Earth Hour is Phoney, Energy Hour is Genuine: how schools can help children appreciate modern energy supplies, and sidestep the odious conspiracies around climate change.

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 If people must (and some seem determined to) engage in global displays of the same thinking at the same time on their clocks, then Energy Hour has much to commend it over the profoundly unpleasant and dubious Earth Hour as promoted by wealthy fundraisers such as the WWF.  For them, and others, fear means funds and they clearly don’t have enough yet to give all their executives incomes in the top percentile – that 1% targeted, curiously enough, by some other left-wing agitators as being somehow the bad guys. [Hat-tip – all the links in this paragraph are to posts by Donna Laframboise.]  In brief, Earth Hour is phoney because it is based on shoddy science, and is part of an intense propaganda campaign aimed ultimately at winning political control on unprecedented scales using 'climate change', currently, as the preferred Trojan Horse to get into people's minds and lives.  There are at least three alternative 'Hours' being suggested as defences to this insidious power-grab:

(1) The International Climate Science Coalition  is promoting 'Energy Hour':

Ottawa, Canada, March 28, 2012: “Earth Hour is yet another symbol of how climate activists have hijacked the environmental movement,” said Tom Harris, executive director of the International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC) which is headquartered in Ottawa, Canada. “Most people do not realize that, when they turn out their lights for sixty minutes on March 31, they are not supporting science-based environmental protection. Participants in Earth Hour are unwittingly helping prop up one of the most threatening scientific hoaxes in history—the idea that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from human activities are known to be causing dangerous global warming and other problematic climate change.”

 Anthony Watts (WUWT ) has picked up on this and that will ensure wider coverage.  The ICSC are taking the following approach:

‘“If we are going to demonstrate solidarity with those who lack adequate energy supplies, then we need to really feel what they feel, not just turn off a few lights,” said ICSC energy issues advisor, Bryan Leyland of Auckland, New Zealand. “Earth Hour should be renamed Energy Hour and citizens encouraged to use as little energy as possible for 60 minutes so that they can get a sense of what societies without adequate power are actually like. For this is exactly where we are headed if governments continue to yield to climate activists and try to replace reliable, base load generation with expensive, intermittent and diffuse energy sources such as wind and solar power.”

(2) Tim Blair in Australia is suggesting an 'Hour of Power': 'Earth Hour is with us again this Saturday night, so you’ll want to start planning.
For your normal Earth Hour types, this is a simple procedure. Just turn all your lights off at 8.30pm and sit there thinking that you’re Jesus. But for those of us in the Hour of Power movement, a proper celebration requires substantial commitment.
Just follow my essential power party guide and you’ll be set.
First, it’s symbolically vital that you turn on every single light for the appointed hour. Sounds easy enough, but there is always a sneaky bulb out on the back porch or in the garage. Be vigilant. Don’t let even the smallest or least visible globe escape illumination.
Toddlers are especially useful for this. “Just preparing for Earth Hour,” a friend texted before 2009’s event. “Max is loving running through the house turning all our switches on. We think he’s really learning something important!”'

Jo Nova has picked up on this and that will ensure wider coverage down-under.  She has also added a few ideas of her own to it (with a little fun with 'Hello Earthians!', picking up on a demented speech by the leader of the Green Party there):

'Hello Earthians! It’s time to say thank you to Edison, to Faraday and Maxwell, it’s time to celebrate the Gift of Light.

Saturday night at 8.30 – 9.30pm this week is the Hour of Power

(Don’t confuse this with the splinter group celebrations called Earth Hour, where people sit in the dark –  so they can appreciate the glory of luminosity come 9.31).

The Glory! We are the lucky generation with light at the flick of a switch

In the hundred thousand years since homo sapiens came to be, people have fled bondage, wars, small-pox, dysentery, died from minor scratches, starved to death, been ravaged by lions, stricken by cholera, and survived the odd ninety thousand year stretches of hypothermic, abysmal ice age.  We lived in the darkness for 99,900 years, cowering in corners, listening to drips, waiting for the sun.

There is only one type of Freedom – and all else is servitude, slavery or tyranny.

It’s your chance to show your commitment to fighting the forces of darkness. Be brave, stand up to the people who want to tell you what kind of globe you are allowed to buy. Feed the world by helping to boost global CO2 to lift crop yields and fertilize farms all over the planet. Children are hungry in Haiti and, since CO2 is a well mixed gas, sooner or later, you will be helping them.

(3) The Competitive Enterprise Institute is promoting 'Human Achievement Hour':
‘On March 31, some people will be sitting in the dark to express their "vote" for action on global climate change. Instead, you can join CEI and the thousands of people around the world who will be celebrating Human Achievement Hour (HAH). Leave your lights on to express your appreciation for the inventions and innovations that make today the best time to be alive and the recognition that future solutions require individual freedom not government coercion.’


It seems to me there are two basic options if you want to do something about 'Earth Hour' other than go along with it (and three, if you would prefer to ignore it completely):

 Option 1 Turn off lights etc as a symbol of concern and compassion for those who do not have this wonderful resource so readily available.

Option 2 Turn on lights etc to show how much you appreciate them, and that you do not take them for granted while others lack this wonderful resource.

Either option could be used to motivate study of the great benefits we have gained from mass power generation, and how these benefits can grow hand-in-hand with economic development.  The recent surge in material progress in China provides dramatic illustration of this, as they are said to be building coal-fired power stations at the rate of one a week.  No doubt, they will be displaced in due course but in the meantime, just as they did in the West, they can provide the enormous benefit of affordable, reliable electricity supplies as a stepping-stone to better futures.

Now, I must confess I am more inclined to turn all my lights etc on out of revulsion at such as WWF telling me to do otherwise.  I regard them as having made a transition from admirable to reprehensible, and anything I can do to diss them is appealing.  But these are not noble sentiments.  On the other hand, the examples above give plenty of scope to devise an Energy Hour/Day/Week etc etc that would be more edifying if you wish to take part in such activities, or if you are required to by, for example, state control over your school.

Note added 31 March 2012.  WUWT has that satellite pic of North Korea, and re-publishing of McKitrick's classic rebuttal of the sloppy, regressive thinking promoted by the like of the WWF for Earth Hour. Quote 'Earth Hour celebrates ignorance, poverty and backwardness. By repudiating the greatest engine of liberation it becomes an hour devoted to anti-humanism.'

Note added 3 April 2012.  'Globe' as used above is Australian English for 'light-bulb'.


Note added 18 April 2012.  Here is a letter from a primary school announcing Earth Hour to a parent. A parent who was rightly outraged at the naive nonsense contained in the letter, and the deliberate intention it conveyed of indoctrinating the childen.