What did you do for Earth Hour? The (yawn) reality

The Toronto city skyline at 8:27 pm during Earth Hour, March 26, 2011. Image: Lucas Oleniuk/TORONTO STAR

Here’s a collection of thoughts, quotes, and of course the result of our WUWT poll on “what did you do for Earth Hour?

First, my own experience: Being keenly aware of it days ahead, even I forgot about it at the appointed time, having been distracted by normal family happenings, so I didn’t remember to turn on all my outdoor lights until 8:50PM. Given other news reports, it seems the novelty has worn off, and many many simply either forgot about it or don’t care.

Pointless symbolism isn’t what it used to be I suppose.

Here’s the newsbytes describing the (non)event worldwide (Thanks to Tom Nelson for many of them):

Is Toronto in the dark when it comes to Earth Hour?

Millions of people from 134 countries — from Delhi, India to Heidelberg, Germany — switched off their lights and televisions for the fifth annual Earth Hour on Saturday night to show their support for action on climate change.

But Toronto only saw a 5 per cent power drop during the event — half of the reduction achieved during Earth Hour in 2010.

The year before that, the city had a 15 per cent drop in megawatts being used.

“Honestly we still think it’s successful, we think it’s a great program,” said Jennifer Link, a spokeswoman for Toronto Hydro, who added that cool temperatures likely had many people using more heat than this time last year.

In Toronto, energy use fell by 115 megawatts between 8:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m., a drop of about 5 per cent, said Jennifer Link, a spokeswoman for Toronto Hydro.

Last year, the city’s Earth Hour efforts saved 296 megawatts; in 2009, it was 454 megawatts.

Meanwhile, Nova Scotia Power reported saving 10 megawatts of power, a significant drop from last year’s 18 megawatts.

?Locally, the Toledo Zoo participated in the event. Facebook responses included “this is so silly”, “there is no way I can close early to participate” “C’mon, on a freezing cold Saturday night?” and “I enjoyed the hour”.

h/t to reader Brad R for this one below:

“Utility provider Enmax reported no noticeable drop in power consumption between 8: 30 p.m. and 9: 30 p.m. Saturday, when residents were asked to participate in Earth Hour by shutting off all nonessential power.”

As we drove along Ortigas Avenue, I was freakishly disappointed. Why? Because lights were on and it was Earth Hour.

Inside the car, I thought I wanted to blame the relatively-poor marketing the Earth Hour guys had on this year (You haven’t really noticed the Earth Hour 2011 ads as well right? You know they were there but the campaign wasn’t convincing enough).

Unfortunately, where I was, it was only us who participated in this event.

My parents slept early and I was left with my two grandchildren, age 6 and 7. I had to explain to them what this was all about.

Being just kids, they were restless. They kept on asking me how long will this last and why was it our neighbors did not do the same thing. I told them that it will only last for one hour and they should be proud to be a part of this worldwide event, to take a stand against climate change.

While we were waiting for the hour to pass, I decided to say the rosary and let them join me.
…Kids have this way of asking questions that any mature person would not dare to ask.
…
Five minutes after the hour had passed, we turned on the lights. They kids were happy.

The Earth Hour has passed. In retrospect, I questioned myself if I can still go beyond.

Earth Hour will come early to Los Angeles International Airport. The ring of 15 100-foot-tall towers near the airport’s entrance will light up a solid green at 7:30 p.m. — an hour before Earth Hour — and remain illuminated for 60 minutes. Then the lights will go out from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., an airport news release says.

[Yeah that's just what I want from Earth Hour, screwing around with the electricity at one of the worlds busiest airports]

“Our goal for Earth Hour 2011 is to reach new, unprecedented heights of social engagement to fuel the single largest act of global participation the world has ever seen,” said Carey Isom, Senior Vice President of Digital Strategy at Arc Worldwide/Leo Burnett Worldwide. “As a HumanKind communications company dedicated to putting a brand’s purpose at the center of everything we do, we are honored to bring awareness and activation to this very special cause.”
…
Earth Hour is the largest mass participation event in human history and was organized by WWF—an election between Earth and global warming, organized the largest mass participation event in human history.Created by Leo Burnett Sydney in 2007 and carried on by Leo Burnett Chicago, Earth Hour was the first time people of all nationalities, race, ace, gender and religion were able to vote on the future of our planet as one global democracy. Now, just five years later, more than one billion people turned off their lights in celebration of Earth Hour.

[Hmm, more like a billion people don't HAVE electricity:

1.6 billion people — a quarter of humanity — live without electricity:

Breaking that down further:

Number of people living without electricityRegionMillions without electricity

Source: globalissues.org Poverty Facts and Stats]

?

Yeah but, how much more CO2 did they release organizing the celebration, getting people there, and putting that guy up in the helicopter/airplane/hotair balloon/whatever to get the shot?

To celebrate the worthy cause and encourage participation by residents and businesses in Earth Hour, Dewa, in partnership with Emirates Wildlife Society (EWS) in association with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), Emaar and other government departments and local schools and universities and NGOs and private sectors and residents, marked the event with a traditional Arabic heritage village at Emaar’s Burj Plaza in the Downtown district adjacent to the world’s tallest building, Burj Khalifa.

Over 20 Arabian tents filled with arts and crafts, traditional cooking stations, El Arish hospitality, educational exhibitions, music and many local gifts and souvenirs were enjoyed by over 6,000 people who took part in the fun festivities and Earth Hour celebrations. A family occasion, children were also catered to with their own arts and crafts tents, face-painting, delightful entertainment and a conservation exhibition to educate and inspire their young minds.

Two three-minute official Earth Hour videos are below.  The 2010 video is all about the global warming hoax.  The 2011 video fails to even mention global warming. 

Make no mistake: this is what winning looks like.  Of course, most alarmists are never going to come right out and admit that on The Most Important Issue of All Time, they were wrong and we were right.  What they’re going to do is just gradually quit talking about it.

YouTube – Earth Hour 2011 Official video 

This Earth Hour 2011: 8.30pm, Saturday 26 March, celebrate your action for the planet with the people of world, and add more to your Earth Hour.

YouTube – Earth Hour 2010 Official video

Earth Hour 2010 is set to be the best yet

They know the lights will be back on in less than an hour. If they tried Earth Month instead, that would be the end of the global warming religion.

Here is the results of the WUWT poll, as of noon PST, March 27th:

It seems wildly popular to turn on lights, or ignore the whole idea, rather than turn them off, doesn’t it?

However, in one country, North Korea, Earth hour was once again a stunning success:

Night-time satellite photo of North and South Korea. Note the single light for “Dear Leader”. Image from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program 

View the original article here

The reality of wind turbines in California – video

As many know, I was on a road trip for two weeks. On my return into California, I traveled a road I had done many many times – California Highway 58 through Tehachapi pass, one of the windiest areas of California, and loaded with wind turbines like you see in this photo from www.wind-works.org which seems to be taken during 2003. All the turbines seem to be spinning.

But, the reality I encounter when I drive through there is much different than what you see in the photo above. I often drive this road, but always wished I had a video camera with me to show how many turbines are inoperable since this doesn’t show up well in still photos. Unless you have a slow shutter speed to show “blade blur”, they all look inoperable.

But this day was different. I did have a video camera with me. Plus, the day I drove through, Tuesday, March 15th, 2011 was near perfect for wind turbines. There was a front coming in, and strong winds ahead of it.

Here’s the wind data from the ASOS at the Tehachapi airport during the time I drove through:

The wind data displayed above are measured at 1000' lower elevation than the wind turbines on the top of the ridge, where the wind velocity will be higher.

And here is what I saw of the wind turbines along the ridge top, there were quite a few inoperable on this windy day. This video was taken right about 11AM PST:

There were many more inoperable turbines, but could not be filmed from a safe vantage point along the highway. This video was take from the semi-truck staging area near the agricultural inspection station.

My best guess from the video and others I saw that I could not film is that about one in four turbines were not operating.

The problem is maintenance. The location, while perfect for wind, is treacherous for work and support equipment. Even on a flat terrain, like in Texas (shown below) where I photographed these turbines, doing maintenance on gearboxes and generators high up on a post isn’t easy.

Imagine the complications on a mountain ridge for maintenance.

On the wind-works.org website “tour” section, they lament the condition of the Zond (Enron) wind power sites:

Wind Plant Maintenance Items to Note

Throughout the Tehachapi-Mojave area look for turbines without nose cones, turbines without nacelles (blown off and not replaced), oil leaking from blade-pitch seals, oil leaking from gearboxes, road cuts in steep terrain, erosion gullies, non-operating turbines, and “bone piles” of junk parts. One Zond bone pile of abandoned fiberglass blades is visible on the east side of Tehachapi-Willow Springs Rd. near Oak Creek Pass. (Kern County doesn’t permit on-ground disposal of fiberglass.) While touring wind farm sites look for blowing trash and litter (plastic bags, soft-drink cups, bottles, electrical connectors, scrap bits of metal, and so on). These all reflect management’s attention to maintenance and general housekeeping. At the better sites, you won’t see any of this.

Even on the valley floor, the smaller four turbines just west of the Tehachapi airport that greet visitors who drive in from Bakersfield had a problem, and these are on flat ground and accessible:

In Palm Springs, CA, another windy place, they have similar problems:

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Florida’s broken windmills:  A California problem

The permit allowing windmills to go in didn’t say they could sit there broken. Palm Springs is getting tough. If windmills are going to exist in the city they must be operational. A city that has welcomed windmills since it was first approached about them in the early 1980's is finding that many of those windmills are no longer working and it wants them fixed. The question is who’s responsible for fixing them? Florida Power and Light (FPL), the owner of the inoperable windmills, was allowed to install and operate local windmill farms under a conditional use permit (CUP) stipulating if the windmill does not run for six months, it’s declared a public nuisance and without a hearing, must be abated.

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Here’s a video showing the inside operations of a wind power facility in Washington State

And, the lack of maintenance problem is not just in California. In 2001, I visited Kamoa wind farm near Southpoint in the big island of Hawaii. The wind is so strong there, trees grow horizontal like this one:

As much as I was surprised by the horizontal trees, I was equally surprised to see dead wind turbines there. It was my first experience with a wind farm.

From this American Thinker article “Wind energy’s ghosts”:

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Kamaoa Wind Farm, Hawaii. (image)

Built in 1985, at the end of the boom, Kamaoa soon suffered from lack of maintenance. In 1994, the site lease was purchased by Redwood City, CA-based Apollo Energy.

Cannibalizing parts from the original 37 turbines, Apollo personnel kept the declining facility going with outdated equipment. But even in a place where wind-shaped trees grow sideways, maintenance issues were overwhelming. By 2004 Kamaoa accounts began to show up on a Hawaii State Department of Finance list of unclaimed properties. In 2006, transmission was finally cut off by Hawaii Electric Company.

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Image from Waymarking.com

Again, like in California, Hawaii’s turbine problem is lack of maintenance.

But isn’t that the way it always has been with windmills?

It seems the more things change, the more they stay the same:

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UPDATE: It appears Idaho is getting set for putting a wind power moratorium in place:

State Lawmakers Look At Wind Energy Moratorium

Mar 18, 2011 6:16 p.m.

BONNEVILLE COUNTY, Idaho — Construction of wind turbines may be coming to a halt in Idaho.

State lawmakers are considering a bill that would prevent the construction of any new wind farm for the next two years.

Over the last year, dozens of new wind turbines have gone up on east bench just outside Idaho Falls, but many of the neighbors and their legislators want to put a temporary end to new construction.

When the legislature adopted the 2007 energy plan, it did not envision so many energy companies wanting to build wind farms in Idaho.

Bill sponsor Erik Simpson said he and both his Republican and Democratic colleagues agree they need to take a look at the long-term consequences.

“Local governments need some direction as to what should be included in some of their ordinances, recognizing some of the impacts that are out there on wind, and we need to find out what those impacts might be,” said State Affairs Committee member Tom Loertcher.

To conduct the study, the bill proposes a two-year moratorium on wind farm construction.

“It may be a problem mostly in eastern Idaho now, but it’s likely to be a problem in (other legislators’) communities as well unless we take this two year pause and study this a little more in depth,” Simpson said.

Wind power is not the cheapest way to produce energy, and lawmakers want to make sure their constituents don’t have to pay top rate.

“Utility rate payers are paying more for this unreliable intermittent energy source,” Simpson said.

Many are also concerned about the environment.

“A lot of these projects are going up in pristine wildlife areas,” Simpson said.

But not everyone agrees. Some local people like Bonneville County farmer Tory Talbot want to continue to see more turbines.

“The moratorium will basically limit businesses wanting to come into Idaho. Southeastern Idaho and southern Idaho has a huge wind energy potential,” Talbot said.

The State Affairs Committee plans to continue the debate on Monday when they hear from utility companies and energy companies.

They will then vote on whether they should move the bill to the House floor.

If the bill passes, any project already approved would be allowed to move forward.

View the original article here

Negativity...or Reality?

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In "China Noses Ahead as Top Goods Producer," the Financial Times highlights yet another area where America is no longer top dog:

China has become the world’s top manufacturing country by output, returning the country to the position it occupied in the early 19th century and ending the US’s 110-year run as the largest goods producer.

The change is revealed in a study released on Monday by IHS Global Insight, a US-based economics consultancy, which estimates that China last year accounted for 19.8 per cent of world manufacturing output, fractionally ahead of the US with 19.4 per cent.

China’s reversion to the top position marked the “closing of a 500-year cycle in economic history”, said Robert Allen of Nuffield College, Oxford, a leading economic historian.

Deborah Wince-Smith, chief executive of the Council on Competitiveness, a Washington-based business group, said the US “should be worried” by China taking over a position that the country had occupied since about 1895.

“This shows the need for the US to compete in the future not on the basis of commodity manufacturing but on innovation and new kinds of services that are driven by production industries,” she said.

I know, I know: more negativity from yours truly.

Or is it just reality?

View the original article here

A Separate Reality

The current draconian Spanish smoking ban came into force on 2 Jan 2011. Translated from El Correo. Doctors and restaurateurs have declared war. Navarra Basque Society for the Prevention of Smoking entered yesterday into the controversy of the 'smoking ban' to attack the restaurants with two accusations that could hurt them a lot. Health professionals claimed that owners of bars and cafes of "being sponsored by the tobacco industry" and said they do not believe they have been losing money since it was forbidden to smoke on their premises. The sector's response was immediate. "We challenge Navarra Basque society to say openly that our association has received some support from the tobacco industry, and it will be in court immediately," the federation said.

The stakes are high. A document sent to the mail by the president of the Basque Navarre Society for the Prevention of Smoking, Carlos Cortijo, said that the statistics of membership of the Social Security Ministry of Labour "shows that the number of people employed by the industry increased "from January 2010 to January 2011."

So let's get this right. A bunch of antismoking doctors have claimed that Spanish restaurants and bars are being paid by tobacco companies to protest about the smoking ban. In addition, they say that restaurants and bars haven't actually been losing money as a result of the ban. Their evidence? The fact that they took on more staff last year.

This is crazy. It's completely unhinged. It's more or less routine for antismokers to claim that anyone who disagrees with them is in the pay of Big Tobacco. And indeed sometimes they are. But the entire hospitality industry? That's crazy. But even crazier is the notion that the trade must be doing fine this year, simply because it was last year. It's as if these antismokers occupy a separate reality.

And that's perhaps exactly how it is.

For the reality of things according to the antismokers is that smoking bans don't harm business, but actually improve it. And that smokers almost universally approve of smoking bans, and carry on going to restaurants and bars just like they always did, only more so. And that there are dramatic improvements in public health. And that smoking bans are always a great success, and there have been countless examples of this success. This, as far as the antismokers are concerned, is the simple reality of the matter. Anyone who disagrees is either uneducated or in the pay of tobacco companies.

And so, when the antismokers read reports of bars and restaurants losing business, they know that it simply isn't true, and that it has to be those damn tobacco companies up to their usual mischief.

It would seem that these new realities (and the antismoking reality is not the only one) are conceived and nurtured in small closed communities (a bit like Heaven's Gate), very often in San Francisco, in which all concerned become true believers before they set out to bring their new reality to the wider world. There it circulates first in the highest strata of society, among politicians and journalists and senior executives and professionals of every sort. And then, once safely ensconced there, it is rolled out for general public consumption. And only a few hundred top executives and opinion formers may be needed to do that. A prince or two helps, of course.

It seems entirely plausible that there was a one-day seminar held somewhere in London in, say, 2004 for a number of top executives from the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, and several newspapers, and also the CEOs of a number of pubcos, and several senior politicians from the Labour and Conservative and Lib Dem parties, and maybe a couple of celebrities as well. Senior doctors like Sir Liam Donaldson or Sir Charles George would have addressed this select gathering, outlining the known dangers of tobacco smoking, and the newly discovered menace of secondhand smoke, and the medical imperative of denormalising smoking. In a slick Powerpoint presentation, somebody from ASH would have assured all those present that smoking bans had proved to be a great success in America, particularly in California, and there had been no loss of trade in bars and restaurants, and a dramatic improvement in public health and worker productivity. Afterwards, over tea and smoked salmon and egg-and-cress sandwiches, many of these executives would have no doubt expressed their enthusiasm for the idea of smoking bans, given the many clear benefits, and the zero costs. Any doubters would have been referred to the relevant pages of the accompanying glossy brochure for them to be quickly assured that, for example, 70% of smokers wanted to give up smoking. Once everyone was on board, the smoking ban could be rolled out across the nation with the all the political parties and the whole of the mass media and most of the hospitality trade each playing their pre-assigned roles. All that had been needed to be done was to persuade a hundred or so key figures of the coming new reality, and they could be counted on to do their bit to help to create that reality.

Of course, more or less everything they were told was untrue, or was a half-truth. But these busy executives didn't have the time to give the matter serious consideration. They were as impressionable as anybody. All they needed to know was that Sir Liam Donaldson and Sir Charles George had 'Sir' in front of their name to trust them implicitly. Furthermore most of them hadn't been inside a pub or a cafe in years. And many of them no longer smoked.

And so when the ban was introduced, they all did their bit to help launch it, and it was accordingly immediately hailed as a great success, particularly among smokers. And almost immediately, as ever, the usual health benefits were claimed.

But if this is how the 'new reality' was created in Britain, why isn't it quite working in Spain? The answer may be that the British mass media, and the hospitality business, and political power, is concentrated in relatively few hands, and so relatively few people needed to agree among themselves to make it work. And in Britain we currently have pretty much a one-party state, with Labour and Lib Dems and Conservatives all but indistinguishable from each other. And most pubs belong to chains of one sort or other, and for the proprietors of these chains they are simply another business opportunity, not different from a baking or a mining business. And there are only a handful of media outlets. Relatively few people were needed to help create the new non-smoking reality.

But this couldn't be done in Spain where most bars and restaurants are small family businesses, and where the mass media isn't quite so centralised, and where politics is rather more fractured. In Spain, and even less so in Greece, it wan't possible to create and sustain this new reality. In fact, it can probably only be done in fairly advanced Western societies, with well-established media outlets (like the BBC), well-established political parties, and well-established hospitality chains (e.g. Starbucks). For they all have to work together to create and sustain the new reality.

And of course the new reality, when it is rolled out in public, comes up against the old reality, which is one of traditional smoky pubs and bars. It becomes a struggle of one reality against another reality. It becomes a struggle of the political class, the media, and the hotel and restaurant and pub chains, against the ordinary pubgoer, whose reality - all too often of broken communities, fractured friendships, isolation, exclusion, and loneliness - can never be allowed to mar the perfection of the new reality (by being reported, for example).

The new reality is an illusion, of course. But if the illusion can be sustained for long enough, it may become reality. If people can be got to stop smoking for long enough, the ancient vice might yet be expunged from society.

And what applies to the new antismoking reality that has been rolled out over the world also applies to several other new realities. The global warming reality. The European Union reality. And probably a whole bunch more realities. All of them conflict with pre-existing realities in one way or other. And the wars between these realities are all conducted the same way, by suppressing the old reality as far as possible, and supplanting it with the new reality. So the old smokers are never allowed any say. And nor are climate sceptics. Nor eurosceptics. They mustn't even be permitted to be seen. In this manner a new public consensus is created, without any apparent dissenters, with which even ordinary members of the public often feel unable to openly disagree.

Nevertheless, none of these new realities has yet been successfully installed in the public arena. While most of the European political class, with one or two notable exceptions (e.g. Vaclav Klaus), is on board for the EU, the general public in almost every European country is becoming increasingly disenchanted with it. And the global warming reality struck a rock in the form of Climategate last year, and hasn't recovered. And the antismoking reality has encountered strong resistance in Holland and Spain and Greece and most of the old Eastern bloc countries.

It's far from over.

View the original article here