Earth Hour

littleowl

I think you miss the point. Turning the lights off for one hour does make a huge saving of energy.

geordie_joe

Just been on the earth hour web site, and so far 291,000 people and 20,000 businesses have signed up. Not quite the 100 million they were expecting.

And yes, I do know that not everyone who took part bothered to sign up at the web site.

devil30

littleowl wrote: »

I think you miss the point. Turning the lights off for one hour does make a huge saving of energy.

And the energy saving is then negated by turning the (wasteful) lighting back on permanently (minus one hour a year). :rolleyes:

geordie_joe

littleowl wrote: »

I think you miss the point. Turning the lights off for one hour does make a huge saving of energy.

I really hope Cardew sees this.

But the point wasn't to save energy, it was to raise awareness. It has failed in this because people were already aware.

It was also to show how much we could save in one hour, there for getting home how much we could save over a year. But people turned the lights off for an hour then turned them back on again. proving that in reality they have taken no notice of the message.

Apart from that, there are 8,760 hours in a year. turning the lights off for just one hour is not saving a lot. OK, you say if millions did it it would add up to a lot, but not compared to the other 8,759 hours when the lights are on!

If all the lights in the world are on for 4 hours per day, and they were all switched off for 1 hour per year, that's only 1 hour out of 1,460 hours. We would not have saved much compared to what we are using.

littleowl

Well I believe that turning the lights off in Sydney last year saved the energy equivalent of running something like 47,000 cars for a year. Not a mean feat I would have thought.

devil30

littleowl wrote: »

Well I believe that turning the lights off in Sydney last year saved the energy equivalent of running something like 47,000 cars for a year. Not a mean feat I would have thought.

Not really a mean feat in the grand scheme of things. How many thousands more cars were run in the city (and the world) every day the rest of the year?

All I'm saying is that I think the green cause has been hijacked by a number of people for their own ends, and that if you want to do something positive, do it in a practical everyday way. I'm starting to feel that its getting rammed down my throat a bit!

geordie_joe

littleowl wrote: »

Well I believe that turning the lights off in Sydney last year saved the energy equivalent of running something like 47,000 cars for a year. Not a mean feat I would have thought.

For that you have to believe that they are telling the truth when they say 2 million people turned off their lights last year.

Two million divided by 47,000 equals 42.5. You would also have to believe that turning 42.5 lights off for one hour will save the same energy as a car uses in one year.

On average a light is on 4 hours per day, does using a light bulb for ten days really use the same energy as a car does in one year?

You also have to believe that half the 4 million people in Sydney took part. Considering how many people signed up to the world wide campaign this year, you'd have to be pretty gullible to believe last years figures.

EDIT: The earth watch web site stated that the energy saved last year was the equivalently of taking 48,000 cars off the road for an hour.

MissMuppet

Surely if this helped raise awareness (I didn't know about it last year), and to save a little bit of energy, that's good enough. I tend to turn things off if I'm not using them anyway, I've been doing since I got my own place, but some people might not have bothered until they heard about this.

And it was a bit of fun sitting in the dark for an hour...

Primrose

I was like to have participated but learned about it too late to get myself organised although I noticed Google had "blacked out" their site, which I thought was excellent publicity, but a little too late off the mark. I've suggested to them that next year they do a "countdown" on their site several days beforehand to increase awareness. I'm all for supporting these initiatives. I don't know whether next year the event will occur around the same date? Perhaps we can all make a future diary note to keep checking and then we can all try and publicise it a bit better?

geordie_joe

Primrose wrote: »

I was like to have participated but learned about it too late to get myself organised

How long does it take you to organise turning a light out?