I learned the story of time zones in American government schools in the 1980s. I apologize if my accounting doesn’t resemble actual fact. In any case, the reasoning and the point behind it are the same.
A century and a half ago, America was being connected by the railroad. It was possible to board a train early in the morning and be somewhere far away by sunset. A constant problem travelers experienced was a difference in time. Every locality seemed to have its own somewhat arbitrary idea of what the current time was, and when you stepped off the train at your destination, you had no way to know the local time unless someone told you what it was. Planning and keeping appointments was very difficult.
Obviously other parts of the world experienced the same problem, so time zones were created. The Earth was divided into 24 zones, each zone correlating to 15 degrees of the Earth’s 360 degree sphere, or the distance the sun travels in one hour relative to the Earth’s surface. The longitude point passing through the observatory in Grenwich, England, became the reference point from which other time zone values were determined.
This map shows time zones as they exist today. Click it for an enlarged graphic. The zones don’t strictly follow longitude lines because of practical and political considerations, but the overall idea is obviously present.
Sometime during World War II, at least in the United States, Daylight Savings Time was implemented, allegedly for the purpose of conserving electricity by skipping one hour so the sun would be up longer during the regular human day. Perhaps that was a good idea at the time, considering American’s electric generating ability was almost certainly a fraction of what it is now.
DST then became institutionalized and for decades we’ve skipped an hour every spring and added an hour every fall. More than a year back, the geniuses who write our laws decided that DST would begin at the completely arbitrary second Sunday in March (instead of the completely arbitrary first Sunday in April) and end at the completely arbitrary first Sunday in November (as opposed to the completely arbitrary last Sunday in October), extending DST by about a month. Their excuse: Save electricity! What a load of bullshit.
Changing the date for DST doesn’t make my furnace run any less. The weather on March 11 this year will be what it will be regardless what time my clock says. Changing the clock so I’m awake for an extra hour of sunlight doesn’t mean the sun is actually in the sky for another hour to warm the Earth, so my savings are zero.
My refrigerator runs as often as it needs to keep food cold no matter what time it is. My stove uses the electricity necessary to cook my dinner regardless of the clock. My water heater doesn’t give a damn what time it is. The outdoor lights at my house stay on for the same amount of time because the length of the night doesn’t change because we shift our clocks. The computer equipment in my house runs as often as it needs to without regard to the time. My television comes on when the shows I like come on, whether the sun is up or not.
Energy savings my ass.
“But what about lights? Because the sun is up later in the day, you don’t have to turn on the lights, and you save electricity!” What you’ll save by leaving the lights off for an hour is minimal. I’ll tell you how to really save energy, if you’re so damn concerned: Turn off the shit you’re not using right now. You know that bedroom light you leave on all the time, even when you’re not in there? Turn it the hell off. When you’re in the basement folding laundry, turn off the TV upstairs you’re not watching. Turn your furnace down and wear a sweater. I guarantee a change in your personal behavior, rather than a change in the law, will do much more to save energy.
And if you want an extra hour of daylight, get out of bed an hour earlier.
DST is stupid, and there’s no real justification for it. At least two states and four territories in the US don’t recognize it, and half the world by location, and likely population, doesn’t recognize it. Most importantly, the fact that clocks move ahead or behind an arbitrary number of hours at arbitrary dates at some places in this country and at some places in the world totally defeats the purpose of providing consistent, predictable time, the reason for time zones to begin with.
Thanks idiots.
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March 9th, 2007 at 6:43 pm
I’ve heard estimates (not sure how reliable) that indoor lighting still accounts for around 30% of a home’s energy consumption. Whether or not that is true, Congress could be doing a lot more to help reduce our collective energy consumption by simply encouraging Americans to switch to more efficient lighting technologies such as halogen and compact fluorescent.
March 9th, 2007 at 7:14 pm
It seems to me that if 30% of energy consumption is lighting, then people probably do have a lot of lights turned on they don’t use, and turning them off would cut that by quite a bit. I’d be interested to see some credible numbers concerning how much DST reduces energy consumption. We’ll have to wait at least a year to compare the savings of old DST versus current DST.
I don’t believe that it’s Congress’s place to manage our energy usage. I think that’s up to the free market. When halogen and CF bulbs present obvious benefits to consumers, the energy savings from those devices will obviously follow.
March 9th, 2007 at 7:23 pm
I care not for your reasonable and historically backed tirade against DST. I only care that the sun it up later, which I like, so hush up, you!
March 9th, 2007 at 7:28 pm
Emotion over logic. That’s a good legislative strategy.
That’s why gay people in Ohio can’t get married, and businesses can’t decide if smoking should be allowed on their own property.
March 12th, 2007 at 11:07 am
I have to agree with you Aaron. Changing times is just plain dumb. So what that you move the “daylight hour” by one. That just means that you are turning the lights on in the morning instead of the evening. The billions of dollars and headaches that this little change wasted probably nullified any possible advantage it provided.
A better piece of legislation would have been to ban the use of incandescent light bulbs. Make everyone use CF light bulbs. I know you’ll disagree with that type of legislation, but the free market will take too long to change peoples habits on this one since incandescents are cheaper to buy (not use).
-Glen
March 12th, 2007 at 12:19 pm
Think daylight saving time saves energy? Think again. Or not.
This article has some of the same anti-DST arguments that I’ve used here. Additionally, it has some motives behind DST other than energy savings. It’s also interesting to note that real data about energy consumption’s relation to DST in the US seems nonexistent.
March 12th, 2007 at 12:21 pm
Will the Daylight Savings Shift Do Us Any Good?
This article from ABC news references some data collected in 2000 for Australia’s DST extension. They ended up using more energy during DST.
March 12th, 2007 at 5:42 pm
Last week, the public radio program “Marketplace” did a fine article on Daylight Savings Time. I hope you enjoy listening to it as I did.
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2005/04/11/PM200504113.html
March 12th, 2007 at 5:46 pm
Oops! Sorry! Wrong URL! This IS the one I wanted to use:
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2007/03/09/PM200703095.html
March 13th, 2007 at 8:27 am
I am ambivalent about DST I like the extra daylight hours but hate the sudden change when we return to standard time. It suddenly getting dark at 5:30 depresses me. As Will Rogers said “When Congress makes a joke it’s a law” My other issue with time change is the extra challenge of dealing with time zones when I am arranging video conferences. That gets a little strange.
Compact Florescence lamps while they will save energy, have some environmental issues also. Since they contain mercury you shouldn’t toss them in the waste stream. They do save energy but some people have issues with the quality of the light. I have started to replace some of my incandescent lamps with CF but not all of them.
March 14th, 2007 at 7:39 pm
By reducing your need to turn on the lights is a hugh savings for everyone. DST is a great thing and something that seems to work or why would we do it?
The guy who invented Standard time hired my grandmother to babysit his kids….if anyone really cares.
March 23rd, 2007 at 12:57 pm
Actually, I thought the idea of this change in DST start and finish dates was to test the energy savings hypothesis for a couple of years. If it turns out not to be the case, even with extension of DST dates, then the commerce dept. (i think) will have a good argument for dropping it.
By the way. if you REALLY want to have a good argument about time, live in Indiana (where I do) and straddle the time zones. We’ve been arguing over what time zone to be in AND whether to observe DST for as long as I can remember.
April 3rd, 2007 at 1:47 pm
[...] I said: Energy savings my ass. [...]
July 8th, 2007 at 9:37 am
“And if you want an extra hour of daylight, get out of bed an hour earlier.”
No. I like having more daylight later in the day, not because I give a frak about saving energy or money but because I’m not a morning person.
I’ll agree with you that changing time arbitrarily twice a year is illogical. I won’t agree with you that there’s some God-given or even logical reason that daylight has to start at 7am (or any particular time) as opposed to 8am or 6am (or any other particular time).
This one really should be majority rules. If the majority prefers to daylight start earlier in the morning (I know daylight starts whenever it starts, regardless of what time we call it, but you know what I mean), then I should have to live with it. But if the majority of people want daylight to end later in the evening (i.e. call the midpoint of the daylight time 1pm or even 2pm instead of noon), then you should have to live with that.
And no, we don’t need majority rule in every time zone in the world (in other words, not every time zone has to follow the same rules). Unlike when people got off trains in the 1800s, we all carry devices that can be programmed to know the rules, and I’m not advocating differences in every town in the world, just by time zone or perhaps by large regions of time zones. Hell we lived with Indiana being quirky for years (though they’ve finally rejoined the majority time zone rules). We could live with every single state having differences.
September 10th, 2008 at 7:48 am
“No. I like having more daylight later in the day, not because I give a frak about saving energy or money but because I’m not a morning person.”
And here we see, what DST actually is — a psychological trick to fool people to get out of bed one hour earlier. Let’s say that you like to get up at 7am, both in the winter and in the summer. When you change your alarm clock to DST, it means that your alarm clock will wake you up one hour earlier. In reality this is no different to setting the alarm to 6am during the summer, the result is the same: you wake up one hour earlier, whether you’re a morning person or not.
“Unlike when people got off trains in the 1800s, we all carry devices that can be programmed to know the rules,”
Yes, that’s true. But someone has to do that programming. In my daily work I have spent dozens and dozens of hours doing just that. And, someone has to pay for all that work, and usually it’s those using the devices and systems that need to be made DST-aware. And in the end there are always devices and systems that fail in working out the DST, and this leads to confusion, missed appointments etc.