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World Cities Go Dark For 'Earth Hour' Climate Campaign (afp.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the AFP:
Earth Hour, which started in Australia in 2007, is being observed by millions of supporters in 187 countries, who are turning off their lights at 8.30pm local time in what organisers describe as the world's "largest grassroots movement for climate change"... In Paris, the Eiffel Tower plunged into darkness as President Emmanuel Macron urged people to join in and "show you are willing to join the fight for nature". "The time for denial is long past. We are losing not only our battle against climate change, but also our battle against the collapse of biodiversity," he said on Twitter. Moscow's Red Square also fell dark and the Russian section of the International Space Station dipped its lights, the Ria Novisti news agency said... UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the event "comes at a time of huge pressure on people and planet alike. Resources and ecosystems across the world are under assault. Earth hour is an opportunity to show our resolve to change."
Other landmarks "going dark" include the Empire State Building in New York and the Sydney Opera House, as well as the harbour skylines of Hong Kong and Singapore.
Other landmarks "going dark" include the Empire State Building in New York and the Sydney Opera House, as well as the harbour skylines of Hong Kong and Singapore.
I think I will mine for Bitcoin instead. This should completely negate all the power Paris is saving.
All my cities lights are still on. Doesn't seem to be an "all" thing to me.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
"Let's not do/buy "X" on this day/hour/etc."
Yay! Accomplishes NOTHING.
All they're doing is stress testing the grid's ability to cope with increased demand when everything comes back up.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
This is something that will only be forced on poor people. Excuse me while I turn on every electronic device I can possibly get my hands on!
The great triumph of the human intellect has been the taming of nature to suit us. Darkness and cold were the first beasts we slayed.
This is a tiny blip in total energy use. Long-term changes, both in personal behavior and systemic society aspects needs to occur. Individuals can use more public transit, eat less meat, not keep the heat up really high in winters, etc. But personal changes are not enough. If one wants to help directly with helping reducing CO2 production then donating to solar and wind charities is the best bet. For solar, the best two seem to be Everybody Solar https://www.everybodysolar.org/ (which gets solar panels for non-profits like museums and homeless shelters), and the Solar Electric Light Fund https://self.org/ which gets solar panels for people in developing countries. I'm not 100% sure on an ideal charity for wind, but one good one is the New England Wind Fund https://www.massenergy.org/the-wind-fund . Finally, if one wants to directly reduce CO2 in the short-term, then the best bet is simply directly donating to Cool Earth https://www.coolearth.org/. In terms of maximum reduction of CO2 per a dollar, Cool Earth is unambiguously the best so if one wants to engage in carbon offsets that's best. A typical American lifestyle can offset their entire yearly carbon budget for about $500 (this won't be the case indefinitely though, as if Cool Earth gets more than about another order of magnitude of funding, the diminishing marginal returns will be start mattering).
I thought I recognized you.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
NORTH KOREA!
We proudly award North Korea the winner of the Earth Hour Challenge. They've shown great efforts in caring for the environment for not just sending the entire nation into darkness for an hour (except Dear Leader's palace grounds) but by doing so for the entirety of Earth Day! ... and the year. For much of the last century really.
Next year we'll take applications for the nation that has shown the lowest carbon footprint growth for the last 50 years. This will be to mark the 50th anniversary of Earth Day coming in 2020. We know who is in the front running, don't you? Let's see who else can revert their nation into the stone age by then. We hear that North Korea is already making plans for their victory by building rockets for a massive fireworks display that no doubt will send shockwaves around the world!
Come on America! We can't let North Korea show us how things are done! We need to lower our carbon footprint too. USA! USA! USA!
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
As an alternative to virtue signaling tonight, how how celebrating something that has made a difference in the lives of billions - Human Achievement Hour.
The fact that across the world we have less disease, poverty, and hunger than ever before - not to mention lifespans increasing in even the poorest of countries.
As George Carlin said, the Earth will be fine no matter what we do. Celebrate the fact that we have collectively helped humans to live better, which will in the end lead to a better environment than any useless gesture ever will - it's only when humans feel content and safe they feel free to turn their gaze away from survival and towards conservation.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The worlds cities should do something meaningful like turn off half the streetlights all the time. The reduction in light pollution would be an added bonus.
He'd at least be getting something out of the energy use compared to earth hour... which, if you believe CO2 is a threat, leads to more CO2 in the atmosphere without associated benefit.
Hear me out... when you think about how most of our energy in this country is produced, it's not simply plugging in a storage medium into the electrical line, but instead the transformation of the chemical properties of coal or gas, or relying on the radioactive properties of fissile material to heat water & create steam... which then gets run through turbines to generate electricity.
When demand on the power grid takes a sudden turn, they can't quickly turn down the heat on the generation of steam (without causing them a longer & more expensive startup). You can adjust the properties of a nuclear reactor to slow the process more quickly by comparison, but given ~60+% of our power comes from fossil fuels (https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3), it means that how it handles the drop in load is more impactful.
What do you do when you've a coal or gas powered plant which is suddenly producing too much energy? You can only store so much steam (which builds pressure), and you don't want to simply extinguish the fire (because re-firing a burn is amazingly expensive carbon wise, they don't just set a match to the coal, but get it started with a good bit of fuel oil). Your easiest option... is to dump the excess stream in a way that it will not go through turbines to generate electricity... effectively meaning that the carbon releasing burning that that went into generating the dumped steam... was wasted.
Source: an uncle of mine spent several decades running power plants at a multi-state power co-op... and each year at earth hour chuckles at the needless release of carbon by those who are trying to lower it... and he doesn't subscribe to the anthropomorphic theory on global warming.
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