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Daylight Saving Change Saved No Power
Brett writes "Results from energy companies are coming in, and the word is that moving Daylight Saving Time forward three weeks had no measurable impact on power consumption. The attempt by the US Congress to make it look like they were doing something about the energy crisis has been exposed as the waste it is. But the new DST is probably here to stay — letting the bill expire would mean re-patching a lot of systems again next year. So much for saving energy."
Look, I understand people that want to take a stab at the administration - Bush's administration has done far more harm than good, but come on - bashing like this summary is just not necessary. This was a widely supported idea beyond just the US - a number of countries followed suit in the idea. At the very least, it didn't HURT anything - so why bitch about it so much? Oh well, you had to patch your systems. It's over and done with. No need to try and make this into a "prime opportunity" to bash the administration for at least trying. There's plenty of other things to gripe about when it comes to this administration - learn to pick your fights, otherwise you just end up looking like a giant douche.... or a turd sandwich.
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... we can just get rid of DST altogether, since it has been shown to not do dick except annoy people and cost companies money in IT time.
Keep it summer time year round if you ask me.
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First of all, this is a move by congress, no one is bashing "The Administration"
No harm, no foul, huh? How about the time it took to patch my file transfer program. I'm sure my employers don't appreciate the extra money spent. Not to mention tying up our IT staff trying to get time clocks/etc. fixed when the Windows patch f#$%ed up the time then fixed it again two days later. There's two days of pay for the IT staff, not to mention lost time where other things didn't get fixed.
And it's us who look like giant douches for complaining?!!
...and I'm all for it!
This DST2007 thing has been a real pain in my ass. I know that the US government hates to admit failure, so we won't leave Iraq and we won't back off on DST2007... wish we would though. It has caused a lot of problems.
You can with a change in DST that is supposed to save energy on both ends, and only affects one month on each end.
For other things, maybe not.
or, alternatively: three more weeks with LESS sunlight BEFORE work actually do something (run, bike, ...) is all that matters. And I've been robbed.
Who cares if it's sunny after work? Daylight when I wake up is a lot more important.
Not for those of us who have visual overstimulation induced migraines. This just means that they've stolen several hours of my precious DARKNESS in return for no monetary advantage.
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3) Congress wasted time on this bill that could have been spent getting something important done, such as finally hammering out a definate government policy on Stem Cell research, abortions, or actually making a true impact on the energy issue we face.
See, that's the glass-half-empty talking. Just look on the bright side: When they were wasting their time turning out this ridiculous waste of time and paper, it meant that they weren't really screwing anything else up!
Please, Congress, do us all a favor: spend your time on things like creating new "National $FOO Week"s. What -- there aren't any free weeks left? Okay, I've got one: why don't you guys try to fix the date of Easter? I'm sure that won't take you too long.
The more idiotic, banal stuff that I know the Congresscritters are doing, the better it makes me feel, because at least I know they're staying out of trouble. It's when they go quiet for a while that I start to worry. The further away they stay from the "real issues," the happier I am. As absolutely fucked as the system we have is, don't you even think for a moment that with hard work and diligence, they couldn't make it at least ten times worse.
Congratulations, Congress, on your brilliant plan. By all means, keep up the great work.
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some schoolkids have to wait for the bus in the dark
I never understood school schedules. It has been shown that teenagers naturally wake up later in the day, and that elementary school students wake up earlier. Yet it is the elementary schools that start at 8:30 and the high schools that start at 7:30. Why not make school like work, where it runs 9-5, on a schedule more matching that of the parents? Some will counter that high school students have jobs in the evening, so let them start earlier. Why should jobs drive school schedules?
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Fine. You like more light. GET UP EARLIER. And leave my clock alone.
I _really_ dislike getting up before dawn. I mean deep viceral psychological bio-cycle "why am I getting up at night" kind of dislike. Just when dawn was arriving at a decent time, you "I want more light so I'll force everyone else to change their schedules" people make me get up at 5:00AM EST instead of 6AM (and now you're talking about pushing it back to 4:00AM?!?).
The clock reflects astronomical realities of earth/sun positioning. Noon is supposed to mean the sun is overhead, mid-day. Cocky people then decide they don't like that arrangement, and declare what _is_ shall be different from what they _want_ reality to be. A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, and calling dung a "rose" doesn't make it smell any better. Calling 5:00AM "6:00AM Daylight Saving Time" doesn't change the fact that it's really 5:00AM, and the combination of light and circadian rhythms means it's still time to sleep.
It's almost enough to make me move to Arizona where they ignore this nonsense.
Seriously, man - it really messes up my internal clock. Midnight to six is my time to _sleep_; mess with that, and you're messing with my ability to function.
You want more light? YOU get up earlier. Leave my clock alone; I'll be a lot more productive that way.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
What amazes me about the whole thing is that nobody bothered to look back to 1973 when Nixon did essentially the same thing. No energy was saved then, either.
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We have quite a few; first, its supposed to reduce it by reducing daily demand, and its supposed to do it generally across the nation. You don't need multiple years of data to get a decent idea of what is going on with that; you can look at the data from one month daily and by region, and see to what degree it appears to be true. Or you could look at the overall average over all regions and days, and see that the number is not different that what would have been expected without the change.
Of course, one might posit that there is some reason to expect that this month was systematically atypical in a way which would distort the results, but those making that claim ought to have something to point to to justify it.
First, "unseasonably warm spring" is somewhat irrelevant (and not established) as its not even 2 weeks into the 13 weeks of Spring, yet, and a significant portion of the new DST time is in winter.
Secondly, even considering the right time period, where is the evidence that an unseasonably warm March increases energy demand? Certainly, in the hottest areas it may increase cooling demand, but in much of the country a warm late-winter-to-early-spring is going to save energy by reducing cooling demand.
I think all of us can agree that in a perfect world, the rest of the goofballs out there would pay as much attention to this as we Slashdot readers have. I turn my lights on when I need to see in the dark. I go to my appointments on time, no matter what numbers the government or anyone else tells me that time is called. Also, what is the deal with time zones? I think this is the same issue. I feel the same when I wake up at 8am eastern time as when I wake up at 5am pacific time. Seriously, this is all stupid and old fashioned. I suggest that anyone who cares about this start using GMT exclusively in their dealings, especially if those dealings are as meaningless as mine.
Back in the day, when people's interactions were mostly local, time zones might have been harmless. But now, a large part of our population interacts across time zones every day. They're just a PITA -- time is an arbitrary number anyway, so who cares if the clock says 6pm or 6am when you wake up?
It would take a little getting used to, but I bet everyone would adjust quickly and never go back. Imagine having every computer (and every log, timestamp, calendar, etc.) in the world on GMT. Imagine scheduling conference calls and not having someone confuse which time zone it was scheduled for.
What if we just gave up standard time? Everyone likes the light. Few like the clock change hassle. Let's just stay in DST.
If you life depends on the sun, get up earlier.
The government's laws should be about encouraging businesses to set working hours to match the sun, not changing fundamental measurement systems to trick people into getting up earlier.
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Companies used to mostly work 9-5 (or 8-5).
Now, our company works from 7am to 7pm (9 hour shifts w/ hour lunches).
Basically, if you get up early, you take a 7am shift- if you get up late, you take a 10am shift.
I don't see why they can't leave the clocks alone and places will just shift their hours if it matters.
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Do you people have any clue what the concept of "noon" is supposed to be? In case you've forgotten, it's supposed to be the time of day when the sun is highest in the sky. It's supposed to be the time when there is as much daylight behind us as is in front of us.
For practical purposes, this isn't exact, but we've done a pretty good job with splitting the world up into 24 time zones so that it's somewhat close.
But not any more! No, now noon is just some arbitrary point during the day when we find it convenient to be. We want more time at the end of the day, so let's just move noon an hour ahead, right?
WRONG! I have a better idea. Instead of dinking around with clocks and redefining what something means that has been around since the beginning of recorded time, why don't we just have businesses shift their hours around?
Imagine how nice this would be. We never change our clocks. Twice a year, government changes its hours. The Post Office, for example, doesn't open at 8:00am during the summer, it opens at 7:00am, and it closes an hour earlier, too. Businesses that choose to do so follow suit and make sure its employees know when to show up. I suspect that almost all of them would, and probably most companies would have a policy that says something like, "When the government shifts its hours, we're shifting ours also."
Everyone's happy. People get their extra hour at the end of the day. No one has to write stupid software patches to account for when DST is. Atlanta, Georgia is always GMT-5, never GMT-4 like it is now. People don't think Arizonans are weird because half the year they're on Mountain time and half the year they're on Pacific. If government wants to change its hours a few weeks earlier next year, there's no issue at all, they can just announce it a few months in advance, and when the time comes, do it.
I'm sorry, but people who think that DST is a good thing are idiots. If you want to change your schedule, change your schedule. But leave my freakin' clock alone.
It would be better to switch back. Why? Because there are unfixed errors in a lot of software that are still causing problems. For the fixed bugs, well, those can be "unfixed" if they were fixed in the first place. It isn't too late to switch back.
"Fine. You like more light. GET UP EARLIER. And leave my clock alone."
No, you should get up later instead.
"The clock reflects astronomical realities of earth/sun positioning."
Nope, it reflects oscillations of a cesium atom. Far more regular and periodic than, say, the time between two consecutive noons.
"Noon is supposed to mean the sun is overhead, mid-day."
If I recall, there are only four days a year when local solar noon and local mean noon are the same thing, and neither have anything to do with standard time, unless you're standing on a meridian that's a multiple of 15.
"Cocky people then decide they don't like that arrangement, and declare what _is_ shall be different from what they _want_ reality to be."
If we're getting paid by the hour, we want our hours to be of a consistent length.
"doesn't change the fact that it's really 5:00AM,"
Is that standard time, local solar time or local mean time?
"Seriously, man - it really messes up my internal clock. Midnight to six is my time to _sleep_; mess with that, and you're messing with my ability to function."
Then maybe it's time for you to find a job that lets you sleep later.
"You want more light? YOU get up earlier. Leave my clock alone; I'll be a lot more productive that way."
No thanks, I prefer coming home before sunset.
I don't see how this is saying Bush sucks. It blamed congress for the change in Daylight savings time, and last I checked, congress is run by the Democrats.
BZZZZT! You lose. Maybe you should wind back the clock and note who was in control of Congress when this bill was signed. Can you guess which party had control of both the House and the Senate at the time?
Those who laugh at you for you having a Mac.. are the people who constantly call you to fix their PC.
You got exactly the same amount of light that you would have gotten anyway. You just think there was more because you didn't sleep in as late as you usually would have.
Personally, I think anybody who needs the government to trick them into getting up early is a moron, but morons' opinions may differ...
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People who oppose DST don't realize that it's just an attempt to recapture what people used to do automatically: Get up when the sun rises. The greater your latitude, the more variation there is in sunrise times between the solstices. We've settled on an hour as a good compromise that works for most people.
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... completely ignoring the "functioning in society" bit.
People who complain about the gubmint are often just complaining about having to deal with other people.
Sure, if I never had to talk to anyone or do anything, I'd get up at dawn and go to bed at sunset too.
But I'd also be living in a cave, and be dead by now.
I couldn't handle reading 300 posts, but I did search the whole topic for the word "peak" and nobody at 2+ used it. So here it is: we had a local news article in Calgary about the lack of change in TOTAL consumption,( just as many lights on in the AM as off in PM) but that it was good because it shaved the PEAK CONSUMPTION.
People use the most energy right after they get home from work, basically; TV, computers (like me right now), cooking and other household operations.
Removing added lighting needs AT THAT TIME reduces the maximum generating capacity you need available to meet the peak demand. Which means they build a new power plant for your area in 2014 instead of 2012, or whatever. The time-cost of money means real savings on your power bill - even at constant total kWh consumed.
The rest of the world should follow Arizona's example. Don't touch your clocks. I grew up here in AZ, and for the life of me I can't understand why people want to mess with their clocks. If you want more daylight, get up earlier, or stay up later, whatever floats your boat. I'm usually a fan of the Founding Fathers, but Ben Franklin was off his rocker when he dreamed this one up.
I think that you vastly underestimate the power of institutional memory. Why do kids go to school September-May? Why, so they can go out and help with the crops in the summer, of course. Look at the amount of headway year-round schooling (go to school 2 months, off 3 weeks) has made - little to none! Even though many things point to it being superior in various ways. But damn it, kids get the summer off, that's how the world works. The original reasoning behind it has long been abandoned and forgotten.
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"yes, you should be getting up and scheduling your day so that you are able to "use" the daylight in the way you wish."
Well, in order to do that, I'd have to get everybody I do business with to alter their schedules as well, and they'd have to do the same with everybody they do business with, and everybody they do business with, and everybody they do business with and... gee, maybe we should have an agreed-upon standard for this whole "adjust our schedule to follow daylight hours" thing. We could call it... Daylight Saving Time!
OP is bitching about being in the slim minority that doesn't want to change. It's his right to bitch, but he's going to have to do some serious legwork to convince everybody between him and Kevin Bacon to abandon it.
It is estimated that it cost US businesses about a Billion dollars to implement this DST change. If congress would have instead mandated a billion dollars worth of conservation efforts (such as more energy efficient lighting, better building insulation, etc.,) it would have saved 10 times the energy that the bill was supposed to save as conservation helps ALL the time, not just for an hour a day, 3 weeks of the year. It really doesn't take a whole lot of intelligence to figure this one out...
"Ah, but I need the government to trick my boss into thinking the time for me to come in to work has changed. That's how I get my extra daylight. :)"
One man's 'funny' is another man's 'insightful'. Every business I've worked at had its start/end times set to work with the start/end times of the businesses it worked with. You'd think reality would prevent somebody with mod points from +1'ing somebody for loudly proclaiming that DST doesn't actually cause more sunlight to hit this side of the planet.
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