PrintMarch 29, 2009
No Drop in Electricity Usage in NY and CA at Earth Hour (updated)
The Greenies did not convince the average liberal New Yorkers and Californians to turn off their lights at the appointed Earth Hour of 8:30 PM local time.
By looking at real time data in New York and California, there was no drop in electric usage.
The New York State Independent System Operator has data for electric usage here. By downloading the data and plotting it it appears that at the Earth hour of 8:30 PM, there was no discernable electric usage drop. Here is the load graph for New York in Megawatts:
In California, there was also no discernable drop in load either according to the graph provided by the California ISO. This graph uses the 24 hour clock so 20.5 is 8:30 PM.
These results seems consistent with recent surveys that show that people believe that the MSM are exaggerating the effects of global warming. No doubt the MSM will also ignore the lack of Earth Hour participation by a skeptical public.
If New York and California do not voluntarily reduce demand to "save the planet", then we can safely assume that the rest of the country does not believe the global warming hype either.
Update: Don Surber mocks the airheads in Sydney, Australia (where Earth Hour was first commemorated) who turned out the lights and lit candles as they got all weepy over the assault humanity has launched against Mother Gaia. There's a great photograph of them by Kate Geraghty of the Sydney Morning Herald he uses. He writes:
So, was any carbon dioxide saved?Noted the Christian Science Monitor: "As Australian blogger Enoch the Red pointed out after last year's Earth Hour that an average Australian who tries to replace all the light produced by an incandescent bulb with light cast by parrifin candles will result in about 10 times the greenhouse emissions.
