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ALL LIGHTS ON
Earth Hour looms. Citizens, prepare your illumination arsenal.
UPDATE. A roundup of the unenlightened.
And in 9 months a baby boom, the downside is Al becomes Australias most popular boys name….
Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2007 03 31 at 12:05 AM • permalinkThis fatuous exercise will have as much effect on the climate as 200,000 walking across the Harbour Bridge in May 2000 did for aboriginal welfare. Cheap, feel-good symbolism then and now.
Real world problems with effective solutions to hand such as providing clean water to millions without it; combatting malaria which is still killing two million people, mostly children, a year; and helping third world countries to build viable economies; are all forgotten while a substantial proportion of our population obsesses about the climate.
It’s grotesque.
We’re celebraitng by buying an SUV.
—Nora
Posted by The Thin Man Returns on 2007 03 31 at 12:49 AM • permalinkHow dare fairfax throw the warmening balance out.
Weather forecast suggests tonight at 7:30pm is going to be a bit cool - so on with the heater and as many incandescent bulbs I can find. Hopefully this will make it too hot so I can turn on my 2 airconditioning units!
I had no intention of using my new 42” plasma TV tonight but will now turn it on anyway - just so that I can make a difference.
Posted by Vincent Gerome on 2007 03 31 at 12:50 AM • permalink‘Battery operated Lanterns’. Give me break. These people actually do believe in their moral superiority. Well, at no time will I be using my ‘rechargeable battery operated lantern’ tonight. I shall be using my ‘Gaia gutting, coal fired electrically energised globes’, in which to light my way around my domicile. Also I will be vulcanising the tyres of my internal combustion sports transport so as to mobilise ourselves aimlessly around the hills of central Victoria tomorrow.
Shame it Isn’t 2 hours later when Australians will be cranking up their energy gobbling plasma TVs for the cricket.
And #6 It is grotesque. I would dearly love to ship these c@@ts off to some poverty and malarial ridden 3rd world country then come back a few years later and ask what they think of development now.
2005 was Australia’s hottest year on record… So 2006 was cooler. Could someone be behind the power curve trend-wise? Furthermore one might be inclined to posit the decline of other gases is causing gerbil worming.
Set free the CFCs!Fairfax are issuing all staff in their buildings “battery-operated lanterns” to use afetr the witching hour of 7.30 tonight.
They also helpfully suggest that staff “go to the toilet before 7.30” so that they won’t be groping in the dark (is that you Alan Ramsay, yoo-hoo, Mike Carlton, is that you over there, Adele, what are you doing in the men’s loo…”.
They also suggest that staff who are scared of the dark speak to their supervisor before 7.30 so “that arrangements can be made”.
This is a serious newspaper in a first-world country folks. Beyond parody? Beyond a joke more like it!
#19, no worries. I think I also have a 240 outlet. Iirc, that’s where I have my washing mashine plugged in.
I dont know how we could fix the issue of everything spinning backwards and being upside down where you’re at. Would that harm electical components? Or would it just make digital screens read backwards?
Just checking the equipment now. I’ve got 16 lights and 1 spotty, 1 fridge, 1 freeer, 1 drier, 1 washing maching, 3 X PCs, 1 fish tank (with heating, pump and light!), 1 foxtel unit, a big TV, 1 DVD player, 1 CD player, 1 outdoor pump, a few radios, a toaster and a sandwich maker. OK, I’m firing up nat 7:15.
You don’t even have to worry about me, Tim: Hawthorn v Brisbane on the box, starting at 7.00pm. The whole house will be lit up to mark the start of the 2007 season and all three TVs will be on, as we settle down for the game in our official members’ scarves, with fish-and-chips and a bottle of white for the grown-ups.
GO HAWKS!
Highway flares! Light, waste heat and HUGE carbon emissions!
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2007 03 31 at 04:24 AM • permalinkSeems like quite a party! All I can contribute is a little music.
Posted by dean martin on 2007 03 31 at 05:11 AM • permalink13 mins to go. All 42 lights checked and on
Posted by pommygranate on 2007 03 31 at 05:16 AM • permalinkStarted turning on lights, TV, computers etc when I realised I’d left my clothes for tonight in the wash. Since I don’t have a dryer, they’re now in front of the radiator running at full power. Two birds with one stone.
Posted by SouthernCrusader on 2007 03 31 at 05:18 AM • permalink#32 I’m sure Muslim car bombers have taken 75,000 cars off the road in the last year. No wonder greenies love them so much.
Posted by dean martin on 2007 03 31 at 05:19 AM • permalink6 minutes to go. Damn - too cold for the air conditioner but not cold enough for the heater. Stoopid mild Sydney autumn weather.
Posted by David Morgan on 2007 03 31 at 05:23 AM • permalinkTurned on the printer and it started just printing out gibberish and chewing up dead trees for some reason. Right now at least, I can only see it as a good thing!
Posted by SouthernCrusader on 2007 03 31 at 05:31 AM • permalink#45 Dino - just got something out of the fridge and left the door open for a long time - every little bit helps.
Posted by David Morgan on 2007 03 31 at 05:36 AM • permalinkThe play in our small town was cancelled at the last minute so just got home early.
Turned the TV, radio and lots more lights on only to overload the system. Had to go downstairs and reset the trip switch.
All lights and appliances now running at full volume.
Oh, and I noticed on the way back that the hippies who rent the other residence on this property have all lights blazing. Maybe they aint so bad after all.Channel 7 Sydney just reported that the energy saved will be the equivalent of taking 75,000 motor vehicles off the road for a year.
Didn’t anyone at Channel 7 study maths at school?Obviously not. Let’s make some simple assumptions:
* An average car is driven 1 hour a day, 5 days a week, year round.
* On an average journey, the engine is putting out an average of 10 horse power (7.5kW). An engine puts out power even at idle, and a lot more than 10HP during acceleration, and probably around 10 during moderate speed cruising. So I think this is probably a fair assumption.
* A car’s drivetrain is about 33% efficient (that’s probably a bit generous).So, 75000*5*52*7.5 = 146 250 000 kWh
Halve that figure to take into account efficiency of a power plant and transmission lines, and we’re looking at 73 gigawatts of power turned off for an hour. So if every household turns off, say, four 100W bulbs, you’d only need 182 million households to provide an equivalent saving!
Now.. the only remaining question is.. are there 182 million households involved in this travesty?
Morons.
Oh, and I didn’t even take into account the fact that if enough people switched off their lights, it would eat into the baseload capacity, which would mean the large plants would have to be throttled down or turned off for an hour, which is an extremely inefficient process. Quite a bit of coal will still be burnt, despite the reduced draw, simply because you can’t flick a coal power station to “off” and then switch it back on an hour later instantly.
It’s a stunt, pure and simple.
Nicholas, maybe they should have just constructed a giant papier-mâché light bulb and invited everyone down to symbolically “turn out the lights” by destroying it - burning it in effigy, as it were.
They do have experience with giant papier-mâché constructions, don’t they? (I think some university grads probably have a degree in it.)
Once again, I’m appalled at the prevalence of non-seriousness amongst the Blair readers. It’s just this sort of attitude that has me reading this blog much, much more less and increasingly infrequently. Global Warming. It’s happening. We’ve got to do something.
As a show of solidarity to my fellow warming buddies, I’ve chosen to satisfy my lighting needs entirely with alternative light sources.
* The entire front room and 1/2 the kitchen has been lit with the headlights of my truck, which, to keep the battery up, was running in idle and with the gear in neutral for the duration the dark part of the day.
* When I put my light switches in the position suggested by the .au web sites, the lights came on, so apparently light circles in the opposite direction up here as opposed to down there. So all the light switches stayed down, but only after I removed all the bulbs so as to prevent any spontaneous illumination events.
* Candles were used to light the parts of the house to which the truck headlights would not reach.
* Battery powered flashlights were used when moving about the place.
* Kerosene lanterns were used in the back yard and for brief trips inside the house to find needed items such as the beer bottle opener.
* The entire dinner meal was cooked on the BBQ.
So there. And it feels good to have participated in this glorious endimming to save the planet.
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I’m in Canberra today, they go to sleep at 7pm….