Good grief. It's still WINTER, for heaven's sake!
In 2005, Congress approved legislation extending daylight shifting time on the grounds it saved energy. Those supposed savings were based on dubious data from the mid-1970s.
But a study of energy consumption in Indiana — which just switched to DST statewide in 2006 — found that the switch actually may waste energy.
How can this be? Conventional wisdom says that extending daylight hours into the evening means lights don't need to be turned on as early.
What this analysis fails to take into account is that during daylight shifting time's cooler months with the darker mornings as people get ready for the day, they tend to crank up the thermostats after they roll out of bed, in addition to turning on the lights in the morning instead of the evening. In the hotter months during that extended evening daylight, they actually run the air conditioners longer.
In Indiana, after the statewide switch, residential electricity usage increased between 1 percent and 4 percent, amounting to $8.6 million a year. Those counties that had made the switch years ago were used as a control group so that weather changes from year to year could be taken into account when the data were analysed.
Congress should roll back DST to begin the last Sunday in April, as it was prior to 1986. Better still,
leave the damned clocks alone and let those early birds who like to rise before daybreak and stumble and fumble around in the darkness to get ready for work, set their own alarm clocks ahead and allow the rest of us snooze in peace for another hour!
The bottom line is those who have to go to work are being forced to get up an hour earlier every morning... and losing an hour of late night radio on 75 and 160.
'Spring forward' won't save you energy
