Utterly Pointless Green Tokenism from Capital FM

http://www.lightsoutlondon.co.uk/home.asp

Even supposing that a good number of people do as they suggest and turn out their lights for an hour on 21st June, it will actually have zero effect on carbon emissions. Why? Well the power companies have to maintain a certain level of generating capacity during the day to be sure they can serve peak demand. If they fail to serve peak demand then you get brown outs in various areas and anarchy usually ensues.

So on 21st June when all these well intentioned people switch off their lights it will have no effect other then to waste the electricity which is at that time being generated to service their requirements. You cannot simply store electricity in the same way as you can store gas and other fuels, when you generate it ti must be used immediately or it is lost. The power you are drawing from you socket as you read this was generated now, barring the distribution delay getting it to you (electricity is transmitted at the speed of light)

Large generation plants can take up to two days to run up to speed and the same amount of time to run down and I think you can be sure that the normal maximum generating capacity will be on stream on 21st Jun in London. net result on carbob emissions? Zero. Number of people requiring hospital treatment because they fell over in the dark? Quite a few I think.

I can understand that people want to feel they are "doing their bit" to help the environment and stave off Global Warming but surely the things they choose to do must actually be effective and not be designed to make them feel better. The real problem is that governments engage in this kind of nonsense also and damage the future prosperity of the world's economy by focussing thier attentions of the wrong issues.