Earth Hour 2008

[rootbear75]

-qczUcQ-VjMhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qczUcQ-VjM

 

not much i can do here. thought i might be able to get some flyers up.

[🜲 Samapico]

[★ CRe]

Very interesting

[Aileron]

Hey Sama, its your lucky day! They already ration electricity in Communist countries!

[rootbear75]

well, like the video said. turning off your lights in a city for an hour is like taking 48000 vehicles off the road

[🜲 Samapico]

well, like the video said. turning off your lights in a city for an hour is like taking 48000 vehicles off the road

Taking out 48000 vehicles off the road for 1 hour, that is.

[2pac]

If he payed attention to the video, he would have known and also put that on his post. But anyways, this is new and I haven't heard of it, wondering the states might do it.

[rootbear75]

well, like the video said. turning off your lights in a city for an hour is like taking 48000 vehicles off the road

Taking out 48000 vehicles off the road for 1 hour, that is.

no, completely. for a year

at least thats what i understood.

i mean, it doesnt specify the length of time those cars are off the road

Edited March 25, 2008 by rootbear75

[Hakaku]

I heard about it; my city (Ottawa) is participating, although I don't think many people actually know about it.

[🜲 Samapico]

Is there a list of the cities participating somewhere?

[rootbear75]

www.earthhour.org

?

[★ doc flabby]

i hate to say this, is if this actually happens it risks creating more "carbon" than it saves, though the surge that will happen when everybody turns stuff back on, triggering backup generators to come online. Surges to the power grid are never good.

 

If everyone turns of there lights the power stations still generate the same amount of power and produce the same amount of CO2. It takes about 4/5 hours to turn on/off a coal/gas powerstation. Nuclear is never turned off.

 

So really what is the event going to achieve? very little.

 

A far better thing would be to stop eating meat, or reduce our intake. The food we eat produces substantially more CO2 than anything else. Beef being one of the worst. Meat is one of the least efficient ways of fuelling a human. Exercise also produces CO2. So really we need to eat less, and do less. Driving by car powered by petrol produces less CO2 than a human walking the same distance powered by eating a big mac.

 

Then again this whole "green" thing seems to be a good excuse to raise taxes

Edited March 25, 2008 by doc flabby

[Suicide_Run]

I find what doc says is kinda true. And the surge from turning all the lights and what not back on will be huge.

 

I believe this is just a way to let companies show that they "care" about the environment. Btw....how many of you are realistically gonna turn your lights off in the middle of something for an hr?

[🜲 Samapico]

i won't turn off my computer... but i'll probably turn off my lights

[Aileron]

Actually nuclear plants are turned off regularly, though they operate for months at a time. They can be turned off in about a second, though it takes two or three days to turn one on.

 

 

Even though the power plant is turned on, lower power usage does equate to less fuel consumed, !@#$%^&*uming ofcourse that the load on the power plant is significant to begin with. It takes a certain amount of fuel to keep the generators going even if no electrical power is put out, analogous to idling a car.

 

The electrical power used up translates to physical resistance to rotational momentum in the generators, which then would demand more force from the turbines, which would need hotter steam to push them, which would need more fuel to burn. Lowering the amount of electricity used would decrease the resistance in the turbines and decrease the amount of fuel needed to maintain the cycle. Less electricity = less resistance = less rotational energy = cooler steam = less fuel.

 

Be careful when energy benefits are labeled in the form of cars taken off the road. That number of cars is insignificant and isn't even close to a percentage point.

 

Meat is however a good way to get a lot of protein and vitamins (as long as whatever you are eating was getting enough vitamins it its diet, which sadly isn't the case in a lot of farm animals...I say eat deer).

 

Actually, I think this CO2 thing is way to prevent companies from making synthetic gas. That stuff could be made at about $40 a barrel.

[★ D1st0rt]

Doc Flabby beat me to the punch :/

 

But just in general, staying at steady state is better than going transient

[Smong]

I thought page 2 might have something more serious on it

 

Although no one has yet mentioned a surge from turning things off (that still changes the load).

[🜲 Samapico]

cool, Montreal is part of this... they should speak about it in the news or something.. else it won't work :/

 

that surge crap isn't a factor for us here, hydroelectricity doesn't burn fuel at all

[🜲 Samapico]

cool... my school is signed up as a business

[Smong]

If you change the speed at which the generators rotate then the AC will change frequency, which is bad. If the load suddenly changes then the rotational speed will also change. So it's still going to affect hydro.

[Suicide_Run]

You know, instead of telling people to turn their lights off an hour. How about telling all those people who uses the older light bulbs to change to energy saving light bulbs? That way, people are saving energy the whole year instead of just 1 hr in 1 year.

[Hakaku]

^Because people are lazy, and won't bother to waste money immediately when their perfectly good light bulbs still work, even though in the long term it'll save them money. Others are just sceptical about everything.

[★ Dav]

^Because people are lazy, and won't bother to waste money immediately when their perfectly good light bulbs still work, even though in the long term it'll save them money. Others are just sceptical about everything.

Simple solution with green taxes:

 

tax the crap out of the old style bulbs and drop tax on energy saving ones. Unfortunately it probably wont be done any time soon.

[Incomplete]

Or stop selling the low energy saving ones altogether and replace them for the ones that do actually save energy.

[rootbear75]

Or stop selling the low energy saving ones altogether and replace them for the ones that do actually save energy.

u know 3-way lamps? those compact fluorescent ones dont work in them