USD College Republicans

Earth Hour a miserable failure

Like other liberal feel good events, Earth Hour failed miserably.
-----
Credit the public with sense. Earth Hour, hysterically promoted by The Age, the Sydney Morning Herald, the ABC, SBS, Sky News and the federal and state governments, resulted in no significant fall in power usage.

Check the graphs from our National Electricity Market Management Company, tracking power use between 8pm and 9pm (a period in which demand always plummets)
-----

Here are the hilarious updates:

-----
As with the graphs, so with the crowds:

More than 1000 people braved the chill and the rain to see Premier John Brumby and Lord Mayor John So lead the countdown to 8pm… At the top of the Rialto, a small crowd had a sense of anticlimax when there was no widespread blackout at 8pm. In fact, across the CBD rows of illuminated office windows, with little sign of beavering workers behind them, showed not everyone had read the memo.

The organisers will say never mind, this was about raising awareness (although not of raising awareness of the facts). But here’s the awareness it should raise: how difficult it is to get even a tiny cut in just electricity use for one lousy hour, in a country responsible for just 1.5 per cent of the world’s emissions.

And then think what the Rudd Government is promising: a 60 per cent cut in all emissions, all year. And it’s to be matched by every country around the world.

Meanwhile, the world has not warmed since 1998. Indeed, the oceans and atmosphere have cooled over the past couple.

UPDATE

Meanwhile the Sydney Morning Herald keeps telling fibs about last year’s Earth Hour while claiming success with this one:

The city’s energy consumption dipped by more than 10 per cent - a 25-tonne reduction in carbon dioxide emissions...

Again, it’s raising awareness of anything but the truth. In fact:

(T)he claimed dip in power was just for the CBD, not all Sydney. (Moreover), the 10 per cent cut claimed for the CBD is itself a gross exaggeration. A cut so tiny is trivial - equal to taking six cars off the road for a year. But David Solomon, a finance PhD student at the Chicago University’s graduate school of business, crunched Sydney’s power figures to exclude seasonal and daily fluctuations, and concluded… “the drop in electricity use during Earth Hour is statistically indistinguishable from zero.”

UPDATE 2

Reader Sally points out that the hundreds of Brisbane residents who drove to Kangaroo Point, choking the roads, to see the lights go down sure made up for any cut in emissions:

UPDATE 3

Reader B., an electrical engineer, checks the raw figures. His initial findings, pending more detailed research:

I have just looked at Qld, NSW, and Vic. Qld dropped the most power during Earth Hour, and it appears to be greater than normal. On average the drop is around 250 MW, in this case it is 400 MW… While Qld appears to have done well, NSW’s power usage actually went up for the first half-hour (7,777 MW to 7,862 MW), before dropping 112 MW… Vic remained more or less constant, with a drop of only 90 MW during the hour.

UPDATE 4

Some warming worshippers just didn’t get that this was about cutting warming gases, not adding to them with a bonfire:

At Giuseppe Arnaldo & Sons, celebrity chef Maurice Terzini ensured diners were not left in the dark in spectacular fashion by lighting 1000 candles.

UPDATE 5

Reader Jessica spots more warming lunacy:

We watched at least 7 helicopters flying around the inner Brisbane skies. I sent a leftie friend of mine an sms at about 8:15pm asking her if she could hear them too - she was very perplexed as to why they were there until I explained it was the Earth Hour people filming the lights so that they could go home and watch their “success” on their plasma televisions.

UPDATE 6

Reader Andrew lives in Carlton, a Melbourne suburb with a strong Green vote. Note that you’d actually know it from Earth Hour.

UPDATE 7

Symbolic, all right - of the way even fraud is excused in this “good” cause:
Sixteen office blocks owned or leased by the State Government took part. In a few cases, where staff were on 24-hour rosters, lights on some floors had to be kept on, but staff were instructed to pull blinds in order not to detract from the effect of the blackout.

(Thanks to reader oblong.)

UPDATE 8

National Electricity Market Management Company says Earth Hour caused power use to fall - but only until everyone reached for the switches again:

“We’re still finalising the data, but we do believe that there was at least 1,000 megawatts reduction across the national grid, which is a significant reduction across the states, south-eastern and eastern states of Australia,” (spokesman Paul Bird) said… Mr Bird says demand dropped during the hour, but then rose again.
-----
This is typical of the feel good events that liberals/progressives hold. As with Al Gore's failed Live Earth event in summer 2007 (I witnessed the DC event- what a crock ), this event failed to have any appreciable effect on emissions or energy usage. Maybe they should actually DO something.

The organizers of this event said it was held in order to "raise awareness." What? Who ISN'T aware of global warming? The mainstream media shove it down our gullets DAILY. If it's as urgent of a problem as they say, it's only logical that they'd want to DO something about it, rather than holding these stupid, insignificant events.

-Matt Hittle

Posted at 11:17AM Mar 31, 2008 by College Republicans in Climate Change/Global Warming  |  Comments[3]