An Inconvenient Recount - Landslides Win by a Landslide

Here is an amusing thing i prepared for a lab meeting on 02 April 2009.

Earth hour was observed on Saturday 28^th March 2009 at 20h30 local time in 88 countries worldwide. This event was marketed as an international election between the earth and global warming (turning off your lights for the hour constituted a symbolic vote for the earth). Laurentian University participated in this event by requesting building occupants to turn off unnecessary lights in their labs and offices and having physical plant turn off non-essential lights on campus. Cursory observations found that the Willet Green Miller Centre was dark. The Parker Building was dark with the exception of the Student Centre and the Governor’s Lounge. Over half of the windows in the West Residence and Single Student Residence were lit up while just less than half of the windows in the University College Residence were lit. The top two floors of the Mature Student Residence (i.e. all that was visible from my observation point in the pit) were entirely lit. Interestingly, the street lamps lining the University’s roads were deemed non-essential forcing any safe driver, including your humble observer, to activate their high beams when driving on them.

In order to celebrate this monumental event a lovely choral music event was held in the Fraser Auditorium under high efficiency LED lighting. To gage the carbon footprint of this event, ignoring the event itself or its marketing, the number of motorized vehicles entering the science parking lot were recoded 45 minutes prior to and 15 minutes following the onset of this event at five minute intervals. Qualitative evidence indicates that a very high percentage, if not all, of these vehicles arrived for this event. In order to be counted, a vehicle had to either (1) be seen parking in the metered lot or (2) cross over the speed bump past the metered lot and turn left toward the drop-off area and gated parking lot. 139 vehicles were counted. If one were to assume that each vehicle traveled 4.0 mi each way (the distance between the University and downtown Sudbury) and that each vehicle had the fuel efficiency of the champion of this event’s hybrid vehicle (31mpg) 35.87 US gal of petrol were burned. Multiplied by the estimated CO₂ emission factor (10.3 kg/gal) the conservative estimate of a 0.69 tonne carbon footprint emerges.

Peter Rossi who manages the University’s electricity usage indicated that he had observed no qualitatively significant change in energy usage over the weekend, and the University’s monthly hydro bill is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars (personal communication). The carbon footprint yielded from a $100,000 monthly hydro bill in Canada is 29.7 tonnes (www.carbonfootprint.com). For a total electric black-out lasting one hour the University’s carbon footprint decreases by 0.0399 tonnes. Please note that this is almost 20-fold less than the footprint generated by the increase in vehicular traffic.

If one were to interpret the above dispassionately as true election results global warming clearly won last Saturday’s election by a landslide (which, ironically, we may see an increase of in coming years if the Al Gores of the world are correct).