Posted on 03/06/2014 1:10:05 PM PST by thackney
With the switchover to daylight saving time just around the corner, you might wonder why we go to the trouble of springing forward and falling backward every year.
It turns out that more daylight gives us more time to shop, drive, grill and perfect our golf game. What it doesn't do is cut our energy use, as is the intent, says Michael Downing, a lecturer in English and author of Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time.
In fact, when we lose an hour's sleep at 2 a.m. on March 9beginning the eight-month DST seasonit will not reduce our electricity use even by one half of 1 percent, says Downing, contrary to the most recent study by the Department of Energy.
While the government continues to claim that the country reduces electricity use for each day during DST, Downing says we come nowhere near that. Some studies do report small reductions in electricity use, but the most comprehensive study of household energy demand and many others report an increase in overall energy consumption ranging from 1 to 4 percent during DST.
"The barbeque grill and charcoal industries say they gain $200 million in sales with an extra month of daylight savingand they were among the biggest lobbies in favor of extending DST from six to seven months in 1986," he says. Lobbying alongside them that year was the golf industry, which says that additional month of daylight has meant more time on the links and an additional $400 million in revenue.
But what's good for retail is bad for overall energy use, says Downing. "If it's light when we leave work and we decide to go to the mall or a restaurant or head for a summer night at the beach, we don't walk there; we get in our cars," he says.
Gas consumption goes up during daylight saving time"something the gas industry has known since the 1930s," Downing says. That's why it lobbied hard to reintroduce DST after two short-term experiments with it to conserve electricity and other energy resources during World Wars I and II.
But more driving also means more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which exacerbates climate change, says Downing. Moreover, the reduced cost of indoor lighting on sunny spring and summer afternoons is offset by higher air-conditioning costs at offices, factories and shopping malls.
"Every time the government studies [DST], it turns out that we are really saving nothing when all is said and done," Downing says.
And yet, at the urging of many industry lobbies, the government has extended the duration of DST several times. In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Uniform Time Act, which instituted daylight saving time, beginning on the last Sunday of April and ending the last Sunday of Octobersix months in all. This act standardized customs that varied from state to state between 1945 and 1966.
Then in 1986, the federal law was amended to add a full month to DST, making it begin the first, not the last, Sunday in April. "This change was spurred by a large number of lobbies: golf and golf equipment, home improvement, the Hearth, Patio and Barbecue Association and the gas and fuel industries, which saw a potential boon to their sales," Downing says. "There was little concern for those living in western parts of each time zone, where sunrise could be as late as 8:30 a.m. some months.
"This standardized time change was no favor to farmers, who now had an hour less of morning light to milk their cows and get their goods ready for market, let alone for commuters or children waiting for school buses in the dark," he says.
In 2005, seven months of DST became eight with the passage of the Energy Policy Act, which moved the start date to the second Sunday of March and ended it a week later, on the first Sunday in November. The change from the end of October to early November was not driven by energy savings, but by the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS), who wanted Halloween to occur during DST. "It gave the children more time to trick or treat and eat more candy," Downing says. Of course, in addition to Snickers bars, Americans buy 80 percent of their gasoline at convenience stores, and the NACS credits that extra month of daylight saving with a $1 billion increase in annual sales.
"So today we have eight months of daylight saving and only four months of standard time," he says. "Can you tell me which time is the standard?"
Commercial upsides aside, Downing offers that daylight saving time does do something good for the soul: "It may be based on a myth of energy saving, but who wants to give up enjoying those long, warm summer nights?"
You're thinking of the hippies...
Ha ha, very funny.
Do you realize that the clock is like the calendar? It's not a scheduler; it's an objective measurement of time. Running the clock up an hour to make daylight "last longer" is no different than running the months up by one so that summer doesn't end until late October. Utterly ridiculous.
I agree with the earlier poster; if you want to do everything for eight months out of the year (or even twelve, for that matter, then just do everything an hour earlier. Leave the clock and the time alone.
I have absolutely no patience with you DST apologists/lovers. Take your snarking elsewhere.
I do, too. It doesn't save daylight, it takes it away. Right now, I'm getting up with the sun. Next week, it will be like getting up in the middle of the night.
I can barely wait!
“It turns out that more daylight gives us more time to shop, drive, grill and perfect our golf game. What it doesn’t do is cut our energy use...”
If we could only con the Leftists into believing that DST causes global warming, since mankind was gracious enough to let the Sun shine a little longer than in times past, we could get rid of it in no time flat!
Leave the clock and the time alone.
DITTOS AND AMEN!!
It didnt used to. But for the last couple of years, it has gotten harder and harder to make the change. Of course, it happens. But I am a zombie for the first couple of days.
If they could co-ordinate warmer weather with it....
I’m with you, SS.
I’m an outdoors guy and the more daylight after 6pm there is the more I can do - and I’ve always got more to do than I can do. Not a farmer, but we do have acreage and it needs attention.
Losing the extra hour of daylight in the winter is a bummer.
And, I’m a biker - and want those hours to ride after supper.
I agree with never changing it 100% - just leave it where the daylight hours are most productive. Who wants the sunlight in the early am hours?
And why are so many against it staying on the DST setting all year?
I did night shift for 17 years. I worked 3 12 hour night shifts, then switched over to a “normal” schedule to spend time with the family for my four days off. Then 4 night on and 3 days off the next week. That schedule sucked but I am amazed that people can whine so much about 1 hour’s difference. What a bunch of Nancys.
Actually, that is the normal (standard) time. Daylight Savings time is during the summer.
Actually we don’t “lose” an hour of sunlight. We can’t change the orbits of the planet around the sun by moving the hands of a clock. Just sayin’.
I HATE SPRINGING FORWARD!!!
Messes me up for weeks
That is easier said than done. If you have a 9-5 job you are stuck there till 5. I personally like DST. I like the extra time in the evening and my wife likes it too.
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*snicker*
Because if you’re on the DST setting all year in the dead of winter the sun won’t be up until most folks are already at work, and have been at work for a while. It’s bad enough waking up before the sun, getting to work before the sun defeats the purpose of the industrial revolution.
I’m all for extra time in the evening for those that want it, but rather than make everybody change the clock work it out with your employer, change careers if necessary. Don’t make the world change for your convenience.
Thank you, sir, for the post and Flyer ping.
You already know how I feel about this silly ritual.
At least now I know why the [blankity-blank] thing is being made longer and longer every chance they
get. What are they going to do after they get it year-round? Go Spring forward and Fall back again?
Sick bastids.
And I never met Flyer, but I surely do miss him. I have been told all about him, and he was a good man.
...we lose an hour’s sleep at 2 a.m. on ***March*** 9...
...the federal law was amended to add a full month to DST, making it begin the first, not the last, Sunday in ***April***.
Keen grasp of the obvious here. DST was invented for dairy farmers who milked by hand and had no electric light.
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