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Comment by lukasLansky | Hacker News Reader

The same argument goes for Mother's day. Why be nice for one day? Does it really make a difference? :-)

The value is symbolic. Participation is a reminder and a statement.

But how valuable is that sort of symbolic gesture? If it actually makes people in the 1st world congratulate themselves that they've made a difference by flicking a switch, and then continue as normal as if everything is fine, then it might even have negative value. I don't agree with much of the article, it's quite wooly, but this point was the most valid/interesting part and I think you might have missed it.

I have never thought about this as an actual action against excesive energy consumption -- moreover, I am surprised that anyone could. It's just one hour.

Some years ago I lived in a student's dormitory (a big and tall building), and there were people who organized similar project every year: they negotiated with students that only some rooms in given hour would be lighten up. They made it so the building showed some image (lightbulb, for example). In this case, no one (I hope) thought that participants want to lower energy footprint of the building. It was all about a nearby highway and all the drivers.

Absolutely nobody (for all reasonable definitions of nobody) believes that turning the lights off for one hour has any quantitative impact on energy usage. What it does is remind us that for the other 364 days of the years, we need to be thinking about energy policy. Efficiency, conservation, and low carbon/low polluting energy sources are important as we grow to 10 Billion on this planet, AND the third world starts to consume energy closer to the levels of the developed nations on a per capita basis.

Actually, anyone that knows how turning off a large load unevenly and turning a large load back on affects the electricity grid knows perfectly well that doing that necessitates increasing energy production.

The short explanation is that large simultaneous changes in the electricity grid will create shocks which make it difficult to maintain the voltage at every point of the grid. Changing electricity distribution is not actually that fast country-wide, so the electricity company must put the largest possible load into the grid. When it is randomly reducing that is the load that was on the grid before the reduction, when the load is increasing that is a certain percentage above the point it's increasing to, generally ~20% more. Get it wrong and large amounts of electrical equipment will be confronted with a way too low, or way too high voltage on the sockets. Low is bad (stuff doesn't start, washers get "stuck", ...), equipment gets damaged because it can't be kept operating, which may cause fast on-off cycles that destroy electrical motors pretty quickly. Too high is VERY bad, for obvious reasons. The way to compensate for that is to put more energy in the grid so that every distribution box is capable of getting the local lines up to 240V, and destroy the excess at local distribution stations. If the load is very predictable that energy destruction can be kept to very low values, if it's not, you have to raise them.

So to make the farce of earth hour complete, electricity companies prepare for earth hour in Australia (earth hour's home turf) by ... increasing the output of local coal power plants, the worst offender for global warming ... Granted, the difference is probably small, but earth hour is definitely making things worse, not better.

You just can't make this up. Earth hour is a publicity stunt, meant to channel money and attention into it's parent publication, nothing more. It should be treated like any other pop-up ad.

I wasn't suggesting that most people think they're making a quantitative impact by flicking a switch, give me some credit for goodness sake. Did you not notice how I defined the subject of my comment symbolic gesture? I'll make my point again, since you missed it the first time. I was suggesting that by flicking the switch, and participating in the grand symbolic gesture of Earth Hour, people feel like they've achieved something, and go right back to their incredibly wasteful 1st world life style feeling like they've scratched their eco-itch for another few days/weeks/months/whatever. As a tactic I think its shallow and weak. Lifestyle changes need to be baked into the fabric of society and dictated to us if we're to see any meaningful change, frankly.

How valuable are symbolic gestures? Pretty damn valuable - humans are emotional beasts, and a lot of the time its just as important to get them to feel than to think.

Well, if on Mother's Day we were actually hurting them, I think the same argument would in fact apply.

The article doesn't succeed, in my opinion, in making the argument that more CO2 is produced.

"during Earth Hour, any significant drop in electricity demand will entail a reduction in CO2 emissions during the hour, but it will be offset by the surge from firing up coal or gas stations to restore electricity supplies afterward."

Note: Offset. Not negated.

"And the cozy candles that many participants will light, which seem so natural and environmentally friendly, are still fossil fuels—and almost 100 times less efficient than incandescent light bulbs. Using one candle for each switched-off bulb cancels out even the theoretical CO2 reduction; using two candles means that you emit more CO2."

So if you use a candle and if you use more than one candle for every single light switched off, then you're emitting more CO2.

The author also doesn't specify if he's counting bulbs that were already switched off. There are dozens of bulbs in my house, but only a few on at a time.

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