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Earth Hour Australia!!?

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Spread the word fellow Australians! Earth hour is upon us! At 7:30pm tomorrow (31st March) turn off your lights for an hour, as a sign of committment to reduce global warming. According to the official Earth Hour site, it was originally for people who live in Sydney, but all of Australia can show their support and turn off their lights at 7:30pm local time to help as well.

Spread the word fellow Australians! Earth hour is upon us! At 7:30pm tomorrow (31st March) turn off your lights for an hour, as a sign of committment to reduce global warming. According to the official Earth Hour site, it was originally for people who live in Sydney, but all of Australia can show their support and turn off their lights at 7:30pm local time to help as well.

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Thanks,
Iv'e just heard of earth hour thru yahoo answers.
The things you learn about here!!

Others
South Africa is taking part as well!

good on them

I will be doing this as well and I live in the country!

Come on Aussies Come on!
I don't live in Sydney and I only just heard about it.

If I had known, it would have made me feel great to do something good for the environment.

Howzabout I go without a hot shower instead? lol
This is not by me -- I took part but who knows if the following cynical view is true?

"WWF鈥檚 Earth Hour stunt, whipping up a little mass hysteria in Sydney to turn off some lights for an hour on Saturday night, has been a massive PR success. Too bad it was a con as far as reducing CO2 emissions goes.

Contrary to the media claims, no CO2 was saved, no lump of coal received a stay of incineration. Indeed, it鈥檚 not hard to argue that more CO2 was produced by the circus as thousands of Sydneysiders drove to the harbour to watch, well, not much. And then there were all those burning candles and kero lamps...

The SMH鈥檚 front page led this morning's gushes:

In the city centre alone energy consumption fell 10.2% between 7.30pm and 8.30pm, saving 24.86 tonnes of carbon dioxide from being released into the air. Central Sydney's mighty effort is the equivalent of taking 48,613 cars off the road for one hour.

Er, no. It didn鈥檛 happen. Saturday night鈥檚 electricity comes from base load generators 鈥?the big coal-fired stations. They are not turned on and off at the flick of a light switch.

Normal Saturday night NSW power consumption runs at 8,500 megawatts. There was a dip of 150 MW/hr between 7.30pm and 8.30pm on Saturday night. That鈥檚 vastly more than the 23,613 kilowatts the SMH is wetting itself about 鈥?but it鈥檚 still just a 1.7% variation in electricity consumption.

Which means the turbines kept turning, the coal kept burning and the CO2 kept being released.

If the people behind Earth Hour and its key promoters actually had any idea of what they were doing, one might have expected they would have known perfectly well what the reality of electricity production is. But never let facts get in the way of a good story.

Lighting is one of the least of electricity鈥檚 major worries. The cool rooms kept operating on Saturday night, the electric trains kept running, the aluminium smelters kept smelting and so on.

And it鈥檚 just as well they did. If there really had been a sizeable instant downturn in electricity consumption, say 500 MW, it would have been the equivalent of one of the base load stations running into trouble or a smelter falling over 鈥?and that could well have triggered cascading blackouts through the electricity system.

No, it鈥檚 not as simple matter, but don鈥檛 tell the public that. Throw them a novelty item and let them think they鈥檙e "saving the planet".

A bit like those green supermarket bags."