There has been some criticism of the administrators of this blog for not posting something on Earth Hour. Apparently the contribution from Art Raiche wasn’t enough.
Anyway, by popular demand, here is a piece by Rex Murphy in Canada entitled ‘The darkness that is Earth Hour’:
“Tonight, in cities across the country and, indeed, such is the contagion of ostentatious and cost-free do-goodism, in cities around the world, there will be celebrated – if that’s the word for so twilight an exercise – something called Earth Hour.
The central action of all these Earth Hours is pulling out the plugs on every “needless” electrical appliance and turning out a whole lot of lights. Toronto puts the goal most succinctly: “to make the city as dark as possible for one full hour.” Does this mean, I wonder, a night session of City Council? As a shortcut to utter bleakness, the idea is unassailable.
Between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m., there’s going to be a jamboree at Nathan Phillips Square that the very agreeable Nelly Furtado will be highlighting, or perhaps lowlighting in this case. Ms. Furtado, I gather, is an Earth Hour ambassador, and it is a tribute to the seriousness with which she takes that appointment that this global-touring artist will give a “primarily unplugged” performance.
I wonder what “primarily” means here. Will there be – gasp! – electrical cables, microphones and giant display screens at Earth Hour’s ground zero? Is this the electrical bulldozer in Earth Hour’s Amish barn?
I see from the news reports that Toronto’s yoga crowd is really into going dark. Any number of them are going to be holding classes by candlelight, which, it is certain, will mightily stay the rising of the waters and the melting of the polar caps that are the imminent dread of all thinking people everywhere. I don’t know if the fatal combination of light bulbs and yoga made it into the great list of free association cautions of An Inconvenient Truth, but they should have if they didn’t.
Read more here: http://ago.mobile.globeandmail.com/generated/archive/RTGAM/html/20080328/wcorex29.html
There was a letter in the local Blue Mountains Gazette on March 19 from a Paris Portingale, suggesting, “In preparation I have bought thiry or so torches, the big ones, which I will be tying to the light fittings.”
And a friend of mine said he drove about Brisbane, presumably with his headlights on, taking photographs of the event.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
I don’t really think earth hour was worth bl..ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
Let’s see if within 9 months the population in the Western world shows a sudden baby boom!
I believe Earth Hour didn’t attract too much attention in Europe. I didn’t see anything on TV nor in the newspapers.
Another example of the richest and most (supposedly) educated segment of the world’s population being dependent on stunts and more BS symbolism for their “awareness”.
Spare me!
Rex is a good tease.
Another April Fool’s joke?
I am going to be so glad when my half-wit generation has passed on to worm farming (apologies to e.e.).
Uh, well the thought consoles me anyway.
It was a big event in Canberra, a 10% cut in electricity usage they say.
I turned off my single 10 watt CFL for an hour and felt very self righteous. The TV gave off enought light to see by anyway.
Hansen’s at tipping point!
In Canberra, if there was a 10% reduction in electricity use it was matched by 10% increase in smugness and hypocrisy as the candles smoked away.
Earth Hour: its kind of dumb, but it is also excellent, excellent marketing.
In just one year it has moved from a sydney newspaper/green group gimmick to a multi-national occasion.
In addition to people who actually turned off their lights (Whoops i forgot this year), the event has given rise to thousands and thousands of newspaper articles, TV news spots, radio spots, talkback, and endless blog entries and comments.
As a marketing exercise it is pure gold – even skeptics are promoting it by being unable to ignore it and stay quiet.
Something like Earth Hour reaches a huge audience – quite an achievement when the average media consumer is pressed for time and has a short attention span.
Skeptics could learn a lot from the methods of their opponents.
I spent my early 20s hanging around university-level greenies (like me) and their (my) paranoia, impotent ire, cynicism and shouting at how allegedly dumb everyone else is reminds me very much of the kind of attitude that pervades most skeptic blogs that I read now, including this one.
What skeptic efforts have their been to try and appeal to a mass audience? Saying that the media is left-dominated and against you is just impotent hand wringing of the kind that university level greenies do. What are you going to do?
What’s your gimmick? What is going to work?
PS. Before you get the urge to respond to my comment with something like “Greenies are about spin, skeptics are about science”, know in advance that I’ll just frame that to “greenies are about real impact, skeptics are about conspicuous but ultimately ineffectual expression of indignation”.
Steve, we don’t need a gimmick. We have reality on our side and it is already catching up to the Alarmist greenies. All they can do now is flail away with silly campaigns like Earth Hour. Checked the temperature lately – like for the last 10 years?
Steve is right. I have been keen as mustard to dump a load of vegetation regrowth on the harbour bridge, gateway bridge, [add traffic choke point of choice], during peak hour for yonks. A truck load of bull$hit might also be an optimum mix of medium and message. It is just adding time and place utility to a basic raw material. Convert worthless raw material into $1 million worth of air time. Talk about value adding.
Ian,
I think in the middle of our houses of parliament might be most appropriate!
Mark, it pains me to see people deluding themselves, regardless of their politics. It really does.
Do you seriously believe the tide is turning?
Every major government in the world is working to address climate change – including the Bush Govt, even if they haven’t signed kyoto. And when the bush govt goes, the momentum will go up another notch for more action on climate change.
All three US presidential hopefuls have given strong messages about tackling climate change.
China and India have much bigger renewable energy programs than Australia. Russia has ratified kyoto. As has Australia, and that’s recent news!
Every Australian govt (barring perhaps a few local govts) have climate change policies and actions.
The media is constantly filled with a stream of items about climate change.
In what sense do you think it is reality that ‘alarmist greenies’ are getting bested?
This is a massive bandwagon, it has had three decades to pick up momentum, it pushed through to a new and obvious-to-anyone significant level in 2006, and it ain’t stopping any time soon i’m afraid.
And to be honest, I’ve been stunned into silence by the whole “1998 is the warmest and temperature is plateauing therefore climate change is wrong” line currently being peddled by skeptics. I see it as a tremendous embarrassment for Jennifer that she is pushing such a ridiculous line.
You know in a strange way Steve is right. We are attacking this in the wrong direction. We are small, the climate change coalition is huge. Judo is the call of the day. Al Gore by his own admission thinks it is ethical to exagerate the danger of global warming in order to prod American political sentiment. For the greater good.
We can use that. Let the rediculously inflated doom prognosticating begin.
In the vein of the shrinking zebra stripes, what if newspapers were fed a steady stream of semi plausible animal impact climate change stories that were totally wrong? You think they would check? Or would they just print em up like gospel?
In less then a year we could have their credibility damaged beyond repair.
Let’s put some fun back into the retraction section.
What do you say?
I say that sounds like black ops and therefore pretty lame.
If climate change believers are into making money for themselves (in the guise of affecting change for the benefit of mankind) and reducng pollution what are climate change non believers for ? We know you they are against. What are they for ?
It won’t be long before oil runs out anyway, what does it matter ?
“It won’t be long before oil runs out anyway, what does it matter ?”
Yeah that’s a fair point.
We have people like Ted Turner describing the cannibal zombie future world of global warming.
Seriously, do we even need black ops with a guy like that out there?
Ted’s already a double agent.