Daylight Saving Time Wastes Energy 550
An anonymous reader writes "With the time approaching when we'll be changing our clocks again, the Wall Street Journal is running a timely article on a study done by a UC-Santa Barbara economics professor and a Ph.D. student. The study unambiguously concludes that Daylight Saving Time not only doesn't save any energy, it actually wastes energy and costs more. The study used energy company records from Indiana before and after that state mandated DST for all of its counties, and calculated that the switch cost Indiana citizens $8.6M per year. 'I've never had a paper with such a clear and unambiguous finding as this,' the professor said."
Who Benefits? (Score:5, Funny)
Bruce
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What is apparent to me as an Indiana citizen is that Mitch Daniels (our governor) wanted to do something to make himself look good. Many things, however, have strong pro or con sides in which the Democrats or Republicans will boo at.
Instead, we had our governor make an assumption: the businesses in our state will make more money if we switch to DST. It's complete garbage, but as a politician, making non-changes like this while claiming everything
No, Really! (Score:5, Informative)
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We're called Hoosiers you insensitive clod!
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Re:Who Benefits? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Who Benefits? (Score:4, Interesting)
That's Arthur David Olsen for all Unix, Linux, BSD, Macintosh, and then the guy from Microsoft. It's gotta be only one guy at Microsoft, the way of handling this in Vista is so dumb.
Re:Who Benefits? (Score:4, Interesting)
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It is hard for an individual to be dumber than a big team. It does happen sometimes, but not often.
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A
Re:Who Benefits? (OT rant) (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't forget the sysadmins that have to implement the new code that tries to deal with DST!
Exchange and SharePoint both seem to have huge issues with daylight savings. I think Microsoft must have gone out of their way to ensure they have as many different places to store timezone information as they could find. You need an update for Windows to get the new definitions; that's cool. Then you need an update for Exchange. Then there's another update for MAPI. I think there were a few more than this as well, but (fortunately) I'm not our Exchange admin. I can't believe how much of a mess it all was, though.
Then there's the brand spankin' new SharePoint 2007, which sits around scratching its balls for an hour during DST because the part that schedules jobs to run and the part that starts them running at the scheduled clearly have different ideas about timezones. What a joke. Why does any of this even HAVE its own timezone database, and not just use the system one? It boggles the mind. Even now after their hotfixes to resolve this issue, the jobs still say they're scheduled to run at some point in the future. But hey, under the hood it works properly, so I can deal with the UI telling lies.
Wandering even further off-topic, the human-readable part of meeting requests sent by Outlook uses the wrong timezone. Here's one I just sent myself to schedule a meeting at 6.30pm:
Very nice, really - it tells you the exact offset from GMT so there's no question about when exactly this meeting is. Unfortunately, +0800 is our usual non-DST timezone. During DST (which we're in now until the end of March) it's +0900. Apparently the GMT+08:00 is just part of the timezone name, but it's confusing as hell to anyone who receives these messages. This is particularly problematic if you're scheduling conference calls and the like with people in other states (or countries) who can't reasonably be expected to know about WA's DST trial.
I would've thought a problem like that would have been noticed and fixed a long time ago, given that most of the USA do have DST.
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Sure, but just because the broken window is a net negative for society doesn't mean that glaziers don't benefit.
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Well you can cope with not enough sleep. It doesn't mean it's good for you.
DST offsets of 1 hour _might_ make sense in some places where daylight hours reduce by 1 or 2 hours in winter.
But for other places I don't see the point - it's still going to be mostly dark in winter anyway. No point fooling yourself that way, after all we've already got this new fangled electric lighting thing nowadays.
I currently live in an equatorial region, but I've stayed for a
Re:Who Benefits? (Score:5, Interesting)
So, you can change the clocks, or change your schedule. Having DST ensures that everyone changes together.
Re:Who Benefits? (Score:5, Informative)
Uh, there are such things as curtains and shutters.
The Japanese didn't see the benefit of DST. The US imposed it during the Occupation. The first thing the Japanese government did when it regained control was get rid of it.
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Japan did indeed see DST as something not worth doing, but even before that comes the problem of what time zone Japan actually lies in.
Look at a time zone map [metoffice.gov.uk] and you'll see most zones leaning over to the west as people try to get a little more sunlight in the evening. France and Spain are particularly noticeable. Japan, on the other hand, leans to the east. Japan's time is the same as Korea's, despite lying well east of that country, and Vladivostok lies west of Japan, yet is an hour ahead! Why did J
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Re:Who Benefits? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's right. And the most surefire way to convince your boss to let you work 9-5 in the winter and 8-4 in the summer is to institute DST.
Re:Who Benefits? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're going to change the clocks, change them drastically, make 9 occur in the middle of the night, see if people really are stubborn enough to go to work at such hours.
I also think timezones should be abolished, they only serve to confuse, especially with the global communication we have now. Time should be something that always remains constant, so things can be kept in sync. Having multiple timezones confuses that, using dst to manipulate those timezones even further just makes the problem even worse.
Why is it that the idea of things occurring at specific numbers on the clock is more important than what those numbers actually mean?
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Re:Who Benefits? (Score:4, Insightful)
In manufacturing, hours are already often changed due to heating and energy issues. Office workers hours could be changed for similar reasons, and the general customer service industry will follow suit.
DST is the tool of the Devil.
Re:Who Benefits? (Score:5, Insightful)
You forget how timezones were created here. Before the concept of a time zone, current time was regulated by determining the local mean solar time for you particular location... meaning your exact longitude. Defining what "now" was could be different even on opposite sides of a college campus, much less between different cities. At least with the concept of a time zone, all the arithmetic you have to perform is to add or subtract a few hours, unless you are dealing with truly global enterprises or projects.
On a historical note, the concept of a time zone was introduced by the railroad companies, who found that it was incredibly difficult for them to make train schedules where each individual town on the route would have its own definition of time. Imagine the locomotive engineer who had to have something like a complex GPS receiver that would give the local "time" as they moved across Kansas heading for the Rocky Mountains built out of 19th Century technology. It just didn't work, so instead the idea of a time zone that would only have to be occasionally adjusted for genuinely long distance travel was created.
This also had the advantage that it was at most about a 1/2 hour off from the "local time" used in the previous definition of "now". In other words, it wasn't too difficult to move people off of the previous "standard" onto the newer "standard" of time zones. With your proposal of elimination of time zones (which is pretty much the case anyway in terms of synchronizing computers and other scientific experiments needing that level of organization), getting ordinary people to adjust to a global clock is going to cause many other problems. Such as why should Paris/London be selected as the "ideal" time zone, as opposed to Moscow, New Delhi, Beijing, or New York/Washington DC? GMT/UTC is an adopted standard only because that is what mariners for the UK Royal Navy used during a period of global colonial dominance, not that the French didn't mind using the same standard either for the most part as Paris and London are nearly the same longitude, at least for time considerations.
One other thing to consider (and I've had to be blunt with people from different time zones to point this out)... 8 A.M. "local time" is when most people get up, and about 10 P.M. is when most people head for the bed. If you are aware of this when dealing with people in other time zones, you can be much more polite and note when they may be "in the office". Having a bill collector call you at 6 A.M. is not only annoying... it can even be illegal, especially if they ignore the concept of a timezone when they call you. And yes, that has happened to me.
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When you've got multiple people on a team and customers/clients to work with, then yes, they're 'stuck' in their ways. If you've ever described somebody as a 'flake', then you already understand this concept.
"If you're going to change the clocks, change them drastically, make 9 occur in the middle of the night, see if people really are stubborn enough to go to work at such hours."
Okay, you win, if you take something
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Basically, the clock is ju
Here is a solution for you (Score:5, Funny)
Now, while the USD has been falling against the yen recently, I'm going to wager that 100 yen is still less than $8.6 million.
Re:Who Benefits? (Score:4, Interesting)
DST is not a panacea, and is more trouble than it is worth IMO, especially when politicians start changing it for no good reason. I think we should just stick to the "early" schedule, and live with the idea that you need to get up when it is still dark in the winter. After all, you have to come home in the dark during the winter anyway, so there isn't much of a difference. The "schoolchildren excuse" doesn't really apply anymore either since few kids walk to school nowadays, and if it is really that big of a problem the school could use a later schedule for young children or alter it for part of the year.
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Re:Who Benefits? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Ever heard of curtains ?
Besides, here in Finland, you go to work before sunrise and home after sunset. Not that the Sun is usually visible during daytime, either. Now that global warming has taken snow from the ground, this place makes Hades seem like a carnival.
So don't complain that Sun rises before you do where you live.
Re:Who Benefits? (Score:5, Informative)
Also, with DST, you get another hour of daylight tacked on to the end of a summer day. In Japan, the summer sunset is around 7pm. It'd be nice to have sun until 8pm.
A third point to consider is that these are the hours that the sun breaks the horizon. It starts getting light as early as 3:30am and is usually completely dark by 8pm.
In short, DST is nice if you like to do things on summer afternoons.
Re:Who Benefits? (Score:5, Insightful)
What's to stop you starting work at 8am instead of doing exactly the same thing and calling it 9am instead? You'd finish at 4pm instead of pretending it's 5pm, and still get your evening.
Re:Who Benefits? (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact that everyone in the same geographical area does it together I guess.
Re:Who Benefits? (Score:4, Interesting)
My boss. Well, actually I could probably do that. But then my daughter's daycare has to agree to open an hour earlier, which means her teacher has to agree to go to work an hour earlier, my co-workers have to agree that all meetings will end an hour earlier in the afternoon, etc, etc.
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Not a downside (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Who Benefits? (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Who Benefits? (Score:4, Informative)
I am not a physicist and don't follow the math, but one of the things that general relativity says is that just because some event A happens before some event B when observed from our frame of reference, doesn't mean those same events happen in that order when observed from another frame of reference. If you are on Earth and I'm on Chiron Beta Prime, and we are looking at two stars going super-nova, and in your frame of reference Star A goes before Star B, I may observe Star B to go nova before A.
It's not just a speed of light thing either, there is simply no absolute frame of reference for time, just as there is no absolute "center" of the universe. The lack of an absolute frame of reference makes it impossible to define a consistent "universal clock."
Star Trek's Fictional Time (Score:3, Insightful)
However, in the Fictional Star Trek Universe, it still solves a problem (remember, Star Trek assumes instantaneous communication, they have FTL communication). Sure, the visibility of stars going supernova from various outposts with ships traveling at near light speed has relativity issues. However, what is more likely, the people on Earth and
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Actually, the point was to take into account relativity. There is no unique "simultaneous" between two distant places, but you are free to define a "now". It's just that the universe won't respect it; the mere definition of a "now" won't prevent the usual litany of FTL paradoxes, which Star Trek (and all TV science fiction) generally just ignore... what else can they do?
This isn't fiction, we already do this. We have several systems that h
Re:Who Benefits? (Score:4, Informative)
Hokkaido in June for example, reveals times all before 4am.
Re:Who Benefits? (Score:5, Informative)
No. It's called living in high latitudes.
In London, even with daylight saving, the sun rises at 04:45 for all of June.
Even now, it's light when I get up in the morning at 06:30 but it's dark before I leave work in the evening.
It's much harder to take advantage of daylight hours in the morning when you are working. I cycle - but I can't go out for half an hour in the morning because I need to be in the shower by 06:35 if I'm going to catch my train to work in the morning, which means I'll be getting at this time of year just around sunrise. Give me that hour in the evening instead and I can have a shower, get cleaned up, whatever, once the sun has gone down.
I'd like summer time in the winter and double summer time in the summer (or even triple summer time). On the longest day It's sunrise at 04:43 - and almost nobody is up and around at that time. But it's sunset at 21:22 and there are lots of people out and about at that time. And that's with summer time giving us an extra hour in the evening.
Several safety groups in the UK claim (I haven't seen the figures) that there's a spike in road traffic accidents to children when the clocks go back. Roughly, it goes from sunset at 17:45 to sunset at 16:45 across the UK.
Aberdeen, at the other end of the UK, gets sun from 04:12 to 22:08 on the longest day. On the shortest day it's 08:46 to 15:27.
Tim.
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By changing the definition of time you're defeating the point of having a clock. Why are people so set in their ways that things must happen at fixed numerical times? If you changed the clock so that 9am occured during darkness, would people still go to work at that time? It's utterly absurd.
You know, my employer has these strange things called employment contracts that includes the hours I'm expected to be at work. And trains for my commute
You're close, actually (Score:3, Insightful)
The results of this study are entirely unsurprising. DST saved energy when lighting was the primary use for electrical power in the home. More light in the evening, fewer lights on. But since the 1970's or so, air conditioning has come to consume far more energy in the summer than light
Re:You're close, actually (Score:5, Funny)
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DST has been lobbied for years by Cat Inc. Think of how many more birds can be killed with an extra hour of daylight!
IMO the extra hour of light is nice when recreating outdoors.
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When it's light later in the evenings, people drive more.
People use cars in the mornings to get to work, and that doesn't change with lack of daylight.
While the new rules expanding daylight saving time had been promoted as environmentally beneficial, the promoters only claimed it was to reduce home energy consumption (as electricity and heating fuel). The new rules were expected to increase total energy
Why not do it like AZ? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's MUCH easier than having to change your clocks all the time. And it seems that it's much less wasteful, too.
Re:Why not do it like AZ? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Why not do it like AZ? (Score:4, Insightful)
And then to convert that amount of energy into the number of barrels of oil it represents. I don't think most people have ever considered the equation of how much oil we are spending to enable us to use less oil. (only talking plastic, of course - aluminum is a pretty clear case of a win for recycling)
There's probably other things, too, that we just take for granted as they are such small impacts on our time (energy), yet add up to significant amounts in aggregate.
Re:Why not do it like AZ? (Score:4, Interesting)
Most plastics can't be recycled. Type 1, 2, and 3 are *recyclable* but type 1 is the only one commonly recycled.
Most paper will degrade anyway. A lot of landfills can use this degradation to power equipment and produce electricity.
Re:Why not do it like AZ? (Score:5, Informative)
So, what's left is plastic.
Re:Why not do it like AZ? (Score:4, Insightful)
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$ cb "((((10*300000000)/60)/60)/24)/365"
95.12937595129375951293
So by your estimate of 10 seconds per clock, about 95 years worth of people time is wasted each year. Unless I made a mistake in my quick typing. Depressing isn't it?
My vote: Just suck it up and use utc. Who cares that you get up at 12 or 17 o'clock?
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Re:Why not do it like AZ? (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, let's do away with all of this time zone crap too. I think the folks on the other side of the world from me can all go third shift.
Re:Why not do it like AZ? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Why not do it like AZ? (Score:5, Insightful)
No DST.
No Timezones.
No AM/PM.
Re:Why not do it like AZ? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Your system would work fine for internal time systems, but humans I think need that common ground for communication. Instead of saying, "an earthquake struck the Azores at 1300, which was 2 hours after sunrise,"
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Skip DST entirely. No clock changes at all. You want more daylight? Get up earlier. Need more time to work? Work summer hours.
It's MUCH easier than having to change your clocks all the time. And it seems that it's much less wasteful, too.
Because somewhere, somebody is making money on this, and they would stand to lose quite a bit if we all adopted Arizona's model. The question is, who is that somebody? Bruce Perens above said it's the charcoal briquette manufacturers; I've heard it's WalMart and other retailers (selling charcoal briquettes, but also other picnic/outdoor/camping gear). It's pretty obvious that the official reason (saving energy, which is why the DST change was attached to an energy bill) is a load of crap.
I wouldn't be s
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Re:Why not do it like AZ? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Why not do it like AZ? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Why not do it like AZ? (Score:5, Funny)
Putting the thermostat above 60 wastes it too (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, after all, you're not going to get hypothermia. Most of you will be miserable of course, and the cost of that is rather difficult to calculate. I don't know about the rest of you out there in Slash-land, but my co-workers and I have been looking forward to coming home after work and having an extra hour of daylight. It's priceless. So. Put that in your penny-pinching pipe and smoke it.
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Of course, I more than make up for my wintertime conservation by air conditioning down to 67 degrees in the summertime.
(my thermostat is for some reason in fahrenheit).
Re:Putting the thermostat above 60 wastes it too (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Putting the thermostat above 60 wastes it too (Score:4, Insightful)
Or the sample is not enough? (Score:5, Informative)
"One study of the situation in Indiana cannot accurately asses the impact of [daylight-saving time] changes across the nation, especially when it does not include more northern, colder regions," the congressman (Mr. Markey) notes.
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Who's shocked? (Score:3, Informative)
Puts a whole new spin on our candidates, don't it? Look at their "platforms", then look at their voting history. The patterns are usually blatantly obvious for any who so chose to look. It's then the job of the candidates ( and their parties ) to bullshit us into believing we aren't seeing what we're seeing. It's all smoke and mirrors.
Don't look behind the curtain, folks, just punch the ticket and elect the next nutjob into office.
I can only speak for myself (Score:3, Insightful)
DST Improves Quality of Life (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:DST Improves Quality of Life (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:DST Improves Quality of Life (Score:5, Funny)
Re:DST Improves Quality of Life (Score:5, Insightful)
Alternate interpretation (Score:5, Insightful)
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more recreation time & increased economic acti (Score:4, Insightful)
Show me the figures with those items adjusted for and there may be something worth a story.
Daylight savings is great. I vote we keep it. (Score:2)
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Give me more light in the evening (Score:5, Insightful)
well thats different (Score:2, Informative)
then a study by University of California-Santa Barbara economics professor Matthew Kotchen and Ph.D. student Laura Grant
Daylight savings insane (Score:2, Flamebait)
I want a different kind of daylight savings time. (Score:3, Insightful)
Letter to my congressional reps (Score:5, Funny)
Dear Sir:
Daylight savings time hits hard this time of year.
It was cold and dark when I got up this morning, so the
first thing I did was was turn up the heat and turn on the
lights. That's going to jack up my energy bill for the
month.
Then I drove my son to school. He missed his bus all five
days this week. That's going to jack up my fuel bill for the
month.
Then I dragged myself through another day at work. I don't
function well when I have to get up before dawn.
The people in my family are all diurnal (dI-UR-nal). It
means we sleep when it's dark and wake when it's light. The
problem is that in northern latitudes (like Massachusetts)
the sun rises later in the winter than in the summer.
To compensate for this, we have a scheme called Daylight
Savings Time. Daylight savings shifts our school and work
schedules forward in the summer and back in the winter, to
keep them roughly in sync with the sun. It used to work
pretty well, but congress broke it a couple of years ago:
now it goes too long in the fall and starts too early in the
spring.
Most of the damage that congress does affects me at some
remove, but this--this comes right out of my hide. When I'm
stumbling around in the dark for three weeks next spring,
I'll be thinking of you.
Sincerely,
won't somebody think of the cows? (Score:2)
Split the Difference (Score:3, Interesting)
Year old paper that came to same conclusion (Score:5, Informative)
RYAN M. KELLOGG and Hendrik Wolff, "Does Extending Daylight Saving Time Save Energy? Evidence from an Australian Experiment" (February 14, 2007). Center for the Study of Energy Markets. Paper CSEMWP-163.
http://repositories.cdlib.org/ucei/csem/CSEMWP-163 [cdlib.org]
Maybe there should be some kind of central place we could all use to search for papers that have some bearing our subject matter?
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