By repudiating the greatest engine of liberation it becomes an hour devoted to anti-humanism. It encourages the sanctimonious gesture of turning off trivial appliances for a trivial amount of time, in deference to some ill-defined abstraction called “the Earth,” all the while hypocritically retaining the real benefits of continuous, reliable electricity. People who see virtue in doing without electricity should shut off their fridge, stove, microwave, computer, water heater, lights, TV and all other appliances for a month, not an hour. And pop down to the cardiac unit at the hospital and shut the power off there too.
I’m sending this to my Town Council.
CF-18 pilots celebrating Earth Hour a little early.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8405986/Canadian-CF-18-jet-bombs-Libyan-weapons-depot.html
Ross wrote a great article that explains perfectly the fallacy and hypocrisy of the earth muffins (thanks John).
We will be turning on all the lights, some of the Christmas lights and a few other appliance items just to celebrate Human Achievement Hour. Then we will return to our normal practice of turning off any power using devices we are not using.
As a kid I lived under the conditions that these wingnuts would impose on all of us if they get there way. I do not want to go back to that unless world geopolitical events force it. Then we will cope with that reality.
The effete latte sippers that push Earth Hour do not have the remotest clue what it is like to live without the conveniences that we all have come to enjoy.
The people in the third world countries would just love to exchange places with us.
Oops, it should have read “their” in the third last paragraph.
Ross is awesome in the article. I think I will print a copy of it, and hand it out to anyone who asks me what I’m doing to celebrate Earth day or hour or whatever the he11 it is.
Should be called, Gullible Chicken Little Simpson Dillinger Hour; this would sum up the stupidity of all the clowns/media;charlatans/polititians; and oughtright theives/ Gore Suzuki Strong etc. that have had a hand in this exercise in self destruction of our western economies. What idiots, cue the virgins, find a volcano cause it is 14 below here in Alberta on Mar 25,global warming? start with Gore though
I too shall be celebrating Human Achievement Hour.
If it runs, it will be running.
Let the dirt-worshiping hippies starve in the dark.
And never forget to mention that there is no global warming and no climate change – at least no human-generated climate change.
Also we are on top of temperature upswing now heading into another stone age.
AGW is genocidal, can anyone help charging Gore with genocide and obtaining proper conviction?
should read ‘into another ice age’
Earth Hour is a demonstration of political power. Demonstrative of an ability to control the body politic – a complete cycle of message creation, delivery, and harvesting.
If The People really want to deliver an appropriate message, they should defy those that attempt to leverage their ignorance. Turn on every appliance, every engine, run the hot water tap. Defy, defy, defy, in a message that says loud and clear that you will think for yourselves. Columnists are exempt, given their esteemed positions in the knowledge hierarchy.
Critics are saying Earth Hour is just theatre, and bad theatre at that.
Mr. McKitrick makes some valid points. His position would be hard to argue with.
If those who want to do this useless exercise had the courage to cut off their power; burn their driver’s licance; sell me their car [cheap of course]; cut of heating fuel – oil or gas; and stop their carbon imprint by stop breathing [exercise produces more carbon … yea couch potatoes!!] … then I might decide to turn my lights out for and hour.
But, like the LIEberals, Non-Democradic Party and the Black-mail Party, it is just going through the motions to show that they really care about what they say.
wouldn’t it be truly awesome if we made those latté sippers heat their homes and cook their meals with cow/camel dung (because cutting down trees hurts the “earth-mother”). furthermore, potable tap water exists only because of electricity powering the water treatment plants–we should make them draw their water from the lakes/rivers/ditch. After most of them die off from dysentery (and it’s mostly lefty types who espouse this idiocy), we could reassert common-sense back into our culture.
Excellent opinion!
Electricity makes life in the Gr8 White North bearable during these long cold winter months.
I am pretty sure relying on our resident little red squirrel to power our generator just wouldn’t cut it.
It is no longer far fetch or tin foil hat to put radical environmentalism, socialism, communism and Islamofascism in the same boat. They have tentacles branching together on a worldwide scale. The end goal is to create a high tech worldwide police state controlled by the U.N. or some new entity to come.
Listen to the crazy one, Glenn Beck, on an excellent analysis of these past few days:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKeh4ge0mEE&feature=player_embedded
BTW, FOX and Beck are not getting along too well these days, many suspect the “establishment” are putting pressure on Fox Entertainment Group owners to muzzle this true Patriot. For this, it is speculated, Glenn is seriously considering starting his own network or at least a new channel…You go Glenn.
FOX is going slowly into the sewer too now, especially the very dissapointing Bill O’Reilley “I’ve personally seen the birth certificate/they are all loons” of late.
The celebration of earth hour is the celebration of the static mind.
In other words the mindset of those unimaginative folks who believe that mankind has reached the apex of innovative thinking and it is downhill from here on.
These people are sad sorts albeit dangerous ones in that they desire to take us all down with them.
To my way of thinking the earth is basically an enclosed sphere…apart from a bit of space junk,all that is within this sphere recycles itself thru time.
And after all is said and done, time is OUR invention.
When I was a kid we didn’t have electricity. I was too young to help much but chores took up most of the day and were incessant and pretty back-breaking. We had coal oil lamps. We had to cut, split and burn wood for warmth, cooking and canning, and heating water for bathing and laundry. All water was hauled by hand from the well or pumped (by hand) from the cistern. I think my mother cried the day we got “power” and she was able to flick a switch to light a bulb (incandescent). Power was spoken of in awed voices like a miracle at Lourdes, and perhaps for my parents it was equivalent. (Not meaning any disrespect to St. Bernadette–I think she would understand.)
I too love nature and often go camping in a tent and walk, sometimes for a week or more. To look at the stars undimmed by city lights is awesome in the true sense of the word. But at the end, I know I have a vehicle which will take me to a place where there is hot water and where I will be able to eat something other than a granola bar or heating gruel on a gas stove. (Ooooh. Propane. Bad.) Also it’s the height of summer. I only once attempted that in the winter. Even this poor attempt at roughing it is greatly eased by ultra-modern equipment, such as a light tent, clothing from Mountain Equipment Co-op and a bottle of Muskol. I don’t have to kill my own food and if I get lost I have a good map and sometimes a GPS.
For me “nature” is a hobby–very soul satisfying but simply, an occasional escape. I could not survive in nature. The Earth Day crowd would not either. They might think gnawing on lichen and wearing bark clothing is romantic and if we all did it, Earth would somehow respond in a benign way–reward us for having pure thoughts and good intentions. But Earth is a planet–not your friend. You survive partly by luck and you survive better with the odd bit of technology and access to energy. As far back as we can suss out, man attempted to improve on nature by making tools and devising ways of harnessing energy.
So, I don’t feel guilty when I fire up my truck or when I use electricity. Nor do I waste stuff (conservation was an ethic ingrained by my parents long before the word became trendy). I am fortunate to live in this time and grateful to all the innovators, inventors and those systems that make my life pretty idyllic compared with that of my parents.
“Earth Hour celebrates ignorance, poverty and backwardness”
add to that death, suffering, misery, disease, pain . . .
it is a long list of really bad things they want us to celebrate.
Firefox 4.0 download available.
Burn, baby, burn the Red-Greens.
…-
“Tomorrow night between 8:30 and 9:30 supporters of “Earth Hour” urge you to turn off your lights as part of a call for action on climate change. Will you participate?”
Yes. It’s an important symbolic gesture to show I’m concerned about, and want action taken on climate change and conservation
9.87%
No. Ontario has surplus electricity at this time of year. Every time we turn off the lights, we pay millions of dollars in subsidies to the U.S. and Quebec to take our surplus power – $53M in December
88.7%
Other
1.35%”
http://www.cfra.com/
Fantastic commentary. I intend to have every single thing in my house that burns electricity turned on, and will be drinking beer that has been flown from as far away as possible.
Lack of electricity is a massive problem for hundreds of millions of people. To gain a little light in their homes they strip the vegetation bare for firewood, and suffer lung ailments from the smoke.
There’s a charity called “Light Up The World” dedicated to bringing affordable lighting to those who lack it:
http://www.lutw.org/
I wonder if LUTW will be celebrating Earth Day?
What is amazing to me is how the left cannot connect the dots to understand what powers their devices such as …
TVs
Eh Pods (Canada version of IPod)
Eh Pads (Ditto)
Home heat and lighting
Hollywood movies that they love so well
Hospitals and schools … to name a few items that make our society worth living in.
If all lefties got their sorry asses off the grid, the rest of us could live as we wish with zero footprint. I think we should force them to make the sacrifices they keep wanting to inflict on the rest of us. That way, they would achieve a guilt free existence and would achieve a commie-pest-free existence. How sweet would that be?
I won’t be turning on all things electrical in my house during Earth Hour. I will, as I do every night, be turning down the thermostat and shutting off all lights in empty rooms. Now this is not in response to a symbolic, self-righeous and completely useless suggestion from the enviro-cretins. I do this because I am cost conscious. Some would describe my behaviour as cheap, however I prefer “thrifty”.
maz2 11:04 (No. Ontario has surplus electricity at this time of year. Every time we turn off the lights, we pay millions of dollars in subsidies to the U.S. and Quebec to take our surplus power – $53M in December)
This never occurred to me. I knew that Denmark was caught in the vise of having to pay for power from adjoining countries when the windmills did not turn, and also they had to sell their surplus at a loss to those same countries. But I wasn’t aware that Ontario was in a similar situation.
Actually Earth Hour is an exercise in conditioned reflex. The sociopathic left who dream of plunging us into some sort of pre-industrial autocratic austerity are attempting to popularize and mainstream their misanthropic Luddite beliefs.
In this case, they (Green Luddites) use peer group pressure to condition you into believing yourself to be a criminally irresponsible user of mass consumer convenience technology. It’s a form of conditioned self-loathing. Electric appliance use is subliminally portrayed as a social evil. Electric generation is presented as some depleted non=renewable resource which must be rationed and controlled.
Green fascism never sleeps.
Well I’m not gonna burn un-necessary electricity….that no-one but me will be aware of.
However this light’s out thing is about raising awareness and showing allegiance to sillyness by being in the dark.
All my LIGHTs visible will be on….plus a coupla big extras installed for the occassion last year.
It’s all about making a visible statement…..hear me roar….
It’s no different than any other silly celebration. If you celebrate the passage of the earth through an arbitrary point in space on a yearly basis, or the birth, in December, of a man who was born in September, you’ve got no business criticizing the celebrations of people who want to sit in the dark for an hour. I mean, feel free to criticize them all you like, as long as you realize that the difference between your words and your actions is the very definition of hypocrisy.
I know people who turn down the lights during earth hour and then go sit outside in their heated hot tub.
In other words, they are acting out of fear that others will see them with their lights on, but sitting in a heated hot tub on -5 C weather is fine.
Religion, religion, religion.
>>If you celebrate the passage of the earth through an arbitrary point in space on a yearly basis, or the birth, in December, of a man who was born in September, you’ve got no business criticizing the celebrations of people who want to sit in the dark for an hour.
Since I don’t celebrate either of those events, I can feel free to criticize the silliness of Urf Day without feeling any hypocrisy.
No, Alex the equivalent would be to celebrate the birth of Jesus by punching your neighbour in the face.
Granted, some do this, but I think there would be general agreement that the action is not congruent with the message.
Same thing on Earth Day, to celebrate “Earth Day” by demonizing one of the most positive development in man’s history on it is stupid and worthy of ridicule.
How often does it need to be said?
Mother Nature doesn’t care.
As was so vividly proved in Japan only two weeks ago.
I’ll be visiting my uncle in the hospital during earth hour, I’m sure the nurses would be very please if I started unpluging things…
Its like morons who boycott buying gas on X day. It only makes a difference (good or bad) if you make fundamental changes to your lifestyle. Its not just what you consume directly, but rather what you consume indirectly through the infrastructure you enjoy.
That’s it, I’m turning on both ovens and running them @ 400*F on Saturday to help buffer this madness!
Burn/bury the CBC’s $billion poll in the PET Cemetery.
…-
“Earth Hour: Will you be participating?”
“Yes 8.33% (1 votes)
No 75% (9 votes)
I’m not sure yet 16.67% (2 votes)
Total Votes: 12”
http://www.cbc.ca/news/yourcommunity/2011/03/earth-hour-will-you-be-participating.html
I’ll be more impressed if these bozos turn everything off for just say one lousy week. No electronics, heat or refridgeration for a week and then we’ll see how these eco-nuts would feel.
I remember spending a summer in the northern Manitoba bush and I never forgot the feeling I had of having a hot shower and a cold beer afterward. You sure develope a humble appreciation of what we’ve achieved.
“Since I don’t celebrate either of those events, I can feel free to criticize the silliness of Urf Day without feeling any hypocrisy.”
Absolutely – you’re a deviation from the norm. I get to criticize it, without feeling like a hypocrite, for the same reason. My comment was obviously aimed at the 99.9% of the people here who have no problem with their own silly celebrations, but feel the need to mock and insult anyone who does something different.
Four words: insidiousness, rent-seeking, fear-mongering and media manipulation.
OK, sorry, that’s technically 7 words.
CBC poll could use some help….
Yes 38.46% (90 votes)
No 53.85% (126 votes)
I’m not sure yet 7.69% (18 votes)
http://www.cbc.ca/news/yourcommunity/2011/03/earth-hour-will-you-be-participating.html
I have to admit that for me it’s a lot more about the hyporcitical stupidity of it all. One of the claims is that it’s about reducing the impact on the earth. Problem is, it doesn’t do anything in that regard.
Power plants generate. That’s what they do. If the load on their output increases, they have to increase their generation, up to the maximum load for their turbines and transformers.
If they are producing at a given level for their expected load at that time of day, that’s where they stay, unless load goes up. They rarely ramp down. So the electricity continues to get generated, and it continues to be pushed out to the grid. It cannot be stored.
Thus, all that lovely power is being wasted, and the associated emissions (or whatever they want to be concerned with) stay at effectively the same level.
And every year, the propaganda outlets continue to look for the tiniest indication that “people power” had any noticeable impact. It really, really annoys me.
That said, I posted a link to the article to my Facebook page. So far, no reactions to it, but we’ll see how that goes. 🙂
TJ
How about playing “You light up my life” over and over again on your outdoor speakers?
I plan on doing it.Keeps the riffraff away from the door.
Different is different…there’s more than one way to skin a cat…and stupid is as stupid does.
Geez, atric…it would be nicer to waterboard them.
During Earth Hour, I will celebrate by beating the crap out of some hippies.
Agreed Marc but I was told I had to be nice.
After all, they have a serious disability.
And while you are on the CBC site you can:
David Suzuki: Send your birthday wishes to the beloved host of The Nature of Things
blech
Another Calgary Marc@2:27
“Power plants generate. That’s what they do. If the load on their output increases, they have to increase their generation, up to the maximum load for their turbines and transformers.
If they are producing at a given level for their expected load at that time of day, that’s where they stay, unless load goes up. They rarely ramp down. So the electricity continues to get generated, and it continues to be pushed out to the grid. It cannot be stored.
Thus, all that lovely power is being wasted, and the associated emissions (or whatever they want to be concerned with) stay at effectively the same level.”
Er, no. Not quite. Each unit of load added to the grid requires that a little more fuel be burned to keep the turbines spinning at the correct speed to generate 60 Hz power. And each unit of load shed, requires that a little less fuel be burned. The excess power isn’t wasted; it is never made. (to be strictly correct, strike “power” from the foregoing, and substitute “electrical energy”)
Want an example? Fire up a little portable generator. With ZERO load on it, it will still burn fuel, because the rotor has to turn at sufficient speed to show 120 volts, 60 Hz at the outlet. Even an inverter-type generator will at least be running at idle, and burning some fuel; the older generators will be running at 3600 RPM, but with the throttle nearly closed. (which is why inverter gensets are more fuel-efficient, at the price of being more complex) Plug a load, say an electric kettle, into either, and you will clearly hear that gasoline engine grunt and get down to work. The inverter unit will rev up to meet the demand of the load, and the old-style unit will simply open its throttle, and burn more more fuel at the same RPM. In fact, RPM will sag momentarily until the mechanical governor catches up. It’s a pretty vivid demonstration, in fact, of just how much actual work electricity does. Nothing like watching the whole process happen within the span of your outstretched arms.
So all the greentards shutting off lights for Earth Hour will, in fact, appear as reduced load to the meters at the generating plants, and fuel feeds to the boilers will be adjusted accordingly. Or, perhaps, wind generators will be taken off line instead, so that they don’t have to mess with the coal plants.
That’s why Human Achievement Hour is so important. If we climate realists can burn up extra power for a brief spell, enough of us so doing will blunt the impact of the Earth Hour greenies, and reduce their political clout. If Earth Hours winds up being a barely-discernible blip on the power demand curve, the powers that be will be less-inclined to pander to the greenies.
So it’s important for us not to merely leave lights burning, to symbolize our disapproval of Earth Hour, but to extravagantly use power for the whole period, in order to swamp out the reduction in demand caused by the greenies. So what if it costs you an extra buck or two on your power bill for the month? Think of it as an investment in affordable energy for the future.
Rita 10:51am – Thanks for passing on your memories.
Well written. Your note should be printed in a few newspapers.
My comment was obviously aimed at the 99.9% of the people here who have no problem with their own silly celebrations, but feel the need to mock and insult anyone who does something different.
This “something different”(Earth Hour) is being done to arrive at a baseline calculation for rationing energy useage.
Earth Day is not a celebration, it is a rally for support of the totalitarian environmental movement.
Neither are celebrations, they are political devices whose design is to influence politicians and bring about expensive draconian legislation that will directly affect my way of life.
“This “something different”(Earth Hour) is being done to arrive at a baseline calculation for rationing energy useage.”
😀
The crazy is strong with this one …
As is the stupid with you. Amen.
It’s no secret that leaders of the environmental movement have been calling for energy rationing for over a decade.
Environmentalists want energy rationing to the point that they have been insisting on punitive taxation to bring it about.
Every year after Earth Hour the MSM touts how many MWs below the average everyday baseline was not used during Earth Hour.
Anyone who doesn’t recognize that Earth Hour establishes a baseline for energy rationing hasn’t been paying attention and shouldn’t even be taking part in this discussion because they are too obtuse.