NationStates Jolt Archive


Daylight Savings Time, a bad idea it's time to scrap?

Eutrusca
09-08-2005, 12:38
COMMENTARY: Great. Just what we needed ... darkness until 8:30 AM! Congress definitely does some wierd shit, but this is just kinda over the top.


Endless Summer (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/09/opinion/09downing.html?th&emc=th)

By MICHAEL DOWNING
Published: August 9, 2005
Cambridge, Mass.

CONGRESS has an amazing new scheme to cut crime, automobile fatalities and energy consumption. There is one hitch. We have to stay in bed until sunrise during the first week of November - lights out, televisions and radios off and please stay away from that coffee maker.

Of course, doing so might interfere with breakfast, school attendance, morning workouts and jobs. That's because during that week, the sun won't rise until 7:30 a.m. at the earliest. If you live on the western edge of your time zone, expect darkness until 8:30 a.m. Sorry, Boise. Good night, Grand Rapids.

Congress has extended daylight saving time by four weeks: In 2007, our clocks will spring forward on the second Sunday of March and fall back on the first Sunday of November. And frankly, there may be another hitch or two in the plan.

First, the trick of shifting unused morning light to evening was intended to exploit long summer days, when sunrise occurs between 4:00 and 5:00 a.m. Standard Time - hours of daylight that do not exist during the short days of March and November.

Second, after nearly 100 years, daylight saving has yet to save us anything.

The idea of falsifying clocks was proposed by the British architect William Willett in 1907, but the Germans were the first to try it in 1916, hoping that it would help them conserve fuel during the First World War. Then Britain and America gave their clocks a whirl. The fuel savings never materialized, and daylight saving was so unpopular here that Congress repealed it before officially declaring an end to the war.

That most Americans still believe we save daylight to help farmers tells you something about the quality of debate on this perennial controversy. In fact, farmers hated daylight saving. They needed morning light to get their dairy and crops to markets, and they were powerful enough to rally popular opinion against the law. For that reason, except during the Second World War, Congress did not dare to pass a national daylight saving policy for almost 50 years.

It was New York City that kept the practice alive, and it did so by passing a local daylight ordinance in 1919. This served the powerful department stores, which wanted evening light to tempt working people to shop on their way home. Wall Street profited, too; fast time preserved one hour of overlap with London traders, whose clocks sprung forward every year.

By 1965, 71 of the largest American cities practiced daylight saving and 59 did not. One airline reported 4,000 calls a day from customers asking what time it would be in their destination cities. The United States Naval Observatory dubbed the nation "the world's worst timekeeper."

And so in 1966, Congress passed the Uniform Time Act, which gave us six months of Standard Time and six months of daylight saving. This wise compromise has since been compromised out of existence. We now face eight months of daylight saving. Before we bargain our way into a permanent, year-round policy, we should know whom we have to thank for saving us nothing.

Richard Nixon infamously mandated year-round daylight saving in 1974 and 1975. This decision did not soften the blow of the OPEC oil embargo, but it did put school children on pitch-black streets every morning until the plan was scaled back. A Department of Transportation study concluded that Nixon's experiment yielded no definitive fuel saving. It optimistically speculated, however, that daylight saving might one day help us conserve as many as 100,000 barrels of oil a day. Based on that projection and the hope of reducing street crime, in 1986 and again this year Congress extended daylight saving by a month. But there has been no corresponding reduction in oil consumption or crime.

The new four-week daylight saving extension won't save fuel or lives, but it will put our clocks seriously out of sync with Europe's, costing airlines $150 million a year. It will foul up clocks in computers, confuse trade with our continental neighbors and make it impossible for many Jews to recite sunrise prayers at home.

Sure, later sunsets will encourage Americans to go outside - to the mall or the ballpark - but this will only put more cars on the road for more hours of the day. The petroleum industry recognized daylight saving's potential to increase gasoline consumption as early as 1920. And it is a sweet deal for retailers: candy makers have long lobbied to extend daylight saving past Halloween. In 1986, the golf industry told Congress the extension would boost fees and retail sales by as much as $400 million annually. The barbecue industry saw a $150 million bonanza. And 7-Eleven convenience stores stocked up for a $50 million rise in sales.

I am a fan of long summer evenings and of social policy that promotes conservation. But I can't promise I won't turn on a light until 8:30 in the morning. Come November, wouldn't it make more sense for Congress to leave the clocks alone, ask us to turn down our thermostats at night and maybe spring for a pair of flannel pajamas?

Michael Downing is the author of "Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time."
Monkeypimp
09-08-2005, 12:44
Thats just... strange.
Sdaeriji
09-08-2005, 12:49
What's even stranger is that Eutrusca posted an article from a professor at Tufts University in the People's Republic of Cambridge.
CSW
09-08-2005, 12:55
What's even stranger is that Eutrusca posted an article from a professor at Tufts University in the People's Republic of Cambridge.
That's the funniest thing that I've read all week.
Eutrusca
09-08-2005, 13:06
That's the funniest thing that I've read all week.
Heh! Then you've not been reading the funnier threads! :p
Eutrusca
09-08-2005, 13:07
What's even stranger is that Eutrusca posted an article from a professor at Tufts University in the People's Republic of Cambridge.
All that goes to prove is that the truth is sometimes found in the stragest places! :D
BackwoodsSquatches
09-08-2005, 13:09
So..daylight savings is about money, and oil?

.....I am so dissallusioned right now.
Monkeypimp
09-08-2005, 13:50
So..daylight savings is about money, and oil?

.....I am so dissallusioned right now.

It just makes long summer days fit in better with normal human hours of awakeness I thought? Taking the hour of sunlight from around 4am-5am and putting it at 9pm..?
Chidwick
09-08-2005, 13:51
I don't care how much daylight savings costs. That extra hour in the winter mornings and summer evenings is an absolute godsend.
Laerod
09-08-2005, 13:53
Didn't Benjamin Franklin first propose Day Light Savings time to save candles? :confused:
Now they claim some Brit did it a hundred years later...
Florrisant States
09-08-2005, 13:53
Yes, daylight savings (a false term for sure) was based on war time electricity savings during the wars (ww2 probably?) so the claims of todays' congress are right in line with the same nonsense that congress of the war years said back then.
I've lived my life without daylight savings time so far, so I say, what's the point? You'll live equally well by scrapping it all together.

I caution you to think twice what you read. Daylight Savings Time was a good idea when Franklin Delano Roosevelt supported it. Now that George W Bush and the republican congress want to extend it as part of an energy bill, the usual administration critics call it stupid. Be careful to form your own opinion.

The earth has exactly 12 hours of daylight at the equinoxes. It always will. No amount of daylight savings time will change that. We must adapt society to this fact and I believe we already have - no need to have DST.
Florrisant States
09-08-2005, 13:57
... clocks seriously out of synch with europe's

Why do I ... "care" what the Europeans do? My home state has been without DST for 40 years and the Japanese can set their watches to our time just fine. If the Europeans can't figure it out, then they are just too stupid to do business here.
After all, I know that in the summer, I'm on Chicago time and in the winter I'm on New York time. It's simple to use a time zone map. How's that for a simple, backwards American education?

Commentator Michael Downing is a drooling idiot.
Sylvanwold
09-08-2005, 14:10
its always about money.. and power. They play these games to tinker with the masses and distract them from the real issues and problems. After a couple of days who cares where the clocks are set.
Eutrusca
09-08-2005, 14:22
I would like to see the world try running off one "universal time," and do away with local time zones. It could be Greenwitch Mean Time or some new measure based on Ciesium clocks or something. All localities would have to do is decide what time they wanted government offices to open each day. New York could decide that offices there would open at 5:00 AM, Greenwitch Time; LA could go for 9:00 AM, Greenwitch Time. It would be the same time, all the time, all around the world. Kewl, huh? ;)
FAKORIGINAL
09-08-2005, 14:23
Interesting. In the UK I was always led to believe that British Summer time (clocks go forward by an hour in the spring, then back by an hour in the autumn) was all about getting the harvest in after school (you finished school at say 16:00, but really it was only 15:00 so lots more daytime).

I have seen people argue for it to be extended, but the counter-argument has always been related to kids being walked to school as the amount daylight reduces (apparently that used to happen). In the winter it starts getting dark about 16:00-17:00ish. If BST was still in force that would be 17:00-18:00. Kids get out of school between 16:00 and 16:30, so you don't need the light later in the day, it is much more use in the morning for getting the little blighters to school in better conditions.

It's all rather screwed up by the fact that there are more sunlight hours in the summer than the winter anyway.
Monkeypimp
09-08-2005, 14:25
I would like to see the world try running off one "universal time," and do away with local time zones. It could be Greenwitch Mean Time or some new measure based on Ciesium clocks or something. All localities would have to do is decide what time they wanted government offices to open each day. New York could decide that offices there would open at 5:00 AM, Greenwitch Time; LA could go for 9:00 AM, Greenwitch Time. It would be the same time, all the time, all around the world. Kewl, huh? ;)

That would just make everything backwards here (we're GMT+12)

I like being in the future though :D
UpwardThrust
09-08-2005, 14:28
I would like to see the world try running off one "universal time," and do away with local time zones. It could be Greenwitch Mean Time or some new measure based on Ciesium clocks or something. All localities would have to do is decide what time they wanted government offices to open each day. New York could decide that offices there would open at 5:00 AM, Greenwitch Time; LA could go for 9:00 AM, Greenwitch Time. It would be the same time, all the time, all around the world. Kewl, huh? ;)
I would support such an idea (though with my schedule I am so non traditional that it don’t matter what time it is … I stay awake while I have to do something such as one of my three jobs or school then pass out all other time … irregardless of what time of day it is )
Laerod
09-08-2005, 14:41
I would like to see the world try running off one "universal time," and do away with local time zones. It could be Greenwitch Mean Time or some new measure based on Ciesium clocks or something. All localities would have to do is decide what time they wanted government offices to open each day. New York could decide that offices there would open at 5:00 AM, Greenwitch Time; LA could go for 9:00 AM, Greenwitch Time. It would be the same time, all the time, all around the world. Kewl, huh? ;)The Russkies did that to the East Germans for a while after WW2. The Easties had to get up to Moscow time for work...
Free Soviets
09-08-2005, 16:40
Of course, doing so might interfere with breakfast, school attendance, morning workouts and jobs. That's because during that week, the sun won't rise until 7:30 a.m. at the earliest. If you live on the western edge of your time zone, expect darkness until 8:30 a.m. Sorry, Boise. Good night, Grand Rapids.

and shock/horror, in dec and jan those places have sunrises at the same exact time again without daylight savings. so obviously it must be impossible to live in them year round.

The new four-week daylight saving extension won't save fuel or lives, but it will put our clocks seriously out of sync with Europe's, costing airlines $150 million a year. It will foul up clocks in computers, confuse trade with our continental neighbors and make it impossible for many Jews to recite sunrise prayers at home.

i have to wonder how we manage to trade things or fly across time zones now (omg noes! indiana is in a different time than chicago! the planes all crash rather than land, and the trucks all a splodes!1!!).

it might have been a problem back when things were calculated using an abacus, but it seems like it would be absolutely trivial to program a computer to automatically deal with this now.

it's better to have sunlight after work or school than waste it in the morning. if it makes things hard for boise, they can just join northern idaho in pacific time for a couple weeks - in fact, daylight savings already makes the sun rise at 8 in places on the western edges of time zones for the entirety of october. this just changes things by an additional few minutes for an extra few days (sunrise and sunset vary by like a minute per day).

the problem is the size of time zones. and the length of time people are expected to waste every day on bullshit jobs. and the inflexible nature of those jobs.
Sabbatis
09-08-2005, 17:15
I'm against it. It's an old, old trick - cut off one end of a blanket and sew it onto the other end in order to make it longer.
Santa Barbara
09-08-2005, 17:24
Eh whatever. I hate daylight savings time. What are we, so suspicious of the dark we can't operate unless "8:30 AM" means "sunlight?" It's time to move on from this stupid nyctophobia which is only a needlessly confusing way to pander to certain people's superstitious concepts of "night time" and "day time", and I'm fine with scrapping DST to do so.
Achtung 45
09-08-2005, 17:28
I've never had the pleasure to work with Daylight Savings, but I can imagine how annoying it is to have to change all your clocks and then get up earlier or later or whatever. It is sort of annoying being in two different time zones every year. That is only one reason why Arizona is better. :p
Mesatecala
09-08-2005, 19:13
As long as it reduces oil consumption (I heard up to 100,000 barrels per day). I'm for this, and I feel those negatives that were mentioned including fouling up computers or messing up trade are quite unsubstantiated. How will it mess up trade? It simply won't.
Florrisant States
09-08-2005, 20:45
Indiana completed a debate and passage of DST this summer. It is now in the hands of USDOT what time zone we'll join (most likely EDT)
Those for DST :
investment bankers
metropolitan centers
eastern counties
entertainment and sports
a majority of businesses
government offices

Against DST:
theaters
clubs and bars
television
parents
western counties
Chicago and Evansville suburbs
a minority of businesses
agri commodity traders

About the "mini Y2k" of automatic clocks
Media Communist Dave Ross said something I agree with. He talked about the Jerusalem dichotomy of time zones (the jews and palestinians must do everything different). So he told us what most citizens of Jerusalem do -
" We get up early in the morning and set the clocks ourselves ".

Of course, most people already know to do this.
Jah Bootie
09-08-2005, 20:47
I personally love daylight savings time. I like that i've got an hour of daylight left after I'm done with work and the gym. Extending it farther seems like a dumb idea though.
Lord-General Drache
09-08-2005, 20:50
Fine by me. I hate being awake before noon, anyways. 10 at the earliest. Any earlier, and I'm not a happy person.
Ifreann
09-08-2005, 21:08
What possible good can come from changing the way daylight saving works?i always thought the idea behind it was so we could take advantage of the hours of sunlight without changing our daily routine,work will still start at the same time and finish at the same time,so will school etc.

Eh whatever. I hate daylight savings time. What are we, so suspicious of the dark we can't operate unless "8:30 AM" means "sunlight?" It's time to move on from this stupid nyctophobia which is only a needlessly confusing way to pander to certain people's superstitious concepts of "night time" and "day time", and I'm fine with scrapping DST to do so.

superstitious?it has nothing to do with superstition,it's easier and safer to do thing in the sunlight,like drive.imagine if the morning or evening rush hours were in total darkness.


I'm against it. It's an old, old trick - cut off one end of a blanket and sew it onto the other end in order to make it longer.

I don't think anyone is being tricked.nobody thinks we're getting more of a day,were just adjusting it to fit in with the sunlight.the only people who thinks it's longer are children to young to fully understand it and idiots.