Earth Hour flops again

In typical fashion Big Environment is yet again ignoring the utter failure of Earth Hour by heralding the puny participation rate as a huge success.

I was privileged enough to receive an email from Earth Hour Australia with all of the details (I think one of my asshat lefty mates signed me up to wwf.org.au as a bit of a lark coz I never did).

Here's the first paragraph, along with some analysis:

Wow, what a night!

It sure was! I invited a few mates around, had all of the lights on, turned on the BBQ (well, we did have an assortment of bits from farmyard animals to cook), all of the hot plates, the oven (admittedly, it was also used for cooking roast veggies) and the microwave (also admittedly, one of my mates suggested we heat up cups of water for no good reason other than we could; the man's a veritable genius).

We hope that you enjoyed being part of the biggest Earth Hour ever.

It was that good I'm still recovering.

Earth Hour continues to be embraced by the global community, transcending race, culture and age.

Breathing and eating are also embraced by the global community and, funnily enough, also transcend race, culture and age.

A record 134 countries and territories on all 7 continents registered, with a whole host of countries officially joining for the first time (including Lebanon, Jamaica, Iran, Uganda, Swaziland, Tajikistan, Chad, Azerbaijan, Gibraltar, Palestine, Suriname, Uzbekistan, Trinidad & Tobago and Lesotho).

OK, I'll play your silly game. Which country in Antarctica registered for Earth Hour? And what are the 62 countries that didn't participate? That's actually quite a few when you think about how easy it is to be involved in this pointless piece of environmental onanism.

Across Australia, over 300 schools, 152 councils, almost 2000 businesses, and 220 government departments across Australia officially signed up to take part, as well as thousands of individual Australians.

Wow! That's amazing! What terrific penetration into society! Let's run a few numbers, shall we?

There are, according to the ABS, 9468 schools in Australia so Earth Hour organisers did a sterling job to sign up a whopping 300. That's 3% or, in IPCC terms, a consensus.

There are around 700 councils so 152 represents a mind blowing 22%. Given that councils are mostly run be leftist nitwits and are a haven for Green activists and the Climate Taliban I'm going to suggest that getting only 22% is actually a crap effort.

How many businesses are there in Australia? A heap. Over 2 million. To get a piddling 2000 of them to come on board, a microscopic 0.1%, doesn't seem too spectacular to me. But hang on, you say, aren't most of those small businesses and sole contractors? By jingo, you're right, 80% of them are in that category so it's really 2000 (assuming none are small businesses) out of 400,000 or 0.5%. Thanks for pointing that out!

I've got no idea how many government departments there are in Australia. Thousands, probably. But that's a bit irrelevant because organisers could pick up 100 simply by having the federal government on board, which in these days of Carbon Tax wars is a dead certainty so no points for the Earth Hour people from that, either.

As I said, I complete joke. Tim Blair linked to a report that over 10 million Australians had participated. He correctly described it as a lie.

What a fantastic display of care and commitment to this planet we call home. Thank you for being part of it.

Hey, pal, let me tell you something. I care more for the environment than your entire cohort of envirofascists combined.

The command and control policies you support led to the greatest environmental destruction the world has ever seen. And, embarrassingly for your side, it took free market capitalism to clean it up. Not that you'd ever even admit to that even if you could understand how it did (and continues to do so to this very day).

But thanks for the comedy. Keep it coming.

(Nothing Follows)