Earth Hour

Were you one of those concern citizens who joined shutting off their electrical devices to give Mother Earth "an hour of importance"? Well, I'd say, I was one of them and I'm proud I did such thing but I'm wondering what country got the highest number of watts saved from that hour.

Did the said practice affect businesses, household chores or even an hour of your life?

I didnt even realize there was an "earth hour" nor would I have acknowledged it if I did. Its not that I dont think being wise with our resources isnt important, its just that I feel that this whole "save the planet" has blown way out of proportion and is being used to control people, not to actually save the planet.

@ the_patriot11,

I'm not sure I understand when you say "its just that I feel that this whole "save the planet" has blown way out of proportion and is being used to control people, not to actually save the planet." Would you mind helping me understand what ya think?

Here's the "Catch 22": Electricity is produced on demand and in excess so that we, people in 1st world countries, dont suffer the 2nd world issue of "brownouts" where there is too much load on the system and not enough electricity or capacity. Given that the electricity has already been produced unplugging the TV and the microwave for an hour isnt helping anyone but yourself (via a slightly lower bill). the power generation plants do not care if they have a massive drop in consumption for 1 hour they will continue to produce at the plants peak output.

Another thing, most people dont realize that you use just as much energy to re-cool your fridge/freezer after an hour of being off as you do to leave it running for the 2 hours. HVAC is the same way the amount of energy saved is almost nil compared to turning everything back on and getting it back to nominal conditions. To give you an idea I used to work at a plant that used old Gardner-Denver air compressors with old 36" diameter GE electric motors, when we had to crank one up we in maintenance had to wait until manufacturing had stopped (ie. lunch) or do it no later then 1 hour before work started in the plant (wasn't gonna happen, 2 AM is so early its almost late) because the amount of electricity required to get one of the old motors turning was enough to make every light in the factory (440, 3 phase) go dim and if work started too soon there after it would overheat the breakers and possibly the transformer (which happened exactly once). The cost to keep them running at idle was less then the cost of getting them stated up.

Well said BlackSpyder. I got the point now but are you trying to say that the "earth hour" (an hour shutting the electricity off) was useless or will be useless?

For example, in this case-like blackspyder pointed out, turning off your electricity really did nothing to help the environment. . .all they did was get you to turn off your appliances for an hour. People accuse us of "global warming" for using fossil fuels like coal, then tell you you need to use the new electric cars. What they dont tell you is A: the car only lasts 40 minutes before needing charged, and guess what, you still have to plug it in to a power source which is, you guessed it, powered by coal. In fact I would suspect it takes just as much coal to keep that car charged, especially if your using it a lot, as it would to simply use a gas powered car. But oh no, were contributing to global warming. . .

I got your point now the_patriot11. If naturally it's being useless, why number of poeple (well, including me) participated and joined such hour? Weren't they thought that it was useless and will be useless in the future? In my own, I would say it's useful because it helped me lowered down the amount of watts of consumed in a month or even in year as a whole. It helped me reduced my electricity bill (though it's not that big but at least it helped).

like black said-unless you unplugged your fridge and freezer, it will help you out, but on the whole globally, it solves nothing which was the whole point of earth hour. In all honesty, people would save more money every month doing things like turning their computers off when not in use, turning the a/c or heat down when out of the house (not off, if you turn it off it takes twice as much to re-cool or reheat the house when you return) stuff like that would drop your energy usage considerably, but on the whole, it would make no difference unless everyone did it, but then it wouldnt be an immediate response-the power plants will only produce less when the demand goes down.

First thing they have to do is by finding a alternative source other then fossil fuel. One of them i am aware of is the wind power turbine and solar power which i pretty sure they don't use coal.

the problem with wind power is its nowhere near as efficient, and wind farms take up sooo much room. Plus theyre high maintanence. Solar power, again same problem-youd have to have a massive amount of solar panels to create enough power to replace coal plants, add on to that both are expensive and high maintanence, and you just cant switch right away-coal amounts for between 60-80% of the United states power, if you were to just suddenly take away coal, the vast majority of the nation would then be out of power, completly.

And to add insult to injury, a lot of the environmentalists are throwing a fit over the wind farms because the turbines affect the local bird populations (the green earth people cant even get along with each other) The only other power source out there that could concievably be used to take over coal power in the US in the next 5 years, is Nuclear power, and that in itself poses its own set of problems.

I'm not sure if this is to be another topic but if the use of electricity harms the Mother Earth, why did the Inventor of the electricity invent such medium? Didn't he think the effect of it? If it has to kill to whole world at large, why keep using electricity? To keep country industrialized? Well, what's the use of an industrialized country if the place where it's operating on will be destroyed because of the effect?

First off electricity doesnt kill the whole earth, its just the method of creating it (fossil fuels) that supposedly does it-and I say supposedly because I dont think it has half the effect people claim, its mostly hyperbole. And finally, when electricity was made there was no way of knowing the future and where it would go. Lastly, im glad he did invent electrucity or we wouldnt be having this discussion right now, literally.

Well solar panel can be installed onto houses which i recently got them installed on my house. This i believe will cut down the power bill and this will slowly convert every houses and businesses to solar which will take time. Also there is no required maintenance. For the last few years there has been a lot more ads about going with solar in Australia.

Personally, I think that Global Warming (now called Climate Change) is nothing but a huge scam to enable governments to extract more money from the populace.

If you want to check out the other side of the story, have a look at these two websites.

http://www.globalwarminghoax.com

http://www.globalclimatescam.com/

Well solar panel can be installed onto houses which i recently got them installed on my house. This i believe will cut down the power bill and this will slowly convert every houses and businesses to solar which will take time. Also there is no required maintenance. For the last few years there has been a lot more ads about going with solar in Australia.

youd be surprised, especially where you live. In the middle of a large city, not a lot. In a desert environment with high wind and sand, the sand chips away at the panels. Hail storms can cause damage to them, and lets not forget if you get a major storm with a lot of cloud cover, especially over a few days, well its goodbye electricity. Wind power faces the same weakness-if the wind stops for a few days, no power. Im not opposed to them, just pointing out their weaknesses, that and theres no way enough solar panels and wind machines could be made in the next decade to replace fossil fuels.