I had to have a smile when I saw all these do-gooders with the lights turned off and a lit candle.

Now forgive my dumb ignorance was not the idea to reduce green house gas emmissions?

If it was? Then why light a candle and add to carbon dioxide emissions. A by-product of combustion such as burning a candle is carbon dioxide plus other gases.

I do turn off all electrical sources that are not in use and have done so for years. So the only way I could reduce my carbon footprint any further would be to go to bed when it got dark and get up when it gets light.

But didn't they all feel good about themselves (imagine the piety of the participants the next day at work)...for an hour. Then they went back to their air conditioned houses and flats, turned on their plasmas, computers, lights, etc. Life as usual.

Geez either do something worthwhile or don't bother.

I think you have missed the point. Earth Hour was a symbolic gesture. It was a way for ordinary people to show their support for the reduction of global warming. Obviously turning the lights off for an hour doesn't make a huge difference but it reminds people that they have the power to control global warming.

It is also a political statement because of the government's failure to ratify Kyoto. It is a polite reminder to John Howard to clean up his act on greenhouse gases.

in california, they initiate referenda against greenhouse pollution, in oz- light a candle.

with great reluctance, i say: " well done, governator, bless you, rupert". doesn't anyone wish they had access to citizen initiated referendum power? or are you content to let mining companies decide when or if we act to stop global warming?

Symbolic gestures are a waste of time. The government ignores them. Voters don't remember them at the next election.

As for the gesture itself. It wasn't even slightly successful. Hardly anyone even bothered. If sending a message to the government was intended I think the people need to turn up the volume. Or maybe it doesn't rate as highly as the media would have us believe.

As for citizen initiated referendum power, we have elections. We have "The Greens" as a political party ready to shutdown the mining and forestry industries. And yet they haven't had many votes in the past. This year, maybe we will see the citizens vote (almost like a referendum) for the Greens. I'm betting not. Maybe they are just a tad too radical.

One under reported aspect of this stunt was the extent to which people shifted to candle power. The essence of sustainability is to ask the question, if everyone did as I do, could we continue indefinitely?

And the answer is NO!

If that proportion of the population made a permanent switch to candle power the rate of house fires would return to those of Victorian era cities. And never mind the additional deaths, it wouldn't take too many extra houses to go up in smoke to completely swamp the so-called emission savings from this classic green tokenism.

Earth Hour was always a symbolic gesture about a moral issue, no wonder RightThinkers just don't get it. I just wish i could hear Mr Solomon explain to his grandchildren what he did about climate change: "I got paid to make excuses for the apathetic rich".

Alzo says, "Symbolic gestures are a waste of time." I dare you to tell that to the soldiers returning from Mr Howards symbolic support for 'peace and democracy' in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Quite agree with the general tenor.
If Global warming is real it is likely that the industrialised ‘West’ will survive best for it can garner earths resources to itself by war when necessary. We may need to alienate some areas thus increasing our food producing capacity and limit drug distribution to ensure that population decline is more marked in the developing world.Even aid the increase of aids?
Again when necessary with the appropriate self justifications that are commonly used, reduce the people number by genocide. More resource usage at accpetable CO2-e output?
No we will not call it genocide perhpas ethical genetics?
Naturally we cannot do anything unless everyone else does, that is the Australian ethos.

On the other hand people like Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute www.rmi.org have for years (since around 1976) shown how energy efficiency can go part way to reducing our CO2-E output at little cost and how with slightly greater cost, pay back time >10 years an do a lot more on a world wide basis. He I think was the first advocating energy efficiency and detailing the how on the web site but there are many other similar organisations. Most of all these show business how to reduce CO2-E in least cost ways.
May I respectfully suggest writers do some home work.
Sure these measures alone may not suffice but since population is a driver looking at population, excluded in Australia since around 1996 and even resurrecting the Commission for the Future.

Liam's "just don't get it" is, of course, the giveaway expression of the fundamentalist. "[A] dogma", wrote Carl Jung, "that is to say, an undisputable confession of faith, is set up only when the aim is to suppress doubts once and for all. But that no longer has anything to do with scientific judgment; only with a personal power drive."

Like other religions, it appears environmentalism now has its Lenten ritual in the Earth Hour (only an hour, mind you, not 40 days), complete with candles. Through gratifying self-denial and will worship, the Earthers stood nearer their deity in Mother Earth, perhaps forgetting momentarily that She, like God, is capable of wrath, and was so long before man ever came on the scene. Yes, I too fear for our children's children's children; I hope they're not around for the Greenish Inquisition.

alzo,

The Greens aren't a tad too radical, they're just a tad too stupid.

One smart guy, this David Solomon when he's ignored the contribution from the national and international communities in the Earth Hour project. And no, we didn't all light candles!

SBS advised tonight that while George Bush remains asleep at the wheel, many energy companies and pollutant industries, including Alcoa and Pacific Energy were part of a group who approached the US parliament requesting MANDATORY cuts to emissions. California mandated caps on carbon in 2006.

More egg on our face when all the big polluters in Australia are rampantly increasing their uncontrolled emissions and vigorously denying their culpability in environmental vandalism.

Wonder whose pushing David Solomon's buttons? I suggest he butts out and conducts his sermons in his own country!

We, in Australia, already have an over-supply of right-wing rabble-rousers - habitual criminals, intent on privatising and polluting OUR clean air - or what's left of it!

Richard Castles has obviously been keeping up with the GW denialist press, the 'religion' smear on environmentalists is suddenly popping up all over the place. Note his fact-free rhetoric and bile, could be straight from the pen of Andrew Bolt but for lack of style.

Never mind that the IPCC is the biggest collaborative science project in human history, never mind that co2 conc/ocean temp/ocean acidity/glacial melt/species migration/weather records all provide concrete proof that biosphere is changing fast and emissions are playing a big role.

Keep right on with the smears Richard, a rich sugar daddy will be sure to reward you soon (ExxonMobil alone having spent over $14mil covertly funding GW deniers in recent years www.exxonsecrets.org).

It's "the biggest collaborative science project in human history" part that worries me.

Plenty of the usual childish invective so far, but no answer to David Solomon's final challenge.

Note Liam's use of what Bjorn Blomborg described as "the litany" or list of issues that supposedly prove something but in fact are still subject to major debate. He said, "never mind that co2 conc/ocean temp/ocean acidity/glacial melt/species migration/weather records all provide concrete proof that biosphere is changing fast and emissions are playing a big role".

But mean temperatures of the upper 700m of ocean has only increased by 0.10C over the past 50 years and the original sea level rise scarenarios have now crawled back into a very small IPCC hole. Ocean acidity is only an issue in the north atlantic while there has been minimal change in the remaining 85% of ocean volume. Glacial melt has since been found to occur in spasms and the ones that had speeded up in the past decade have now almost stopped. And species migration and weather records have just been thrown in to pad up the list to make it appear more substantial. Much ado about nothing really.

Perseus: Bjorn Blomborg?!? Suspect you're thinking of Bjorn Lomborg, the political science academic working as a statistician who pretends to know something about climate physics
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Bjorn_Lomborg
http://www.lomborg-errors.dk/error_catalogue.htm
At least he's not another lawyer! You may claim the factors i listed are in dispute and we should continue 'growth'-as-usual, but i disagree with your unevidenced claims on the data.

Ocean warming to date is much closer to 0.5C, and that amounts to a huge mass of water, phenomenal amount of heat. http://www.oceansalive.org/explore.cfm?subnav=article&contentID=4704 "For one, ocean surface temperatures worldwide have risen on average 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit, or 0.5 degrees Celsius, and ocean waters in many tropical regions have risen by almost 2 degrees F (1 degree C) over the past century. This is 30 times the amount of heat that has been added to the atmosphere, a significant amount even though the ocean has a lot more mass than the atmosphere."
or http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/04/010406073554.htm

Sea level rise forecasts in IPCC 4thAR only fallen on an apples to banana's comparison
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/the-ipcc-sea-level-numbers/
A common mistake for those who skim the data with one eye open.

Are you ready, Steve? Aha. Andy? Yeah! Mick? OK. Alright, fellas, let's go!

Oh, I see a man at the back
As a matter of fact his eyes are red as the sun
And a girl in the corner let no one ignore her
'Cause she thinks she's the passionate one

Oh, yeah, it was like lightning, everybody was frightening
And the music was soothing, and they all started grooving

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah
And the man at the back said
Everyone attack and it turned into a ballroom blitz
And the girl in the corner said
Boy, I wanna warn ya, it'll turn into a ballroom blitz
Ballroom blitz, ballroom blitz, ballroom blitz
Ballroom blitz.

I like the way The Lord Mayor of Sydney was in New York at a climate summit the other day and touted the 1-hour lights out as a raging success.

She suggested that every city in the world should do the same some time, at the "same time"

Can you imagine New York agreeing to that at morning or afternoon peak hour? Imagine Hong Kong or Tokyo at morning or afternoon peak-hour turning off their lights or surplus energy. Imagine London or Paris at morning or afternoon peak hour.

Some cities in the world would have to sacrifice a peak hour if Clover Moore gets her own way. Of course, Sydney is so important, we will get to set the time for all cities to synchronise?

Sydney is not really as important as it sees itself.

I'm sure they clapped politely to Clover Moore in New York and politely scrubbed her name off the list from any credible Delegate.

I have to agree with you saintfletcher. Sydney has voted for a real dill there. I bet she has a large "carbon footprint" too...

She's right up there with Justin Madden and his McMansion comments.

Liam displays the usual partial grasp of the brief when he claims, "Ocean warming to date is much closer to 0.5C, and that amounts to a huge mass of water, phenomenal amount of heat. http://www.oceansalive.org/explore.cfm?subnav=article&contentID=4704 "For one, ocean surface temperatures worldwide have risen on average 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit, or 0.5 degrees Celsius".

Bollocks, apparently you have not heard of the thermocline, the upper layer of ocean where heat is actually absorbed. This varies between zero and 1000m thick. Below this there is ZERO additional warming due to penetrating heat. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermocline

So while the surface water may have increased by 0.5C the average increase over the upper 700m of ocean is only 0.1C. The other 3,300 metres of average ocean depth is unchanged. You, and all the sea level scarenario punters, have wrongly assumed that the change in surface temperature is replicated over the entire ocean profile. It is not, and that is why the IPCC has pulled its head in big time on the whole issue of sea level rise.

When you multiply the volume of the upper 700m layer of the worlds oceans (255 million km3) by 1/10th of the coefficient of warming for water (0.00021/10) we get a very modest volume expansion of only 5355 Km3 which, when spread over our 365 million Km2 of ocean, amounts to a total sea level rise from thermal expansion of only 14.67mm over the past half century.

In contrast, the annual precipitation over Antarctica of 50mm takes 760 Km3 out of the oceans each year which amounts to an annual drop in sea level of 2.0mm or equivalent to a 10 centimetre drop over the past half century. Luckily, glacial ice, subglacial lakes, and ice fall from the edges appears to have been significant enough to offset this sea level decline. But that did not stop the climate cretins from reporting the latter as a portent of catastrophe.