Anyone doing it? 8pm your time, today. T - 20 mins here. I'll be turning off the lights, but not my computer, cos I'm too scared to sit in the pitch black on my own!

doh, link - http://www.earthhour.org/ the website's been down quite a bit today though, lots of traffic I guess

Nah.

its a problem for the next generation thankyouverymuch

Pretty sure that isn't going to do anything noticeable.

Nope. In fact, I'm gonna turn on the electricity in my abandoned grandparent's house (they are in Florida), turn on their electricity sucking entertainment center, and play Rock Band for 8-9 hours.

God bless America.

I spent half my spring break camping. I figure that pretty much covers it. Also I sleep a ton. So....nope. Sorry.

I did like this though:

What will you do when the lights are off? We have lots of ideas.

Haha!

it seems more than 1 in 300 canadians have signed up. we are being hailed as "earth hour crazy".
as for canada i'm pretty sure it'll make a difference. with most of canada's major cities taking part they estimate hundreds of thousands of KWH will be saved in just one hour of lights out. that's a lot.
every mcdonalds in canada will be turning off their golden arches saving over 10,000KWH.

I'm going to drive around town in my SUV with a megaphone advertising earth hour.

Why the hell do they need them on in the first place?
Thats just... dumb. Like Stalin being called a hero because he doesn't kill anyone for an hour.
Just a note, This is internet.

:downs:

My ****ing shows are on. Screw that.


I think it's pretty retarded anyways. What with the whole, not going to change anything and just annoy people that don't care that you participated in Earth Hour.

We are putting our kids to bed then, which is storytime and all that. Need lights for story time. Mine will still be on.

I don't give a ****. Lights are staying on.

Mine will stay on. I can't take a shower in the dark.

I'll be working.

can i turn the lights back on yet i cant see the lightswitch

Do you have access to your workplace's fuse box? You could still participate.

Happy.

Or you could help other people participate.





I know the first one is supposed to be for telephone wires, but what's the worst that could happen?

What's it for? If it means I get to see stars, I'm all for it.

Reducing the average consumers electric bill by a miniscule amount, I guess.

Probably to stop global warming or something like that...

I like that earthhour web site design

That would be within the scope of this effort, but for it to happen your municipality would probably have to turn off the streetlights. Otherwise it would be no different from going out at 3 AM or so in terms of the stars you would see.

I'll turn off the lights and unplug the laptop. The latter of those is actually pointless, but what the hell.

Treehuggers. Meh.

I turned on extra lights, ran the dryer empty and put the oven in self-clean. Your move, earth.

it's a great idea, but the power stations will probably run at the same capacity anyway and aren't really in a position where they could regulate the supply and adapt quick enough to make a difference.

now, if they purposely reduced the supply and made people's lights go off...that'd be cool

(this is coming from a guy who is working on an experiment that requires a whole frence nuclear power station to run )

i was going to turn on all the lights in my house...
>.>

but i forgot and i was somewhere that i'd have no lights to turn on

Does doing the opposite during Earth Hour make you cool or something?

We had Earth Hour last night, turned everything off at my mates' place a few hours into a bbq and poker night. Was surprisingly entertaining sitting there having a few bevvies in the dark.

Several days ago, we had a huge powercut all across town for a few hours and it was the most fun few hours we'd had in a long time. We hung outside our flat in a little courtyard and bantered a bit with complete strangers, and then went and got some beers and candles and sat up playing cards. Usually, we sit in our rooms playing games or watching stuff (or posting on inane forums), but we had a lot more fun without electricity and were genuinely a little dissapointed when the power came back on.

To all of you that are all 'waah, Earth Hour is pointless therefore I'm going to do the opposite haha i'm hilarious oh the irony (there is no global warming!!)'.. The point of this is not that we can save the world by turning everything off for an hour, the point is that this is a gesture. A minute's silence isn't going to bring anyone back, it's essentially pointless but it's an important gesture. So is this. It is showing that we can make a difference, and challenging the pathetic apathy that most of you display. It's entirely a volunteer event and yet with just one hour we can still make a blip on energy use. It's making an important link between the seemingly unfeasably 'big' problems like energy use and global waming, and your personal day-to-day life.

You can easily live for one hour without electricity at all, so you can easily cut down your day-to-day electricity usage as a whole and you can easily make a difference. Except for your pathetic apathy, for which you don't really deserve electricity at all.

Actually, I think I'd be pretty pissed if the datacenter where my server is didn't have electricity for an hour. As would most of the Massassians here :p

Earth Hour only specifically mentions turning lights off, doesn't say anything about computers and servers.

It's about turning off unnecessary usage of resources. In the vast majority of cases you will have more lights on than you need and even when you do need lights you'll be using more wattage than you need.

A webserver would be regarded as a necessary use of power.

Treehugger kept on saying it's symbolic.

I did have my lights off, however, but I forgot Saturday was the day.

I had the lights off so I can enjoy Vegas 2 better.

the itnernet is not a good use of power hunter gatherer bretheren

I sit in the dark with the lights off most of the time anyway.

I would think the effort put into promoting Earth Hour would have been better spent advocating fluorescent energy-saving bulbs but I guess I'm just funny that way.

Wouldn't a better gesture be financing solar power plants*, or thwarting car manufacturers relationships with oil companies? My point is that we have a level of consumption that isn't being matched by the resource we're consuming. If we switch to a more renewable (relatively infinite) source, we wouldn't have to make empty 'gestures' towards conservation. Instead we could have 'consumption wars' amongst ourselves, or 'send a volt to 3rd world country' day.

I prefer action to gestures. The problem is that our leaders would rather see gestures and sign wagging become popular before we ever hold them accountable.

* - This article fails to mention that, while initially "3 times" as expensive, solar electricity becomes infinitely cheaper over time, relying only on reusable storage cells which should become cheaper over time, as well.

so i have to care about the environment over say, paying my electricity bills?

I go without electricity in my apartment 16 hours a day. I don't need to cut down anymore.

And some people turning off electricity for one hour on a rare occasion isn't going to do jack. If you want to do something helpful, fund something that will give more efficient power sources.