US Congress may extend daylight-saving time

CNN Story

'Lawmakers crafting energy legislation approved an amendment Wednesday to extend daylight-saving time by two months, having it start on the first Sunday in March and end on the last Sunday in November....

"The more daylight we have, the less electricity we use," said Markey, who cited Transportation Department estimates that showed the two-month extension would save the equivalent of 10,000 barrels of oil a day.'

I just wish they would set a time and leave it alone. I really hate the spring forward and fall back thing.

It's funny to think that our elected officials think it will create sunlight. I've never noticed the an savings when I have to turn the lights on when I wake up instead of turning them on after I get home from work. Of course, by the end of a 1 hour commute, I used to spend almost no daylight hours at home.


On a more serious note; I sent an e-mail to my senators asking that they defeat such a bill. The essence of the argument is that many computers have the DST stuff embedded in the time routines, and messing weith the start and stop will cause problems. A copy is below in case anyone wants to send it to they ellected representatives.


- - -

Honerable Senators,

I write to ask that you work to defeat any proposed changes to the
Daylight savings time. The cost of such a change (even temporary)
is immense.

I manage computer systems. All of them know about daylight savings time
and switch automatically from standard to savings time twice a year.
The operating system knows the algogithym used to determine when DST
starts and stops.

THE COMPUTERS WILL CHANGE TO STD ON TIME EVEN IF THEY ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO.
WE WILL HAVE TO MANNUALLY CHANGE THEM BACK IF DST IS EXTENDED.

These systems have automated processes that run daily, based on the time
of day. We have to be careful about processes scheduled between 2 and
3 am, since that's the timeframe used for the DST change.

If you extend DST, it will cause no end of problems with programs that
are time dependent. The last time DST was messed with was in the 1970's,
when much less of our lives depended on computers. Now we have things
like the whole banking system that may be screwed up if a small number
of systems are not manually re-synced in a timely mannor.

Please feel free to call if you'd like to discuss any of this.

Sincerely.

There are better ways to tackle the energy problem, I sure don't think messing with people's clocks is the way to do it.

If it goes through in the US, it might not happen in Canada. I haven't looked at any sunset, sunrise tables, but I'm pretty sure it would be dark in the AM at school time during the added months. This is a problem for school kids having to walk to school, catch buses, etc. The risk of accidents would rise quite a bit, methinks.

[ QUOTE ]
LifeNRA said:
I just wish they would set a time and leave it alone. I really hate the spring forward and fall back thing.

[/ QUOTE ]
I feel the same way. If the only reason is so that the sun is up in the early morning at certain times of the year why not just have kids come to school an hour later in the winter months? Same result, no hassle of changing the clocks twice a year.

If Congress is really going to extend daylight savings for two more months per year, I really wish they would consider just changing time zones period. Move our clocks up once and leave them there all year round.

Not that I am in favor of doing this but for me it makes much more sense than changing clocks for about 4 months during the winter to unsave daylight that isn't even there.

I remember during the first OPEC embargo, around 1974 or so that we had double daylight savings (looked it up, actually base time was advanced 1 hour, plus DST change when scheduled)--felt weird to be going to high school that early in the morning...

Now for the scientific reason to not have daylights savings time:

ABC News (Australia):

[ QUOTE ]
Stanley Coren, from the University of British Columbia, decided to see whether the change-over, into, and out of, daylight saving, had any effect on traffic accidents. He and his team had access to the data on some 1.4 million accidents that were reported to the Canadian Ministry of Transport for the years 1991 and 1992. They looked at the accidents that happened on the Monday before the changeover, and the Monday immediately after.

They found that when Canada went into daylight saving in the springtime, there was an 8% increased risk of accidents on the Monday after the changeover.

But when people had one hour's extra sleep (when they shifted out of daylight saving back into normal time), there was an 8% fewer risk of traffic accidents.

[/ QUOTE ]

A Canadian Research Report:

[ QUOTE ]
Coren (1996c) attempted to confirm this finding using accidents other than those associated with vehicle operation. He did this by looking at every accidental death in the US reported to the National Center for Health Statistics for the years 1986 through 1988. Since over 80% of accident induced mortality occurs within 4 days of the accident, data for analysis was restricted to the first 4 workdays in the weeks preceding, immediately following, and one week after, the DST change. While he found a significant increase in deaths following the spring shift (6.6%) he could not confirm the fall rebound, which only showed a nonsignificant (1.5%) decrease. Other studies that have used traffic accidents have found the increase following the spring shift to DST but have also failed to find any decrease following the fall time change (e.g. and Hicks, Lindseth & Hawkins, 1983; Monk, 1980).
...
U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the National Center for Statistics and Analysis. This data base maintains full records on all traffic accidents in the U.S. that result in fatalities in the participating states. Thirty-three states participate... The data set available to this researcher went from 1986 through August 1995. There were a total of 366,910 traffic deaths during that period. ...This 17 percent increase is larger than that observed in previous studies. The same analysis conducted for the fall DST shift, however, produces an insignificant reduction in traffic deaths...

[/ QUOTE ]

Or, maybe not...

[ QUOTE ]
In 1995, Ferguson and several colleagues published a study in the American Journal of Public Health that showed fatal accidents decreasing in the weeks after the switch to daylight saving time in the spring, and increasing after the change back to standard time in the fall.

During daylight saving time, the study showed, the extra hour of sunlight typically occurred during peak traffic periods and cut the number of fatalities even further. The biggest reduction was in the number of pedestrian deaths, because drivers were better able to see people walking in the street.

Though daylight saving time does make it darker in the morning, fewer people tend to drive that early, so there was not a corresponding increase in fatalities before dawn, the study said.

Far from viewing daylight saving time as dangerous, the study's authors recommended switching to it year-round, a move they said would have saved more than 900 lives over the five-year period they studied.

[/ QUOTE ]

Quick US history of DST:

[ QUOTE ]
History

1784: The idea is first suggested by Benjamin Franklin in an essay called 'An Economical Project.'

1918: Daylight time is formally adopted in the U.S. It has been used in many European countries since World War I.

1942: During World War II, President Roosevelt instituted year-round daylight time, called 'War Time.'

1966: By this time, most Americans are observing daylight time based on local laws and customs. To establish consistency, Congress passed the Uniform Time Act: daylight time would begin the last Sunday of April and end the last Sunday of October. Any state could exempt itself from daylight time by passing a state law.

1974: President Nixon signs the Emergency Daylight Saving Time Energy Conservation Act on Jan. 4, 1974. Clocks are set ahead one hour for a 15-month period ending April 27, 1975.

1986: Congress amends the law so that daylight time would begin earlier, on the first Sunday in April.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't really like DST--it is probably a big conspiracy by the barbeque industry to sell more supplies. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

But, of course, none of the above has ever stopped congress from passing another law:

April 7th, 2005: Congress looks to tack on one month to DST at begining and end

[ QUOTE ]
"The more daylight we have, the less electricity we use," said Markey, who cited Transportation Department estimates that showed the two-month extension would save the equivalent of 10,000 barrels of oil a day.

The country uses about 20 million barrels of oil a day.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, this will save 0.008% of our oil use per year. Gads--get the government off of my back. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif

Here is an article that says we will save 1% in electricity usage for a few weeks--before it is dwarfed by the summer use of airconditioners.

Just as an FYI... Here is an active look (from www.caiso.com -- the folks that brought us the California rolling blackouts a few years ago) at how much electicity is using during the current 24 hour period. I still am trying to see how much power is wasted by street lights. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif



Note: If I did this correctly, this is a live image that is updated with every reload.

-Bill

This just has to be a late April's Fool joke, right?

/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/ohgeez.gif

Uh... no. Other than the BBQ industry reference (sort of--actually they have been mentioned many times over the years--even pre-Internet--as lobbying for DST).

DST laws, IMHO, are just one of the many millions of little ways that government lawmakers intrude into daily life with very little results for the havoc they cause. Unintended consequences.

Kind of like Red Light Cameras that cause more injury accidents at signal lights than they prevent. Or the massive use of exterior lighting to prevent crime (which it may or may not do) and we now have light pollution and wasteful energy consumption.

-Bill

/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon23.gif

If America wants to save energy, it's going to take more than just daylight savings time to do it.

I never understood why it was necessary to shift everyone's schedule. If local government agencies and employers valued saving energy, they would schedule their activities accordingly... but that would require action whereas DST is inaction of itself - it just happens every year on its own ponderous momentum.

No, DST is just stupid. Change everything for some nebulous reason and cost just as much in unforseen externalities. Most businesses don't seem to care about energy costs - it's nothing next to the cost of labor. If every office worker spends 10 minutes whining about it being too cold/hot and loses another 30 minutes a day fidgeting because they're uncomfortable, that costs substantially more than the energy to maintain the lowest common environemtal denominator (read: meat locker during the summer, fruit dryer during the winter).

It's seemingly beyond most of the population to acclimate themselves to a wider range of temperatures.

Exponentially greater savings (energy and money) could be realized with investments in efficiency... but it seems to run against human nature to invest more precious capital despite overwhelming evidence that the long-term savings are tremendous (shockingly, this might lead to more capital being available to invest next time around).

Say, one could really tear into that "Ownership Society" theme the administration has been pushing if they go and promote top-down government solutions...

I hate time zones as well - everything should be GMT with local prefference on when to schedule everything. Of course, I work in a 24x7 center, so time is far more relative to me than the average 8-5 day-tripper with their structured daily routine and the luxury of following circadian rhythms. During the 24 hours of a workday I work 8 hours, spend 1-2 hours commuting, sleep 8 hours, and the rest of it is mine to squander however I like.

At least Halloween will be safer for children!

All I can say is...........: /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/ohgeez.gif (add a Homer Simpson "D'oh!")

As a kid, I usually did not bother going out on Halloween if it was early... Halloween is only fun in the DARK!

-Bill