]

Honda Civic VX could get 50 mpg easily, but they don't make that any more either.

Re:Corrupt Culture of Waste

[Anonymous Coward]

So why just do it symbolicly?

For the same reason you would do anything symbolically.

Re:Corrupt Culture of Waste

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Greenies want all the creature comforts, but for other people to live in caves and turn wind progress back to the dark ages. Often they will talk about social issues and the like, but the actual environment does not have a real protagonist party -- unless it is a fury koala or something that is easy to get to and "save" for an activist.

Re:Corrupt Culture of Waste

[Patch86]

I get 40 MPG (Imperial) easily in my regular old petrol Corolla in normal mixed-use driving. That's about 48 MPG US.

I'm surprised that a Prius isn't considerably better. A small engined diesel can get 80+ MPG easily.

Re:Corrupt Culture of Waste

[Ginger Unicorn]

Yes, but he isn't trying to pretend otherwise, which is the point that you're missing.

Re:Corrupt Culture of Waste

[Nationless]

Because people are stupid and forget about important things all the time.

It's a campaign revolved around awareness. If you notice all the lights going out around you and you take a moment to think "Ooh, that's neat" and then figure out it's earth day then maybe sometime next week you'll turn off a light you would normally have left on or turned down (up?) the AC a couple of degrees. But more often than not you will forget it, because people are stupid and forget about important things all the time.

Sure it's futile, but at least it's something.

Re:Corrupt Culture of Waste

[dywolf]

Unethical? Dishonest? How? For pointing out the pointlessness of symbolic gestures? You either act on something you believe in, or you dont.

It's equivalent to thinking you're going to Heaven cause you go to church on sunday, and are a straight up arsehat the rest of the week.
Or saying "ugh, I'm too fat and out of shape, I need to workout"...and then grabbing another bag of cheetos and plopping onto the couch.
People want these gestures because they want to believe they can change....they just dont actually want to change.

Unethical? Dishonest? No, quite hte opposite. I dont do these symbolic things precisely because they are dishonest. I do those common sense, every day "things" that are within my ability. I dont need a symbolic thing to make myself feel better. Just like try to be a good Christian every day, not just on Sunday.

Symbolic gestures are meaningless. It falls into one of two categories: preaching to the choir, or hypocrisy. More usually hypocrisy from what I seen.

A candle is worse than a 60W light bulb...

[Anonymous Coward]

I looked into it a few years ago after staying at an "earth friendly" surf resort that didn't have elctrical power in Nicaragua. They gave everyone two candles a night and insisted it was eco-friendly.

The amount of soot, CO^2 and other bad stuff from a single candle is worse for the environment, not to mention your health, than running a 60W light bulb off electricity generated at a coal power plant in the USA. In all likelyhood a coal plant in Nicaragua is worse than the USA but I thought it was interesting...

Symbolism over substance

[Anonymous Coward]

To the current generation of the "educated and enlightened", symbolism is what it's all about. It is the perception of doing something for a politically correct cause that is regarded as a "moral act".

--
Watch this get down-modded because this post contains the 'M' word "MORAL".

That can't be true! That's IMPOSSIBLE!

[MrLizard]

A popular "green" ritual is just an act of empty symbolism designed to make people feel morally superior while actually doing nothing and causing no real inconvenience? No! I refuse to accept that!

This is wrong, free energy in the grid?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did anyone think that a grid that is so inefficient that less usage doesn't equal less energy raise eyebrows? Why are they charging us when we use more?

Re: How about this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most devices have a 'don't use DST' because there are areas of the country that don't observe DST at all)

And those who haven't are probably not important enough for it to matter.
Having automated lights turn on and off one hour too early for a couple of decades until they are replaced is mostly not a problem. If we only replace those embedded devices where it actually matters the big problem will be deciding on permanent winter or permanent summer time.

Stupid question

[wonkey_monkey]

If switching off the lights for one hour per year really were beneficial, why would we not do it for the other 8,759?

The stupidity of the question aside, why are you implying that we all have our lights on 365/24/7?

99% of everything is crap

[Mike]

Just about all modern whacko environmentalism can be accurately summed up as vain symbolism -- at best.

I know I risk losing karma to post this, because there will always be the lilly-livered who downgrade posts they disagree with. So be it. Real karma will get them back. ;)

Re: How about this?

[Endo13]

And other studies done when DST was increased a few years ago showed increased energy use due to more home AC use. AC uses a lot more power than artificial lighting, and home AC is generally a lot less efficient than commercial AC.

But that's all moot, because you can achieve the same thing as DST simply by having places of business open and close an hour earlier. Except, of course, without the downside of stupidly forcing everyone to change their clocks and adjust to a different time twice a year.

So how about this: just switch to DST year-round. Maybe then people will realize how stupid it is to set clocks off by an hour. I mean really, if we're going to do this it makes more sense to simply use GMT everywhere and forget about time zones all together. After all, we're already not using the best time for our time zones so having clocks for any purpose other than keeping track of time is already gone.

Re:Nuke gay whales for Christ

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, no math is not hard. 1 + 1 = 2, can't get any fucking simpler - or clearer. Yes it does get more complex but in the end it's just a set of rules and principles.

LEDs ~ 4000 times more efficient than candles.

[An dochasac]

While writing a story about Hannukah and other lighting miracles, I found that modern LEDs can run for 6 months on the equivalent of 1 day's supply of menorah oil. So if you were to attempt to illuminate your house with candles for Earth Hour, you'd consume 4000 times as much oil. Thankfully we don't do that.

Beyond Earth Hour's temporary abatement of light pollution in participating cities, earth hour is symbolic. It is also a talking point. "Wow, look at that comet, I wouldn't have seen that if we hadn't turned off the barn light." "The building's landscaping is a bit too bright, I think it looks better against a natural sky.", "Hi neighbor, would you like me to show you Jupiter and the Pleiades through this telescope." , "Hey this is fun, why don't we do it once a week?"

Re:LEDs ~ 4000 times more efficient than candles.

[An dochasac]

"Beyond Earth Hour's temporary abatement of light pollution in participating cities, earth hour is symbolic."

Oh god, hippies. Can you just like go talk to someone who gives a shit? I do not.

When approaching air pollution, energy dependence, light pollution, anthropogenic climate change and other tragedies of the commons (a simple concept some true Americans mightn't get until Family Guy explains it), it's important to know which of your neighbors don't give a shit. So while yahoos here can hide behind "Anonymous coward", during Earth Hour all we have to do is look for the redneck with camo gear, "I lov Sarah Palin's intulekt" bumper sticker and a 3 million candlepower Wal-mart floodlight.

Finding the source of any problem is the first step in solving it.

Re:Nuke gay whales for Christ

[GNious]

No, is expected to take him about 1 hour to write the above message on his fridge using magnets.

Why Did't You Use the Billions the US Gives You?

[Anonymous Coward]

We just had our first democratically (for a certain value of democracy) elected govt to actually complete their term. So much for democracy...

The one that simultaneously sheltered Usama Bin Laden while accepting billions of dollars from the United States government?

You're surprised your situation is shitty? Do go on ... I have infinite sympathy for you ...

It is important

[citylivin]

"Like most, if not all other enviromental*sic* efforts, it's all about talk and symbolism, and very nearly nothing about actually doing the math..."

That is because the average person cannot in any way dent trans oceanic shipping burning bunker oil, or stop the americans and chinese from burning tonnes of coal per second. Of course its symbolic. Symbols are the only way for the average person to focus in on these earth sized problems. Christmas does not bring "good will to all mankind", however it may be enough to focus in on goodwill in your own life. Thus symbolism can bring a certain focus on the individual level to get people thinking about all the energy we use every day and what it would be like if it one day shut off / became unaffordable and we really did have to go without.

Symbolism is very important here precisely because we cannot do anything meaningful on an individual level to combat global climate change. It's all we have. I have never believed that one person giving up their car, or consuming no boxed foods makes a difference globally. I do not think that actual reduction in emissions is the idea behind earth hour. I think people that make that judgement are missing the point of it. Same as "buy nothing" day. Stuff will still get bought by someone, that's not the point, its symbolic.
*flame hat on*

Re:It is important

[Americano]

Here's the thing - assuming the numbers are correct, and the symbolic gesture is actually MORE harmful in terms of emissions than doing nothing... why keep doing it? Why not find a new symbolic gesture - except choose one that is actually helpful (even if it's a very small, symbolic improvement) rather than harmful?

This would seem to fit the definition of "cutting off your nose to spite your face," to me. It's the same mentality that allows no-burn policies in national parks to create massive, thousdands-of-acres-conflagrations in the long run by allowing highly flammable deadfall and underbrush to accumulate for years without a periodic burn to clean & clear it in smaller areas naturally.

I suppose next the environmentalists will be telling us that dumping raw sewage and toxic waste into the ocean is an awesome, symbolic gesture to protest overfishing?

Re:It is important

[jeffmeden]

What you are referring to is a Collective action problem and yes, trying to call individuals to act against the problem directly is often fruitless, which gives way to gestures like this that hope to slowly turn the public sentiment.
Judging by all the responses this has gotten, the earth is fucked.

Re:It is important

[An dochasac]

Earth Hour has a symbolic element but it also has a real and profound positive environmental effect which lasts for exactly 1 hour. Like air pollution, light pollution is a "slow boiled frog" problem. Ask a kid in Beijing what color the sky is and he might say brown or yellow-orange or grey but probably not blue. If things don't improve, the next generation of kids have no idea that the sky is supposed to be blue. Ditto for kids in NYC, Los Angeles, Brussels and thousands of other cities where people have seen stars on TV and movies, maybe even planetariums but never in real life. A well organized Earth Hour can temporarily change that giving the next generation a glimpse of what the night sky is supposed to look like. After seeing that, they'll be less likely to accept McDonalds Laser french fries and other pollution of our night sky with moving, flashing gyrating annoying projected night sky advertising which is sure to come unless enough people say "Not on MY planet!".

Re:It is important

[Americano]

That's all well and good, but "Earth Hour" has nothing to do with "light pollution" - it's about 'showing a commitment to sustainability.' Light pollution is a problem of many people living together in close, industrialized proximity to one another. If "sustainability" requires us to do away with the conveniences and luxuries of modern life such that our cities would produce significantly less light on a consistent basis, then you've identified the crux of the problem right there, and also why the program is destined to fail. You will never convince people to revert to pre-industrial civilization in order to "protect the earth."

From their own FAQ page:

Earth Hour does not purport to be an energy/carbon reduction exercise, it is a symbolic action. Therefore, we do not engage in the measurement of energy/carbon reduction levels. Earth Hour is an initiative to encourage individuals, businesses and governments around the world to take accountability for their ecological footprint and engage in dialogue and resource exchange that provides real solutions to our environmental challenges. Participation in Earth Hour symbolises a commitment to change beyond the hour.

So, since it's not about "light pollution," and turning off the lights for 1 hour might actually be a net-negative in terms of sustainability, it still strikes me as "dumping toxic waste in the ocean to show our commitment to ending overfishing." It seems to me that if you want to express your support for sustainable living, you shouldn't do it by engaging in an activity that could actually produce more CO2.

Re:It is important

[Anonymous Coward]

A Christmas gift is also a symbolic gesture. It doesn't matter if the gift is worth 500$ or if it was bought at a dollar store, they are both symbolic. But let's be honest, a 500$ gift is not the same kind of symbol as giving something bought at a dollar store.

Turning off the light for one hour is really the equivalent of a gift from a dollar store. The symbol is : I like to pretend, but the truth is I don't really give a shit.

Re:It is important

[An dochasac]

That's all well and good, but "Earth Hour" has nothing to do with "light pollution" - it's about 'showing a commitment to sustainability.'

Light pollution is a clear and easy to understand example of tragedy of the commons. Individuals each acting in their own self interest each causing a relatively small amount of environmental degradation can collectively damage the environment for everyone. Solving this problem is key to solving all sustainability issues and Earth Hour's instantaneous (though temporary) reduction in light pollution is a clear demonstration that small, painless actions by a large number of people can have a positive impact on the environment. The US's "Keep America Beautiful" campaign did the same for litter but it took a decade. Earth Hour has a more immediate, positive and measurable impact on the night sky environment than decades of cleaning oil from beaches and rescuing sea turtles have on these aspects of our environment.

Light pollution is a problem of many people living together in close, industrialized proximity to one another. If "sustainability" requires us to do away with the conveniences and luxuries of modern life such that our cities would produce significantly less light on a consistent basis, then you've identified the crux of the problem right there, and also why the program is destined to fail.

Light pollution to the level it has reached in many western cities is not an unavoidable side-effect of industrialization. It is, in fact, an indicator of technological inefficiency. Several billions of dollars worth of energy spilled into outer space every year does no one any good.

You will never convince people to revert to pre-industrial civilization in order to "protect the earth."

No I won't, nor do I need to. Too many people believe that environmentalism means a return to the past. As I said in an earlier post, the modern LED light bulb uses 1/10th the energy of an Edison bulb and is 4000 times more efficient than the ancient oil lamps they replaced. Environmentalists should celebrate this and paint those obsessed with Edison incandescent bulbs, internal combustion engines and an oil-based economy as the Luddites they are. Sadly, many in the green movement do not have the technological, scientific or media savvy to clarify this point and seem to embrace the "return to the past" meme which will not work. A true environmentalist has a long view of time. What can we learn from the past, what of value will we use by using this technology? What will be the long-term impacts of using this technology. True environmentalism weighs the past and future along with the present. Its understandable that our "now" focused culture would not value the long term educational benefits of Earth Hour.

Re:It is important

[Americano]

Light pollution to the level it has reached in many western cities is not an unavoidable side-effect of industrialization. It is, in fact, an indicator of technological inefficiency. Several billions of dollars worth of energy spilled into outer space every year does no one any good.

Explain how more-efficient light generation that's just as bright solves this problem?

Again: LIGHT POLLUTION is not going to be solved by 'sustainability' efforts. People will move to LEDs - and still use bright lights all night long, because in cities, the lights need to be on - for public safety, to support a 24x7 society, and because some people will always be up and about. In fact, they're more likely to use them, because the LEDs will be cheaper and cheaper, and the energy will be too, as new 'sustainable' capacity comes online and gets more economical - suddenly a hand torch with an economical LED and a high-capacity battery with a small generator becomes a great thing for all the people who now rise & sleep with the sun because they live in third world poverty-stricken areas where electricity is a luxury they can't afford.

Whether or not the light pollution is generated by LEDs or Incandescent bulbs or smoky oil lamps and torches doesn't matter to the problem of light pollution. Do you think people are going to say, "You know what, since I'm moving to LEDs, I don't need a bright light at night?"

Typical output of an incandescent bulb is 15-16 lumens per watt, and LEDs are in the range of 40-50 lumens per watt, if I recall correctly. Switching over to LEDs would certainly reduce pollution created by powering the light sources, but does nothing to change the brightness light emitted by all of the lights on in all the cities that are creating the light pollution. The only way you solve light pollution is by turning the goddamned lights off.

So what you're saying is...

[Anonymous Coward]

So what you;re saying is that if I turned off ANY electrical appliance, this will NOT reduce the amount of electricity I'll use?

So what determines the amount of electricity you use, then?

If the lights did nothing then why are so many rightwingnuts going ape-shit about how much warming they'll lose in winter when they're not allowed to use incandescent bulbs?

I don't thing you've thought about this, you stupid bint.

Re:So what you're saying is...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, what he's saying is that cutting back your electrical usage for 1 hour will not sufficiently impact demand and usage on the grid - they can't "shut down" the capacity - you're going to go right back to normal in an hour. They will keep pumping electricity into the grid at more or less the same rate. Meaning, the power plants will be pumping CO2 into the air at roughly the same rate for that hour.

And at the same time, you're probably going to simply chew up battery-powered gadgets by candlelight, meaning you'll:
1) Need to recharge after you turn your lights back on - you're simply "delaying" your energy consumption an hour, not really changing it at all;
2) Emit CO2 and other pollutants by burning candles;
3) Probably, when considered on a worldwide scale, cause a non-trivial number of house fires with those candles, which will emit lots of extra CO2, and cause all the fire engines to burn more fuel to come save your sorry ass, then the construction industry to clear-cut and strip mine another half acre of forest to get building materials for your replacement home.

I know it's fun to take shots at "right wing nuts," but you know nothing about power generation, base loads on the grid, or how power plants respond to peaks and valleys in electrical demand, and you clearly have zero concept of how this "event" will impact overall CO2 generation and global warming.

Want to reduce global warming? Eliminate your air conditioning - learn to love fresh air, ice water, a little sweat, and some open windows. That's probably one of the largest power draws in your house, and would make a measurable impact if adopted on a large scale. Until then, stop lecturing those of us who CAN see the ignorant folly of vain symbolism, you stupid twat.

Re: How about this?

[Anonymous Coward]

You nailed it. I've been saying for years now that time zones are stupid. Why does it have to be 7:00 AM when the sun comes up? It is just a referent. I'd much rather know that the world cup game is on at 23:00 and know that it didn't fucking matter where it was being played - it was at 23:00. And if the sun rose in my area at 18:00 - why would I care? I'd still know that I had to be at work at 15:00 (yes, I get to work at 4:00 AM). Get rid of DST, get rid of time zones and we'll all be fine.

Re: How about this?

[jittles]

But that's all moot, because you can achieve the same thing as DST simply by having places of business open and close an hour earlier. Except, of course, without the downside of stupidly forcing everyone to change their clocks and adjust to a different time twice a year.

Don't I have to adjust to a different time twice a year if my work shift changes by an hour twice a year? I mean don't get me wrong, I hate DST, and I work from home most of the time, so it doesn't really matter to me, but it seems like its practically the same thing for 90% of the population.

um, what?

[roc97007]

> '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.

I can't address all of these, but computer? I read back in the late nineties that computers dissipate a power level less than a 75 watt bulb, probably less now with power conservation and "green" designs. And cell phones? Miniscule, compared to generating light or heat. Televisions? Maybe old tube type, or really humongous sets now, but in general, I'm under the impression that they don't use that much power. He has a point about air conditioning (in most cases) and heat, but those, plus light, are gross uses of power.

I'm not convinced that a given individual's electronics would be a substantial percentage of their personal, total power footprint. (There are probably alpha nerds out there who heat their rooms with i-products and only use them in the dark, but I'm thinking not many.)

The contention seems to be that what you should switch off is measured by convenience rather than actual power usage. This seems an conceptual error.

Re:um, what?

[RabidReindeer]

> '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.

I can't address all of these, but computer? I read back in the late nineties that computers dissipate a power level less than a 75 watt bulb, probably less now with power conservation and "green" designs. And cell phones? Miniscule, compared to generating light or heat. Televisions? Maybe old tube type, or really humongous sets now, but in general, I'm under the impression that they don't use that much power. He has a point about air conditioning (in most cases) and heat, but those, plus light, are gross uses of power.

I'm not convinced that a given individual's electronics would be a substantial percentage of their personal, total power footprint. (There are probably alpha nerds out there who heat their rooms with i-products and only use them in the dark, but I'm thinking not many.)

The contention seems to be that what you should switch off is measured by convenience rather than actual power usage. This seems an conceptual error.

I'm very sorry to say that in the late 90's a 100W power supply was generally pretty sufficient, but these days you'll find no shortage of 600W or 1KW power supplies. I don't know how much my current system pulls, but the preceding one idled at about 115 Watts, and I kept it longer than I "should" have because it was relatively efficient for its time.

Cell phones have also tended to demand more and more power in order to get that full multi-media smartphone edge.

On the other hand, replacing CRTs with solid-state monitors was a big jump in the other direction, and if you want to really feel all hippy greenie eco-friendly, you can do a lot with a Raspberry Pi and it only pulls about 5 watts. It's no gamer machine, but it still outperforms the desktops of the 90's.

Re:um, what?

[roc97007]

I'm very sorry to say that in the late 90's a 100W power supply was generally pretty sufficient, but these days you'll find no shortage of 600W or 1KW power supplies. I don't know how much my current system pulls, but the preceding one idled at about 115 Watts, and I kept it longer than I "should" have because it was relatively efficient for its time.

Cell phones have also tended to demand more and more power in order to get that full multi-media smartphone edge.

On the other hand, replacing CRTs with solid-state monitors was a big jump in the other direction, and if you want to really feel all hippy greenie eco-friendly, you can do a lot with a Raspberry Pi and it only pulls about 5 watts. It's no gamer machine, but it still outperforms the desktops of the 90's.

Right, but the power supply rating is different than the average power consumed. Power in a PC tends to vary with what the PC is doing. Hard drives, monitors, CPUs, tend to consume more power under heavy load than they do just sitting there, especially with modern improvements in power management. I think the 75 watt statistic was meant to represent the *average* amount of power consumed over time, taking into account long periods of unuse, not the peak amount of power the computer was capable of consuming. And it is the average power consumption that is important in this thread.

"Cell phones have also tended to demand more and more power in order to get that full multi-media smartphone edge" ...Except that over longer periods of time, the circuitry in cell phones have been going through a design process to consume less and less power per use of a particular feature. Longer and longer talk times for a cell thinner than a paper tablet aren't entirely due to battery improvements, there have been a lot of engineering into making the circuits consume less power. So, for a given generation of silicon, more capabilities may mean more power consumed, but major new capabilities often are precluded by a new generation of silicon.

But the bottom line is that it's the actual power consumed relative to gross power consumption for heat, lights, and environmental cooling, to which I will add major appliances, is the real issue, and I believe you'll find that the power consumed by your geeky devices is down in the noise compared to the major consumers in your life.

Personally, I don't pay any attention to hippy greeny stuff, and my computers are configured to never sleep, and for the hard drives to never turn off. Just pointing out the fallacy of the argument.

It's similar to the fuss 15 - 20 years ago of showers over baths. There was a perception that a bath consumed less water because you don't have water running down the drain the entire time you're bathing yourself. Yet the fact remains that except under bizarre circumstances, baths always consume *more* water. And the test is easy -- put the plug in, and take a shower. Note that when you're done, there's only maybe 2 - 3 inches of water in the tub. Now think of how much water is in the tub during a typical bath.

Back to power, "more" or "less" for a given device isn't nearly as important as the percentage the device consumes relative to your total power consumption.

Re: How about this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Switch to DST year round? Take a look at Russia's time zones sometime. They already did that... mostly by accident. The then-Soviets tried to implement DST some years ago, but the spring-forward was such a debacle, they never fell-back again!

Let me know where and when

[Anonymous Coward]

And I'll come along to watch.

Don't mind me smoking, do you? You're not one of those PC brigade who thinks smoking is evil, are you? Good. I'll have a good old smike as you stand in a puddle of petrol.

Re: How about this?

[Attila Dimedici]

All of the "studies" I have seen "proving" that DST saves energy are thought "experiments" rather than actual real life studies of what happens when some locale changes from not having DST to having DST. All of the studies of actual occurrences of changing from never changing the clocks to implementing DST have shown an increase use of energy after the change (although in at least one of those cases the change was small and could potentially be attributed to other causes). In other words, all real-world studies of energy use and DST indicate that best case scenario is that DST makes NO difference in energy use and quite possibly increases it.

Re: How about this?

[nedlohs]

Except in this case, for some people, it does.

If the blanket is "daylight hours", then tweaking the clocks so that less of those hours occur when I am sleeping means I see more daylight hours. Of course people who get up and go to bed earlier than me could see less daylight hours or just see the timing of them moved a little. Still in the country I happen those who see more daylight hours outnumber those that see less for a net win.

Re: How about this?

[Anonymous Coward]

If the blanket were tied at its middle to the middle of your bed, and you happened to prefer cold hair to cold feet (presence of hair presumed) then yes, cutting one end off and sewing it to the other has a rather pointed and valid application.

Re: How about this?

[omnichad]

My thermostat doesn't have a clock. I don't adjust it most days at all. Maybe I'm not the "average" person, but I thought that was pretty common.

A/C and heat

[Dan East]

Turning off air conditioning or heat for one hour will accomplish absolutely nothing. As soon as it is turned back on it still has to move or generate all the heat energy over that hour it would have otherwise. Simply put, it will have to work a little harder to catch up what it would have been doing over that hour anyway. Same with hot water heaters, dehumidifiers, refrigerators, etc. Merely putting off washing clothes, cooking, etc obviously accomplishes nothing either.

Re:A/C and heat

[fredrated]

Simply put, it will have to work a little harder to catch up what it would have been doing over that hour anyway

Actually, you are quite wrong.
Think of it this way: the only heat (in the heating case) you have to replace is the heat lost through the walls and ceiling. If the heat in a room is kept at K degrees then you replace the heat that is lost at a constant K temperature. On the other hand, if you turn off the heat for a while then the rate of heat loss goes down as the room cools, and the total heat loss, the amount you must replace, is less.

Re:A/C and heat

[night_flyer]

2 summers ago, I turned my AC to 80 while I was at work, when I got home I turned it back to 72, the house never seemed to cool back off.

Last summer, I had to keep the AC at 72 because someone was home all the time...

The difference? I saved $100.00 a month by keeping the AC at a steady 72 and the house stayed cool... (and a lower cooling bill means I was using less electricity)

Re:A/C and heat

[Dan East]

The difference you're talking about over the course of a single hour is negligible. What I said is accurate in the real-world, measurable sense. We'd be talking about only 1 or 2 degrees K. If this was over the course of several hours, then yes, the cooling would slow down as the room's temperature approaches the outside temperature. But that's not what I, or the article, is talking about, is it?

Re:A/C and heat

[Anonymous Coward]

While I doubt turning the A/C off for an hour will accomplish much, it should save energy.

As the temperature difference between the inside and the outside gets smaller, less energy will be transferred. So the total amount heat flowing into your home in that hour will be lower when the A/C is off. Then when you turn it back on, it will indeed have to do a little extra but overall it will still be less than it would have been otherwise.

That's why putting the A/C on a timer and having it off while nobody is home and then automatically turn on shortly before you arrive home will save energy. The same obviously goes for heaters.

Re:A/C and heat

[Anonymous Coward]

A residential gas furnace that starts 4 times an hour is less efficient than one that starts 1 time an hour. Purging the stack, heating the metal up inside, and heating the flue is all wasted energy. Better to waste it once instead of 3 times. Also colder return air temperatures mean a greater delta T and more heat transfer which means efficiency.

Re:A/C and heat

[TClevenger]

As soon as it is turned back on it still has to move or generate all the heat energy over that hour it would have otherwise. Simply put, it will have to work a little harder to catch up what it would have been doing over that hour anyway. Same with hot water heaters, dehumidifiers, refrigerators, etc. Merely putting off washing clothes, cooking, etc obviously accomplishes nothing either.

That's why I have my heater set to switch on and off thousands of times per second to keep the temperature just right, since it doesn't use any more energy anyway.

Re:A/C and heat

[Anonymous Coward]

Physics fail. Turn in your geek card, you must at least have a grade 12 physics education to hold membership.

Re:A/C and heat

[toddestan]

I figured out the same thing. Problem is that if you turn the thermostat down when you get back from work that means your AC has to work hard during the hottest part of the day, and that's when it's the least efficient. You could take it even further and turn the thermostat down at night when the AC is most efficient (and electricity is cheaper) so the AC would run less during the day as the house warmed back up. Though I'm not sure if that would be worth the bother for what money you would save.

Re: How about this?

[jeffmeden]

After all, we're already not using the best time for our time zones so having clocks for any purpose other than keeping track of time is already gone.

Amen, I once tried to use a clock as a skateboard, and the goddamn thing just crumbled into a million little shards of plastic. I guess the old saying is true, "a broken clock is right as long as you don't give a shit what time it is."

Oh, you meant clocks serve no purpose other than measuring time relative to itself, and especially are not for determining the optimal moment for any given activity that relates to the position of the sun... Right...

But your Sundial watch won't work then....

[bobbied]

Well.. You can run your life on GMT or Zulu if you want, but it is a bit less confusing if the sun is overhead at noon at lunchtime for me. There is just something wrong with dragging your self out of bed at 12:00 Noon wondering why it is still dark. Besides, then your sundial won't work AT ALL, unless you live at the prime meridian...

Re:But your Sundial watch won't work then....

[webmistressrachel]

Ask someone who does shift work on a sem-permament basis about this and you'll get a completely different answer.

"it is a bit less confusing ... for you" - so the rest of the world, having realised that consistency and accuracy is more important than the light from nearby star? How do people cope in Binary or other types of star system? Answer: They just do.

"your sundial won't work" - well my analogue TV doesn't work, along with lots of other old tech I've thrown away or re-purposed because the rest of the world moved on. I'm still better off with what I have now instead, it's called "progress". Despite governments and wars holding us back in other ways, progress still happens, and it's still a good thing. (fictional example)Your sundial probably wouldn't work that well in my Firefly-class transport, either, but I'd rather be on board exploring than not... (fictional example).

Re:But your Sundial watch won't work then....

[Anonymous Coward]

We used Zulu time when I was deployed. Took a little getting used to, but after a few weeks it was perfectly normal for the sun to rise around 0300 Z.

Also helped coordinate international business a LOT, which happens rather frequently in the military. "We'll call you at 1500 zulu." For us that meant evening time, for people on the West Coast USA it was early morning. Regardless, there was never a "oh, you meant 2:30 your time?? Or mine, or AM or PM or..."

Re:But your Sundial watch won't work then....

[crutchy]

it's just habit... you're used to seeing a 12 at the top of a clock, and that traditionally means noon, but there is nothing natural about time (except that it seems to continue indefinitely in the forward direction only). how we measure time is entirely man made.

if you start work at 8am or 5pm or midnight, does it really matter if everything else (including where the sun is in the sky) is the same?

the problem with adoption of a universal time would be changing everything to suit it and it alone. there would obviously need to be a transition period, but it would be very costly for seemingly little benefit.

a decimal universal time might be a bit easier to teach our kids. the english language is hard enough with all its rules with exceptions and letters that could sound a bunch of different ways depending on the word or context, let alone trying to explain why there are 12 hours in a day and why the international date line isn't straight.

at the end of the day though, the way we keep track of time now seems to work, and if it ain't broke, don't fix it

Re:But your Sundial watch won't work then....

[crutchy]

bahahahaha "12 hours in a day".... apparently i haven't drunk enough coffee

Re:But your Sundial watch won't work then....

[Belial6]

I'm not sure if I am missing your sarcasm, or if you really don't understand why that post is ridiculous. If you are being sarcastic, bravo for very clearly articulating the kind of thinking that makes so many things in the world are screwed up.

Re:But your Sundial watch won't work then....

[Belial6]

The problem is that the way we track time now really is broken. Way too many conversations are had over and over again trying to figure out what 3:00pm is being talked about. People show up late for work when the clocks change. Others show up early. In both cases people end up sitting around waiting for other people so that they can continue on with their day. How many lifetimes are lost every day to our broken time system. Sure we are not taking all the life from one individual, we are just sucking a little each away from of millions.

Re:But your Sundial watch won't work then....

[TsuruchiBrian]

If I didn't know anything about human culture, I would have no idea to expect the sun to be directly over me if a clock said 12:00. There is no reason people can't get used to a different set of numbers for when things normally happen. In Europe and the military they have a 24 hour clock.

For people who aren't concerned with other places (i.e. their whole world is their town, they could get used to using zulu time within one generation.

For people who travel, and participate in the global economy, I think it would be more valuable to have a sense of simultaneity. When someone says "The teleconference is on Wednesday at 17:00", everyone knows when that is. If you want to know what time of day it will be for someone else, then you have to do a timezone calculation.

I think this is a better system than someone saying (The teleconference is on Wednesday 17:00 Madrid time) and everyone who is not in Madrid needs to figure out what time it will be in their timezone. You get to know that in Mardid it will be early evening without any calculations, but that information is less useful in my opinion.

Re:But your Sundial watch won't work then....

[bobbied]

Yep.. I was being sarcastic, although I don't think many caught on to it.

You do know that this whole time zone thing was invented long before folks started wondering if the world was round or flat. Time was told by sundial and everybody lived in their own zone. With the advent of train schedules, it became pretty hard for conductors to keep track of the schedule (important in the days before electronic signals kept trains from running into each other) with the time changing at each stop slightly when running east and west.

It is not that necessary now days..

Re:But your Sundial watch won't work then....

[jrumney]

We used Zulu time when I was deployed.

Zulu time would be UTC+2?

Re:But your Sundial watch won't work then....

[mpe]

Well.. You can run your life on GMT or Zulu if you want, but it is a bit less confusing if the sun is overhead at noon at lunchtime for me.

In which case you'd want no DST and a timezone where local noon was close to 12:00 (pm). There are plenty of places where this is not true now. e.g. Iceland and West Africa which use Zulu rather than November. South Island New Zealand which uses Lima rather than Mike. Fiji which uses Mike rather than Kilo. Thus it's possible for "noon" to be anywhere between 9:00 and 15:00.

Re:But your Sundial watch won't work then....

[Anonymous Coward]

so the rest of the world, having realised that consistency and accuracy is more important than the light from nearby star?

What does this even mean?

Do you realize how badly "everything runs on GMT" would fuck things up as "normal usage"?

Sunrise & sunset vary from day to day and location to location - why would you want to have to "re-learn" the time every time you traveled anywhere? It also wouldn't really help you adjusting: if your local time zone had the sun overhead at 3 am, and you went on vacation and the sun was overhead at noontime... you'd STILL have jetlag. You'd just be way more confused because you would never have a good reference to tell what time it is quickly.

Using our current system: sun's overhead - what time is it? Roughly noon, no matter where you are on the globe, it's roughly noon, local time.
Using your proposed system: sun's overhead - what time is it? Weelllll.... that depends. Where am I on the globe? What season is it? What are the local sunrise & sunset times?

Yep. I can see how that's much simpler.

How do people cope in Binary or other types of star system? Answer: They just do.

Great, and if we evolved in binary or other types of star system, we'd probably invent a different timekeeping system that isn't tied to the rotation of the earth. This point is completely irrelevant, because we don't live in a "binary or other type of star system." We live in a star system, on a planet that revolves around the sun in such a way that we've spun on our planetary axis roughly 365 times every time we return to the point we started at. That full orbit of the sun is called a "year," and each of the revolutions on our axis are called "days."

Your sundial probably wouldn't work that well in my Firefly-class transport, either, but I'd rather be on board exploring than not...

Sorry, if the only argument you can offer in favor of "progress" is "IT'd be better in a completely fictional universe, or if we had evolved in a binary star system," then you've pretty much lost the debate.

Re:But your Sundial watch won't work then....

[webmistressrachel]

Instead of just admitting "Humans are versatile and intelligent, we don't NEED to be trapped into routines dictated by the stellar routines in our tiny corner of the galaxy, technology enriches our lives, I agree" you choose to pick holes in all my little personal motivators from fiction (Which leads humanity forward, historically) and the fact that I don't care whether your sun is up and still lead a successful, social and fulfilling life, perhaps because you feel so uncomfortable with change that reinforces the fact that you are in fact, a useless troll who will never achieve anything but putting down others who do want to make positive change.

tl;dr: Troll bitten.

Re:But your Sundial watch won't work then....

[Endo13]

Using our current system: sun's overhead - what time is it? Roughly noon, no matter where you are on the globe, it's roughly noon, local time.

No it's not. DST takes care of that. For example, right now, in Indiana, the sun will be at high noon when the clock shows somewhere between 1:30-1:45, depending on your exact location in the state. Clock time in California is closer to sun time in Indiana than Indiana's clock time is during DST. The same will be true for any areas on the far edges of time zones.

So again, why bother with time zones at all if your clocks are going to be off by as much as an hour and forty-five minutes? May as well go with GMT as 12:00 means nothing. It's not noon and not midnight, not even close.

Photography

[walshy007]

It may do absolutely nothing for energy consumption, but as a bonus people that live in cities/large towns will have less light pollution for shots of the stars.

Concious about energy.

[PenguinJeff]

Hell even the hour without light does save some. I know I'm not the most conservative about energy but it was proven that it takes less energy to turn off and on a light even for minutes then leaving the light on even CFLs. I think it was on mythbusters. I leave a computer on at home 24/7 as a DVR and as a complete home server. This waists a lot of energy. If I could afford it I'd put more efficient stuff in it. I consider it a necessity. Unplugging all devices would increase the electricity saving. All smart home stuff like x10 and others uses a small amount of power to be able to turn items on and off. Computers that can be turned on via ethernet use power to watch for the magic packet. There are no modern convinces that don't waist some amount of power. Maybe get solar powered outside lights to read a book for a few hours and flip the main breaker to the house would save the most electricity. If your family does it enough you can lower your electric bill to.

spend an hour

[Anonymous Coward]

planting some bamboo instead. something like 1 acre absorbs 50 tons of CO2. apparently the size of texas exclusively planted with bamboo with sequester the US's yearly CO2 output.

Innovation Hour... an alternative to Earth hour

[al.caughey]

The Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC) radio show 'This is That' did a piece a while ago about a group proposing an Innovation Hour as an alternative to Earth Hour... in short, "If it has a switch, click it!" They're asking people of the world to turn everything in their houses and businesses on, or "run it hot," for one hour to celebrate in ingenuity behind innovation.

Here's a link to the 'story': http://www.cbc.ca/thisisthat/news/2012/09/18/innovation-hour-calgarian-asks-canadians-to-run-it-hot-for-an-hour-each-year/

Re:Innovation Hour... an alternative to Earth hour

[Anonymous Coward]

The Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC) radio show 'This is That' did a piece a while ago about a group proposing an Innovation Hour as an alternative to Earth Hour... in short, "If it has a switch, click it!" They're asking people of the world to turn everything in their houses and businesses on, or "run it hot," for one hour to celebrate in ingenuity behind innovation.

Here's a link to the 'story': http://www.cbc.ca/thisisthat/news/2012/09/18/innovation-hour-calgarian-asks-canadians-to-run-it-hot-for-an-hour-each-year/

WTF? C-C-C-C-Canada? Where one has to watch what one says lest he be hauled before a Human Rights Tribunal because he has a morality based disagreement on how some people live? Before you know it, Canada will adopt the gold standard, leaded gasoline and big block V8's will make a comeback! Perhaps even the Draft and [G-G-G-GASP] market-based health care...

Kuck Farma

Re:Innovation Hour... an alternative to Earth hour

[al.caughey]

BTW - "This is That" is a satirical/comedy 'News' show... they've duped many folks with 'stories' like the one above.

Al

Re: How about this?

[cayenne8]

So you like having the sun come up at 4:00AM in the Summer? I personally have a lot more things requiring daylight going on at 10:00 PM than I do at 3:30 AM.

Err...what?

Why would the sun all of a sudden start coming up at 3-4am?? With or without DST sun comes up here about 6am +/-

I don't live at the north pole after all.

lessen

[Anonymous Coward]

I stopped reading when I came across "lessen". But also, I understood earth hour to be a 'shut everything off' including computers, phones, etc. So...I'm calling bullshit.

Great!!!

[jay508]

I've always wanted to hit the EPO switch in the datacenter. This will be the perfect time to test.

Maximizing my effectiveness

[marciot]

To maximize my effectiveness, I could turn on all the lights in my home the day before, so when Earth hour comes, I can turn them all off at once, for greater savings.

I basically never have lighting on.

[Anonymous Coward]

So I am already winning.

The only times I ever have lighting on is if I really need to find something and it is too dark, which is rare because I never allow myself to have to find things that I would need at night without placing them out beforehand.
And even most times, it is usually a USB light on my PC, which is another source of light along with this very monitor.
And it is far easier on the eyes to read a monitor that isn't a torch and can be turned down very low because there is no background light flooding it out.

One thing that would help save a lot of energy overall was if dimmers or lowLight systems were in every house by default.
You don't need BRIGHT AS 50 SUNS lighting to generally walk around and see what you are doing, you only really need it to see very specific details and only those times. (not only that, it is seriously damaging to your health over time to have constantly bright lights like that when your body is supposed to be sleeping!)
Designing other things around this (such as remote controls and hardware interfaces not having god damn grey text!) would help hugely as well.
Hopefully when OLEDs come around and are cheap will save considerable energy as well, and even just LED in general.
Heating as well, it is so abused at times. I rarely have it on unless it is uncomfortable with HEAVY clothes on. Why waste energy AND money on heating when you can slap some heavy clothing on? You'd only need to keep the general living room area hot so people can be relaxed and casual instead of preparing for a nuclear winter. (my grandparents have been doing that for decades, before I was even born)
Beds + automatic blankets will prevent you from freezing to death during the night and won't waste energy compared to having the heating on at solid temperature.

So so many things you can do to save energy overall, but it is far easier to not do these things if you already don't do them.
Change is effort and most people have none of it to spare. (including laziness)
It would require actual effort to get this to happen in massive numbers where it would be effective.
Hell, even crazy ideas are welcome. Why have bright street lights everywhere at constant brightness? Use nightvision goggles in non-heavy traffic areas. Would be far cheaper overall compared to the price of the NV.
Detect movement using very simple systems in various control areas, connect them up, use them to gauge when lights should be turned up or down. (just don't tell the crazy paranoid tinfoil hat types or they will scream bloody murder)

Re: How about this?

[Runaway1956]

The entire theory is asinine.

Let's say that I run a school district. Let's say that I believe that children should leave their homes while there is daylight, and they should arrive back at home while there is daylight. What's the SIMPLEST thing I can do?

Schedule school hours to begin 1/2 hour after the sun rises, and to end not later than 1/2 hour before the sun sets. As the days grow longer or shorter, I can adjust the beginning of classes accordingly.

DERP A DERP!!

The same idea applies to businesses, of course. As summer approaches, I might schedule my workforce to come in earlier, and as the winter approaches, I can schedule them to come in later to take advantage of daylight.

People who work outdoors just don't care very much about what the clock says. They'll generally start working at daylight, and work for x number of hours, or if necessary, work til dusk.

Re: How about this?

[Lithdren]

I honestly have no idea what you mean.

A vast majority of people, the whole concept is a huge waste of time. If someone wants to have more daylight hours in their work day, wakeup just before daylight. Why move the freaking clocks? It doesn't make any sense, and it never has. Hours are just a measurement, there's nothing that says you have to be asleep at 7am. If you want to get up early because you'll get more daylight for things you're doing, get up early!

Instead we have this system where we jump the time forward or back an hour, and it serves no prupuse. It's a waste of time and energy.

I'll cut down your car.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fair?

Hell, I'll help you burn fuel: I'll set your car on fire when you're revving it.

No, no need to thank me, I'm glad to help.

Re:I'll cut down your car.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fair?

Hell, I'll help you burn fuel: I'll set your car on fire when you're revving it.

No, no need to thank me, I'm glad to help.

The enviroloonies will love this as burning cars is wrong because of pollution mmmkay except when the enviroloonies are burning a Hummer dealership. GO ENVIROLOONIES!

Re: How about this?

[Runaway1956]

It's optional and voluntary, as opposed to being mandated by government. Besides - you mentioned "shift". I work third shift. It matters not one iota to me where the sun is when I wake up, or lay down. It matters just a little on the drive home, because in the spring and fall, the sun is in my eyes for part of the drive. And, it matters not at all where the sun is while I'm at work. Only when I step outside for a smoke do I see whether there is a moon and stars, or it's dark, dark, dark. Time changes mean nothing to a shift worker, except he loses or gains an hour of sleep when the time change occurs.

Re: How about this?

[Baloroth]

If someone wants to have more daylight hours in their work day, wakeup just before daylight. Why move the freaking clocks? It doesn't make any sense, and it never has. Hours are just a measurement, there's nothing that says you have to be asleep at 7am. If you want to get up early because you'll get more daylight for things you're doing, get up early!

Sure, and if you could convince a few hundred million people to do that, you probably wouldn't be commenting on Slashdot, you'd be President of the whole planet. People are not rational, and they do not behave rationally. A person is, sure, but people as a group are not, and they never have been. You can make all the theories you want about how daylight savings was always a stupid idea, but if you forget that large groups of people are involved, and that those people won't follow the logical path, you're just wasting energy typing.

Mind you, with how cheap electricity is now, and with how much interior lighting is used anyways, it doesn't matter anymore and hasn't for decades, but it made sense at one point.

Re: How about this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Up here in Northern Europe it doesn't really matter, around winter solstice we get up when it's pitch black and go home when it's nearly pitch black. Conversily during summer solstice you could even attempt to drive during night without your lights provided it was around full moon and the sky was clear though most of EU does mandate use of at least low beam headlights at all times to make others more aware of your presence on the road. In fact, within about a month, I will stop routinely using high beams till about late october though that has a lot to do with individual driving schedule. Nevertheless during the dark time of the year I end up using high beams even during the "day".
In other words, please let's make EU to stay with summer time ASAP, winter time is just retarded. I think a million or two signatures from at least 3 or so member states should at least make the EP or EC or whatever act on this.

It's called symbolism people

[musixman]

It's called symbolism people not everything in life has a 0 & 1 state.

Re:It's called symbolism people

[tbird81]

Quite correct. It's symbolism, and it does nothing.

New data - Earth's surface temperature is stable!

[SplashMyBandit]

The evidence is piling up that after a short period of warming the Earth's surface temperature is no longer increasing. In fact, in the Southern Hemisphere there is a slight decrease. Here is an easy-to-digest article discussing the data and illustrating how the climate models (that the scare mongering is based off) are very wrong: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2294560/The-great-green-1-The-hard-proof-finally-shows-global-warming-forecasts-costing-billions-WRONG-along.html

The skeptics were right. "An Inconvenient Truth" is actually an "Inconvenient Lie". Now, it is always ok to be wrong and change your position when presented with new data that contradict your existing position. That's what science is about, after all. However, it will be interesting to see the Slashdotters that prefer to maintain their entrenched 'climate alarmist' position rather than accept that the new scientific evidence shows that the data shows that the Earth's surface temperature has stabilized - and the rise was from reasons we don't fully understand.

It is disgusting that many people lots their jobs for being skeptical about the cause and extend of global warming. There was 'blackballing' of anyone opposed to the truth about the warming. It shows how witchhunts still happen if you oppose the prevailing environmentalist/Democrat/Progressive/Socialist views that have take hold in the Western World. Once you start focussing on the evidence (and counter arguments for an against the strength of the evidence) it is hard to believe in the prevailing 'leftist' narrative. Most people want to do good, but let's get fact-based about it, eh? drop the touchy-feely stuff and demonisation of those who hold counter-views; sometimes when you really *listen* to an opponent's view you will learn something about your own position.

Please excuse me while I feel smug. Posters vilified my skeptical position made in another thread around a month ago. Thanks to Thomas Sowell's insight on the climate I became aware of scientific studies that showed the climate alarmist models didn't match the observations. Sowell is not only great for this, he also has a brilliant understanding of economics (as the prodigy of the brilliant Milton Friedman) - and the inevitable failure of collectivist systems if they dominate individual economic activity, ie. crush personal liberty and personal economic liberty (called 'capitalism').

Re: How about this?

[Anonymous Coward]

But that's all moot, because you can achieve the same thing as DST simply by having places of business open and close an hour earlier.

Don't I have to adjust to a different time twice a year if my work shift changes by an hour twice a year?

Yeah, or your business could schedule itself to open and close according to the winter solstice and not have to adjust the clocks at all. That is, the latest sunrise (NYC) is around 7:15, and the earliest sunset around 4:30. If you schedule "workday" to be 8-4, then you get a reasonable amount of (at least twi-) light on either side, even in the middle of winter.

Re:Nuke gay whales for Christ

[PPH]

Hey! I though this thread was going to be a reminder to stock up on whale oil and wicks for the lamps we will need in lieu of the electric lamps

Have some CO2, buddy.

Lame article

[Tridus]

This article follows a fairly standard template: Make up some criteria for success that the event organizers don't use, then claim it's a failure because it doesn't do those things.

Earth Hour was never intended to save power. So yes, it doesn't save power. The point is simply awareness, and it's been pretty successful at doing that.

Now, that awareness hasn't translated into *results*, so you could claim it doesn't work on that regard. But this article doesn't do that.

Obviously..

[Anonymous Coward]

", Earth Hour is simply 'vain symbolism,' and it won't actually save any energy "

What a stupid sentence and submission.

Obviously it's symbolism.. didn't need a bloody investigation

Stop it with the political statement.

[jellomizer]

Stop Political Statements, and work to reduce your own energy footprint as good as you can.
Turn off light you don't need, Adjust your thermostat to be a bit cooler in the Winter and a bit warmer in the summer.
Find excuses to walk or bike to some places you need to be. Or if you drive try to make it in one trip vs. a lot of different ones.
If you own a company, try to reduce you power needs.

For politics stop trying to push the citizens to abstain from dirty energy, you just a political response against you. You need to push for improvements in efficiency, and clean alternatives for different needs. There is no single bullet.

Re: How about this?

[viperidaenz]

So are you going to shift start times at arbitrary points during the year or by 30 to 90 seconds a day, depending on the time of year?

Re: How about this?

[viperidaenz]

I don't want more daylight before work. I'd rather have 5 hours of light after work than 1 hour before and 4 hour after.
Larger blocks of time to do things means less time is wasted starting and stopping.

Re: How about this?

[Anonymous Coward]

We're not talking about DST, we're talking about "Hippie Hour" where you're supposed to shut off a bunch of stuff you don't need for an hour. You know, to show how much energy we can save, the article is making the point that this actually results in wasting more energy than is saved. Although to be fair, the point of the exercise is to get people aware of how much stuff they have leeching power which they don't really need turned on all the time.

From what I understand, they actually observer statistically distinct spikes in heart attacks and suicides with the time changes each year.

Snort. If shifting clocks for an hour is tipping your scale to that point, then I will risk being a completely douchebag and say that we're just weeding out the weak-minded, already mentally unstable people. But as I've never seen any credible evidence to support your claim, I'll just call bullshit.

Re: How about this?

[viperidaenz]

No, no one will have to reset their clocks. They'll just need to remember when each business opens at what time of year. That's much better.
It would be super cool if shops opened when they felt like it and changed the time they opened at different times of the year, so all their customers would need to check online for today's opening hours. You'd get a lot more ad revenue from your website. The current method of having shops open and close at the same time every day is so last year.

Re:New data - Earth's surface temperature is stabl

[fredrated]

And this is peer-reviewed where?

Re: How about this?

[nedlohs]

Changing the clocks is significantly simpler than having to work out just what time does school start and finish this week. And since my job doesn't follow the school schedule the entire timing is off and the simple tasks of organize for Johnny to get to school becomes complicated.

And if, as you say, people who work outdoors don't care very much what the clock says it makes even more sense to change what the clock says for the rest of us - since apparently the main group inconvenienced by it won't care anyway.

Re:A last desperate attempt

[u64]

Symbolism and placebo effects can have some usefulness.
Earth Hour is a last desperate attempt at getting people to at least try to save something.
Just to see what it's like. After that, more people can start saving all-year round.

Hopefully people starts to realize that saving isn't that uncomfortable and that it's for their own good.

Re: How about this?

[nedlohs]

Why not move the clocks. Hours are just a measurement after all, we can change them to better suit our environment. I don't want to get up early for more daylight, I happen to want my daylight at the end of the day (heck I'm all for putting the clocks back 4 hours in winter...) and apparently enough people agree with me that large chunks of the world change their timezone in order to make that easier.

What time and energy is being wasted?

All my clocks (ok except the one the stove, which is wrong anyway) change automatically for daylight saving time and change automatically when it ends. I usually only realize we start daylight saving when I find myself getting tired a little early that first day because I got an hour less sleep without noticing.

Re:Nuke gay whales for Christ

[WaywardGeek]

Here's some math: my kids waste about 1KW 24/7 by not turning lights off. Our house stays lit up all the time. If there are 100M families like mine out of the 1.6B viewers who watched last year's event, there's about 100GW just waiting to be saved through turning off lights when you leave a room.

Even better, how about just replacing all the 60W bulbs in my house (about 100 of them) with $13 Cree LED bulbs? I'd cost me $1,300, but I'd save about $700/year (900W * 24hours/day * 356days/year * 0.08/KWH). Payback time: under 2 years. Sweet.

Re: How about this?

[Runaway1956]

Arbitrary points, of course. Very much like DST already is. Except - it's VOLUNTARY. The students and the parents in the school district have input, and we decide together if it's worth the effort.

Re: How about this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most people don't want more daylight hours, before work, they want more daylight hours after work. You can't move your work hours. They want enough evening daylight to be able to do leave work, drive an hour through traffic to get home, Stop at the grocery store or something to get anything they need for the day, cook dinner, eat dinner, clean up from dinner, and still have some daylight left over for recreational activities. You can't just move the recreational activities to the morning. You can't cook your dinner outside in the morning. If you live in a place like New England, where you are North and East, you don't get much evening sunlight. You really need daylight saving time to proper enjoy the summer.

Do you like always stay inside and alone? Try to get say 9 friends and family to come over to play a volleyball game. See if you can schedule the game for 6AM. Then see if you can schedule the game for 7 or 8PM depending on month and part of country. Which time is more successful? If I want to sit outside with a scotch and cigar, I want to do it at 8PM, not 4AM. Can't you see the difference? You are basically saying that all activities can be done at all times, and all your friends are equally willing to join you at all time. You see so difference between smoking a join an hour before work, vs smoking it an hour after work? You see no difference between a cookout dinner party and cookout breakfast party? You think every business and government service is open 24/7, so that you can do all your errands before work? You think people like getting up early in the morning, being the only one up, and then having to go to bed really early, and miss out on hanging out with their friends and family. Why do you assume that all hours of daylight are equally valuable? Why do you assume that the whole world revolves around your schedule? And don't forget about safety. Crime is much more abundant when the sun is down.

We should change the clocks more. I wish we moved it an hour in like March, and then moved it another hour in April or something. That's even more evening time daylight.

City Politicians

[CanadianMacFan]

The other year the city politicians were all happy to announce that they turned off all of the unnecessary lights for earth hour. I felt like calling them up and asking them why the heck were the lights on in the first place if it wasn't necessary for them to be on! I'm in Ontario so on Saturday night it's probably base load of nuclear or hydroelectric so there's no CO2 anyways. But from a taxpayer perspective I want those lights off every night no matter what the source of the electricity is.

CO2 emission ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bitch please, we are not filthy Americans here in Canada. We got Water power, it's completely "green".

It won't be dark where I am during that hour

[Anonymous Coward]

you insensitive clod!

Re:Nuke gay whales for Christ

[tragedy]

But think of what would happen if enough people actually did this... All the power plants and substations that would blow up as a large part of the electrical load abruptly vanished... All of the consumer electrical equipment damaged from the spikes. All the house fires. Hmmm, this actually may not be such a great idea.

Re: How about this?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Why would the sun all of a sudden start coming up at 3-4am??

You have a poor memory. In my office at Microsoft, I've watched the sun start to appear at the horizon at 5:10am in late June dozens of times. It starts getting light at about 4:30am. Without DST that would start at 3:30am. I don't agree with the anti-DST people that we need daylight before 4am.

Re: How about this?

[mrbester]

Sunrise tomorrow is 0606. The clocks jump forward on Saturday week in UK, so it will appear that sunrise now will happen 47 minutes later. In other words, dawn has broken before I go to work (something I appreciate after months of dark starts), until April, when I again have to start my journey in the dark.

I'll have to wait another three weeks before I'll be going to work after sunrise, so as far as I'm concerned, anybody who thinks this is a good idea is a fucking idiot.

Re: How about this?

[Wookact]

You do realise that instead of everyone changing their schedule twice a year is less schedule changing that your idea. What if my work wants me to come in earlier, but the school doesn't want the kids that early? What if that prevents me from getting to my job on time?

Re:Nuke gay whales for Christ

[Anonymous Coward]

GP is paying!

Re: How about this?

[farble1670]

Besides - you mentioned "shift". I work third shift. It matters not one iota to me where the sun is when I wake up, or lay down.

so what? most people don't work shifts, and hello, policies aren't meant to work for every single citizen, they are meant to accomodate the interest of society as a whole.

Re: How about this?

[CrimsonAvenger]

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.

Of course, the whole idea got going as an attempt to keep the pubs open a bit longer during the War - they had to shutdown at dark as part of the blackout.

Re: How about this?

[farble1670]

I'll have to wait another three weeks before I'll be going to work after sunrise, so as far as I'm concerned, anybody who thinks this is a good idea is a fucking idiot.

translation: this doesn't work for me, so everyone that thinks this is a good idea is an idiot.
brilliant.

Re: How about this?

[CrimsonAvenger]

Mind you, with how cheap electricity is now, and with how much interior lighting is used anyways, it doesn't matter anymore and hasn't for decades, but it made sense at one point.

It was never about saving electricity - it was about keeping pubs open after people got off work during the blackouts imposed by the War....

Opt for green electricity

[TomGreenhaw]

Many people have an option to select who they purchase their electricity from and there are generally green options. The green option for me is only 2% more. If everyone consciously chose this instead of what's most profitable for their utility, I'm sure it would make a big difference. Check out https://power2switch.com/ if you are in Texas, New Jersey or Illinois.

Re: How about this?

[Belial6]

There is an extra step of stupidity to DST. A lot of businesses change their hours during the summer on top of changing the clocks.

Re: How about this?

[CrimsonAvenger]

Why would the sun all of a sudden start coming up at 3-4am?? With or without DST sun comes up here about 6am +/-

Northern Hemisphere Summer Solstice, ~50 degrees north latitude, daylight lasts about 16 hours. So 4AM to 8PM, sans DST, or 5AM to 9PM with DST.

That's just a bit north of the Canada/US border, south of the UK, northern France, southern Germany or Poland...

Northern Scotland will have pre-4AM sunrises for several months (and 3AM sunrise, 9PM sunset on the Solstice), much of Norway and the other Scandinavian countries, ditto. And Alaska, of course.

Re: How about this?

[Belial6]

It is pretty common. It is also pretty common to buy a $15 thermostat that automatically changes the temperatures multiple times a day. Given how cheap programmable thermostats are now, non-programmable thermostats just don't make sense anymore.

Re: How about this?

[Belial6]

A lot of businesses already hold Summer/Winter hours that are different from each other. They also have a tendency to change their hours depending on the day of the week.

Re: How about this?

[Runaway1956]

And, I've already made it pretty clear that the policy sucks. It does not accomplish what it was meant to accomplish. Others have posted links to studies that either show no energy savings, or minimal savings, overall.

And, it might be appropriate to point out that 2/3 or more of the population of the US has been "indoctrinated" to accept the idea. I was around before daylight savings. But, I'm getting old now. If you're not at least fifty years old, you've grown up with DLS, and just assume that it must be good, or right, or "the thing to do".

My opinion is, daylight savings time is petty, and stupid. Totally unnecessary. If an individual business sees the merit for changing their work hours to save on heating costs - fine, let them change. I'm not to worried about my work hours matching school hours - they never have!

Re: How about this?

[TsuruchiBrian]

I agree. You can change the times at which things happen to make them more convenient( e.g. go to school after the sun rises), without changing the time.

Let's say I need to cut a piece of wood that's one foot long. Oops actually it needs to be a little shorter. I don't go out and get a ruler with shorter feet, I just cut the wood at 11-inches on a standard ruler that doesn't change. Daylight "savings" is much more inconvenient than the fact that I might have to get up at a different time. Also, it doesn't save any daylight at all. It just *attempts* to keep the sunrise somewhat similar while drastically changing the time at which sunset happens. Why we would care so much more about sunrise than sunset or even consistency of time in this modern world, I am not sure.

Re: How about this?

[Runaway1956]

BINGO! We have a winner!

Re: How about this?

[TsuruchiBrian]

You could do it in are many inconvenient ways to do it, but we could also just do the same thing without changing clocks at all. We just decree that in fall and winter everyone does everything one hour later. If you go to school at 8am normally, then you go at 9am. If you go to work at 6am, then you go to work at 7am. You do exactly what we are doing now, without changing any clocks.

Re: How about this?

[Chuq]

I'm not sure if you are aware, but you are posting on the internet. Not everyone on the internet lives in the same city as you; some live in places where, yes, the sun DOES start to rise at 4am in the summer.

Re: How about this?

[TsuruchiBrian]

Neither daylight savings nor the absence of daylight savings is extremely difficult to manage. It is that daylight savings is more difficult to manage correctly than simply changing the times you do things.

We could for example change the size of a liter of water to double the amount in summer time. People need to drink more water in summer because it's hotter. If we double the amount of a liter in the summer then we can always drink 1 liter of water and be safe from heat stroke. We could even call them "summer liters", to avoid confusion.

This is completely doable. We already have a bunch of weird units. one more won't do too much harm. We could manage it. But the point is that it would ultimately make things more confusing and create more work than just keeping the units the same and acknowledging that most people need to drink more units of water in the summer.

Having common units of measurement that don't change makes things simpler. Converting between units requires effort and introduces a risk of making mistakes.

Cite please

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

In an allegedly scientific article by an alleged scientist, you'd expect some sort of link to some sort of evidence. Unfortunately this seems to be missing...

Re: How about this?

[viperidaenz]

Runaway1956 didn't think it through very much.

Re: How about this?

[viperidaenz]

DST has an advantage in that is applies to everyone in a particular region consistently. You don't need to check with who or what you're dealing with as to their current schedule that changes at arbitrary times.

I DON'T care

[Anonymous Coward]

"I really care. My carbon footprint is effectively zero, thanks to independently audited offsets, public transport / biking, vegetarianism and solar. "

Carbon footprint is a scam pushed on the gullible to make them feel like they're making a difference.

Congratulations to the people who convinced you you're doing something.

Global Warming is Junk Science

[Anonymous Coward]

thank you for finally posting something accurate. thank you to whichever moderators pulled their head out of the sand long enough to let actual thought, instead of just liberal boilerplate, go through,

Re: How about this?

[mrbester]

This doesn't work for millions of people. So, continuing your theme of "accommodate the interest of society" as mentioned in a previous post, how does an outmoded and irrelevant idea translate to society's benefit in this age of international 24/7 business?

Re: How about this?

[Zalbik]

People are not rational, and they do not behave rationally. A person is, sure, but people as a group are not, and they never have been.

I think Agent K said it better:

"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it."

Re: How about this?

[nedlohs]

Except that people use size measures every day and they all relate to each other.

I would agree that changing the length of an hour in summer would be stupid. Changing the time we call X to be when the sun is in a different position doesn't have any knock on effect though. Other than for people who work with multiple timezones - and again they are the minority and their extra work is more than made up for by the benefit everyone else gets.

Re: How about this?

[mpeskett]

From what I understand, they actually observer statistically distinct spikes in heart attacks and suicides with the time changes each year.

I've heard similar about traffic accidents, at least in the vicinity of the one that leaves everyone sleep deprived on a Monday morning.

Re: How about this?

[CAIMLAS]

You must not live in the country. Typical farm and/or ranch days start at 5am and end at 8 or 9 evening. In most of the US, this means daylight savings really doesn't help anyone: the day is dark when they get up, and the sun is setting or already set when their day is done. Many of these people don't even operate by the clock, anyway: they're up an hour before dawn, and work late into the evening regardless (or work by the sun during the summer). It only really makes sense if we're talking about pre-industrial environments.

Even for commuters or people who get up around, say, 7am, there's no benefit to the "extra hour" of daylight in the morning: it's often still dark when you get to work. This is true for probably close to the entire northern half of the US.

Daylight Savings was an invention by the railroads and sold to government officials for political financial support for the purpose of simplifying train schedules around many disparate "local times" which were synchronized to the actual rising and setting of the sun. It's a ruse and serves little to no purpose beyond having distinct timezones.

Re: How about this?

[omnichad]

As an apartment-dweller with basically no-modifications lease terms, I have a thermostat from the 60's or 70's.

Re: How about this?

[viperidaenz]

Yes, different hours on different days of the week are common, but consistent.
Most companies keep the same schedule all year round, with exceptions on public holidays.

Stop pointing fingers.

[Fuzzums]

China this and China that.
That is only diverting the discussion from the fact that there is nothing wrong with doing something yourself.

By the way: http://public.wsu.edu/~mreed/380American%20Consumption.htm

Americans constitute 5% of the world's population but consume 24% of the world's energy.
On average, one American consumes as much energy as
2 Japanese
6 Mexicans
13 Chinese

Re: How about this?

[TsuruchiBrian]

Like I said, neither option is impossible to deal with. Both require some work. I am arguing that one requires less work.

"Everyone remember to set you clocks back an hour", is just as much work as "Everyone remember to set your alarm for 9am instead of 8am now". The difference is that a lot of infrastructure can be simplified, and a lot of little things become less error prone.

Losing an hour in the spring and getting an extra hour in the summer means that every time based log looks something like this twice a year:

11:58: A

11:59: B

12:00: C

11:01: D

11:02: E

When did the murder occur? 11:30pm. Was that the first time it was 11:30 that fall night or the second time? Oh that's a good question, I didn't think to write that down. I guess this trial is fucked.

Furthermore, the sunrise shifts by as much as 4 hours over the year, and we only shift by an hour for DST. Even with DST there is a 3 hour difference between sunrise in winter and in summer. If it was really so advantageous to have the sin rise at the same time everyday, why wouldn't we set our clock forward 3 times and back 3 times over the course of the year? Or at least set it forward 2 hours ahead and 2 hours back? The current implementation is inconsistent with the goal of keeping the sunrise at the same time.

But we're talking about light, aren't we?

[xded]

It's not like you will need to light yourself up with twice the power to compensate for skin greening...

Not saying that I agree wih Earth Hour, just tryin' to stay on topic...

All these sorts of things are pointless

[Chas]

Don't buy gas on such and such a day! It'll send a message! (Yeah, that people think this sort of thing helps are dumbasses who don't understand that a one day cessation of demand, even on a worldwide scale, is pointless. As people simply buy the next day or stock up in the preceding days.)

Don't use electricity for an hour! *Snore* Basically it's a load test for your grid. And an expensive one too. Nothing more.

I've got one!

All you people who want to send a REAL message!
If you're SERIOUS about this. Do the following.
Don't breed. EVER.

If you can't do that, try the following.
Don't breath for an hour. You'll be doing the world a favor.

If that's still too much to ask, here's something more fun.
Go skydiving and experience freefall for 30 consecutive minutes.

Nobody thinks thinks that.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody thinks Earth hour is anything but symbolics (Yes I am sure you can probable find some exceptions). And everybody should know this, so why play stupid and act as if the point of earth hour is anything but symbolic. Forget the is earth hour a waste of time what about these kinds of discussion are a waste of time. Playing stupid to give yourself an easy target is pointless. You will not change anybodies mind and you will raise questions about your own motives.

Re: How about this?

[jones_supa]

Sure, and if you could convince a few hundred million people to do that, you probably wouldn't be commenting on Slashdot, you'd be President of the whole planet. People are not rational, and they do not behave rationally. A person is, sure, but people as a group are not, and they never have been. You can make all the theories you want about how daylight savings was always a stupid idea, but if you forget that large groups of people are involved, and that those people won't follow the logical path, you're just wasting energy typing.

How do you know that the reaction would be negative?

What if a good amount of those people would say "Good point, let's end this silliness."

As an IT guy for a large power company

[Anonymous Coward]

I can assure you, no amount of residential power offs will cause any single generator to shut off or coal plant to increase to decrease any anything. It won't cause more emissions... That's just not the way that bulk electric production works. You will indeed cause a net electricity demand drop, but only slightly. What you'll do instead is possibly make someone in one market have a tiny amount of extra capacity that they could sell to another market.
So it is saving money, but not really you.... just the power companies.

One hour isn't enough time for a power company to respond to anything anyway. If you were truly able to drop demand in any meaningful way, you'd have to sustain the reduction long enough that future models would be affected. If a company chose to shut down a generator, it takes at least an hour to fire it back up. You would never shutdown unless you had days of models showing a dramatic trend downward.

Re: How about this?

[Mister Liberty]

Indeed.
The only purpose it served was that it gave a handful of politicians,
at the time it was implemented, a sense of power and control.
All of the arguments pro are dimwittery.

Disclaimer: I'm an astronomer.

Don't accept bogus data, the temperature is rising

[ThePackager]

Take your politically colored blinders off, Rose produced nothing but propaganda for the anti-science movement. His "official" graph is a fabrication, (see http://www.windows2universe.org/earth/climate/climate_today.html and http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/ and Rose cites no authorities. Referring back to the main thread - the hour of 'lights out' would be much better spent if everyone sought out ways and actually acted on them consistently to reduce their energy demand. Like cleaning out and turning off that 2nd refrigerator - turning the heat down, unplugging your device charges when you aren't using them, just use less energy, or we're all screwed. Especially future generations.

Re: How about this?

[Anonymous Coward]

because the free market requires a punctual start, thus the clocks MUST be moved !

because stores that open at 9:00 don't get to decide on a store by store basis when 9:00 is for them.

because, really, your idea only helps people who set their own hours, living in a community of people who get to set their own hours && who largely agree with your ideal time to wake and work.

Nothing More That Political Hype

[Anonymous Coward]

And Lunacy, attempted on a Planetary Scale.

In short, just stupid.

But, 'Stupid' is Obama's Game Plan One To Infinity. A sad plan.

Re: How about this?

[Ghaoth]

And the cows would be happier

Re: How about this?

[crispytwo]

Even though I despise DST or whatever I live in a northern country. Yes, even at 49 degrees north, the daylight is significantly affected over the year.

2 times a year, I see the sun rise at 6 am and set at 6pm... one of them is in 3 days... but since we use DST, it will be 7am to 7pm... (roll eyes).
in December, rises 8 AM and sets 4 PM -- dim for about 1 hour on each end like from 8AM to 9AM and 3PM to 4PM
in June, rises 5 AM and sets 9 PM -- bright outside these times for 1-2 hours each way, so from 3AM to 5AM and 9PM to 11PM even though the sun is basically set.

For me, it takes me 3 weeks to adjust to a 1 hour change. It has to be the most horrible period in the spring dealing with it. If it were a 2 or 3 hour change, it would take a day or two to adjust.

DST is stupid - I'm not a child who needs to be told when to go work and when to go eat, but I barely follow these conventions for the convenience of others. It is obvious that businesses that live and die by these rules are mostly obsolete. Being at work when others are working is not a DST issue... having a common opening time is beyond moronic, for example, why would a bank only open from 10-3 during the week when everyone is working? That's convenient. Or worse, a clothing store? Who would go?

I love the fact that computers get updated timezone files all the time. It demonstrates how incredibly arbitrary and useless DST really is.

Re: How about this?

[hawk]

Gosh, ole Ben Franklin was *really* forward thinking . . . :)

hawk, still not certain he could finish his freon ice sculpture in just one hour . . .

Re: How about this?

[BrokenHalo]

And if, as you say, people who work outdoors don't care very much what the clock says it makes even more sense to change what the clock says for the rest of us

Sigh. The arbitrary selection of a group to inconvenience doesn't really constitute much of a reason to to anything. Throwing one more specious argument into a topic almost entirely dominated by specious arguments doesn't achieve anything. But all this is wildly off-topic. Some fool hijacks a thread about saving power and uses it to push his opinion about daylight saving, and the /. lemmings happily follow.

So how about this, to derail the thread back on-topic:

If the aim is to save CO2 emissions by reducing power usage, why not just do it at the source? Shut the power stations down for an hour or so. Everybody can keep warm by jumping up and down yelling abuse at each other.

Let the flames begin... ;)

Re: How about this?

[chrismcb]

Ok, but why bother to switch back in the winter? If we stayed on PST all winter, it would get dark at 5pm instead of 4.

Feel Good

[Sivaraj]

You are forgetting the main intention and benefit of Earth Hour. It is supposed to make us *feel good*. The sacrifice of switching off our redundant lights gives us enough karma to not feel guilty the rest of the year when we splurge on fossil fuel. No other energy saving event would feel as good.

So I am all for Earth Hour, even if it wastes more energy in the process.

Re: How about this?

[theNAM666]

You are aware than less than 1.5% of the US lives on farms, right?

Re: How about this?

[mpe]

Daylight Savings was an invention by the railroads and sold to government officials for political financial support for the purpose of simplifying train schedules around many disparate "local times" which were synchronized to the actual rising and setting of the sun.

In the case of timetables changing the clocks twice a year is a complication. Though less so than having to deal with local time at every station. Indeed US railroad companies were against it. The concept of DST originates from around the turn of the 20th century. The event which caused it to actually happen being The "Great War".

Re: How about this?

[theNAM666]

Aie, you'da bloody well loved double DST during the Blitz, mate. Back when we'da shot whiners like you, except we needed the cannon fodder.

Re: How about this?

[mpe]

All of the "studies" I have seen "proving" that DST saves energy are thought "experiments" rather than actual real life studies of what happens when some locale changes from not having DST to having DST. All of the studies of actual occurrences of changing from never changing the clocks to implementing DST have shown an increase use of energy after the change (although in at least one of those cases the change was small and could potentially be attributed to other causes). In other words, all real-world studies of energy use and DST indicate that best case scenario is that DST makes NO difference in energy use and quite possibly increases it.

There also must be an economic cost to changing clocks which do not change automatically. As well as those which should change automatically, but in practice require human intervention.

Why don't we use the billions the US gives us?

[ryzvonusef]

From the VERY FIRST LINE of your own link:

Pakistan receives foreign aid from several different countries and the international community. Those fundings are meant for the civil projects within the country but unfortunately most of it never reaches the common public because of corrupt politicians.

Also, further on in the same first paragraph of your link:

-Why you pay us:

The bulk of international aid to Pakistan is from the Coalition Support Fund which is reimbursement "to Pakistan for expenses already incurred and compensation for facilities made available to the coalition forces such as the Shamsi Airfield and Dalbandin air bases by Pakistan as well as $4 billion has been billed to CSF for the training and services provided by American Military and contractors.

-Why you keep paying

The amount transferred to the Pakistani Treasury in cash over 10 years has been $8.647 billion.The misuse of funding by the authorities in Pakistani is often ignored from the US government as their main interest is to use the military base in Pakistan as a passage to Afghanistan in fight against Taliban.

TL;DR:

- Your government pays our government mostly for services rendered, not gratis.

- Your government KNOWS the money is going to crooks, but you still keep giving; i.e. your government is complicit.

Thank you for sharing the link and making it easy for me, parent! ;p

----

I wasn't asking for sympathy anyway, I was just sharing the realisation that things in Egypt are *still* better than Pakistan, despite the revolutionary chaos there. I know things are shitty here, but his comment just brought into perspective just *how* shitty they are.

Re:Why don't we use the billions the US gives us?

[Anonymous Coward]

TL;DR:

- Your government pays our government mostly for services rendered, not gratis.

- Your government KNOWS the money is going to crooks, but you still keep giving; i.e. your government is complicit.

Thank you for sharing the link and making it easy for me, parent! ;p

Well, if you're your nation's best and brightest, the situation makes a lot of sense. If you had bothered to read the link you'd still see 6.08 billion in economic aid after you factor out the 11.740 billion in military aid. But I guess it's hard to continue reading when confirmation bias kicks in.

Your government's corrupt and it's the United States fault. It's always the United States fucking fault, right? You said so yourself you have a Democracy and it's still the United State's fault your government is corrupt. Jesus fucking Christ. If we pull aid, we're murderers. If we leave it, we're powering a corrupt government. Talk about ungrateful little shits :(

Re:Why don't we use the billions the US gives us?

[ryzvonusef]

Sigh, mr confirmation bias, let me spell it out for you:

Military aid: services rendered, keeping generals happy

Economic aid: bribes to keep bought politicians bought

Happy now? I thought it was clear.

And sorry, but I am not an ungrateful shit, coz I haven't got a cent of US aid to be grateful for ;p

You give aid to buy off politicians, and keep them bought.

Btw, found this in your link:

Furthermore a significant proportion of U.S. economic aid for Pakistan has ended up in back in the U.S., as funds are channelled through large U.S. contractors. A U.S. lawmaker also said majority of U.S. economic aid has not left the U.S. as it spent on consulting fees and overhead cost

Seriously though, I absolutely agree with you, cut off the damn aid. Let's not fund corrupt politicians. No one will accuse your govt being a murderer for not giving aid, you are not our nanny (well, there *is* the drone thing...guess why you were paying the heavy bribes ;p)

You hate the aid, I hate it, but what can one do when our governments love it?

Poor misunderstanding of poster

[Anonymous Coward]

Earth Hour is not about actually saving energy during this hour. It is about generating general awareness with regard to energy consumption.

Re:Nuke gay whales for Christ

[gmack]

An even better way to save money is to go through the house and fix every leaky tap or toilette. Back before I finally got my first sysadmin job I worked with my father fixing/ installing sewage treatment systems and you would be amazed how many calls we got wondering why systems were 20 - 30 gallons a day above normal and ended up tracing the problem to a slow leak in a single toilette somewhere in the building.

Re: How about this?

[nedlohs]

I already stated that it is zero work to change clocks. Disagreeing with my claim is one thing, just ignoring that is was stated makes for a pointless conversation.

For logs, sure I hadn't thought of that. I've never heard of that causing a single trial to be fucked though, and I really would expect that to make the news. Maybe there's always some sort of corroboration they can use to check what time was meant - people do sometimes make notational errors after all. Or the once a year window to have your crime go unpunished if someone happens to not note the time carefully isn't exploited enough for it to outweigh the benefits of making the change?

It's not advantageous to have the sunrise at the same time, and that isn't the goal. It's advantageous to get shift a daylight hour from morning to evening, for some people. I already stated I'd like the clocks moved 4 hours so your attempt at making it look absurd just supports my not popular at all view.

Re: How about this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you need to convince a few hundred million people to get up early, for YOU to get more daylight hours?

The whole problem is that a minority (around 10-20%) who likes mornings have been able to convince the government to change the clocks, so that everybody has to get up early for work. For the rest of us, it results in lost productivity.

For me, around the middle of March, it starts being bright enough in the morning, that I wake up well rested. When that happens, I am a lot more productive than on the days where I have my alarm clock ruin my sleep. This ends once we switch to daylight saving time, because then my alarm clock will wake me up an hour before I'm rested. Luckily, I'm in Europe, where daylight time starts later, so I'll get a few weeks of being productive in the morning.

Nominal demand = power shutdown?

[stinkbomb]

So the summary implies that a nominal drop in power requires power plants to be shut down? I don't think that's how it works.

Re: How about this?

[cayenne8]

Typical farm and/or ranch days start at 5am and end at 8 or 9 evening.

Well, considering that there are so few farmers that it isn't even listed as an occupation on the US Census anymore...I'd dare say that can't really be used as a reason for the DST changes any longer.

Re: How about this?

[cayenne8]

Ok, then leave it at DST year round...I really don't care which way the hour goes...just pick one and quit changing it.

Re:Nuke gay whales for Christ

[Pope]

Or you can teach your kids to turn off the fucking lights when they don't need them.

It's less than zero to not change clocks then.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want permanent DST, then GET UP EARLIER.

If you want the entire country to go to permanent DST, then get EVERYONE TO GET UP EARLIER.

Re: How about this?

[tnk1]

It is *not* zero work to change clocks. For one thing, daylight savings time probably costs millions of dollars in plain programming time needed to manage DST changes properly in applications. You'd think you could just reference one library and you'd be done, but it doesn't work out that way.

Our Internet works based on time, and while UTC is always an option for some things, you can't use it for everything. I've had to literally do on-call time because I've supported stupid apps that get the DST change wrong or the code just doesn't like the fact that it's 2AM twice or there is no 2AM at two times during the year.

Yes, it could be done correctly.... but it wouldn't *have to be* if there was no DST. It all adds up and it is real money and lost productivity.

Re: How about this?

[tnk1]

Then school starts when it is darker out. It's not like even with DST that it wasn't sort of twilight at 7AM for high school anyway during the winter. I don't see this fixation on "getting more daylight hours". There aren't more daylight hours to allocate.

Changing the clocks costs real time and money, and achieves almost nothing except maybe a little bit of convenience for a few people. For everyone else, it is a gigantic pain in the ass.

The world that doesn't use DST has somehow managed to figure out how to live without it, its time we stopped wasting money and time worrying about this BS.

Night Sky lights

[Anonymous Coward]

Start by installing more efficient night lighting. Direct outdoor lights down, avoid lighting the skies. The recent satellite photos of the earth at night demonstrate how wasteful we are.

Re: How about this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Multiple studies have shown that there is negligible if any electrical energy savings under DST. The United States Department of Transportation (DOT) concluded in 1975 that DST might reduce the country's electricity usage by 1% during March and April,[14] but the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) reviewed the DOT study in 1976 and found no significant savings.[81] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time. But because people are away from their homes longer in the evenings, gasoline consumption rises. Which of course adds to oil consumption. With a negative savings of fossil energy. The only reason to continue with DST is cultural; Except for AZ, and formerly parts of IN, Americans have lived under DST their entire lives, and do not have any appreciation of the many benefits of standard time year round.

Re: How about this?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, let's keep the clocks on standard time year round. Changing twice a year accomplishes no energy savings, and disrupts our lives.

Re: How about this?

[JakeBurn]

Its a good thing people working construction or any job outside or or any job where electricity is not readily available can just turn on their interior lights so they can maximize their work day. I wonder why my landscapers never thought of that. Probably because they're not geniuses like what we have posting here on slashdot.

Re: How about this?

[K10W]

TBH the standardised times worked pretty well for the railway thing since before then you needed myriad clocks in stations showing times at current station and other stations and even other lines maintained by another firm in same place. Setting standard time for all to use in particular place was good thing for synchronicity but I wholly agree it is meaningless as far as amount of daylight workers get as oft doesn't work out that way.

Re: How about this?

[supervico]

I'm also opposed to the switching for the same reasons you mention (I come in to work at 7:30am for that reason), and even signed the White House petition online... but then a coworker presented one good point: when kids go out in the morning and stand outside waiting for their school bus, it would be safer for them to have some daylight. I'm still opposed to the switching, but I can also see her point of view as a good argument since it affects millions of children.

Re: How about this?

[Anonymous Coward]

An old sage once told me: Tell a woman her beauty will last for time eternal, and she will love you. Just don't tell her her face could stop a clock.

Re: How about this?

[jeffmeden]

Was that the first time it was 11:30 that fall night or the second time? Oh that's a good question, I didn't think to write that down. I guess this trial is fucked.

If you write time down (especially if you suspect such confusion is possible) you better write the current timezone along with it, or you are a pretty sorry detective. This is how all computerized logs are already written. I guess, if you are a murderer, you can expect a little leeway right after 2am twice a year, but i would eat my hat if you could point out a single time this confusion actually caused a problem in a criminal trial.

Why it's REALLY done..

[Anonymous Coward]

So astronauts in the ISS can take pretty photos of a dark planet, and post them on social media sites for science magazines.

Re: How about this?

[TsuruchiBrian]

1. I disagree with your ridiculous claim that changing clocks is zero work.

2. The trial thing was just 1 example. Every single thing which is based on time must correctly handle the fact that it becomes disrupted twice a year every year. It is bad enough that we have natural changes to our time system from leap year and small changes to the length of a day, without introducing more artificial changes needlessly.

3. If the goal was to have daylight hours in the evening rather than the morning, then we would be doing DST the other way around (i.e. Fall forward/spring back), because currently DST causes even less evening hours of daylight in the evening in the winter than we would get without it.

4. I didn't know you suggested moving clocks 4 hours, and I wasn't trying to make it look absurd. I was trying to show that current DST is not implemented in a way to achieve it's goals even if we assumed they were goals worth wanting.

5. If you want to preserve daylight hours in the evening, and If you want the clocks shifted by 4 hours, I hope you realize that that this will leave winter with 8 hours less daylight in the evening compared with summer (e.g. 4pm vs. midnight sunsets).

Re: How about this?

[TsuruchiBrian]

My point is that you can't just write down the timezone. You can assume local time, but if something happens in the hour that overlaps during DST, you must note whether it is the first time the clock struck 11:30 or the second time. "11:30pm PST" doesn't tell you what time something happened if it is the night DST starts because there were 2 "11:30pm PST"s that night, one hour apart.

You could also just mark the time in UTC. And in fact most computer logs do just that to greatly simplify things. And that is my point. It is so much simpler to use a time system that is consistent. It is not simple to change tradition, but if DST was not already our tradition keeping track of time would be simpler.

Re: How about this?

[chidorex]

It might save money when starting after April. But DST should end BEFORE the Autumn equinox or else you save nothing. By today standards, we are turning back the clock by the end of October. That last month the sun is coming up at 8:00 or later. If we started DST a week after the Spring equinox (first week of april) and finish it a week before the Autumn equinox (second or third week of september) we might save some money, and headaches. As it stands now, it is just stupid.

Re: How about this?

[farble1670]

i never said it wasn't outmoded. i said the fact that you and a vast, vast minority of others work odd hours isn't a good argument against it. argue that it doesn't make sense for society, not that it does't make sense for you and your vampire-like lifestyle.

sure "a lot" of people work shifts, but "a lot" of people can also handle driving 120mph, and "a lot" of people can safely bring their assault weapons on airplanes also. laws / rules are there for the convenience / safety of society as a whole, not the individual.

At least they didn't ask us to light a candle

[GPS Pilot]

A few years ago, I saw an Earth Hour flyer urging me to shut off an electric light, and light a candle instead.

I guess the organizers weren't aware that for any given number of lumens, producing that much light with candles releases a lot more greenhouse gases than producing it with electric lights.

Why Earth Hour Is IMPORTANT

[Anonymous Coward]

Earth Hour was never meant to be an engineering exercise -- a strategy for immediately or directly saving energy. It's about changing opinion and motivating actions that will make a difference even at the cost of discomfort.

The key is to understand symbolic action, and its power to motivate. Monks burning themselves in a hideous spectacle did nothing directly to end the Vietnam War (or to teach the sanctity of life!) but did communicate in a visceral way just how abhorrent they found the war -- and *that* affected consciousness from which all change flows.

In an era that worships greed, FB millionaires, and the ghost of Ayn Rand it's easy to forget that Altruism is part of the human animal too. Lighting a light against the darkness (or, in this case, the opposite for an hour) is the inspiration and motivation without which nothing real may happen. Reducing greenhouse emissions is not a matter of buying a Hybrid car - it's accepting that modern life much change. Sitting in a darker room thinking about that for a hour communicates the message in a way a thousand Slashdot witticisms do not.

Re:Nuke gay whales for Christ

[WaywardGeek]

You're right. I had a plumber fix all our leaks last year, and I think the savings already paid for the service. I'd guess we were losing $10-$30/month just on leaks. My point is basically that Earth Hour is about teaching people, kids in particular, about turning off the lights and generally being sensitive to wasting energy. I'm highly ADHD, as are my kids, and trying to remember to turn off the lights is likely a lost cause. These new high efficiency LEDs will save me a lot.

hippies...

[KingBenny]

more harm than in the end like so many pointless ludicrous actions, i suppose it raises awareness but with general apathy as the norm i dont think it will make much of a difference. People really need to be brainwashed into new routines, social stigma and guilt always seems to help for long term campaings (eg the crusade against cigarettes a.o. now makes you some kind of irresponsible, stinking lowlife for just smoking one almost)

Re: How about this?

[Anonymous Coward]

So much this. Who needs light for the morning commute? I guess kids waiting for the school bus might need light for safety. How early is that? Lets set the time so kids can catch the bus safely at all times of the year and then not move it ever.

Colour of the sky

[pne]

If things don't improve, the next generation of kids have no idea that the sky is supposed to be blue.

Here in northern Germany, the default colour of the sky is white. Not because of pollution (light or otherwise) but because of these things we call "clouds".

It's fairly rare that a day is not 100% overcast. (Or at least it seems like that to me.)

So the moral of this article is...

[BlueRaja]

It's too hard, so don't even try?

Re: How about this?

[Anonymous Coward]

I honestly have no idea what you mean.

A vast majority of people, the whole concept is a huge waste of time. If someone wants to have more daylight hours in their work day, wakeup just before daylight. Why move the freaking clocks?

Because the point of more daylight hours is to do business. If businesses are closed, you can't do business. So, the benefit is only substantial when everyone's hours are moved.