As you may or may not not at 8:00-9:00 p.m. local time, people are being encouraged to turn off their lights for earth hour. It is to promote energy conservation. Major cities around the globe will be participating. Will you?
I thought it was just google UK
As Tel-Aviv observed Earth Hour on Thursday evening (instead of Saturday,) I already did participate 
Ironically, black pixels use up more power then white on LCD screens, so google is burning extra energy by changing their background color (though I realize directly conserving power is not the point of changing their background)
No, I won’t be participating. During that time frame I’m going to be on the road driving parents home from the airport.
I didn’t know about this (the google.ca/firefox home page is still white… looks like someone at Google forgot to check that one!).
It’s an interesting idea… if we remember to (or if we’re even here) we’ll do it.
No. It’s all of 27F right now at 2pm. The thought of sitting in the dark too tonight, does not appeal. At least with the TV or music on I can’t hear the howling of the wind outside…
Yeah, that whole 8-9pm thing is a bit suspect. If it were an hour earlier, I’d be happy to go sit outside and watch the sunset, but why would I sit in the dark for an hour? Seems to me that if they really want to make an impact, they would set it for a time when one could make a habit of it. But I’m not going to make a habit of turning off my lights every night and sitting in the dark for an hour.
Time.gov will show the region of the world in sunlight/dark. I wonder if this will show up on those satelite pictures of the US.
Edited thread title to make subject clearer.
Colibri
This would be more effective during peak usage hours. Open the blinds and turn off the fluorescents!
I wish I had known about it in time. I tried clicking on the scrolling headlines and it shut me down. I should have taken the hint, I guess.
I was going to do Earth Hour, but my husband just got home after being up since 5:30 p.m. and he needs to eat. And watch some t.v. 
I can’t really blame him, he’s tired and hungry and just wants to relax. He did offer to eat at 9:00 p.m. but I just couldn’t do it to him. Maybe next year…
tha’s funny. I shut my browser down because I thought there was something wrong with it when I clicked on Google. Took me a minute to figure out it was intentional.
So did they, BTW – no point linking to anything, I’m afraid, but at least the Google.uk page did state that they realize making their home page black wouldn’t save any energy, and that the reason they did it was only awareness.
You ARE kidding right? Just because it’s cold outside doesn’t mean you should waste power inside. If you want to have the TV or radio on, fair enough, but make sure everything else that is not necessary to leave on isn’t on. At least during this one hour. Although I suppose it’s too late now.
Noone’s asking you to turn off your heat. In fact, that might even be counter productive as it might take more energy to heat a cold home back up than it would to just keep it warm (I don’t really know.).
“It’s cold outside and I don’t want to hear the howling wind outside” is no excuse. That’s the attitude that’s put us where we are right now.
Now that Google’s gone back to the white, is there any way to set it back to the black scheme? I liked the way it looked.
This is so funny to me…
Today, of all days on a Saturday, I had to give a presentation to new college students and went to the computer to find something on Google.
It had a black screen.
I mentioned to the students that I had never seen THAT before and they all agreed it was something they too had never seen before, but still, kinda cool.
Should have considered there was a reason for it, but was in a rush to find what I was Googling.
And what does it achieve? How do you store electricity?
It’s “promoting awareness”
I guess they hope the next morning we’ll all be saying “We should save electric? When did this happen?” :rolleyes:
However it is a great way for people to feel good about themselves, let off some guilt and berate others for not taking part.