A Brief History…

UPDATED at end of post.

The news media has stuffed us with a surfeit of naive, boosterish articles about the importance of Earth Hour, that self-congratulatory expression of feel-good environmental chic and global warming hype.

Leave it to the relentlessly factual Anthony Watts to illuminate what really happened in the eco-center of environmentalism, California: Nothing. Zip. Zilch, zero, nada.

According to power consumption records from the California Independent System Operator, the much-heralded Earth Hour made no perceptible difference in energy consumption. Below is a graph illustrating the great non-effect of Earth Hour:

Watts writes:

If there was a big effect from Earth Hour, you’d see a step event like the street lights at 7AM as everybody turned off their home lights in California at 8:30PM (2030). Plus, the greens don’t seem to realize that no power plants get switched off, so there’s really no CO2 savings. The power plants are run based on demand forecast. Short term spikes from well intentioned stunts really don’t make a blip of difference to CO2 emissions.

Earth Hour is a failure in California and according to Richard North at the EU Referendum, a failure in Britain too.

It’s nice to see some real fact-checking taking place in the blogosphere, while the media’s faithful acolytes of the Church Of Global Warming continue to emit information pollution.

What did I do during Earth Hour? I was busy replacing old fluorescent lights at home. I celebrate the modern conveniences of life, and reject meaningless, atavistic stunts like Earth Hour — regardless of how wholeheartedly some people comply with it.

North Korea is so enviro-friendly, it observes Earth Hour continually!

UPDATE: Some in the media get it about this political event.
From the UK Telegraph

It’s time for “Earth Hour”, a pointless, hypocritical and silly stunt organised by the WWF in which people turn off their lights and other appliances and delude themselves into thinking they’ve made a difference. So here goes.
Click.
Click.
Where’s the oven switch? Ah, yes. Click.
Nearly forgot the loo! This one’s on a cord. Done!
Now to turn up the stereo.
Telly on, though sound off.
Laptop one: already on.
Laptop two: booting up now.
And why not the printer? Done.
Maybe my electricity bill will be a pound or two higher. And, of course, I won’t have shortened the planet’s life by a nanosecond, any more than the thousands of Guardian readers, Lib Dems, sad celebs, smug tech journalists and poor brainwashed children will have made a difference.
Still, if this is “Earth Hour”, might as well be able to see it properly, no?”

And while people have their lights and computers on, they might find it interesting to read about how the UN’s IPCC and other global warming activists have biased their “science” toward global warming alarmism.

Learning about the fallacies of that political movement would be a much more productive use of their time than mindlessly turning out the lights and holding candles to honor the anti-science political agenda of Earth Hour.

UPDATE X2
While Watts disdains political stunts like Earth Hour, he’s all in favor of rational energy conservation, and carries it out in his daily life. His latest home project was installing a new kind of LED that emits more pleasing, less harsh light. He’s installed some compact fluorescent lights, but doesn’t like their drawbacks, such as their use of mercury, and their often-poor quality.

I do much of the same energy-conservation lighting in my home, although the only LEDs I use now are night lights. I use no incandescents, not even in the refrigerator. And I’ve also found that most CFLs don’t live up to their promise. The ones that are heavily subsidized by utilities often are of the el cheapo variety, and don’t last long. In my home, I use a few of the better CFLs, but mostly rely on the regular 48? tube fluorescents — plenty of them. My vision is not the best, and I like being able to see where I’m going and what I’m doing.

Today, there are a plethora of low-mercury tube fluorescents that give off light tailored to most environments. A warmer hue is good for bathrooms, bedrooms and living rooms. I use the daylight-simulating kind in my home office. And at my desk there, I use a lamp with an extremely bright CFL from Feit Electronics, model BPESL23TM/D. The color temp of 6500 provides great contrast. It provides the illumination of a 100-watt incandescent using just 23 watts. And it emits a lot less heat than an equivalent incandescent, an important consideration in warm weather.

The proof of savings is in my electric bill, which most of the year is less than $30 a month.

Your mileage may vary. Some people prefer to use incandescents, and I say (no pun intended), more power to them. Such domestic decisions should be a matter of personal choice, not controlled by conformity-enforcing eco-fascists and their job-killing parasitical political hacks.

Technology is supposed to improve our lives. I’d rather use the same amount of light, or more, and consume less electricity year-round, than give up the blessings of electrical light and take a symbolic plunge back into the Dark Ages.