Daylight Saving Time - Snafu
My clocks all hate me for this:
The early onset of daylight saving time in the USA this year may have been for naught. The move to turn the clocks forward by an hour on March 11 rather than the usual date in early April was mandated by the federal government as an energy-saving effort — but the move appears to have had little impact on power usage. “We haven’t seen any measurable impact,” said Jason Cuevas, spokesman for Southern Co., one of the nation’s largest power companies, echoing comments from several large utilities.
But we’re not out of the woods yet:
Congress plans to evaluate the effects of the earlier switch to daylight saving time. Perhaps the biggest effect was felt by the computer and gadget users who needed software patches to keep their digital devices on the right time. Dan Hermann, a computer programmer in New York, updated his gadgets to the new daylight saving time three weeks ago, only to have them automatically shift forward by another hour on Sunday, the previous start date for daylight saving time.
So, is the government to blame - or are scientists working for the government to blame? Science geeks, help me out here. What really happened?
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9 Comments
The Chris Pirillo Show
April 3rd, 2007
at 1:07pm
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BWJones
April 4th, 2007
at 10:38pm
Well, I am a scientist who used to study sleep actually, but you don’t really need our advice to determine what happened. All you have to do in this case is follow the lobbyists money that were rooting for this time change. Lobbyists including the candy industry (Halloween is a big money maker these days and the extra hour helps the kiddies to collect candy), the retail industry (an extra hour of light for folks to shop before going home), etc…etc…etc… Nothing more complicated than that.
John A Thomson
April 4th, 2007
at 10:40pm
The scientists will be removing evening time soon and replacing it with 24 hour daylight time to alleviate the need for lighting in the evening! :-)
Is that really the best that US scientist and politicians can come up with to reduce power consumption? Much bigger measures and a drastic mind set change in the citizens are required to ensure a reduction in green house gases in the US. The days of needless energy consumption should be numbered… Europe is leading the way, although we’ve still got loads more to do in this respect.
I’m away to turn off the light since it is now daylight outside and what a lovely morning it looks to be!
Ernest N. Wilcox Jr.
April 4th, 2007
at 10:46pm
Daylight Saving time has remained the same for so many years, many gadget makers hard code the DST function into their devices that support it, forcing us to manually reset the time for such devices a few weeks ago on the new date. This did not change or disable the hard coded DST function so it still executed as scheduled Sunday. I have a few devices here that include a DST configuration function allowing me to set the DST start and end dates. Most devices with the function hard coded do not even have the ability to disable it. Go figure.
Ernest N. Wilcox Jr.
April 4th, 2007
at 11:01pm
Oops. Forgot to finish …
I think the politicians who want to appear to be doing something about Global Warming and the energy situation are really to blame. This appeared to be an easy step to take, creating a good image, even if it does little to help. After all, didn’t you know that appearances are more important than results? So I guess I blame Government for its laziness and its love of expediences. Further I blame the manufacturers and their product designers who lacked the vision to see that DST function configuration could have value.
Paul chinnery
April 5th, 2007
at 2:49pm
Well, I hope they don’t change it back for a while. A lot of my desktops and all of my servers are Win2000. It was a PITA to update everybody with the registry change and also run the Outlook tool.
A lot of the resources such as conference rooms would show one time but the organizer’s Outlook would show an hour later.
I’ll second Ernest’s comment. Another classic example of politicians doing something without understanding or caring about the amount of work it causes everybody (think HIPAA).
Great cartoon!
Candace
April 6th, 2007
at 10:04am
I’m glad my grandfather isn’t alive to see the ongoing political obsession with DST. He ranted (on a regular basis) about the debate when DST was first being contemplated in Saskatchewan. The way the story goes, not a single person wanted it, but the government and politicians pushed it through anyway. He’d be blowing his stack if he’d had to watch this year’s madness.
The Homely Scientist » Daylight Savings Time, it’s all Ben Franklin’s fault
April 6th, 2007
at 10:49am
[...] So, is the government to blame - or are scientists working for the government to blame? Science geeks, help me out here. What really happened? Source: Daylight Saving Time - Snafu ~ Chris Pirillo [...]
b5media - a global blog network
April 6th, 2007
at 8:11pm
The Homely Scientist: Daylight Savings Time, it’s all Ben Franklin’s fault So, is the government to blame - or are scientists working for the government to blame? Science geeks, help me out here. What really happened? Source: Daylight Saving Time - Snafu ~ Chris Pirillo Yeah this recent change to DST in the US and Canada has been… Continue Reading