Shock and/or horror. Greens and the media alike are overstating the effectiveness of Earth Hour. It's fashionable in the media nowadays to be "green". Every other day there's "news" about climate change, whether it be the ice caps melting, or some species allegedly dying as a result of it.
So, it should come as no surprise that when "reputable" news papers such as the Sydney Morning Herald posted "before and after" photos of Earth Hour that the photos were, to say the least, overstated. Anyone who knows a little about photography can tell that the first photo is far more over-exposed than the second photo. If you look at the lights in Hyde park (which were left on during Earth Hour), you can see that they are far more prominent in the before photo when compared to the after. In fact, the Creative Director of a global marketing company describes the exposure difference as "drastic". Matt didn't know that the before photo was actually taken two days before the after shot, when weather conditions made the difference even more dramatic.
This year, for Earth Hour, I decided it would be a great idea to show the greens how ridiculous they are.
And it looks like I wasn't the only one. Someone else took me up on the challenge...
His lights went on about 15 minutes into Earth Hour.
I was pleased that there was a significant number of people pointing at our apartments during the hour. Looks like this is one protest that actually got noticed.
Comments
I was proud not to take part in this event, for which I have nothing but contempt and scorn. Not only does it demonstrate nothing and achieve nothing, it allows these zealots and alarmists to engage in back-slapping piety and sanctimoniousness, and to claim that Australians are all committed to "solving" global warming.
One wonders how this stupid event attracted so much publicity. I simply refuse to believe that anyone in a city which participated in Earth Hour was unaware of the global warming "problem." So the argument of drawing attention to it fails. And any carbon emissions which were "saved" by people turning their lights off for an hour must surely have been made up by people driving onto mountains to look at the view, or by helicopters flying around to take photos for the news.
I think the key message as Andrew Bolt has noted is that this event, which was highly publicised, achieved almost nothing -- and yet the government wants 60% cuts to emissions for every day life. This alarmism is going to hurt, and it's going to hurt badly.
Oh, and I love the lights. Fantastic idea. I should buy some for next Earth Hour...
I plan to run a competition for the next earth hour. It'll be along the lines of 'take a photo of your place', and the most spectacular photo wins.
With any luck, I'll be able to get some sort of sponsor, so we can give away real prizes.