Earth Hour

I have just read on another blog – wattsupwiththat.com – that “Earth Hour” was “total bust” in California. The blog show the electricity consumtion for the state of California for the day in question, including the one hour period we all turned off our lights to help reduce electricity consumption, and therefore fossil fuel consumption and ultimately, remind ourselves that this behaviour affects global warming. The graphs show no change in electricity consumption between the hour the lights were all off and the same hour the next day.
I have a few considerations to add:
1) things like earth-hour, earth-day, etc. are important because they motivate public opinion and keep climate change, environmental and waste and performance issues in the news. That is already important.
2) Can we say that electricity usage on Saturday night would not have been significantly higher at that time without “Earth Hour” – that is, are the Saturday night and Sunday night timeslots otherwise comparable?
3) I understand that approximately 7% of US energy consumption is in data storage centers alone. If that is true, this type of consumption for IT states like California must be quite heavy, and these centres operate whether we turn off our computers or not – contributing to a volume of consumption that may be high enough to render houshold usage less significant in relation to the global level of consumption. The fact is that IT burns a huge amount of physical resources that are “hidden” among apparently “virtual” benefits. I.E., internet requires towers and power! Does anyone have any statistics on this for California?
Anyway, these are just some observations about Earth Hour. I turned off my lights, computer and everything – even the refigerator. I won’t tell you what we did in the dark – but I found Earth Day to have a very high marginal benefit!

We had Earth Day in Italy in 2005, when a tree in Switzerland knocked out power nationally for an entire day – heh heh.

Recession!?!

Here’s an interesting bit of news. Very American – using the free-market to help people out, rather than going to the State.
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2009/03/19/news/inland/poway/zeffc482d9908b6908825757d008064f6.txt

I’m sorry I haven’t posted for a while – it has been crazy at work and there have been talks of layoffs! So nerves have been high and the stress has been incredible. As one of the most recent arrivals, I’ve been worried about my job too. So far it looks like I won’t be cut, but the last round of department meetings were all about “downsizing” and “restructuring staff”. They didn’t say “layoffs”, but that’s what they are considering. On the bright side, with no changes to basic salary, we’ve been told to not work overtime unless absolutely necessary. This means I can leave at 4 on Friday – and the weather is getting warmer. So that’s pretty good.
If you want an interesting look at American responses to local issues, look at the North County Times Newspaper I linked above and click on this link:
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2009/03/15/news/coastal/carlsbad/z60fbdb0c245467528825757b000a3ead.txt

Today’s piece is about a dead seal that washed up on the beach. The reactions posted by the public are quite interesting – from disgust to suspicion of the fishermen to political outrage that municipal police were used to take care of something that happened on State property. Heh heh. Actually, the blog aspect of this Newspaper, and US newspapers in general is really fascinating. If I could study all over again, I think I’d become a communications analyst. Blogs and blogging, chats and forums have been a great way to expand the communications of the once-mass media. Media is now personalised. This is really interesting for network developers, because how do you stay ahead of that curve? One of our recent meetings, on innovation, focused on the dangers of saturating the technology-services market model in a way that companies can’t react quickly enough to changing expectations in consumption and usage. It’s a big problem. Now we have two problems: the recession affects cost since it affects physical supply and operation – even in the IT business (those data centres don’t operate for free!) while internet is increasingly viewed as a way to get around physical supply networks. At least at my company, we’re quite worried about keeping ahead of the desire for technological solutions to existing problems. This is very American. Here even the old people expect some form of technology to solve things. In my little town in Italy, the old people still save on electricity and keep their houses cold. Not really because it is necessary, but because that’s how they learned to manage housing. Forget about them going hi-tech! Maybe their right. If this recession lasts, I might start planting potatoes in the garden!
The other big thing, of course, is Obama. It is really interesting to be in the US for this. He’s really talking as if he can change things here. The free-market has had many problems, and the State must do something to balance not only the economy, but economy and society. Maybe he can do this – cutting bonuses to bankers is a good start! I know there are millions in Southern California who would appreciate a little more fair distribution of wealth, or at least the removal of gross disparity between populations.
I saw a funny video on You Tube by an Irish commedian called Dylan Moran. He comments how Mr. Schwarzenegger was voted into government in California because he is able to lift heavy things, something Americans in general hate doing. It was really funny. Look it up, I don’t have the link right here.
So, I have a bit more time these days. Janine and I are stressed about job security, also because it places some interesting questions in front of us about my work visa (oops – I’m an immigrant!) and what to do next. We try to digest this problem by spending time at the beach – just watch out for the dead seals!