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-- Are your lights off?
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Originally posted by PartEgurl You are hands down the most cynic, pessimistic person I have ever come across in my life. Sorry to crush your perspective, but the organizers of earth hour are NOT trying to make money and take over the world. They actually care about sustaining the worlds population based on the resources available. You say change will only happen when we run out of oil? Earth hour is an organization committed to making change before we reach an energy crisis, which is why you should stop talking about it in a negative way. Your opinions are contradicting.

Call it what you will I just dont buy into a lot of the BS that is fed to us.

Alot of marketing companies have made money from this. Alot of so called charities have recieved a lot of grants for this. Alot of governments have scored political points from this. And all of it to do relatively nothing. It's grandstanding at it's best.

I use a smaller car and drive less because it saves me money. I turn off the light when i leave the room because it saves me money. Turning my lights off for an hour and living like a caveman isnt going to save me much money and its not going to fix the environment. A few 60 watt bulbs and a tv costs what to run? About 30 cents per hour?

Electricity is what differentiates the modern world from the 3rd world. I would argue it also SAVES the environment. Look at haiti. Due to a lack of electricty the local population deforested the entire country for energy. You can now see the border of haiti and the dominican republic from space based soley on its foliage!

And change wont happen until we run out of oil. And when there is an energy crisis it will be man-made just as they always have been in order to drive up our costs and their profits. Im convinced that fuel cell technology or some other form of clean technology has already been developed and is being locked away for safe keeping.

See im hating on big corperations too! At least i have something in common with treehuggers! LOL

Cynical? Maybe... but I just dont buy into BS and hype.... and thats what earth hour is.

Also what is a bit worrisome to me is that we have a track record of sorts. What is today's suggestion is tomorrow's law.

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Originally posted by PartEgurl I don't know how this is possible, but I have disagreed with everything you've ever said. You have to lose to gain - so advertising this issue on electronic signs to have more participation is worth it - this is how the world works. I think earth hour is a great event to educate children (future energy users). It is an interactive way to make them understand how we take electricity for granted and we should conserve.

I agree education is a good thing, but not when it contains misinformation or a false sense of accomplishment. The practices and suggestions being made to the general public have been around for decades, and have been taught for decades. Reuse, reduce, recycle. Turn off your lights when not in the room. Compost. Turn off your tap while brushing your teeth. Not new ideas, but some how being repackaged as new.

The other problem is that people are only paying attention to one aspect of the environment, energy consumption at the end user. Funny thing, that is the one area we as Canadians don't actually have to worry about. We have all the energy, and a lot of clean energy that we need. So if the source of the energy for that light bulb is clean, then who cares how much you use?

What we are not looking at is our consumption of other materials and resources, which are in far greater danger than our atmosphere due to carbon, or our electrical grid. Water consumption may be one of our largest problems yet nobody is telling you to take a shorter shower, or get low flow toilets/sinks. Nobody is telling you to buy less prepackaged food, because they fill up our land fills so quickly and deplete forestry stocks.

Earth Hour was a huge sham which everybody played along with. We are being dazled on the one hand with free concerts, carbon offsets, and public gatherings. On the other side, consumption levels keep rising, and our real problems are slowly slipping through our fingers.

Sustainability is a trend, and with all trends come issues. SOME organizations are using sustainability as a marketing tool. For example certain manufacturers are labeling their products as "green", when in fact most of these products are far from it. What I disagree with is the assumption that earth hour has similar goals making it a negative organization when really it is trying to achieve a positive goal; attempting to bring awareness on a global level to these issues.

I agree water consumption is a larger issue. To grow 1 ton of wheat it takes 1000 tonnes of water, and water tables are shrinking on a global scale. The use of biofuel promotes the use of mass amounts of water - which is a non-renewable resource. There are so many issues and finding the right solutions are difficult; but why would you criticize an organization for trying to raise awareness about these issues (like earth hour)?

quote:

Originally posted by PartEgurl but why would you criticize an organization for trying to raise awareness about these issues (like earth hour)?

Simply because I do not believe in man made global warming. So the promotion of energy conservation to help prevent it, is bogus in my eyes.

This goes back to my earlier point of misinformation. Certain causes and issues are being supported, promoted and forced upon us, which is then backed up by media and societal pressures.

quote:

Originally posted by PartEgurl Sustainability is a trend, and with all trends come issues. SOME organizations are using sustainability as a marketing tool. For example certain manufacturers are labeling their products as "green", when in fact most of these products are far from it. What I disagree with is the assumption that earth hour has similar goals making it a negative organization when really it is trying to achieve a positive goal; attempting to bring awareness on a global level to these issues. I agree water consumption is a larger issue. To grow 1 ton of wheat it takes 1000 tonnes of water, and water tables are shrinking on a global scale. The use of biofuel promotes the use of mass amounts of water - which is a non-renewable resource. There are so many issues and finding the right solutions are difficult; but why would you criticize an organization for trying to raise awareness about these issues (like earth hour)?

The only awareness to come out of this is a demonstration as to how important electricity really is. I would argue that earth hour probably promotes electricty use more than it does curtail it!!

As i said, awareness will come through cost efficiency. Make the alternatives cheap and available and people will have no problem "going green". What we dont need are more lectures and one off grandstanding. Whats more, I have learned about reducing energy since i was a kid thanks to my dad always yelling at us to turn off the lights! LOL!

I went to THE DOCKS and took some pics ...

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Originally posted by Jayx1 The only awareness to come out of this is a demonstration as to how important electricity really is. I would argue that earth hour probably promotes electricty use more than it does curtail it!! As i said, awareness will come through cost efficiency. Make the alternatives cheap and available and people will have no problem "going green". What we dont need are more lectures and one off grandstanding. Whats more, I have learned about reducing energy since i was a kid thanks to my dad always yelling at us to turn off the lights! LOL!

You are making an assumption that everyone who participated on a global level only gained education about the importance of electricity, and not energy conservation.

Someone remind me why I even tried?

if you really wanted to make a statement then this should have been held Friday afternoon from 1-5 pm....at least then I would have the afternoon off work.

I viewed "Earth Hour" as being stupid - pretty much like Valentines Day where romance is FORCED upon us for one night, as opposed to making an effort all year round.

I'm the only person who turns off the work lights when I leave, I've never had a car and I keep my lights off because I hate large hydro bills.

Rather than make an effort for one crappy hour, once a year we should make an effort all year round.

heres some 2003 blackout pics, now that was def a night when the lights went out:

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Originally posted by RobbyG. I went to THE DOCKS and took some pics ...

nice

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Earth Hour was a huge success, with early reports indicating that at least 50 million people participated in this global call to action on climate change! This makes it the largest voluntary power-down event in history. And it was Canada that led the way, with over 150 cities and towns turning off their lights. Thank you Canada! In Toronto, Canada�s flagship Earth Hour city, energy consumption dropped by 8.7 per cent and almost 10,000 people gathered at City Hall to watch Nelly Furtado, The Philosopher Kings and Fefe Dobson play a free concert in the dark. In all of Ontario, 900 MW of energy was saved, the equivalent of taking 3,200 cars off the road for one hour. There were celebrations all across the country and results are still pouring in. In British Columbia, energy consumption was reduced by 125 MW. The energy saved in Ontario and British Columbia alone is equivalent to turning off 20.5 million lights. Thanks to everyone here in Canada and around the world that participated in the first ever, worldwide Earth Hour! Your efforts and determination have made this an event to remember and you have sent a very strong message to our government, and governments around the world, that we need to take action on climate change now.

w00t!

^^ wow gotta love those faulty statistics. There is absolutely no way they can prove that entire amount of 'energy saved' was directly attributed to earth hour.

quote:

energy consumption dropped by 8.7 per cent and almost 10,000 people gathered at City Hall to watch Nelly Furtado, The Philosopher Kings and Fefe Dobson play a free concert in the dark. In all of Ontario, 900 MW of energy was saved, the equivalent of taking 3,200 cars off the road for one hour.

That could be attributed to the amount of people at the concert, if true. Getting 10,000 people out of their house would certainly lower a city's consumption, so maybe we should have free concerts all the time.

I would love to know what energy usage looks like on a regular Saturday night at 8-9pm when people are leaving their houses for a night out. I left my house at around 8pm and turned off all my lights and electronics, and so would be included in their estimates. Problem is that I would do that anyways, and it is completely independent of their 'movement'.

one that keeps on running 24/7 in my house is my comp. that thing is never turned off.

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Originally posted by RobbyG. I went to THE DOCKS and took some pics ...

VERY Nice pics, sir!

so how much electricity was used to play the free concert?

What a great marketing tool.

One of our marketing folks sent me a request at the end of the day to crunch the interval data for this thing and see how much energy was saved. Not all AMRs manage to report every day so the consumption might be understated (in other words, the actual savings might be lower), but a quick glance at 30 or so apartment buildings seems to indicate about a 10% savings (1500 kWh from 8-9 PM vs. a more typical 1700 kWh or so, for non-electrically-heated buildings).

Haven't had a chance to look at the commercial data, but I'm guessing that the savings will be even less, since most retail stores and office buildings would have been closed anyway, and other businesses like restaurants and bars are using a lot more energy for refrigeration, ovens, HVAC, computers, etc. And I'm sure they didn't/couldn't all turn their lights off.

Really nothing to write home about, but it does match the figures in the article. Then again, that's excluding HVAC, so the extrapolation to 900 MW sounds way too high. I guess it must have come from Ontario Hydro or OPG, but the article doesn't seem to cite any source, or explain how they arrived at that number. By my own estimation we'd be lucky to have saved 10 MW in the residential and commercial sectors; my guess is that Hydro is lumping electric heating in with the rest and not factoring in degree-days, which are important because this was a comparatively warm week.

Or not. Who the hell knows what they do to come up with these PR figures. All I can say for certain is that looking at a typical load profile, you wouldn't even see the difference unless you knew exactly what to look for. So in summary I say, f*ck the planet. Earth Hour may have saved a few bucks for non-submetered landlords and condo boards, but it's sure as hell not going to prevent global warming. Of course, that's like saying it won't prevent Jesus from appearing in your breakfast burrito; it's not going to happen anyway.

quote:

Originally posted by Orko ^^ wow gotta love those faulty statistics. There is absolutely no way they can prove that entire amount of 'energy saved' was directly attributed to earth hour. That could be attributed to the amount of people at the concert, if true. Getting 10,000 people out of their house would certainly lower a city's consumption, so maybe we should have free concerts all the time. I would love to know what energy usage looks like on a regular Saturday night at 8-9pm when people are leaving their houses for a night out. I left my house at around 8pm and turned off all my lights and electronics, and so would be included in their estimates. Problem is that I would do that anyways, and it is completely independent of their 'movement'.

Also how is that the equvilant of getting 3200 cars off the road when most of ontarios energy comes from nuclear?

Enviro-nuts amuse me

quote:

Originally posted by Orko Simply because I do not believe in man made global warming.

Nice to see there a few others of us on here. Thank the universe.

Re: Are your lights off?

quote:

Originally posted by phlog Are your lights off?

people only turn their lights off to do pervy things
why would you make a thread about this you exhibitionist




edit:
RE: above posts
I know someone who thinks that the earth is simply following an evolutionary climate pattern... we happen to be living in a warming up period. Interesting... I don't know if i buy it though.

Re: Re: Are your lights off?

quote:

Originally posted by Ania_xox people only turn their lights off to do pervy things why would you make a thread about this you exhibitionist

i acually prefer to have the lights on when im doin 'pervy things'

Re: Re: Are your lights off?

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Originally posted by Ania_xox I know someone who thinks that the earth is simply following an evolutionary climate pattern... we happen to be living in a warming up period. Interesting... I don't know if i buy it though.

Virtually all data collected from the natural sciences over the past 20 years converges on an approximate 1500-year warming and cooling cycle. There's very little disagreement in the scientific community about this; however, enviro-nuts tend to claim that the cycle doesn't account for how much warming is happening right now.

To date, I haven't seen any convincing evidence either substantiating or disproving that counter-claim; it looks like we're maybe kinda sorta a little warmer than one might expect from the cycle, but it isn't the sort of significant statistical anomaly that ought to be causing worldwide panic, nor will turning off your lights for an hour have any profound effect on it (not even if the whole world does it). Burden of proof and all that; I care about the precautionary principle for the environment about as much as I care about it for religion.

But, like I said, electricity isn't free. It's good to try to conserve where possible, since it's getting harder and harder for the province to keep up with increasing demand. Thornhill had a long-ass blackout in the morning just a couple of weeks ago. If you really want to save electricity (and probably make a noticeable dent in your utility bill), stop thinking about the stupid lights and get yourself a programmable thermostat.

Re: Re: Re: Are your lights off?

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Originally posted by DigiNut Virtually all data collected from the natural sciences over the past 20 years converges on an approximate 1500-year warming and cooling cycle. There's very little disagreement in the scientific community about this; however, enviro-nuts tend to claim that the cycle doesn't account for how much warming is happening right now. To date, I haven't seen any convincing evidence either substantiating or disproving that counter-claim; it looks like we're maybe kinda sorta a little warmer than one might expect from the cycle, but it isn't the sort of significant statistical anomaly that ought to be causing worldwide panic, nor will turning off your lights for an hour have any profound effect on it (not even if the whole world does it). Burden of proof and all that; I care about the precautionary principle for the environment about as much as I care about it for religion. But, like I said, electricity isn't free. It's good to try to conserve where possible, since it's getting harder and harder for the province to keep up with increasing demand. Thornhill had a long-ass blackout in the morning just a couple of weeks ago. If you really want to save electricity (and probably make a noticeable dent in your utility bill), stop thinking about the stupid lights and get yourself a programmable thermostat.

sometimes your posts are so pleasurable to read

Re: Re: Re: Re: Are your lights off?

quote:

Originally posted by FunkyCrew sometimes your posts are so pleasurable to read

pretty much most the time. respect to logic, sensibility, and intelligence.

Its like goddamn minus 1 outside now, go to hell Al Gore

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