Lights off! Brains off!

I see the annual festival especially designed for innumerate idiots is almost upon us again.

Still, if these morons could count they'd realise that their token energy saving gestures often produce more carbon dioxide than they save.

When asked to extinguish electricity, people turn to candlelight. Candles seem natural, but are almost 100 times less efficient than incandescent light globes, and more than 300 times less efficient than fluorescent lights. If you use one candle for each extinguished globe, you’re essentially not cutting CO2 at all, and with two candles you’ll emit more CO2. Moreover, candles produce indoor air pollution 10 to 100 times the level of pollution caused by all cars, industry and electricity production.

But still, there will be that smug warm inner glow of the morally superior that they'll carry with them for months afterwards ;)

And guess what happened when last year's Earth Hour did so briefly reduce demand for power in the eastern states?

The more expensive, but cleaner and greener, generators were wound down and the cheaper, but dirtier, brown coal generators in Victoria cranked up.

Gotta laugh I suppose.