Daylight Savings Time to be Extended in US?

I live in N Carolina and don't believe that would harm me much at all. Probably a good idea. Need to hear the research as to the money saved.

The only objection I could see is that when you extend the hours of light in the evening, you're basically taking them away from the morning...which concerns parents with young school children who walk or wait for the bus.

Frankly, I don't know what this would do to sunrise times in early March and late November, and at the moment I'm too lazy to look it up.

"daylight LOSING time" has always frustrated me (at least in the fall) having shorter evenings is somehow depressing to me. Having darkness in the morning is no big deal to me; I am not a morning person. However, I can see how this would bother parents/kids alike in extended dark mornings.
I digress.

I'm tired of the whole thing...let's just compromise by setting the clocks back half an hour now and keep them that way from now on....

--Eric

mac-er said:

According to CNN, an amendment has been added to an energy bill that would extend Daylight Savings Time.

DST would now start the first Sunday in March and end on the last Sunday in November (as opposed to starting in April and ending in October, as it does now).

The bill will go up for a vote before the full House in a few weeks.

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I don't think this would be such a great idea. We need to do things more like the rest of the world. It's confusing enough as it is with daylight savings being one week different between the US and Europe. I say, if anything, we extend it by one week and make it the same as it is in Europe, that is, starting the last week in March instead of the first week in April.

Eric5h5 said:

I'm tired of the whole thing...let's just compromise by setting the clocks back half an hour now and keep them that way from now on....

--Eric

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i could go for that as well, but i suppose if this actually does help with energy spending then i will be all for it, if it doesnt make many changes though or is of little significance then im not sure about it....

Didn't Nixon extend daylight savings back in '72 or '73 in an effort to save coin due to an oil crisis? That was before my time so I may be in error...

According to the proposal, 8 months a year will be under daylight saving time (currently 6 months). That's 70-75% of each year. We should adopt DST as the standard time and call December to February "daylight killing time."

iBlue said:

"daylight LOSING time" has always frustrated me (at least in the fall) having shorter evenings is somehow depressing to me. Having darkness in the morning is no big deal to me; I am not a morning person. However, I can see how this would bother parents/kids alike in extended dark mornings.
I digress.

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It depresses me as well, so I am all for this, plus I have read that it would decrease oil usage by 10,000 barrels of oil per day, so that is always good.

Macaddicttt said:

I don't think this would be such a great idea. We need to do things more like the rest of the world. It's confusing enough as it is with daylight savings being one week different between the US and Europe. I say, if anything, we extend it by one week and make it the same as it is in Europe, that is, starting the last week in March instead of the first week in April.

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What do the daylight savings time habits of the "rest of the world" have to do with it? It's not confusing to find out the time difference.

I wish DST became standard time. I hate it in December and January when the sun has already set by the time I get out of work. I understand the school children argument though. However, it all depends on your latitude, there are some regions far enough north where it doesn't matter, DST or not, it is going to be dark when children go to school. Overall, I think making DST standard would save even more energy as I think more people are awake at 6:00 PM during December - March than at 6:00 AM. This is just speculation though, I have no numbers to back that up.

feakbeak said:

I wish DST became standard time. I hate it in December and January when the sun has already set by the time I get out of work. I understand the school children argument though. However, it all depends on your latitude, there are some regions far enough north where it doesn't matter DST or not it is going to be dark when children go to school. Overall, I think making DST standard would save even more energy as I think more people are awake at 6:00 PM during December - March than at 6:00 AM. This is just speculation though, I have no numbers to back that up.

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well if this bill is passed things will certainly be moving in that direction and i can see it happening too, wouldnt surprise me in the least, i would rather have lighter evenings than lighter mornings myself

to hell with it all.

All clocks on the planet should be set to Zulu time.

Save a lot of headaches.

On that note, I'm glad I coded my daylight code the way I did so that its changeable.

I think that it's just government intervention where not appropriate. They should be doing more to protect our troops. Energy save at one end is used at the other. IMHO it is silly.

so how is it that it will save oil?

yoda13 said:

It depresses me as well, so I am all for this, plus I have read that it would decrease oil usage by 10,000 barrels of oil per day, so that is always good.

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But, according to the article, we already use 20 million barrels a day. That's a 0.0005% savings - practically nothing. The costs that would go along with implementing this just wouldn't be worth it. There are plenty of smarter ways to cut energy usage, and the government *should* be looking at those instead.

I wish they would just pick a time and stick with it. What really bothers me is the switching back and forth. Especially for those of us who are chronically sleep deprived, "springing forward" can really make you feel more fatigued than you already are.

As for the oil savings, it is hard for me to believe it would matter that much. Alot of families are up by 6 AM due to school, work, exercise, etc. So, whatever lights we don't use in the evening, we are using in the AM!

therevolution said:

But, according to the article, we already use 20 million barrels a day. That's a 0.0005% savings - practically nothing. The costs that would go along with implementing this just wouldn't be worth it.

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What costs? Aside from a few OS adjustments (which can't be hard, since DST is different all over the world) and a handful of embedded systems (which, again, must be designed to handle these changes to deal with various timezones), what's the huge expense?

You've gotta figure that DST is a good idea, though, or every industrialized country other than Japan wouldn't be doing it (and Japan is trying, again, to start, for energy-saving purposes). Personally, it works for me--thanks to last weekend I actually get home from work before dark, and it doesn't much matter in the winter since the sun goes down so early anyway (if I can even see it through all the rain).

Really, though, it's sort of sad that we have to legislate a time change to get people to go to school and work at reasonable daylight hours; why on earth should businesses (local ones, not regional or international onece) open and close at the same hours in the middle of winter and the middle of summer? I know some stores where I live have summer and winter hours, just because it makes sense, so why can't this be a more common thing?

Who made the arbitrary rule that all US residents MUST show up at the office at 8am and go home at 5pm, regardless of the position of the sun, and it takes a governmental re-calibration of the clock to force businesses to do something that makes a little more sense, instead of just encouraging (requiring?) them to open at 7 and close at 4.

China, interestingly, manages to get by with one giant timezone--not many people (relatively) live away from the coast, but obviously those who do aren't working 9-5 by the clock, or they'd be leaving home in the middle of the night and going home from work at solar noon. Ignore the clock and go by solar time. Switch everybody to GMT, and let the locals work it out (yes, I know that'd be nuts).

Makosuke said:

What costs? Aside from a few OS adjustments (which can't be hard, since DST is different all over the world) and a handful of embedded systems (which, again, must be designed to handle these changes to deal with various timezones), what's the huge expense?

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It wouldn't only apply to OSes. There must be tons of software out there that would need to be modified, recompiled, and redistributed to account for the change.

Even if you only consider the changes involved with "a few OS adjustments," what are the costs to government agencies, companies, and consumers for rolling out these updates? What happens when people don't update their OS as reguarly as they should?

It's not like Y2K all over again or anything, but I'm just saying that it couldn't possibly be worth a 0.0005% decrease in energy consumption.

therevolution said:

But, according to the article, we already use 20 million barrels a day. That's a 0.0005% savings - practically nothing. The costs that would go along with implementing this just wouldn't be worth it. There are plenty of smarter ways to cut energy usage, and the government *should* be looking at those instead.

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I disagree with this. We are wasteful as Americans, and while I agree that this is a drop in the bucket, you gotta start somewhere. We don't seem to be willing to give up our large SUVs and pick-ups, myself included, and since this is the case, we gotta look elsewhere and start elsewhere. I agree that there are other more promising ways to save energy, but this really doesn't cost anything and gets us started. I like it, a lot.

wdlove said:

I think that it's just government intervention where not appropriate. They should be doing more to protect our troops. Energy save at one end is used at the other. IMHO it is silly.

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I may fall over, you said something that could on some levels be considered as harsh....you usually are so supportive and positive

aloofman said:

What do the daylight savings time habits of the "rest of the world" have to do with it? It's not confusing to find out the time difference.

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It's confusing if you think, "Okay, so Europe's six hours ahead. No wait, what's today's date. Okay, so it's five hours. Wait, is that right? When does their daylights saving time start? Is it six? No, they haven't started daylight savings time yet. Okay, so it's five," or some variation thereof. Time differences between places should always be the same.

I just thought of something. How does Congress have the ability to change daylight savings? As it is, states control it. I know Arizona doesn't use daylights savings at all. Same with Hawaii. Isn't this an infringement of states' rights?