Several weeks ago I was stopped in the street by a pretty girl. This doesn't happen very often and generally when it does it will be a girl in a loose fitting t-shirt with a charity logo. This was no different, but instead of being asked to sign up for a £10 a month donation to WWF she merely explained about Earth Hour before putting my phone number and email into her PDA and gave me a small tealight candle. Two minutes and I was on my way.
Nothing happened until I got a phone call on my mobile phone last week from a bloke with a patronising tone of voice. What should have been a 30 second call to make me aware of the date and thank me for signing up turned into a 5 minute info blitz followed by a 5 minute begging session. The info blitz is what really got me thinking though - he claimed that 1 billion people had signed up to this. 1 billion people. Over 1/7th of the Earth's population. In short, a staggering amount of people.
Naturally, this sent my hyperanal
Let's just say for argument's sake that he wasn't bullshitting me and 1 billion people had signed up, and again, let's just assume that there is an even split of how these people signed up: An equal third in the street, by phone and by the internet. Let's break this down for the "recruitment" process:
Charity workers generally have to travel to get to their "target" city. This will likely be done by train. Let's say that they work in teams of 10 in any one city. Now, let's assume that they target 40 locations (not including their base location) in 100 countries and that there are 10 teams of 10 that recruit in 4 centres per team. That's 4000 group rail journeys. Now, i'm going to use a London to Manchester journey as the average journey length. Using this tool: http://www.co2balance.uk.com/co2calculators/rail-travel/ it works out that the round trip for 10 people is 0.362 tonnes of CO2 for the journey. For all 4000 round trips taken using this average journey length we get 1448 tonnes of CO2.
Now, ignoring the fact that my conservative estimate of charity workers would still mean that they had to recruit 8333 people each in each location they visit, which is unlikely. But assume that these hard working bastards actually slowed time down (because I wouldn't want to be unfair and increase their train usage carbon footprint 10 fold) and did just that and the 333,333,333 people that they signed up had 1 minute of PDA usage dedicated to them. That's 5,555,555 hours, or 231,481 days. Or the equivalent of 634 years.
According to http://www.edn.com/blog/1470000147/post/150013415.html, the annual Carbon Footprint for the average mobile phone user is 0.025 tonnes. Now, the average mobile subscriber does not use their phone 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Let's say that they use it a generous 2 hours a day with the other 22 in "standby" - it's the 2 hours of calls, internet etc. that is going to cause the most battery drainage that requires a good charge. That's 730 hours a year for 25kg. Or 190 tonnes for the all of those hours. I'm going to ignore the one third of a billion tealights that were given out on the street. Let's just say that I'll offset them being lugged around on the train with a carbon friendly manufacturing process.We now have 1638 tonnes of carbon generated for these time bending street recruiters.
So, another 333,333,333 signed up using the internet. Let's be kind and assume an even split between energy eating desktops, laptops and mobile phones. And let's say it took 2 minutes on average to do per person. That's 126 tonnes for the mobile phones based on the above. Now, using figures from this article http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article5489134.ece that says running a PC for 1 hour uses 40g to 80g (I'm going to half that for laptops to 20g to 40g). I'll use a midpoint in those and say 60g for PCs and 30g for laptops. That gives us 222 tonnes for desktops and 111 tonnes for laptops. These seem suspiciously low compared to the mobile phone usage, but I'll roll with it. And I'll be generous and not take into account the server side carbon footprint and assume that the machine was already on. So, we're now up to 2097 tonnes.
Finally, 333,333,333 signed up by being called by WWF. Let's say that they don't try to enlist you at this point and they spend a mere two minutes on the phone. Let's split the phones in equal thirds: Mobile, digital, analogue. But let's assume that they themselves are using a digital phone network. We already know that 2 minutes of mobile phones for 111,111,111 people yields 126 tonnes. For arguments sake let's say that the digital phone (cordless etc.) footprint is the same and the analogue is 10 tonnes (you know, allowing for phones with batteries and flashing lights). That's a total of 262 tonnes at one end of the line. The digital phone network for the WWF will then be create a 378 tonne footprint. We're up to 2738 tonnes now.
But wait, where are these WWF telephone operators located and what are they using to get their information from? Let's assume that those same 10,000 miracle workers from the streets are now safely in various offices around the world. Now, I'm instantly going to assume that they haven't printed all those names out on paper to save using computers because at 50 names per page and 5g per A4 sheet that would be 33,333 tonnes of paper with a footprint of 0.3 tonnes per tonne of paper produced for a staggering 10,000 tonne carbon footprint. I'm going to assume they've used laptops with their 30g per hour. This handily equates to 1g of carbon per person they call - or 333 tonnes for the whole lot. We're now up to 3071 tonnes.
For arguments sake I'm going to say that the WWF asked all the workers to wrap up warm in the offices so they didn't have to heat them and lit the buildings with carbon neutral tealights. So, we're still at 3071 tonnes.
That's leaves one spare person. I'm going to assume that this spare person is me. Or anyone that is reading this that did actually sign up.And the footprint for one person here is negligible.
So, we've got the billion. Now, if what this guy told me and the WWF were contacting every single person by phone then we're back to calculating. Problem is, these aren't 2 minute calls now as this is where the WWF hard sell kicks in. My call was 5 minutes of Earth Hour spiel and 5 minutes of me telling him no. Now some people might well have signed up and spent another 5 minutes on the phone, some might have been able to get rid of the caller after the spiel. So, let's go for an 8 minute average. They're using laptops again and again they are in warms clothes and are lit up with tealights - that's 4000 tonnes for the computer usage, and 1512 tonnes for the digital phone network. We're up to 8583 tonnes now.
Now for the footprint of the calls received - again, an even split between mobiles, digital home phone and analogue phones. So, 120 for analogue, 1512 for digital and 1512 for mobile. Now we're at 11,727 tonnes.
Using this chart: http://www.carbonfootprint.com/energyconsumption.html and assuming equal numbers of energy saving bulbs and old style bulbs and assuming 1 bulb per person we have a total saving for Earth Hour of 27,500 tonnes. And, oh....time to cancel out all those concessions I gave to WWF...
Those workers that work for WWF are not in warm clothes and are in offices. They've got 100 people in 100 offices, and let's say that 1 x 18W energy saving light bulb is shared between two workers. They've got 10,000 of these workers, so they have 5,000 lightbulbs. Now, they've contacted 333,333,333 people by phone for 2 minutes and 1 billion for 8 minutes. That's 144,444,444 hours - or 14,444.44 per WWF worker (seriously, these guys can bend time). Divide by 2 and you get 7222 hours - that's how long each one of the 5000 lightbulbs needs to be on and you get 36,111,100 bulb hours which is actually only 270 tonnes. So, 11,997 tonnes.
I also assumed that they were superman (but still took the train). I'll still keep the figure as 10,000 workers across the 100 countries. Unlikely as it may seem, they recruited 33,333 people each. Now, they can only recruit 240 in a perfect (ie. no rejections) day. This means they were recruiting for 138 days rather than for a mere 4. So let's multiply that 1448 by 34.5. This gives us 49,956 tonnes. That's an extra 48,508 tonnes on travel for a running total of 60,505 tonnes.
Now is a sensible time to stop though. Rather than look further at the carbon footprint of heating the buildings the WWF people operated from, and for boiling their kettles to make their coffees and the unrealistic fact that those based in the offices did not work for 390 weeks solid to inform all 1 billion that it was Earth Hour last Saturday or even take into account their commuting carbon footprint. And then not to even assume that perhaps 10% of those that signed up didn't turn their lights off, or were actually out of the house anyway and would normally have been at that time ensuring no actual benefit was gained. The figures above are as accurate as I can find, and whilst I've made a couple of assumptions, they are in the low "footprints" rather than the high ones.
Am I really to believe that all that effort would have been made by the WWF for a whopping carbon footprint of 33,000 tonnes? Possibly more? No. I don't believe it for one second, but if the WWF are going to lie to you about the numbers taking part in Earth Hour then what the hell else are they lying about? 1 billion? Come on, be realistic and don't pump out such utter bullshit like that. Anyone can combat inaccuracy and fabrications with further inaccuracies and fabrications. WWF did not sign up 1 billion people - merely 1 billion people were represented in one way or another. It would be somewhat churlish to attempt to calculate the carbon footprint of the actual Earth Hour campaign based on actual figures as I'm sure that as a responsible charity such as the WWF would have a carbon offsetting policy - http://www.wwf.org.uk/search_results.cfm?searchText=carbon+offsetting - they say they do, but I can't read the document as the page can't be found.
The most significant savings will have been made by buinesses and city organisations - ultimately, these are the ones that were the targets of Earth Hour and I imagine that the vast majority of reported falls in energy use - up to 7% in parts of Canada: http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2010/03/29/consumer-earth-hour.html - were down to businesses and city initiatives rather than home use. Obviously, full statistics are not yet in but I'll be interested in viewing them. I'd also be interested in seeing how much of the final savings figure was actually from carbon neutral energy (which shouldn't count as a footprint saving).
In the end I totally forgot - I was in, but I had my Xbox chuntering away with the TV on and the computer on in the background playing music at a low level not to mention the fact that I was Sky+ing something on TV at the same time. But at least I had my lights off, if only by virtue of the fact that the big light outside had gone off for the day. But, at least I didn't have the wool pulled over my eyes by the WWF, because, despite my anally retentive response, I know that the WWF did not sign up 1 billion people.
And if they really did, then they're fucking crazy and are helping to destroy the planet rather than save it.
I also assumed that they were superman (but still took the train). I'll still keep the figure as 10,000 workers across the 100 countries. Unlikely as it may seem, they recruited 33,333 people each. Now, they can only recruit 240 in a perfect (ie. no rejections) day. This means they were recruiting for 138 days rather than for a mere 4. So let's multiply that 1448 by 34.5. This gives us 49,956 tonnes. That's an extra 48,508 tonnes on travel for a running total of 60,505 tonnes.
Now is a sensible time to stop though. Rather than look further at the carbon footprint of heating the buildings the WWF people operated from, and for boiling their kettles to make their coffees and the unrealistic fact that those based in the offices did not work for 390 weeks solid to inform all 1 billion that it was Earth Hour last Saturday or even take into account their commuting carbon footprint. And then not to even assume that perhaps 10% of those that signed up didn't turn their lights off, or were actually out of the house anyway and would normally have been at that time ensuring no actual benefit was gained. The figures above are as accurate as I can find, and whilst I've made a couple of assumptions, they are in the low "footprints" rather than the high ones.
Am I really to believe that all that effort would have been made by the WWF for a whopping carbon footprint of 33,000 tonnes? Possibly more? No. I don't believe it for one second, but if the WWF are going to lie to you about the numbers taking part in Earth Hour then what the hell else are they lying about? 1 billion? Come on, be realistic and don't pump out such utter bullshit like that. Anyone can combat inaccuracy and fabrications with further inaccuracies and fabrications. WWF did not sign up 1 billion people - merely 1 billion people were represented in one way or another. It would be somewhat churlish to attempt to calculate the carbon footprint of the actual Earth Hour campaign based on actual figures as I'm sure that as a responsible charity such as the WWF would have a carbon offsetting policy - http://www.wwf.org.uk/search_results.cfm?searchText=carbon+offsetting - they say they do, but I can't read the document as the page can't be found.
The most significant savings will have been made by buinesses and city organisations - ultimately, these are the ones that were the targets of Earth Hour and I imagine that the vast majority of reported falls in energy use - up to 7% in parts of Canada: http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2010/03/29/consumer-earth-hour.html - were down to businesses and city initiatives rather than home use. Obviously, full statistics are not yet in but I'll be interested in viewing them. I'd also be interested in seeing how much of the final savings figure was actually from carbon neutral energy (which shouldn't count as a footprint saving).
In the end I totally forgot - I was in, but I had my Xbox chuntering away with the TV on and the computer on in the background playing music at a low level not to mention the fact that I was Sky+ing something on TV at the same time. But at least I had my lights off, if only by virtue of the fact that the big light outside had gone off for the day. But, at least I didn't have the wool pulled over my eyes by the WWF, because, despite my anally retentive response, I know that the WWF did not sign up 1 billion people.
And if they really did, then they're fucking crazy and are helping to destroy the planet rather than save it.
