Deb’s House Concerts

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I found this Earth Hour Movie - Narrated by Jeremy Piven on Big Brass Blog.

On Saturday, March 29 at 8pm millions of people around the world will turn off their lights for one hour - Earth Hour - symbolizing the need to take action on climate change.

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Today, when I visited Google, the screen was black to advertise Earth Hour.

Earth Hour

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Google users in the United States will notice today that we “turned the lights out” on the Google.com homepage as a gesture to raise awareness of a worldwide energy conservation effort called Earth Hour. As to why we don’t do this permanently - it saves no energy; modern displays use the same amount of power regardless of what they display. However, you can do something to reduce the energy consumption of your home PC by joining the Climate Savers Computing Initiative.

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On Saturday, March 29, 2008, Earth Hour invites people around the world to turn off their lights for one hour – from 8:00pm to 9:00pm in their local time zone. On this day, cities around the world, including Copenhagen, Chicago, Melbourne, Dubai, and Tel Aviv, will hold events to acknowledge their commitment to energy conservation.Given our company’s commitment to environmental awareness and energy efficiency, we strongly support the Earth Hour campaign, and have darkened our homepage today to help spread awareness of what we hope will be a highly successful global event.

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Why did Google choose this specific organization?
We believe in doing our part to help combat climate change, and found the Earth Hour initiative to be a timely, important event. Further, we think the “lights out” idea’s individual-centered nature is something that millions of people worldwide can participate in. In short, we really like it. So we did something about it.

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How can I get Google to do something similar for my organization or project?
We welcome your ideas on how we can become more socially and environmentally responsible. Although we can’t guarantee either a placement on the Google homepage or even a response to every query, we do read every email we receive and welcome your ideas of organizations that you believe we should feature. If you’d like to submit a proposal, please send it to us at proposals@google.com.

Major Cities Go Dark for Earth Hour

By SHAWN POGATCHNIK,

AP

Posted: 2008-03-29 23:33:25

Filed Under: Science News, World News

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CHICAGO (March 29) - From the Sydney Opera House to Rome’s Colosseum to the Sears Tower’s famous antennas in Chicago, floodlit icons of civilization went dark Saturday for Earth Hour, a worldwide campaign to highlight the threat of climate change.

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The environmental group WWF urged governments, businesses and households to turn back to candle power for at least 60 minutes starting at 8 p.m. wherever they were.The campaign began last year in Australia, and traveled this year from the South Pacific to Europe to North America in cadence with the setting of the sun.”What’s amazing is that it’s transcending political boundaries and happening in places like China, Vietnam, Papua New Guinea,” said Andy Ridley, executive director of Earth Hour. “It really seems to have resonated with anybody and everybody.”Earth Hour officials hoped 100 million people would turn off their nonessential lights and electronic goods for the hour. Electricity plants produce greenhouse gases that fuel climate change.In Chicago, lights on more than 200 downtown buildings were dimmed Saturday night, including the stripe of white light around the top of the John Hancock Center. The red-and-white marquee outside Wrigley Field also went dark.”There’s a widespread belief that somehow people in the United States don’t understand that this is a problem that we’re lazy and wedded to our lifestyles. (Earth Hour) demonstrates that that is wrong,” Richard Moss, a member of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the climate change vice president for WWF, said in Chicago on Saturday.

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Workers in Phoenix turned out the lights in all downtown city-owned buildings for one hour. Darkened restaurants glowed with candlelight in San Francisco while the Golden Gate Bridge, Coit Tower and other landmarks extinguished lights for an hour.New Zealand and Fiji were first out of the starting blocks this year. And in Sydney, Australia - where an estimated 2.2 million observed the blackout last year - the city’s two architectural icons, the Opera House and Harbour Bridge, faded to black against a dramatic backdrop of a lightning storm.Lights also went out at the famed Wat Arun Buddhist temple in Bangkok, Thailand; shopping and cultural centers in Manila, Philippines; several castles in Sweden and Denmark; the parliament building in Budapest, Hungary; a string of landmarks in Warsaw, Poland; and both London City Hall and Canterbury Cathedral in England.Greece, an hour ahead of most of Europe, was the first on the continent to mark Earth Hour. On the isle of Aegina, near Athens, much of its population marched by candlelight to the port. Parts of Athens itself, including the floodlit city hall, also turned to black.In Ireland, where environmentalists are part of the coalition government, lights-out orders went out for scores of government buildings, bridges and monuments in more than a dozen cities and towns.But the international banks and brokerages of Dublin’s financial district blazed away with light, illuminating floor after empty floor of desks and idling computers.”The banks should have embraced this wholeheartedly and they didn’t. But it’s a start. Maybe next year,” said Cathy Flanagan, an Earth Hour organizer in Dublin.

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Ireland’s more than 7,000 pubs elected not to take part - in part because of the risk that Saturday night revelers could end up smashing glasses, falling down stairs, or setting themselves on fire with candles..Likewise, much of Europe - including France, Germany, Spain and European Union institutions - planned nothing to mark Earth Hour..Internet search engine Google lent its support to Earth Hour by blackening its normally white home page and challenging visitors: “We’ve turned the lights out. Now it’s your turn.”.

Associated Press writers Shawn Pogatchnik in Dublin, Ireland; Tanalee Smith in Sydney, Australia; and other AP reporters worldwide contributed to this report.

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Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.

2008-03-29 11:41:03

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Frightening Forecast for Earth

Martin Bernetti, AFP / Getty Images

In April, a United Nations climate change panel laid out a timeline of the planet’s future. Scroll through the photos to see the dramatic events that are forecast for Earth between now and 2200.

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Adalberto Roque, AFP / Getty Images

2008: Global oil production peaks between 2008 and 2018, triggering a global recession, food shortages and conflicts between nations over dwindling supplies.

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Manuel Silvestri, AFP / Getty Images

2020: Flash floods increase across Europe. Less rainfall reduces agriculture yields by up to 50 percent in some areas. Population reaches 7.6 billion.

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William West, AFP / Getty Images

2030: As much as 18 percent of the world’s coral reefs are lost as a result of the changing climate and other environmental stresses.

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Slim Allagui, AFP / Getty Images

2040: The Arctic Sea is ice-free in the summer, and winter ice depth shrinks drastically. Some say this won’t happen until 2060 to 2105.

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John McConnico, AP

2050: Large glaciers shrink by 30 to 70 percent as a quarter of the plant and vertebrate animal species on the planet face extinction.

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Fernando Bustamante, AP

2070: As warmer, drier conditions lead to more frequent and longer droughts, electricity production for the world’s existing hydropower stations decreases.

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Schalk van Zuydam, AP

2080: Between 1.1 and 3.2 billion people experience water shortages and up to 600 million go hungry.

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AFP / Getty Images

2085: The risk of dengue fever from climate change increases to 3.5 billion people.

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Solo / ZUMA Press

2100: A quarter of all species of plants and land animals — more than a million total — are driven to extinction.

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AP Graphic

2200: An Earth day is 0.12 milliseconds shorter, as rising temperatures cause oceans to expand toward the poles, speeding up the planet’s rotation. Source: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change