california.tribe.net/listing...830f2846
Andrea Thompson
LiveScience Staff Writer
LiveScience.com
Fri Mar 28, 9:01 AM ET
It may not sound like a classic Saturday night blow-out, but at 8 p.m. on March 29, millions of people around the world will turn off their lights to celebrate Earth Hour.
This event, sponsored by the WWF, a global conservation organization, is intended to increase awareness of global warming and spur action to combat the issue.
The movement began last year when the WWF asked residents of Sydney, Australia, to turn off their lights for an hour. So on March 31, 2007, 2.2 million people and 2,100 Sydney businesses turned off their lights. Even icons such as the Harbour Bridge and the Sydney Opera House went dark.
Electricity in many cities and countries is powered by coal-fired plants that produce carbon dioxide, the most important greenhouse gas that human activities emit into the atmosphere. The WWF estimates that if the greenhouse gas reduction achieved during the Sydney Earth Hour was sustained for a year, it would be equivalent to taking 48,616 cars off the road for a year.
The event has expanded this year to include cities in other countries, such as the United States, Canada, Denmark, Israel and Thailand. Chicago will serve as the U.S. flagship city for the event, with Atlanta, Phoenix and San Francisco joining it as leading partners in the endeavor.
Individuals can sign up to participate on the Earth Hour site - so far 240,000 people have signed their support of the event. Celebrities such as singer/songwriter Nelly Furtado and the band Fall Out Boy have pledged to turn out their lights, as have the Phoenix Suns and Chicago Cubs.
10 Ways to Green Your Home
www.livescience.com/environm...home.html
Timeline: The Frightening Future of Earth
www.livescience.com/environm...line.html
What's Your Environmental Footprint?
www.livescience.com/triviagreenerfuture/
Original Story: Lights Out Globally Saturday Night for 'Earth Hour'
www.livescience.com/environm...hour.html
Visit LiveScience.com for more daily news, views and scientific inquiry with an original, provocative point of view. LiveScience reports amazing, real world breakthroughs, made simple and stimulating for people on the go. Check out our collection of Science, Animal and Dinosaur Pictures, Science Videos, Hot Topics, Trivia, Top 10s, Voting, Amazing Images, Reader Favorites, and more. Get cool gadgets at the new LiveScience Store, sign up for our free daily email newsletter and check out our RSS feeds today!
Andrea Thompson
LiveScience Staff Writer
LiveScience.com
Fri Mar 28, 9:01 AM ET
It may not sound like a classic Saturday night blow-out, but at 8 p.m. on March 29, millions of people around the world will turn off their lights to celebrate Earth Hour.
This event, sponsored by the WWF, a global conservation organization, is intended to increase awareness of global warming and spur action to combat the issue.
The movement began last year when the WWF asked residents of Sydney, Australia, to turn off their lights for an hour. So on March 31, 2007, 2.2 million people and 2,100 Sydney businesses turned off their lights. Even icons such as the Harbour Bridge and the Sydney Opera House went dark.
Electricity in many cities and countries is powered by coal-fired plants that produce carbon dioxide, the most important greenhouse gas that human activities emit into the atmosphere. The WWF estimates that if the greenhouse gas reduction achieved during the Sydney Earth Hour was sustained for a year, it would be equivalent to taking 48,616 cars off the road for a year.
The event has expanded this year to include cities in other countries, such as the United States, Canada, Denmark, Israel and Thailand. Chicago will serve as the U.S. flagship city for the event, with Atlanta, Phoenix and San Francisco joining it as leading partners in the endeavor.
Individuals can sign up to participate on the Earth Hour site - so far 240,000 people have signed their support of the event. Celebrities such as singer/songwriter Nelly Furtado and the band Fall Out Boy have pledged to turn out their lights, as have the Phoenix Suns and Chicago Cubs.
10 Ways to Green Your Home
www.livescience.com/environm...home.html
Timeline: The Frightening Future of Earth
www.livescience.com/environm...line.html
What's Your Environmental Footprint?
www.livescience.com/triviagreenerfuture/
Original Story: Lights Out Globally Saturday Night for 'Earth Hour'
www.livescience.com/environm...hour.html
Visit LiveScience.com for more daily news, views and scientific inquiry with an original, provocative point of view. LiveScience reports amazing, real world breakthroughs, made simple and stimulating for people on the go. Check out our collection of Science, Animal and Dinosaur Pictures, Science Videos, Hot Topics, Trivia, Top 10s, Voting, Amazing Images, Reader Favorites, and more. Get cool gadgets at the new LiveScience Store, sign up for our free daily email newsletter and check out our RSS feeds today!
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Re: Google's gone dark for Earth Hour
Thu, April 3, 2008 - 10:39 AMThis could even be good for the Earth if the power plants were to reduce their production for that hour.
But they won't. It's technically infeasible.
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Re: Google's gone dark for Earth Hour
Sat, April 5, 2008 - 8:18 PMthis got me thinking, we could actually do this more often, like every week./ i mean c'mon, an hour a week would do us some good. maybe 2 hours.
people might actually talk, and be outside. what a concept. -
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Re: Google's gone dark for Earth Hour
Sat, May 17, 2008 - 2:29 PMGoogle fucked up the Net. Dejanews was far better, Google had money, webcrawler hotbot and the rest still ride, hope Google, an unqualified rabble of idiots, quits the net soon. -
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Re: Google's gone dark for Earth Hour
Sat, June 14, 2008 - 7:26 PMAre you kidding? They've got too much of a control grid to maintain...
If Google really cared about this stuff, they'd make themselves dark all the time, like Blackle already is. This of course doesn't change the fact that it's more an advertising conglomerate than a search engine.
And yes, we should all be just detached enough to shoot for two hours every week. It's a sad statement about our hyperactive post-modern society that we don't feel like we can unplug (and yes, there's quite a few ways this is already a literal term) for two hours... once every seven days... at NIGHT! The only forms of media and night-viewing instruments we had even just a century and a half ago were candles, firepits, lanterns, aluminum chemistry lamps, books, newspapers, select magazine publications, and phono-records if you were rich. The phrase to "entertain" guests was a lot more literal. Not only are we endangering the environment with crazy excess energy consumption, along with our view of the true nightscape from light pollution, but we're also losing that delicate art that we barely ever miss until there's a disaster or power-outage. It's for the betterment of our species all around...!
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