Saturday March 23, 2013 Turn Off Your Lights for Earth Hour

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) http://worldwildlife.org/pages/earth-hour
started Earth Hour back in 2007.

Towns, cities, and individuals are invited to turn OFF their lights for an hour at 8:30PM on Saturday March 23rd.

It might be a great night for star watching, or playing with flashlights.

Thanks for the post, very cool idea. As a bonus I now have a reason to buy more batteries and lights

Nice info. Any info on what percentage of the population participates?

if anyone actually turns off town lights, etc, star watching would be easier w/o all the normal light pollution.

I traditionally start this thread every year, and it pretty much always goes over like a lead balloon; you'd think CPFers would jump at the opportunity to practice their approach to a power outage, but usually the only comments I get are political in nature.

But if anyone lurking wants to give this a try, I highly recommend it - when the power goes out, do you know which lights you'll use in which application in your house? Or who will get which light? Do you know where the local news station is on your radio? Have you actually practiced/tried any of these things? Now's your chance! For an hour you can turn everything off and see what actually works and what doesn't in practice. If you value *being prepared* and want to know ahead of time what to do the next time the power goes out, this is the crash course you've been waiting for. I'll be relaxing with my family under the ceiling-bounced warm-tint glow, listening to some entertaining talk radio..

StarHalo said:

I traditionally start this thread every year, and it pretty much always goes over like a lead balloon; you'd think CPFers would jump at the opportunity to practice their approach to a power outage, but usually the only comments I get are political in nature.

But if anyone lurking wants to give this a try, I highly recommend it - when the power goes out, do you know which lights you'll use in which application in your house? Or who will get which light? Do you know where the local news station is on your radio? Have you actually practiced/tried any of these things? Now's your chance! For an hour you can turn everything off and see what actually works and what doesn't in practice. If you value *being prepared* and want to know ahead of time what to do the next time the power goes out, this is the crash course you've been waiting for. I'll be relaxing with my family under the ceiling-bounced warm-tint glow, listening to some entertaining talk radio..

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LOL

Preaching to the choir at my house at least. We're lit up like a Griswald Christmas during the black-outs we get around here regularly.



Good advice though.

Yeah, I'll be participating!

Its more awareness than the actual CO2 savings made over 1hr, let's face it, we could all do with being a bit more 'environmentally friendly'.

Personally I hate light pollution, and would like to see more participation so that we can see the stars at night.

Our local paper did a short story essentially announcing the event, that is how I became aware of it. I haven't seen any other announcement anywhere.

I'm wondering, how many others have seen some media coverage. Perhaps it is one of those things that the news will report after the fact.

I'm thinking that as a flashlight group of individuals we can promote it somehow.

Poppy said:

Our local paper did a short story essentially announcing the event, that is how I became aware of it. I haven't seen any other announcement anywhere.

I'm wondering, how many others have seen some media coverage. Perhaps it is one of those things that the news will report after the fact.

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One out of every seven people on Earth, in 4,100 cities, celebrated Earth Hour last year by turning out their lights - it's kinda popular. This will be my fifth year taking part.

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Some ideas for your one-hour power outage:

The Battery-Powered Radio: Once you're in an actual power outage, there's no TV or internet to get updates from - How many people are affected by this outage? Is the cause over, or is another problem headed your way? Are there special instructions for staying put or evacuations? If you have a battery-powered radio and you know where your local news station is, you can remain informed up-to-the-minute without skipping a beat. You might get better reception in one area of your living space than another, or one station might provide more updates than another; you won't know until you experiment - it's a good thing you're doing a practice power outage to find out!

When you've found your news station, you probably won't want to listen to it nonstop for this drill, so tune around, see what's out there. There are lots of talk and entertainment shows you probably don't know about, and over on the AM band, you can receive stations from many hundreds of miles away, see what's playing in other states (AM 850 KOA out of Denver can be heard throughout most of the US, they'll be playing a Rockies vs Padres game..) You can have the radio on in the background while you're doing anything else, so find something fun and enjoy.

Board/Card Games: Been a while since everyone sat at the table and played a game? A lantern or ceiling-bounced light and it's on..

Fondue: No utilities needed for a steno burner; grab some chocolate and some fruit/cookies/whatever and dip in. Everyone feels a lot better about power outages once you get chocolate involved..

Glow Sticks for the Kids: A few minutes in the dark will show you how completely useless glow sticks are for just about anything (something I learned during an actual power outage!) but kids love 'em and are endlessly entertained by them. A fine distraction since they're cheap and don't last that long anyway.

Family Photo Album: A nice quiet time to flip through family pictures by the lantern/EDC light.

Stargazing: You'd be amazed how much better you can see stars just by having your own local lighting out, and not everyone has time/realizes you have to sit out for at least ten minutes before your eyes truly adjust. Be sure to keep count of satellites and shooting stars.

StarHalo,
Was it you who recommeded a very low power radio as compared to my 8 C cell mini boombox in another "emergency preparedness" thread?

Poppy said:

StarHalo,
Was it you who recommeded a very low power radio as compared to my 8 C cell mini boombox in another "emergency preparedness" thread?

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Yes; boomboxes that take a load of cells usually burn through them in just a few hours, not very handy if your power outage goes into the next day. A quality modern emergency radio [like the $39 CCrane Solar Observer or $13 Sony ICF-F10] will take only two or three cells and run for literally days nonstop on them, a much better deal..

OMG StarHalo, I clicked on the Sony, and that brought me back to the days when I carried a Two Transistor radio, that ran forever. I think on a 9V battery.
I'll have to look around to see if we still have something like that, or I'll pick up something like that. I agree with your sentiments, when the grid goes down, a radio is your connection to the outside world beyond a few hundred feet of your house.

Brigadier said:

+1000 to that.

Now, on occasion, we have blackout night at my house, but not for the sake of 'mommy earth'. Good grief.

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I don't get it. Why do you not give a toss about the environment? From the way I see it there is some pretty good evidence pointing to some kind of anthropogenic 'global/climate/change/warming'. Regardless of your opinion on the matter, in the long run, what's the harm in lowering the amount of **** we're putting into the environment (CO2, plastics etc)?

To truly support this "earth hour," one would need to leave the flashlights off, too. After all, they consume electricity that must be resupplied. You're either running your charger extra the next day, or buying primaries that require manufacture (which uses natural resources and energy, and produces pollutants). So the real "earth hour" supporters will be sitting in the dark.

I ain't no hippy don't believe earth hour does that much. But I understand it as more 'awareness'.
Us older folk are set in our ways but I see the next generation, like my 9 and 12 year old, understanding genuine environmental issues. They are the ones that will have to live on this planet and we at least need to do something to assist.



Sent from mobile device

- Some localities going dark this year: Sydney opera house and Harbour bridge, Petronas towers in Kuala Lumpur, Singapore's Marina Bay Sands, Tokyo tower, CN Tower, Taipei 101, the Bird's Nest in Beijing, the Gateway of India, the world's tallest building the Burj Khalifa, the Ancient Citadel of Erbil in Kurdistan, Table Mountain, the Bosphorus Bridge, the Eiffel Tower, the Brandenburg Gate, the UK Houses of Parliament, Buckingham palace, Times Square, the Rockefeller Centre, the Empire State Building, Niagara Falls, Los Angeles airport, and the Las Vegas Strip.

- In India, the Gateway of India lights will be switched off at the same time as four villages in Madhya Pradesh receive solar lanterns, the first form of electrical energy they will ever use.

- Ritz-Carlton hotels around the world will celebrate the appointed hour with various candlelight-only cocktail events and guided stargazing.

- If you don't have your family entertainment yet, ToysRUs has a 30% off coupon for some board and card games when you order online and pick-up in-store; Uno $4, Monopoly $9, Scrabble $14..

Quiksilver said:

I wouldn't mind street lights being motion-sensor activated in some way, as when I travel via plane, most--if not all--of the light pollution in a suburban area at night is street lights.

All vehicles are equipped with adequate lighting systems to not require street lights now.

I'd be supportive of fully integrated bicycle and pedestrian lighting systems, rather than leaving street lights on when no one is around.

Earth Hour? No thanks!

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QuickSilver,
You really have a few good thoughts on this. Perhaps events like this are most effective at getting people to think "out of the box"

gravelmonkey said:

Yeah, I'll be participating!

Its more awareness than the actual CO2 savings made over 1hr, let's face it, we could all do with being a bit more 'environmentally friendly'.

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GravelMonkey,
Thanks for the support.

StarHalo said:

One out of every seven people on Earth, in 4,100 cities, celebrated Earth Hour last year by turning out their lights - it's kinda popular. This will be my fifth year taking part.

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<big snip>

Stargazing: You'd be amazed how much better you can see stars just by having your own local lighting out, and not everyone has time/realizes you have to sit out for at least ten minutes before your eyes truly adjust. Be sure to keep count of satellites and shooting stars.

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StarHalo,
Thanks for bringing so much information about this event

I pulled out my little transistor radio. It runs on three AA batteries. Its in a mylar bag for the apocolypse... geez I don't even know how to spell that. I think I'll see if it will run on an 18650.

And the drill is already paying off before it's begun - I got out my emergency radio and the pair of C cells I keep outside of it (so they don't leak), both of which normally sit out in the open atop a chest of drawers. Lo and behold, there's spots of rust on the bottom of the C cells. How is this possible if they just sit by themselves out in the open? A bit of detective work revealed the cause - I normally set my drink not far from where the cells are, and apparently the condensation from my drinks has at one time or another left a tiny rivulet of water that slowly crept over to where the batteries are. Had I not checked them for tomorrow night, who knows how long they would have sat there rotting from the bottom..

Practice pays!

Brigadier said:

Um, yeah. Whatever. You enviro-wackos can cry the sky is falling all you want, but when Al Gore sells his network to Al Jazeera, who is financed by OIL, I call BS. It's all a scam to control people. I just chose not to fall for it.

I never said I was against using resources wisely, but quite frankly, all the shrill lecturing from these types is very old.



And I worship the Creator, not the creation.

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Im not crying. I just keep my eyes open on whats going on around on this world. Have noticed that since we started recording the weather some hundred years ago. The most extremes has been the last 10 years. The heat record gets a a little higher every year. Cold fronts creeps further down europe than usual and kills pepole not used to living in freezing conditions. Storms are getting bigger. Ect, ect The list goes on. Might be coincident, but i dont think so. I did too call BS on AL at first. But after seeing the climate is slowly changing for the worse. Well im not so sure its BS anymore. Better safe than sorry..

If it's sponsored by oil producing powerful pepole, why do they want us to burn LESS oil? It would be like coca cola went out in public and said: "sugar makes you fat, drink less cola." Makes less sense than religion. (Nothing controls pepole more than religion...).

According to the bible, we are put here to watch over the earth. Or am i wrong?

I'm shocked this thread hasn't been locked yet or at least the mods can come around to straighten some people out.
:whoopin:

Guys, the OP tried to start a thread on a topic that would be of interest to us. Funny how so many of us get excited about unintentional blackouts and start thread about them but when this subject comes around it has to get political.
Take it to the underground and leave this thread alone before you sink it.