Hi Fellow Lighting Nuts,
What did you guys do for "Earth hour"? I had a very lame show of 1 40w incandescnet and 2 100w incandescents. What about you guys?

I have been away from here

Anyway, i really dont see the point in going bright lights against the earth hour itself

Being green and participating in this event (its not for the amount of energy saved in that hour which is tiny, but for the awareness and spreading the message) is not wrong in any way. Its being green and stupid in the same time which poses a problem

Now if you picked this hour to showcase wasted energy with incandescents in protest for the ban i can understand this, but think of it - What others see is that you are against _earth hour_, they won;t even link your protest to bulb bans or other _specific_ activities. For them, the message they see in your incandescents is the same as if you would go racing your SUV and honking around the block

Very true, unfortunately? I really dislike the people who race around in SUVs, but the government should stay out of the lighting industry!

I'm against earth hour, but I used SOX, MV, Halogen, Blacklight, etc.

@Ash: Using incanscent lamps/bright lights is NOT like honking around in SUV's, they are totally different things.

Mercuryvapor 175, how many MVs did you fire up?

I set a personal best: 14,964W of lights (which may be an underestimate).
128 incandescent lamps, 23 magnetically ballasted fluorescent lamps and 3 HID lamps. 

I saw your YouTube video of that.  I'm andycflbulb on YouTube.  Great job!

 i got a 100 watt burning tonight got a clear caster lamp in my national pyle fixture

I fired up just 1 175w MV. I had one (set up) ballast only., 55w SOX, 300w Halogen

BTW I'm MercuryVapor175 on GoL.

Cool! I already had figured out that you are mercuryvapor175 on GOL

@SOX :

I entirely justify earth hour. Its point is raise awareness to responsible use of electricity - This means, switch off lights that you dont need, when you dont need them. There is nothing wrong with that, and it is very justified given that most of the electricity is made from non renewable energy sources which we have to save as much as reasonably possible

My own use of lighting is not going to change in that hour as i switch off lights that i dont need all of the tie and not just 1 hour in a year

Now the SUV is like ths :

You want to protest against the evil stuff greenies do (bulb bans...) so it makes much sense to use earth hour as the timing for your protest, and demonstratively waste energy as the protest

However - The ones that see your lighting setup, are not lighting specialists. They are probably not even aware much of lighting technology, and know little about bulb bans, ballast bans etc. The most they know is that "CFL is better than incandescent", and some of them dont know anything about lighitng at all

To them, your actions WONT look like protest against specific stuff, because they dont have knowledge about it. All they will see is somebody demonstratively wasting energy. To them it will look exactly like the SUV trip, and your protest will not pass any of the wanted message at all - just make you look evil