Earth Hour 2012

[Griffin NoName]

31st March 2012 -

Earth Hour is from 8.30 – 9.30pm where we can joini the WWF and 1.8 billion other people across the world in 138 countries, in switching off the lights for an hour.

[Opsa]

This is a very cool thing. Thank you, Griffin.

We have participated in the past. It was a fun thing to hang out with friends in candlelight. One year we lined our sidewalk with candles and just sat outside and enjoyed the air.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

But I use ultra efficient LEDs at home...

[Griffin NoName]

Ultra efficient is not zero.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Ahh, but candles burn CO₂ too...  

Edit: I found someone who did the math regarding candles and it turns out that for the equivalent amount of light it creates 10 times more CO₂ than an incandescent bulb (not CFLs not LEDs). Obviously nobody actually gets the same lumen output with candles, usually a lightbulb is replaced by one to three candles, so according to this guy's math:

A candle generates 13 lumens and generates 10.7g of CO₂ per hour.
A 40W incandescent lightbulb generates 500 lumens and 42.3g CO2 per hour.

IOW four (4) candles consume the same CO₂ (and give 1/38th lumens) as one 40@ incandescent light bulb.

If you use a CFL the same lumen output uses 14W or 14.8g of CO₂ per hour or ~ 1.5 candles.
If you use a LED bulb the same lumen output uses 7W or 7.4g of CO₂ per hour or 0.74 candles.
--
I understand the symbolism but if you really want to be ecological you would have to use only one or two candles in the house and no other electronic appliances at the time. Better, if you are using AC or heating that will create waaay more carbon than the lights, and turning that off only delays consumption as temperature regulation will have to run to compensate the time off.

No easy answers I'm afraid. 

[Griffin NoName]

I intend to sit in the dark.

[pieces o nine]

But will you curse the darkness?     

[Griffin NoName]

Possibly.

Actually it's an old Jewish joke.

      How many Jewish mothers does it take to change a light bulb?

      None. I'll sit in the dark.

You have to read it with a Jewish accent and the martyr mother intonation - it doesn't really transcribe well.

[Aggie]

If one uses beeswax candles, it's a renewable carbon source with fairly minimal processing required (for greatest efficiency, process the wax on a beeswax stove).

In all likelihood, I'll spend Earth Hour at work, burning fossil fuels to keep the masses fed.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

That is carbon neutral if you gathered from a walking distance, and processed the wax yourself, otherwise you have to account for the carbon of their transportation and manufacture.
---
Being carbon neutral is mighty hard, you can try to lower your footprint but doing it well is -again- mighty hard (local farmers markets, little or no animal protein and poultry or fish instead of pork or beef, etc). Heck even using a bicycle might create more CO₂ depending on the distance if you use a hybrid or electric vehicle instead (depending on the charging source), and that doesn't account for the carbon burned to get the raw materials, manufacture and transportation before the goods are in your possession.

[Aggie]

Anything you eat that has been produced by modern agricultural methods takes gobs of petroleum to produce.  We'd be much more efficient if we ran on petrol instead of food.

[Swatopluk]

There was an (even then already old) ad in one of my German school textbooks. Not sure which company originally used it but it went: If you were a car, you could not afford yourself.
Below that was the explanation that the new generation of car engines were so much more fuel-efficient and how few calories per mile they burned compared to a human being.

Iirc large ship diesels are the most efficient there are in terms of fuel consumed per weight moved.
Btw, the emergency power plant in the one of the two Western Berlin broadcasting companies (SFB, the other was the RIAS) up to the mid 70ies was a UBoat diesel from WW2. No idea how that got there but it was obviously worth its money. In the first years the Soviet controlled Berliner Rundfunk used the building and the Western magistrate at times cut off the external access to electricity, so they had to run the whole operation on that engine. And iirc it was not thrown out finally because it was broken but because it was either no longer needed or replaced by something more modern (and bigger).