Slashdot Mirror
Is Daylight Saving Shift Really Worth It?
Krishna Dagli writes "Two Ph.D. students at the University of California at Berkeley say that Daylight Saving Shift will not do any good or create any energy savings. We are already spending money for software upgrades in the name of saving energy and after reading following article I wonder has congress really studied the impact of DST shift? " I also read some back story on the concept; OTOH, I found TiVo's suggestions that I manually change everything on my Series 1 device to be somewhat...insulting.
Energy savings or not, I like the extra hour of daylight in the evening. It's extra time to play ball, take the dog for a walk or just let my kid play outside.
I'd go for double daylight savings if I could.
Maybe the PhD guys should get out of their classroom and enjoy the day.
I wonder has congress really studied the impact of DST shift?
It is already well-established that the US Congress doesn't bother to read the laws before they pass them.
If they don't even read the law, I doubt they would do any studies.
This change in DST was definitely worth it, if only for the benefit of forcing embedded systems designers to remember to not hard-code DST dates into their code. Historically, these dates have been changed about once per decade in the US alone. Assuming that they'll never change again is plain stupid. This shift will help train the current generation of developers to just not do that.
The days of going to work in the dark and leaving in the dark weigh heavy on the soul/psyche. DST is a big boost, IMO.
But that has nothing to do with DST, that has to do with 1) what time you come and go to work and how long you stay there, and 2) the days are simply shorter in the winter because the Earth's axis. In extreme Northern and Southern climates (think North and South polar regions), its daylight and dark 24 hours a day depending on the season, and changing the clock will not change that.
I heard on NPR the other day, that the _real_ reason for DST is not to save energy, but rather to appease the retail sector. They have data that people are more willing to go out and spend money after work if its not dark. So people go motoring around in their fuel efficient SUVs, blow money, and thus energy is saved!
Personally, I don't understand why humans are so clock oriented vs sun oriented. It kills me that houses in the US are built in random directions (unless there is a nice view) instead of oriented around the Sun.
Sometimes I think humans are the silliest of all animals.
My girlfriend's after a house with a south-facing yard, so as to catch all the sun it can (she's a garden enthusiast). It's amazing how many estate agents don't actually know which direction a given house faces.
110100 1101000 1101000 1100110 0 1101111 1101000 1100011 1
"I repeat DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME DOES NOT GIVE US MORE DAYLIGHT."
I think we're all aware of that. It must be nice to work in a business that can adjust business hours on their own without any serious repercussions but a lot of us don't have that luxury. I have to be at work when my clients are at work. That's one of the advantages my clients have to using us over using someone offshore. All of our clients live in an 8-5 world so I too live in an 8-5 world. I'm rather fond of my 8-5 world including more daylight after I get off of work. That's extra usable daylight which is the real pro DST argument as far as I can tell. I don't really think anyone believes that setting clocks a certain way impacts the amount of time the sun spends in the sky daily but nice straw man (a term I really think is overused but is unfortunately most appropriate here).
Unofficial estimates claim that costs due to the DST change well exceed a billion dollars TODAY which is more than the theoretical energy savings added up over 10 years. The cost is real and immediately incurred. The savings is nebulous and not guaranteed. Even 5 year old kid math can figure this one out. Imagine if we spent that billion dollars on alternative energy research, or energy conservation efforts - we would end up saving a LOT more money and energy than any fucking stupid DST change could have. The DST change cost my company alone well over $100K in direct costs and lost productivity. Considering what our company went through, I hate to think of what fortune 1000 companies spent - I would assume that it would be in the millions for a good number of them.
Whenever I hear someone talk about how awesome it is to have extra hours of daylight, I ask them why wouldn't it be better to just "recalibrate" the time zones so that "daylight savings time" is the new standard time, then just stop all this switching nonsense.
But time zones are another total pain in the ass, even if there's no switching back and forth. I recently found out the China has a single time zone, whereas the country would encompass about eight zones if they used our style of time zones. And have you seen the time zone map of the US? It makes no sense at all. Alabama is completely on central time, but if you go due north, Michigan is in . . . eastern time? WTF?
I personally advocate the abolition of time zones altogether. Let's all use Greenwich Mean Time, no time changes, and deal with it. Businesses and schools can just change their hours of operation, rather than messing with time itself. Sure, it would be weird to have sunrise at 6 pm and sunset at 6 am, but would it be any more complicated than the current system?
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
The thing to fix is, getting rid of the DST change completely, either way, and stop changing clock twice a year. THAT'S the waste here.
Nothing to say here... move along
Psychologically, I feel a hell of a lot better when it's lighter out later. I know there are millions of people who have some sort of seasonal depression thing that are equally as delighted. I don't know if it saves any energy, but driving home from work when it's nice and bright out and being able to go for a nice walk or something in sunlight makes me happy.