Earth Hour - turn your lights off!

Haven

Administrator
Staff member
http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en_uk/earthhour/
Google users in the United Kingdom will notice today that we "turned the lights out" on the Google.co.uk homepage as a gesture to raise awareness of a worldwide energy conservation effort called Earth Hour. As to why we don't do this permanently - it saves no energy; modern displays use the same amount of power regardless of what they display. However, you can do something to reduce the energy consumption of your home PC by joining the Climate Savers Computing Initiative.
On Saturday, March 29, 2008, Earth Hour invites people around the world to turn off their lights for one hour – from 8:00pm to 9:00pm in their local time zone. On this day, cities around the world, including Copenhagen, Chicago, Melbourne, Dubai, and Tel Aviv, will hold events to acknowledge their commitment to energy conservation.
 

KillCrazy

Active Member
Very interesting, only just heard about it thanks to your link. Our household will be taking part :)
 

Wol

In Cryo Sleep
So much for that then.

Ironically, the page on google I feel people spend most time on, is the results page, and not the initial search page. I only use the firefox search box, which took me straight to the results page, which, suprise suprise, still had a white background. I only knew about this 'earth hour' thing because someone else told me about it.

Theres been many similar things like this attempted before, and amusingly, the national grid said there was very little difference to the electricity usage overall.

A few lights in a household which would be turned off is what.... 120Wh? (two 60w lights?). I'd like to see the amount of electricity wasted by all the computers at Uni which are left on 24/7. I rarely use my heating in my flat, I have a laptop on as a server, and leave my desktop on standby when im not using it. I use as few lights as possible. My normal lighting is one set of fairy lights, and one touch sensitive light on the dimmest setting.

I'd like to work out how much electricity a theatre uses in a day. A rather large amount id say.

my 2p :)
 

Sephiroth

In Cryo Sleep
well my parents have been ranting about our carbon footprint for awhile now, but they still complain when i sit in the dark :) of course this means if no ones in a room the light is off. so my parents took part in earth hour even if they didn't know about it :)
 

Wol

In Cryo Sleep
I love the way that out of all the hours were going through, people will happily turn them off for an hour, but go back to their usual selves afterwards, and leave lights on.

energy saving shouldnt be a special event, it should be part of common sense. in the end, its your electricity bills!
 

KillCrazy

Active Member
That implies that whenever someone has a light on then it's for no good reason. We always only turn lights on when it is needed at night time, and I make it a habit that when I leave a room unoccupied to switch off everything so it is not being wasted.

Having such an event that was on yesterday brings more awareness to those who wouldn't normally think about saving electricity. It's the least you can do in the list of things to try and make people more aware of saving energy. You can't ask people to sit in the dark every night, especially in places where there are more hours of darkness than daylight, but you can remind people to try and stop wasting energy.
 

Nanor

Well-Known Member
Conversion to Judaism by everyone would ensure a lot of energy is saved on Saturdays! :p
 

Macca

Member
I love the way that out of all the hours were going through, people will happily turn them off for an hour, but go back to their usual selves afterwards, and leave lights on.

energy saving shouldnt be a special event, it should be part of common sense. in the end, its your electricity bills!

In all fairness you can use that argument about any sort of event. Live Aid - Why do some people donate to charity one day of their lives etc etc... It's not the fact that they are turning their lights off for an hour and going back to the usual routine, instead it's about raising awareness of the pollution Issue, so that perhaps a small percentage of people will think - Well this is easilly done I'll start doing this more often...

To expect everyone to turn everything off if it's not absolutely essential after an event like "Earth Hour" is just silly :).
 
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