DST vs. Y2K
I have expressed my disdain for Daylight Savings Time before. That dislike now has a new face: my Outlook calendar, which is in disarray due to the software patches that partially succeeded in setting the clock forward an hour (three weeks sooner than expected). It moved some of my meetings ahead an hour, too. I had fewer disruptions (zero) seven years ago when the calendar rolled from 1999 to 2000.
I always thought DST aided the US by increasing the daylight hours in which America is “awake”… thus reducing energy consumption via home lighting. Of course, i don’t know if that is the prime reason.. but it is a environmental “good deed” if in fact it is true
I think saving billions of Kilowatts of energy every day is worth a few minor sleep deprived setbacks.
of course i just wasted more enery than I saved this year by having my computer running to type this… soo.. oh well. Maybe next year.
The problem is that the evidence that it saves energy may be faulty. Here is one recent study…
http://repositories.cdlib.org/ucei/csem/CSEMWP-163/
Besides, I’ve always wondered about whether or not increasing DST will eventually lead to changes in human behavior relative to the time of wake hours during daylight vs. night (i.e., eventually offsetting the savings).
It appears it was a bust.
http://money.cnn.com/2007/04/02/news/daylight_savings.reut/