Earth Hour Wrap-Up

Did you celebrate Earth Hour on Saturday?  Did you celebrate Human Achievement Hour instead?  I was planning on celebrating HAH, but we didn't get home in time - we were actually out driving our full-sized SUV through a driving sleet/snow storm to stimulate the economy via shopping and dinner, so I figure that made up for it.  Since I truly care, though, you should know that one of the spoils of our stimulation is a new TV, which I left on for several hours while blogging late into the night.

So, how did the overall project fare?  Thanks to Grand Rants, we have some hard numbers:

Let's take a look, via Watt's Up With That?, at actual usage charts from the state of California (an area which I think we can all agree has more than its share of folks likely to have celebrated Sit in the Dark Hour), both during the powered-down time, and for the same time period the very next day. What do we see?

Saturday, 3/28: Earth Hour day (see gray shading for the actual usage for the 8:30-9:30 time frame)

Sunday, 3/29, the day after "Sit in the Dark" Hour (see gray shading for the actual usage for the 8:30-9:30 time frame):

As Russ Steel, at the always interesting Watt's Up With That? said:

There you have it, scientific data showing that the Earth Hour was a total bust in California.  If you look close, you can see a little bump up above the forecast demand, which tracked very closely with actual power consumed prior to the witching hour 8:30 to 9:30. But, it is clear that power consumption did not drop, it stayed up. Maybe all those protesters forgot to turn off the lights. 

I can't wait to see what kind of feel-good boondoggle they'll try to foist on us next…

Aw, gee, really?  Environmentalist wacko feel-good boondoggles don't actually accomplish anything?  Who'da thunk it?

There's my two cents.