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View Full Version : Daylight Savings Time Change Had No Measurable Effect


Ed Hansberry
04-04-2007, 02:00 PM
<a href="http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070403-the-daylight-savings-change-no-savings-no-point.html">http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070403-the-daylight-savings-change-no-savings-no-point.html</a><br /><br /><i>"The US government's plan to boost energy savings by moving Daylight Saving Time forward by three weeks was apparently a waste of time and effort, as the technological foibles Americans experienced failed to give way to any measurable energy savings. While the change caused no major infrastructure problems in the country, plenty of electronics and computer systems that were designed with the original DST switchover date (first Sunday in April) failed to update. The inconvenience was minor, and the potential savings were great. Or so we were told by the politicians behind the move."</i><br /><br />There is a shocker. :roll: I am so glad I spent all of that time manually adjusting some Windows 2000 boxes with the TZEDIT tool, applying fixes to 3 PCs at home, 6 Windows Mobile devices, 3 TiVos and manually adjusting 2 HP 17BII Calculators. Your tax dollars at work. :bangin: <br /><br />I propose in 2008 we change to a 22 hour day, eliminating 2 hours of darkness so there will be less electricity usage and late night bathroom runs. Or, better yet, eliminate the 7am-8am and 5pm-6pm rush-hours. Just think of all of the gasoline that will be saved, not to mention the reduced CO2 emissions. :?

rocky_raher
04-04-2007, 02:30 PM
Critics pointed out a basic fact: the gains in the morning will be offset by the losses at night, and vice-versa, at both ends of the switch. That appears to be exactly what happened.


This points out the fallacy of DST, that we get an "extra hour" of daylight by adjusting our clocks. This idea was inspired by the guy who made a rope longer by cutting off a few feet from one end and splicing it onto the other.

PPCRules
04-04-2007, 02:58 PM
Calm down, Ed.

I think it's a good idea and should have been done long ago and should have been implemented without a 2 year delay.

And I don't think it's the politicians that should be bashed (this time). It's the system designers that made systems that were "smart enough" to adjust for DST but didn't make it easy to change the time of that adjustment. Ever since my Windows OS would pop up its notice that it had changed the time I had wondered what it would do if the DST change times changes. I reasoned, certainly it was merely a registry value that coded the start and end date, and it would only require a new value in that spot. I can't figure out why a "patch" was needed in something as new as Windows XP. And you should have been able to do it manually with a registry editor even on Windows Mobile (and all the old Pocket PC/Windows CE versions).

I do acknowledge it will be inconvenient changing something that isn't "patched" four times a year, instead of only the two times a year required if the designer had never included the "convenience" of automatic adjustment.

rhelwig
04-04-2007, 03:09 PM
I still don't see why we even need time zones anymore. Why can't we all just use GMT/UCT? Its just a number.

Does it really matter if you are getting up at 7 or 11 or 18? Does it matter if your workday starts at 8 or 9 or 17 or 24?

Jason Lee
04-04-2007, 03:20 PM
It has been along time since something made me as mad as this stupid, and now proven pointless, change. I have a lot of appointments and tasks that are still messed up. Even some holidays were off by one day!

I had to fix my phone, my wife's, mother's, brother's, friends, people at work... AAARRRggghhhHH!

My boss missed several meetings with very important people...

I think DST should go away all together!

:evil: :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil:

tnels!
04-04-2007, 03:37 PM
Oh you rich republicans are just not willing to make the sacrafices to save the planet from global warming. I would expand on this, but I have to hop on to my private jet and go see Al Gore about a movie deal.

Dyvim
04-04-2007, 04:01 PM
I for one have always loved the extra light after 5pm of DST and welcome the extra weeks of it this year regardless of any energy savings or lack thereof.

Mattitude
04-04-2007, 04:16 PM
I still don't see why we even need time zones anymore. Why can't we all just use GMT/UCT? Its just a number.

Does it really matter if you are getting up at 7 or 11 or 18? Does it matter if your workday starts at 8 or 9 or 17 or 24?

This is a fantastic idea. I will vote for this any day.

Snail
04-04-2007, 04:31 PM
I still don't see why we even need time zones anymore. Why can't we all just use GMT/UCT? Its just a number.

Does it really matter if you are getting up at 7 or 11 or 18? Does it matter if your workday starts at 8 or 9 or 17 or 24?

This is a fantastic idea. I will vote for this any day.

I agree - all we have to do is get 4 billion other people to agree to living on GMT... anyone remember the dark ages of the Empire? :devilboy:

disconnected
04-04-2007, 05:01 PM
I for one have always loved the extra light after 5pm of DST and welcome the extra weeks of it this year regardless of any energy savings or lack thereof.

I agree. I'm always in a semi-coma in the morning anyway, and much prefer the extra daylight in the evening.

And I also agree that it should not have been so difficult to implement on our PCs and mobile devices. I thought the actual dates were always intended to be subject to change.

virain
04-04-2007, 05:12 PM
That's right! Let's adjust DTS not twice a year but every day, as it gets longer and night shorter, minute by minute! Imagine how much energy we will save! Probably That would stop Global Warming and put as back into Ice Age!

BugDude10
04-04-2007, 11:31 PM
I propose in 2008 we change to a 22 hour day, eliminating 2 hours of darkness so there will be less electricity usage and late night bathroom runs. Or, better yet, eliminate the 7am-8am and 5pm-6pm rush-hours. Just think of all of the gasoline that will be saved, not to mention the reduced CO2 emissions. :?

Or, in the alternative, we could just eliminate all the gas-bag politicians who decided to screw with what was already working in the first place -- that would save metric-tons of CO2 emissions each year!

bkerrins
04-05-2007, 05:05 PM
I agree with rhelwig. put us all on GMT and I want to include the use of the 24 hour clock. If someone tells me to meet at 7:00...I want to know they mean AM without having to ask.

I spent several hours adjusting things at home, until I was able to download the HP patch for the time change, my PPC wouldn't keep track of time or meetings properly. This was very painful and a waste of time.

Sven Johannsen
04-05-2007, 10:26 PM
Putting everyone on GMT doesn't solve anything. So everyone is at 0800 at the same time. You still will have to figure out where the heck in the world people are to know if they just got to work, are probably at lunch or are fast asleep in their beds. When it's 0800 in London it'll be 0800 in Colorado, but that will be in the freakin middle of the night, so you better figure that out before you call me up.

Right now everyone has a pretty good feeling that people work from 8-1700, and are home the other times, with exceptions of course. It's not that hard to figure out what time it is right now, somewhere else, which gives you some pretty good info. I think it would be more confusing to have to figure out from what time to what time, people around the world are working or sleeping if everyone did that at a different time block. If I'm calling a colleague in India, I will still have to figure out they work from 0300-1400 GMT. In Colorado we would work from 1500-2400.

I can't stand DST BTW. It's a twice a year irritant with no decernable value. You want more light in the evening, get your butt up earlier in the morning and get off work at 2PM. I know that is not realistic, because the employer sets your hours, but really we are just fooling ourselves. Just set the time and leave it the heck alone.

P.S. Half time zones should be outlawed regardless. You hear me you Aussies ;)

fishfuzz
04-06-2007, 04:04 PM
Just because one article mentions that they found no measurable impact, doesn't mean that it doesn't provide some benefit. Do a little research on your own regarding DST:

http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/index.html

There are benefits beyond energy savings folks.

Palmguy
04-06-2007, 04:26 PM
Right now everyone has a pretty good feeling that people work from 8-1700, and are home the other times, with exceptions of course. It's not that hard to figure out what time it is right now, somewhere else, which gives you some pretty good info. I think it would be more confusing to have to figure out from what time to what time, people around the world are working or sleeping if everyone did that at a different time block. If I'm calling a colleague in India, I will still have to figure out they work from 0300-1400 GMT. In Colorado we would work from 1500-2400.


Also with that; say you get off work at 2400, ok, now it becomes tomorrow in the middle of the frickin day. No thanks.

Ed Hansberry
04-06-2007, 06:24 PM
Critics pointed out a basic fact: the gains in the morning will be offset by the losses at night, and vice-versa, at both ends of the switch. That appears to be exactly what happened.


This points out the fallacy of DST, that we get an "extra hour" of daylight by adjusting our clocks. This idea was inspired by the guy who made a rope longer by cutting off a few feet from one end and splicing it onto the other.
That isn't the fallacy of DST. The truth of DST is it puts more daylight hours in the evening in the summer months, which is good for all sorts of things. Unless you live on a farm, morning daylight hours aren't as important. The fallacy in the change was thinking that by moving it around, less energy would be consumed, as if we would just stumble around in the morning without turning on the lights or driving to work with headlights on as opposed to doing it in the eveing. Moving daylight hours from morning to evening is good. Thinking it wouldn't just move power consumption from evening to morning was stupid.

Rob Alexander
04-07-2007, 04:58 AM
The fallacy in the change was thinking that by moving it around, less energy would be consumed, as if we would just stumble around in the morning without turning on the lights or driving to work with headlights on as opposed to doing it in the eveing. Moving daylight hours from morning to evening is good. Thinking it wouldn't just move power consumption from evening to morning was stupid.

Perhaps a fallacy and perhaps not. Certainly the issue is still being debated among those who study these things. But you of all people, Ed, should understand that a couple of casual comments are not reliable evidence of anything, and certainly not this issue.

So what's wrong with your conclusion?

1) You're missing the point. The energy savings, if they do occur, mostly occur in the summer. The following quote (from the site fishfuzz linked) explains it well.

"In the winter, the afternoon Daylight Saving Time advantage is offset for many people and businesses by the morning's need for more lighting. In spring and fall, the advantage is generally less than one hour. So, Daylight Saving Time saves energy for lighting in all seasons of the year, but it saves least during the four darkest months of winter (November, December, January, and February), when the afternoon advantage is offset by the need for lighting because of late sunrise."

So you wouldn't necessarily expect to see much, if any, savings yet. Those happen in the summer when you don't need lights in the morning because of the longer days, yet you still use less light in the evening because of DST.

2) Where are the numbers? If you're going to throw out DST based on this article, the least we can ask for are some actual data. All we have in this article are a couple of guys saying, 'we don't see any difference.' A difference from what? A difference from the week before... a month before... the same time last year? All of those things would give you a different answer if you measured them. But wait... no one measured anything. They just gave their general impressions.

3) DST started two weeks and three days from the date that article was published. Give a couple of days for the article to be written and let's just round it to two weeks. Two weeks? You're going to take two weeks in two specific places and generalize from those that DST doesn't work at all? Was it cold that week in those places? Hot? Was that the week of the NCAA basketball tournament (lots of people watching TV)? Did one of those places host a major event like that? Drawing conclusions about energy savings from two weeks in two specific places is like taking a survey of 10 people in your home town and drawing conclusions for the whole country based on their answers. It's meaningless.

Like roughly 70% of Americans, I like DST regardless of the energy savings, but that's not the point. The point is that the energy savings have been shown in some studies and disputed in others. We don't know for sure, but there is evidence to support the concept. You may choose to believe one side or the other, but it's certainly not so clear-cut as to be 'stupid'.

If you want to see 'stupid' there are many better examples in the same Act (the Energy Policy Act of 2005), like the one that pays oil companies $6 billion of our taxpayers' money to look for oil. Like if we don't pay them to look for oil, they'll stop doing it? Like we're worried that the current price of oil and record multi-billion dollar profits isn't enough incentive to go look for more? If you want 'stupid', there it is! What a country we live in where trying to save energy (whether or not successful) is 'stupid', while taking billions of dollars from hard working middle-class people and giving it to already fabulously rich private corporations is just fine.

Ed Hansberry
04-07-2007, 06:14 AM
So what's wrong with your conclusion?

1) You're missing the point. The energy savings, if they do occur, mostly occur in the summer...



2) Where are the numbers? If you're going to throw out DST based on this article,...


there are a number of innacuracies in your post, not the least of which is handily defeating the strawman you set up. :roll:

Steve Jordan
04-07-2007, 03:42 PM
A much more realistic way to save money, year-round, would be to start standardizing and implementing the things the government has learned about work-from-home and tellecommute programs, and making it corporate-wide. The amount of money in time and energy expenditures that could be saved by the number of people in this country that can telecommute for part or all of their work week (not to mention the CO2 cut) would be degrees of magnitude above any savings from DST.

Just goes to show you how little the govt really thinks about these things...

Ed Hansberry
04-07-2007, 04:14 PM
A much more realistic way to save money, year-round, would be to start standardizing and implementing the things the government has learned about work-from-home and tellecommute programs, and making it corporate-wide. The amount of money in time and energy expenditures that could be saved by the number of people in this country that can telecommute for part or all of their work week (not to mention the CO2 cut) would be degrees of magnitude above any savings from DST.

Just goes to show you how little the govt really thinks about these things...
There are real productivty issues with this though. I am not saying people can't and shouldn't telecommute occasionally, but despite the fact that I can technically do 95% of my job with email, chat and the phone, there is a lot to be said for walking across the hall, sitting down and working something out. I could spend more time at home but the productivity level isn't as high.

I wonder if anyone has done a serious study of the productivity costs of telecommuting.

Steve Jordan
04-07-2007, 08:36 PM
As a federal government contractor, I've seen plenty of examples of the fact that the government is trying these methods now, and studying what does and does not work within their own organizations. Not that the fed is the most efficient of groups, but they should be able to establish what methods work, what checks and balances are effective, and for what kind of employees. Based on that data, a workable corporate telecommuting strategy is doable. Problem is, no one is pushing its development. The fed could start really pushing that initiative, even giving incentives to companies that practice it, to get it going.

I know telecommuting isn't going to work for everyone... but depending on the organization and the work, significant numbers of corporate employees can telecommute to make a serious impact on national energy use.

Other things the fed can do right now: Improve CARB standards, raising corporate fleet everages above the 22MPG they've been at for 20 years; and speed up the slow transition from incandescent bulbs to compact fluorescent and LED light sources.

Ed Hansberry
04-07-2007, 11:19 PM
The fed could start really pushing that initiative, even giving incentives to companies that practice it, to get it going.
I'll wait until the fed starts practicing what it preaches before shoving it down on me for testing.

Other things the fed can do right now: Improve CARB standards...

CARB standards, by definition, have nothing to do with the Fed, thankfully. That is for the Peoples Republic of California. :wink:

leploep
04-10-2007, 09:06 AM
for all people complaining about manually changing the time on their pc's, I have a suprise for you its called NTP :roll:

http://www.ntp.org/