Earth Hour: Keeping People Who Are In The Dark In Literal Darkness

If you're participating in Earth Hour tonight, you're stupid.

Harsh, I know, but it's true. Global warming is a steaming load of crap, an alarmist cover for Marxist wealth redistribution schemes. That's all there is to it.

What makes Earth Hour particularly dumb is that it is like those gasoline boycott proposals you find in your email whenever the price of fuel is higher than someone would like it to be. "Don't buy any fuel from X vendor today!" is the same thing as "turn off stuff you don't need for one hour tonight!" What will it do? Nothing... if the supposed purpose is to combat the earth's dynamic climate. It will do one thing however: you will save a tiny bit of money.

There it is. Turning your unused electronic stuff off will save you some money. Turning your electronic stuff off more often will save you more money. Turning on everything you have will not affect the environment, but it will cost you money. Money. Do you want to save it or spend it on power you're not even getting any enjoyment or utility out of?

A month ago I read about energy phantoms, which are simply devices that consume small amounts of power even when not in use. Any electronic device that has a "stand by" mode does this, as well as other devices and power adapters (like your cell phone charger) that do not. Computers are loaded with stand by devices, such as routers, sleeping monitors, printers, my microsoft mouse that has a little red LED light, etc. I already had my entire computer system plugged into a power strip, so out of curiosity, I began switching off not just the computer, but the power strip also.

My next power bill showed a $3 decline from the previous month. My home is heated with natural gas, so temperature does not factor in to my power consumption expenses during the winter. As such my power consumption is fairly consistent because it is based only on what I do with the electronic devices in my home. $3 each month is how much I was throwing away on a computer I wasn't using while that power was being consumed.

It is a small amount, I admit. But why pay for something I'm not getting any use and/or enjoyment out of? After seeing those results, I put other device clusters in my home on power strips that I now switch off when not in use: my stereo, satellite radio, DVD player, 50" plasma screen television, etc. My next power bill should arrive any day now.

I do this all the time, every day, as needed. People doing the same thing for one hour tonight won't accomplish anything except to feel good about having done exactly nothing. Even if they did behave like I do every single day, the supposed reason for doing so is weak: would they continue to conserve power if (when, really) it becomes known that this whole global warming thing is a hoax? No, they won't. They'll go right back to feeding energy phantoms. But if the motivation is to save money, when does that ever get proven wrong? Why would you ever stop doing it?

Have fun being in the dark tonight. I'm going to spend my time doing stuff that makes sense.