I am disgusted. They'll use any shamelessly emotionally manipulative trick to make people follow their junk-science secular religion.
For Darmouth students: Unplug -- or the bear drowns!
By SHAWNE K. WICKHAM
New Hampshire Sunday News Staff
8 hours, 11 minutes ago
HANOVER It's mid-morning on a Wednesday, and there's a polar bear sleeping happily in a Dartmouth College dormitory.
But as more students start their day -- along with their hair dryers, computers and music players -- that begins to change. As the power draw escalates, the "ice" around the bear cracks and he ends up floundering pitifully in the water.
The animated creature displayed on a hallway monitor is part of a pilot project to measure the real-time energy usage on four floors of Dartmouth's newest dormitory cluster.
The idea, according to its creator, Lorie Loeb, a research associate professor of computer science, is to show students how their behavior affects energy consumption.
The polar bear has become a symbol of the effects of climate change, Loeb said. "So making that connection for students, it may be sad, but it's a reality."
John Spradling, a freshman from Houston, Texas, said he checks the polar bear's status frequently. "It's sort of depressing," he said. "He's usually drowning."
Loeb likens the effect to how drivers respond to those speed monitors police departments set up on the roadside: "You instantly adjust your speed."
She's hoping the students will do the same with energy use, particularly the so-called "vampire" draw from devices such as chargers for cell phones, music players and laptop computers. "Those little bits can add up to a big energy savings," she said.
The first night the monitor was up in her dorm, freshman Jocelyn Duford of Manchester said, "All these girls were around it, yelling at people to turn off their lights."
These images of an animated polar bear are displayed on a hallway monitor in a Dartmouth dorm. When student energy usage spikes, the ice cracks, and if it stays high, the bear drowns.
"I think the fact it's a cute little polar bear helps, because you don't want to see it drown."
When Loeb told Duford her cell-phone charger consumes power in its standby mode, Duford rushed to her room to unplug it before heading to class.
Loeb said the eventual goal is to compute what would happen if the entire campus applied the same energy-saving behaviors.
And she'd love to see the idea translated into something that folks could have in their homes. "I can just picture it: 'Mommy, we can't leave the house; the polar bear's not happy.'"
Also, yes. Unplug your chargers for Li-Ion batteries that were keeping the batteries topped off, let the batteries run down fully before charging them, which will make you have to replace the battery much, much quicker and put another battery in a landfill. That's brilliant environmental thinking, there!
And finally? IT IS A FREAKING MONITOR, which is using power! Does no one see the hypocrisy?
