Stop the madness...
Apr. 7th, 2005 04:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexpgpThere's a report on cnn.com to the effect that Congress is considering extending daylight savings time.
As is usual with such news, there's not enough information to understand whether the Transportation estimate confines itself narrowly to gross electricity savings or whether it attempts a net estimate.
For example, a post on Slashdot wonders how long it would take for the alleged energy savings to overcome the cost to make, test, and deploy the necessary code changes you'd have to make to software to make computers automatically reflect the correct time?
And I'm wondering if anyone has ever done a study of the cost associated with the mismatched shift between Savings Time (here) and Summer Time (in Europe) during the one week when Europe has already shifted and we haven't, and how such a study might extrapolate to the proposed two-month mismatch.
However, such concerns are beside the point, in my opinion. As much as 10,000 barrels a day is a pile of barrels that I'd notice sitting in my back yard on any given afternoon, the fact that the proposed change is estimated to reduce consumption by a whole one-twentieth of one percent (in a real world where nobody - much less a government agency - is capable of such accuracy) tells me that the effort being spent in Congress to push this measure and the effort - however weak - made to report on it will already outweigh its purported benefits.
At any rate, a similar measure that did pass back during the oil problems of the 70s was eventually repealed. I wonder why, if the extension of DST was such a good idea?
Putting it in personal terms, if you make $40,000 per year, how seriously would you consider commiting to a proposal that might save you $20 at the cost of some guaranteed additional inconvenience?
Cheers...
Lawmakers crafting energy legislation approved an amendment Wednesday to extend daylight-saving time by two months, having it start on the first Sunday in March and end on the last Sunday in November.The projected savings, based on a Transportation Department estimate, is 10,000 barrels per day, for a nation that consumes 20 million barrels per day.
"Extending daylight-saving time makes sense, especially with skyrocketing energy costs," said Rep. Fred Upton, R-Michigan, who along with Rep. Ed Markey, D-Massachusetts, co-sponsored the measure.
As is usual with such news, there's not enough information to understand whether the Transportation estimate confines itself narrowly to gross electricity savings or whether it attempts a net estimate.
For example, a post on Slashdot wonders how long it would take for the alleged energy savings to overcome the cost to make, test, and deploy the necessary code changes you'd have to make to software to make computers automatically reflect the correct time?
And I'm wondering if anyone has ever done a study of the cost associated with the mismatched shift between Savings Time (here) and Summer Time (in Europe) during the one week when Europe has already shifted and we haven't, and how such a study might extrapolate to the proposed two-month mismatch.
However, such concerns are beside the point, in my opinion. As much as 10,000 barrels a day is a pile of barrels that I'd notice sitting in my back yard on any given afternoon, the fact that the proposed change is estimated to reduce consumption by a whole one-twentieth of one percent (in a real world where nobody - much less a government agency - is capable of such accuracy) tells me that the effort being spent in Congress to push this measure and the effort - however weak - made to report on it will already outweigh its purported benefits.
At any rate, a similar measure that did pass back during the oil problems of the 70s was eventually repealed. I wonder why, if the extension of DST was such a good idea?
Putting it in personal terms, if you make $40,000 per year, how seriously would you consider commiting to a proposal that might save you $20 at the cost of some guaranteed additional inconvenience?
Cheers...
