Friday
Mar222013
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill The futile gesture of Earth Hour
Mar 22, 2013 Greens Like the Saturnalia, Earth Hour comes round once a year, bringing with it back-to-front thinking, upside-down reasoning and many ripe opportunities for ridicule.
Bjorn Lomborg is more seriously minded of course, and his take on the annual switch-off is here. There is a related video.
Reader Comments (65)
Bjorn Lomborg think he will duck out of way of the custard pie time.
Why is still pandering to those Arrogant Sanctimonious Eco Idiots .
Earth Hour - The Festival of Obscurantism.
Earth Hour - time to throw more logs on the fire
If you are determined to take part you will need some ethical candles guaranteed free from paraffin wax (a fossil fuel) and animal (or insect) products.
http://www.mnn.com/family/family-activities/stories/diy-soy-candles
Test
There's no point in taking part - North Korea always wins.
Did it work?
Yes!
One of my Earth hour activities is to re-read Ross McKitrick's thoughts on the subject.
I really like real data: this web page gives an excellent insight into the electrical power situation in the UK. The effects of Earth Hour in the UK might be visible here. The imminent closure of some coal fired stations could also make some interesting watching.
Apparently just heard on the Radio .Last nights cold snap and snow flurry UK got down to just 10 % of its Gas Reserve .Earth Hour may be coming early
For Earth hour I'll be making a point of switching on all the lights in my house :-)
I usually keep those not needed off- to keep my energy bills as low as possible :-(
For some reason, the link didn't appear in my post above, probably because as a new user I don't know how to embed an active link.
This is it typed in so it might not be active:
www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/index.php
Nothing wrong in turning out the lights for an hour - it gives people time to put into practice plans for when real blackouts occur here in the UK. I'd say next winter, if it's another cold one, will see the first blackouts.
'1.3 billion people on our planet live without electricity...'
Come next winter you can add a few million in the UK to that...!
I don't know how much electricity is generated by Windscale, but the Beeb are reporting that it is being shut down owing to prevailing and expected climate erm. weather conditions.
Can anyone explain why though? Are they expecting a quake and tsunami combo to hit?
Earth hour approaches!
SidF
The link works ok.
I usually copy and paste addresses to ensure accuracy.
The headline on the front page of the Times today is Britain on the brink of running out of gas. The very first sentence sets the tone for the whole article. Britain has only two days's worth of gas left in reserve as the country braces itself for another spell of wintry weather that will force up energy bills.
Strangely that story does not appear on the home page of the Times' website but there is a link to another article about the potential crisis.
Pipeline failure compounds gas supply crisis
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/business/industries/naturalresources/article3720521.ece
Perhaps instead of an "Earth Hour" we in Britain might soon enjoy an "Earth Day" or, heaven forbid, an "Earth Week."
Isn't it marvellous what our far sighted politicians can do for the environment? The way they lead the world makes you proud to be British!
Some folks at the ICSC are suggesting an Energy Hour to be held one hour before Earth Hour. During Energy Hour, they suggest minimising energy consuumption:
Source: http://climatescienceinternational.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=778
Then of course you could, having displayed your concerns in this fashion, turn everything you can find on for the following hour to help mark just how wonderful it is to have ready access to so much reasonably affordable power, and mark, if you still need more display, to all present how important this has been for world development in recent centuries.
In Bali they have a festival called Nyepi where no lights or fire can be used in the hours of darkness and all day you must be at home, making no noise, using no machinery. This behaviour is enforced by the village security men who patrol, rather like the wardens in WWII and tell off offenders. There are no cars or other traffic permitted on the roads, except for emergencies, and the airport is shut for 24 hours. This day is held annually is for religious reasons to prevent demons and evil spirits from harming the island.
I have considerably more respect for the Balinese tradition than I have for these Earth Day adherents to the new eco-religion.
How do you like the earth hour Now?
Something tells me that Those poor Eastern US states hit by Sandy have experienced a true Earth day .A week long plus living in the dark,cold,no gas ,water, electricity ,transportation, no food ,a Week Plus of No Carbon (CO2) emission. Is this not what those Ecodumologists are asking from our society? ... well there you go Zero Human Carbon Emission. I bet none of them will turn one light off.
I will celebrate Earth Hour in the Holyhead fashion. I have invited some friends and neighbours round for a barbecue. There will be tasty food and drink whatever the weather. At the appointed hour we will throw all the lights on. My friend Gwilym will be poised at an electronic keyboard running through a digital reverb unit (on the 'Cathedral' setting) and hooked up to a 100watt Marshall valve amp (set to 11).
We will then launch into a rousing rendition of 'Lower Lights'.
Thus.
Brightly beams our father's mercy
From his lighthouse evermore
But to us he gives the keeping
Of the lights along the shore
So trim your lamp my brother
Some poor sailor tempest-tossed
Trying now to make the harbour
In the darkness may be lost
Let the lower lights be burning !
Send a gleam across the wave !
Some poor fainting struggling seaman
You may rescue you may save.
And let's remember what Steve McIntyre wrote a few years back:
FarleyR, there's been no electricity generation at Sellafield for a decade, not since Calder Hall was switched off March 2003.
Regarding this Earth Hour thing, I think Lomborg and others are intentionally missing the point. Of course it's not actually going to make any meaning quantifiable difference to the energy system. It's a campaign to engage folks with the issue, to generate discussion etc. That is all.
I have nearly asked about a test page in the past, Bish.
I may have posted it before, but another entertaining futile gesture from beyond the fringe of reason:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5YW4qKOAVM
HaroldW: Thanks for the reminder of Ross's brilliant piece in 2009. I've done a round-robin to all my email contacts entitled "I abhor Earth Hour", quoting the first paragraph and linking to the rest. Then Josh gave it a push on Facebook and Twitter. From small waves can come bigger ones - but only from the energies of the Ultimate Resource, people.
Rick Bradford: That's a quote from Ross, not Steve. Easily done :)
If you turn the lights out, even for one hour, you get more people.
Re-reading the McKitrick essay is part of my annual Earth Hour ritual as well. It is an outstanding piece of writing - and believe me, economists who can write good prose are scarcer than examples of Michael Mann's humility.
A group of us get together every year and have a noisy and floodlit party, and people who own high-powered cars and motorbikes do a bit of celebratory revving.
We burn lots of candles as well as having all the lights on, to symbolise our support of the concept.
"I have nearly asked about a test page in the past, Bish."
That's funny, His Grace nearly created one :)
"One of my Earth hour activities is to re-read Ross McKitrick's thoughts on the subject.
Mar 22, 2013 at 11:58 AM | Registered CommenterHaroldW"
In the same vein: http://cei.org/hah
I think the differences between "Human Achievement Hour" and "Earth Hour" highlight a deep ideological divide. The problem I see is that many who celebrate the latter are unaware of this and are actually closer aligned to the former.
"If you turn the lights out, even for one hour, you get more people.
Mar 22, 2013 at 4:31 PM | Martin A"
But for 57 minutes you can consider the implications of that.
cheers David
Not often do I agree with Dr Lomborg but Earth Hour is a bit of an embarrassment.
Peter Crawford at 2:30 PM:
I will celebrate Earth Hour in the Holyhead fashion. I have invited some friends and neighbours round for a barbecue. There will be tasty food and drink whatever the weather. At the appointed hour we will throw all the lights on. My friend Gwilym will be poised at an electronic keyboard running through a digital reverb unit (on the 'Cathedral' setting) and hooked up to a 100watt Marshall valve amp (set to 11).
We will then launch into a rousing rendition of 'Lower Lights'.
Oh Boy!!! Can I join you next year?? You are in danger of becoming another Glastonbury. BRING IT ON!
Do you get Carbon Credits?
Hengist: Much appreciated comment. We will never agree on everything but that's grand.
When is it?
That's how much I know about it, even though my employer pays lip service to this ordure.
Why is this silly scam still going on?
If I dial back the clock to time before September 2010, Christchurch NZ made a big deal about Earth Hour. Apparently it was the first city in the world to "celebrate" this event.
A couple of years down the track, some fairly major earthquakes with some real power blackouts, suffering and death, this piece of gesture politics has become somewhat conspicuous by its absence.
The BBC is celebrating Earth Hour. There are Just So audiobooks you can download and listen to. Alternately they tell you to enjoy Attenborough's Ark Unfortunately, they don't tell you how to do either activity without power.
@Philip Bratby
Do you have a link? I'd like to listen to the Just So Stories whilst ignoring Earth Hour.
Thanks
Sandy
@ Philip Bratby
Trevor Baylis won fame by inventing the wind up radio. Perhaps he could turn his mind to inventing a computer powered by a clockwork spring so that you could use that to listen to those audiobooks, provided that you downloaded them before Earth Hour began!
SandyS: You have to go to http://earthhour.wwf.org.uk/whats-happening/celebrity-support#disqus_thread.
You can then sign-up and download the WWF Ambassadors narrating the Just So stories. It's not something I shall be doing.
As a better alternative, I shall record Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy which is on at 5.30pm and watch it again later. There is more reality in that book/film than in "climate science" and the sheer stupidity of Earth Hour.
Douglas Adams was incredibly precient. The Hitchhikers guide resembles modern hand held devices. He also forsaw that technology becoming really cheap would lead to your appliances being loaded with pointless and irritating gimicks. The hi-tec handbrakes that are now appearing on modern cars, for example.
Latest comments from Richard Betts.
He stands by his comments made at Oxford. (http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/people/richard-betts)
So now we know. Reasonable Richard is just another Alarmist Modeller.
Don Keiller asked
"Do you stand by your comments of 4C-15C temperature increases by 2090?"
Richard Betts replied
"Anyway - yes, I stand by my comments of 4C or more global warming being possible by the end of this century, with local warming higher in some places, up to 15C in the Arctic an extreme but plausible case."
Although Lomberg points to the close inverse relationship between access to electricity and poverty, he does not follow through. There is a trade-off between the need to combat the environmental costs of "dirty" power and the harm that those policies can cause. Lomberg (in my view) vastly overstates the need for low-cost "green" power sources and engages in wishful thinking about the future possibility of such power sources. In the meantime, policies to combat climate change are both largely ineffective AND push more people towards the 1.3 billion in absolute electrical power poverty.
In economic terms (as expressed by Stern) there is a cost-cost analysis. Stern says we should accept the some low policy costs to avoid the much greater future costs of warming. Policies that prevent people from moving out of absolute electrical power poverty are an unrecognized policy cost. To support "Earth Hour" requires both a lack of recognition of all policy costs AND an overstatement of the environmental costs of electrical power generation.
See, he said 'plausible'. Now all you have to do is lie in wait and bite any journalists' head off who transcribes it as 'likely'.
Life's good when you have room to play from 1C to 10C.
Just wanted to mention that the WWF's Earth hour website has articles that are open for disqus comments if anyone fancies helping to 'raise awareness' of the case against this madness.
Re: Mar 23, 2013 at 10:21 AM | Don Keiller
"Don Keiller asked
"Do you stand by your comments of 4C-15C temperature increases by 2090?"
Richard Betts replied
"Anyway - yes, I stand by my comments of 4C or more global warming being possible by the end of this century, with local warming higher in some places, up to 15C in the Arctic an extreme but plausible case." "
Thanks for this, Don, else I might have missed it!
Interesting he's sticking to the original message despite the revision in the Met Office forecast earlier this year -
A revised Met Office 'decadal' forecast.
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2013/01/05/major-change-in-uk-met-office-global-warming-forecast/
Unfortunately the Met Office seemed to have omitted the final five years from its 'decadal' forecast.
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2013/01/06/ukmo-lowers-5-year-global-temperature-forecast-and-omits-the-second-5-years-of-the-decadal-forecast/
And just for perspective it's interesting to compare it with the graph they produced in their booklet
"Warming, Climate Change - the Facts"
in September 2009 just before the Copenhagen Conference.
See 6th slide down or Page 04
http://people.virginia.edu/~rtg2t/future/gcc/UK.Met.quick_guide.pdf
(Odd isn't it that their 2009 graph doesn't show any of the flatlining admitted in their 2012 forecast!!!)
PS I'd recommend all who haven't already a copy of this to get one now whilst they still have the opportunity - RB was quick to sever the link when I last highlighted the one still available on the Met Office web site.