Candlestick Petition For More Day And Less Night
Congress may extend daylight-saving time:
Lawmakers crafting energy legislation approved an amendment Wednesday to extend daylight-saving time by two months, having it start on the first Sunday in March and end on the last Sunday in November.
[...]
"The more daylight we have, the less electricity we use," said Markey, who cited Transportation Department estimates that showed the two-month extension would save the equivalent of 10,000 barrels of oil a day.
If they want more daylight, perhaps Congress should build gigantic space-based mirrors to reflect sunlight onto geographic areas throughout the night (the opposite of a large sun-blocker from Mr. Burns).
Wikipedia has an interesting overview of the history regarding DST and mentions that one of the justifications used by politicians et al., is that: "Department of Transportation studies found that observing DST in March and April saved 10,000 barrels of oil a day, and prevented about 2,000 traffic injuries and 50 fatalities saving about U.S. $28 million in traffic costs."
While I am not trying to challenge a voluntarily induced time-change, I am challenging the State trying to "fix" what it caused in the first place (perhaps "State-owned roads" could be one problem in and of itself). Remember, without the State we would not know what time it really is or which side of the road to drive on...
Also, it would be interesting to see studies on the economic impact of The-Day-After, wherein employees oversleep and miss work (and therefore are unproductive) or all the software that has to be rewritten to accomodate these new changes (a smaller Y2K?).
This reminded me of Bastiat's satirical petition of the Candlestick maker's:
We are suffering from the ruinous competition of a rival who apparently works under conditions so far superior to our own for the production of light that he is flooding the domestic market with it at an incredibly low price; for the moment he appears, our sales cease, all the consumers turn to him, and a branch of French industry whose ramifications are innumerable is all at once reduced to complete stagnation. This rival, which is none other than the sun, is waging war on us so mercilessly we suspect he is being stirred up against us by perfidious Albion (excellent diplomacy nowadays!), particularly because he has for that haughty island a respect that he does not show for us.
Via Slashdot.
Comments (12)
arielb
if the government were to build a space mirror, there would be no doubt it would end up incinerating entire cities.
Published: April 8, 2005 2:35 PM
Vanmind
Finally we understand the reason behind the debt & deficits: not enough natural light.
Published: April 8, 2005 2:59 PM
tz
Save energy and money, curse the darkness instead!
Published: April 8, 2005 3:12 PM
PA
The New Y2K! The sheer cost of the updating and testing of countless computer systems that rely on the current daylight savings algorithm would easily outweigh any energy cost savings. Thanks republicrats!
Published: April 8, 2005 3:35 PM
Jule Herbert
Just a trick to get people to arise an hour earlier each day. Not a bad idea at all.
Published: April 8, 2005 4:35 PM
Daniel Franke
Having the government change the time on the clock so that we have more daylight is like having the government exchange every existing dollar for five new ones so that we have more money.
Published: April 8, 2005 8:33 PM
zzz
Here in Norway we had daylight-saving two weeks ago.
My mother worked from 11pm to 7am, but the hour from 2am to 3am din't exist, so she worked seven hours. Got paid eight hours though. This september she will have to work the 2am hour twice, making her shift nine hours.
Published: April 9, 2005 8:24 AM
Curt Howland
PA, you should switch to a Linux (Unix style) system. The clock is just the seconds since Jan 1, 1970. Easy enough to update the applications, the system is uneffected.
Published: April 9, 2005 9:41 AM
Daniel Franke
Yup, and we'd all better go 64-bit before the Y2k+38 bug kicks in :-)
Published: April 9, 2005 4:52 PM
Salvius
"The more daylight we have, the less electricity we use."
Then Congress said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.
Published: April 12, 2005 12:23 PM
SCM
How like the government. Play a shell game with the hours and pretend like you are creating more daylight! I do not think any of the pro-daylight assertions have been proven, but I do know that it is annoying to change the clocks on the myriad devices that I have.
"The more daylight we have, the less electricity we use." This statement is just riddled with fallacies:
1. "Daylight savings time" does not create more hours of daylight. You would need to change the rotation of the Earth in order to change the number of daylight hours. Even if this were feasible, the people on the other side of the Earth would be less than pleased, of course. This would also create havoc with weather on all sides of the Earth. The only thing "daylight savings time" is doing is shifting around the social convention of local time. If people pay attention to such clocks (i.e., do not change their schedules to compensate), then this results in either shifting the dark to the pre-work hours or the after-work hours. Either way, individuals far from the equator will be commuting at least one of the directions in the dark.
2. Traffic lights are on whenever it is dark out, so shifting the hours has no effect on these lights.
3. Because most buildings have little natural lighting (offices, supermarkets, big box stores, etc), they run the lights whenever the builidngs are occupied. Shifting the working hours has no effect on these buildings.
4. Homes with natural lighting tend to run the lights whenever the occupants are awake and at home and there is no sunlight. Changing the hours on the clock may or may not have an effect on the schedules of stay-at-home individuals.
5. Having fewer hours of daylight does not require the use of more electrical lighting. Individuals can either adapt to the dark or get more sleep. With more darkness, sleep deprived individuals may even have less stress.
I have no doubt that "daylight savings time" increases stress, exhaustion, and confusion because it ignores our natural circadian rhythms: http://www.hallym.ac.kr/~neuro/kns/tutor/medical/rhy.html.
Published: April 21, 2005 5:52 PM
Michael A, Clem
DST "works" because many people are stuck in set schedules. Many businesses still operate on stereotypical 8-5 shifts. It's true, however, that more and more businesses do not stick to the 8-5 day, especially retail businesses. As such, DST has less effect, although we're still stuck with the clock-changing confusion.
Published: April 22, 2005 11:44 AM