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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.'"
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.