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INTERESTING IDEA... and the French came up with it... and why do they want lights off? We know why!

The first of February we dim the lights between 7.55 and 8.00 PM!

Send this message to as many people as you know!

An action against the climate change.

Take on February 1st part in one of the biggest actions against climate change forced by the people.
L'Alliance pour la Planète (a group of environmental activists http://www.lalliance.fr/ ) calls to all civilians:

Make our planet rest for five minutes!
Everybody is requested to dimm his/her lights for five minutes between 7.55pm and 8.00pm on February first. This not only to save energy for five minutes, but to bring out a message that will attract the attention of politicians and leaders. It is time for them to take action and avoid the waste of energy.

During 5 minutes we'll give the planet rest: it doesn't take long and it won't cost you a thing. And it will make a statement before federal elections that we as citizens want climate on the agenda.

And why February 1st?

Because on that day a new file from climatological experts from the United Nations will be published in Paris. Because it is with our neighbors it is impossible to let this opportunity slip! We have to get attention to the urgent matter of the worlds climatological situation. If everybody takes part in this action it will have an effect on media and politics that might have a real influence, this would be good on such short notice before the (Belgian) elections!

Something to learn...

So... recently I have been listening to audio books on my daily commute up to Barrie... 100km each way... one needs to do something productive...

The book that I am listening to right now is Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything" where I found out about the following individual...

Clair Cameron Patterson

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Clair Cameron Patterson (1922 - 1995) was a geochemist born in Mitchellville, Iowa, United States. He graduated from Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa.

Patterson developed the uranium-lead dating method, and using lead and uranium isotopic data from the Canyon Diablo meteorite, he calculated an age for the Earth of 4.55 billion years; a figure far more accurate than those that existed at the time and one that has remained unchanged for over 50 years.

Patterson had first encountered lead contamination in the late 1940s as a graduate student at the University of Chicago. While using a new method of lead isotope measurement to determine the age of the Earth, he found his rock samples to be contaminated. At the time, the source of the contamination was a mystery.

Campaign against lead poisoning

After the completion of this work, Patterson immediately returned to the problem of his initial experiment and the contamination he had found. He determined through ice-core samples from Greenland that atmospheric lead levels had begun to increase steadily and dangerously soon after tetra-ethyl lead began to see widespread use in fuel, when it was to discovered to reduce engine "knock" in internal combustion engines. Patterson subsequently identified this, along with the various other uses of lead in manufacturing, as the cause of the contamination of his samples, and because of the significant public-health implications of his findings, he devoted the rest of his life to removing as much introduced lead from the environment as possible.

Beginning in 1965, with the publication of Contaminated and Natural Lead Environments of Man, Patterson tried to draw public attention to the problem of contamination of the environment and the food chain with lead from industrial sources.

In this effort, he fought against the lobbying power of the Ethyl Corporation with all its influence (and the legacy of Thomas Midgley, which included tetra-ethyl lead and chlorofluorocarbons) and the lead additive industry as a whole, to ensure that lead was removed from gasoline (petroleum). In A Short History of Nearly Everything, author Bill Bryson alleges that, because of the influence of the lead industry, Patterson was excluded from a 1971 National Research Council panel on atmospheric lead contamination, and was refused contracts with many research organisations, including the supposedly neutral United States Public Health Service.

Eventually, Patterson's efforts led to the Clean Air Act of 1970, and ultimately the removal of lead from all gasoline in the United States by 1986. Reputedly, lead levels within the blood of Americans dropped by 80% soon after this^{[citation needed]}.