Earth Hour.

[Platyna]

I am not a ekofreak - I am eating meat and wearing skins of animals that we eat - cows, pigs etc. also I have hell alot of electonics in my home (most of them power saving and low-energy). Since the big, greedy companies, does everything to drag people off using Earth friendly power sources, we should do whatever we can to show that we care about the enviroment we live in. By turning the light off at 20:00 of your local time for one hour you may show that you care. Alot of people and institutions in your time zone will do the same thing, details are available at http://www.earthhour.org/.

All stupid remarks posted in here will result a warn level being increased and post being deleted.

Regards.

[Matt]

Instead of "saving" one hour of power it matters more if you use energy-saving lamps and abadon using standby-modes of your electronical stuff.

I wonder if it causes a overload of the local power networks when many people participate and switching the lights on again after that hour.

We had a stupid event like that in Germany too.
(Granted, we had no problems with our power supply then, but the big energy concerns whined about it.)

[Superkoop]

The lights in my house will probably be off at that time, since I should be at my grandparents house playing cards anyway.
But I'm all for people being less wasteful, which isn't only limited to electrical devices in your house, it can also apply to eating all the food on your plate, driving less and walking/riding bike more, recycling, building new houses more efficient that are designed to take advantage of the sun, shopping at local farmers markets, just living a more conservative lifestyle (by that I mean using less and being less wasteful).

I know for a fact that people here in the US are incredibly spoiled and in turn very wasteful. So many people think it's their right to own the biggest car they can find, eat only half the food on their plates throwing the rest away(and yet managing to still get fat), and use all the electricity they can.
I suppose a lot of it will only be stopped when gas is $20 a gallon, and electricity prices are multiplied by five.

Oh well,

Don't be stupid and have fun

[Platyna]

Instead of "saving" one hour of power it matters more if you use energy-saving lamps and abadon using standby-modes of your electronical stuff.

And that's what is this event for. Not to save energy for one hour, but to make people aware that they can do something and it counts.

I wonder if it causes a overload of the local power networks when many people participate and switching the lights on again after that hour.

We had a stupid event like that in Germany too.
(Granted, we had no problems with our power supply then, but the big energy concerns whined about it.)

This is not a stupid event, it is to remind people that if everyone will act to consume less energy then it will count.


Regards.

[Landon]

Norway uses it's own garbage to give there selves electricity, how cool is that. We use dams, coal, wind, and nuclear for our electricity. The dams and wind are eko-friendly though.

[Crush]

Unfortunately the norwegian concepts for energy generation don't scale well for countries with a higher population density. Alternative energy sources like water, wind or solar energy can supplement coal and nuclear energy but they can't replace them yet in most industrial countries.

But when you give me the choice between CO2 producing coal power plants and radioactive waste producing nuclear power plants I consider coal the lesser of two evils.

[Platyna]

I wonder why you think so Crush, if nuclear power facilities can generate alot more energy for the price of alot less waste, that not causes greenhouse effect, also there are very good results in nautralization of such waste

Regards.

[GonzoDark]

Norway uses it's own garbage to give there selves electricity, how cool is that. We use dams, coal, wind, and nuclear for our electricity. The dams and wind are eko-friendly though.

Denmark does that 2, in fact Denmark invented the windmill.

Platyna, do you really believe that we should build a power plant that have the capability of destroying us?

Maybe It takes time and energy to do it the old fashion way, but it is safe. I think we need to wait for a safer energy source.

Did you see that google went in Black yesterday? (today for some - it is 03:05 AM here in Denmark) They are not the first to think that idea; http://blackle.com/ where the first to use that idea. Really smart and that have saved us 535,985.105 Watt hours. <-- a lot of those ideas are going to safe us

// GonzoDark

[Superkoop]

Did you see that google went in Black yesterday? (today for some - it is 03:05 AM here in Denmark) They are not the first to think that idea; http://blackle.com/ where the first to use that idea. Really smart and that have saved us 535,985.105 Watt hours. <-- a lot of those ideas are going to safe us
// GonzoDark

I didn't think that black actually made monitors use less electricty. Well maybe CRTs, but as far as I know, LCDs would actually use more. (I forgot why though, I would have to try looking it up again.)

[Crush]

I wonder why you think so Crush, if nuclear power facilities can generate alot more energy for the price of alot less waste, that not causes greenhouse effect, also there are very good results in nautralization of such waste

Regards.

It's impossible to say which method causes "more waste" because the kind of waste is something completely different. One method releases CO2 into the atmosphere which is not directly harmful for humans but does indirect damage by influencing the world climate (although to what extend is still mostly speculative) while the other method creates radioactive waste which is easier to control but has the potential to cause severe damage to the health of thousands or even millions when accidently released into the environment - which happens more often than one might think: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ci ... _accidents

The problem is that the greenhouse effect caused by burning coal is just a temporary effect (from the geophysical point of view) while there is no way to get rid of the radioactive waste. That stuff doesn't loose a significant ammount of its radioactivity over millenia. Only parts of the radioactive waste can be reprocessed or neutralized and burying the rest somewhere underground isn't really a permanent solution.

[Platyna]

Modern utilization of radioactive waste doesn't meat digging them up. And incidents happens everywhere, no one tells you to build power facilities in the center of the city.

Regards.

[Habari]

don't know if im right but i think turning off some electronic equipment and then turn it on again, consumes more energie than to leave it on for the hour , because a lot of energy is needed to turn it on and less to just keep it going on.

[dariunas]

I think that applies to heating appliances and uses... To keep a heater on low for a period of time is better than whacking it on full to heat up a room quickly. e.g. if you pop out for 20 mins, turning the heat off and the room is cold when you get back, would have been best to leave it on low, it would retain a lot more heat...

...although this would depend on your home's insulation qualities as well. Turning on a light/pc for example - don't think it's quite the same. I think if there's a connection at all, then all, if not most of the power is used. Even for things on standby apparently

[Crush]

Normal light bulps require more electrical current when switched on, but only for a few milliseconds so it doesn't really matter.

The difference is a bit more notable for fluorescent lamps but it is minimal, too. It is a myth that these lamps take a half hour of their normal energy consumption everytime they are switched on (although you should still avoid to switch them on and off too frequently because it has a negative impact on their lifetime when they are switched on again before they are completely cooled off)

[dariunas]

Did you see that google went in Black yesterday? (today for some - it is 03:05 AM here in Denmark) They are not the first to think that idea; http://blackle.com/ where the first to use that idea. Really smart and that have saved us 535,985.105 Watt hours. <-- a lot of those ideas are going to safe us
// GonzoDark

I didn't think that black actually made monitors use less electricty. Well maybe CRTs, but as far as I know, LCDs would actually use more. (I forgot why though, I would have to try looking it up again.)

lol - you're right. The idea behind it was that everyone would turn their lights off from 8-9pm on a date... (I can't remember the date, think it was last Wednesday. The actual power difference of displaying the screen in black wouldn't have any effect, (Google said this themselves on the information page about it...)