Earth Hour 2009

Its that time again ladies and gentlemen when cities all over the world go dark to raise awareness about the crisis our planet is facing.So remember on 28 March 2009 (20h30 in SA) one should switch off all electrical equiptments for a full 60 minutes and enjoy the bliss.Hopefully such initiatives have an effect on people and they don't just see it as sitting in the dark for 1 hour.

[CardShark]

earth hour my ass, I shall turn on all my light out of protest to the assholes that do fuck all!

What are the government doing?
not enough!
What are people doing?
not enough!
What are car companies doing?
not enough!

The car companies wont do fuck all untill the government does something and the people wont do fuck all untill we have the ability to do so!

standby com'on, new tv's store a lot of their power in capacitors for standby, lightbulbs finally the government have stepped in and banned the oldens

Electric cars, WOW amazing... if your traveling 1mile upto the shop!

Life revolves around carbon emissions unfortunately and we cannot do enough to save our planet at this rate.
Unless the government flood the research with money and help discount certain goods then we're screwed.


Simple things can help but the large contributors such as plain travel and vehicles we cannot do much about, unless we boycot them which other countries and businesses will not do due to a lot of factors!

Quite frankly we need to put the fear of god into people untill anything happens like anything!
A lot of people wont do anything untill their life is physically involved, its a sick sick world we live in.

What are you doing?Every journey starts with a single step.It disturbs me that a 100 years from now there might be no Cape Town but I'm doing my part in ensuring that I minimise my carbon footprint.Just be the change you want to see in the world.

[CardShark]

Originally Posted by Dan1089

What are you doing?Every journey starts with a single step.It disturbs me that a 100 years from now there might be no Cape Town but I'm doing my part in ensuring that I minimise my carbon footprint.Just be the change you want to see in the world.

I'm cheap so I'm not willing to spend money on things it helps being eco, my car is very carbon friendly as it only costs me like £25 a week to keep me running around I can get that down a little more with my amazing green driving skills .

I turn off lights if i leave a room for a long period of time, I dont leave things on standby everything is unplugged when I'm not using it, and the heating is VERY low as right now I'm wearing a coat!

What else can i do?
install solar panels a wind turbing cavity walls filling?
I dont have money for them which is where the government should pull their finger out!


As opposed to trying to change people they helped make, they should turn their own stuff into more economical methods of running things, ie coal stations, either do some carbon catching like e-on.
Push more money into a fusion reactor or finally realizing that wind turbines work.

What? Is What?

Thanks for bring this to "LIGHT" Dan.

Did a little research on this and the WWF [Only registered members can see links. ] is behind it (one of my best friends works for them so very cool). You can sign up at the site as well as send your reps (at least in the usa) request that the gov follow and take note of the issues.

While in San Francisco I followed the eco movement pretty closely as that city seems to be pretty active. It always seemed to us "real" activist that these yearly events were nice and all... brought some attention to the issue but that was that... Totally agree with cards. It will take even more to make this fucked up world of consumerism/pop change the way it really needs to change. Unfortunately we are on a carbon system and it runs very deep.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/12/earth-hour-2009.php has some great first comments. "There are 8,760 hours in a year. Across the world, people turned off their lights for ONE of those 8,760 hours. In other words, 0.000114155251 of the time in a year. If that makes you feel good about yourself (if you participated), you are one seriously deluded individual. Other than being a symbolic representation of people changing their light bulbs and buying up hybrids (though even hybrids are selling lately), this means absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things.
The only solution to the climate change problem is the eradication of society as we know it. Complete and utter change in every facet of life as we know it. Anyone who thinks otherwise is an ignorant optimist who refuses to see the truth.
The fact is, our lifestyle is in no way sustainable. We can not innovate our way out, reduce/reuse/recycle our way out, or buy our way out of this problem.
I am in no way against endeavors such as Earth Hour, but can't stand thinking about people getting off on thinking that their actions actually have any positive effect on the planet."

I am pretty certain I have a extremely low carbon footprint. I try my best to find ways to make it even smaller. I appreciate the effort Dan but wonder who is really ready to make the changes necessary? I am still looking for the cavemate to share the rest of my life with

Found these stats interesting, since F1 was brought up somewhere... "Let’s compare an F1 car to a typical car in the UK which produces about 160 g/km, and over a year (10,000 miles) will produce about 2.56 tonnes of CO2.

According to Wikipedia a typical F1 burns 75 litres of fuel per 100km raced. Based on figures for petrol (which is a reasonable proxy of race fuel), 0.75 litres of fuel burnt per km equates to a CO2 output of 1737 g/km. And over a race season using approx 100,000 litres of the stuff, that’s 231 tonnes of CO2. Per car. And each team has 2. So for fuel alone, before the costs of flying to races, support vehicles and the number of cows required to furnish Max Mosley’s “special” wardrobe, that’s about 463 tonnes per team. I wonder if they carbon offset?

At least they’re becoming hybrids for the 2009 season…"

The link about F1 hybrid is pretty cute: [Only registered members can see links. ]. From what I can understand the braking system will improve the carbon footprint. Isnt that cute?

What is really cool is that I usually nap the time that this event is taking place so every day I participate

btw, the only media that has had any coverage of Earth Hour, that I have seen, is CurrenTV. But I only watch about four channels on my hundred choices...

[fredv3b]

Originally Posted by fjp999

The only solution to the climate change problem is the eradication of society as we know it. Complete and utter change in every facet of life as we know it. Anyone who thinks otherwise is an ignorant optimist who refuses to see the truth.

Ain't going to happen, Turkeys have been proven not to vote for Christmas.

Nuclear power, anyone?

[yar]

Nuclear power Bad idea they pollution lethal for thousands of years. Until they figure a safe way to store the spent fuel I am 100% against them . I have personally involved in creating 2 of them in Washington State Thankfully they are both off line.
28 March 2009 My lights will be off for one hour. Thanks for the reminder Dan.

[CardShark]

Fusion reactors are an amazing piece of tech.

They are much more economical than the regular nuclor reactors.

But yeah I 100% agree, the government dont know how to control nuclear waste!! and its a disgrace!!
I think wind turbines n' all that really are the best for the job, only problem is nuclear holds more advantages and costs less in the short term.

[Phil]

Count me in

Originally Posted by CardShark

...I think wind turbines n' all that really are the best for the job, only problem is nuclear holds more advantages and costs less in the short term.

How do you do the sums, Card? I don't see how a nuclear reactor (even a small one) costs less than a wind generator (even a large one).

[CardShark]

no thousands of wind turbines, 1 wind turbine cannot compare the the power a nuclear reactor can put out, you need thousands to get close to it!

Originally Posted by CardShark

no thousands of wind turbines, 1 wind turbine cannot compare the the power a nuclear reactor can put out, you need thousands to get close to it!

I know, I was being a little facaetious (...er ok, maybe a lot), but the hidden costs of nuclear generation are enormous.

I just can't help thinking that a few years ago they built a wind turbine which they said was supplying half the needs of Swaffham, so a couple of years later they built another one. Now ... that's not rocket science ... is it?

[CardShark]

Originally Posted by marshlander

I know, I was being a little facaetious (...er ok, maybe a lot), but the hidden costs of nuclear generation are enormous.

I just can't help thinking that a few years ago they built a wind turbine which they said was supplying half the needs of Swaffham, so a couple of years later they built another one. Now ... that's not rocket science ... is it?

Which is why I said short term cost is cheaper for a nuclear reactor. where as wind turbine can hold a long term advantage which is why I'm all for it.

To stop global warming it is faster to build both at once if not other alternatives at the same time don't you think?


And to the government nuclear reactors provides a few more advantages in research.