Have I Mentioned How Ridiculous Daylight Savings Time Is Lately?

In recent years several studies have suggested that daylight saving time doesn't actually save energy—and might even result in a net loss.

Environmental economist Hendrik Wolff, of the University of Washington, co-authored a paper that studied Australian power-use data when parts of the country extended daylight saving time for the 2000 Sydney Olympics and others did not. The researchers found that the practice reduced lighting and electricity consumption in the evening but increased energy use in the now dark mornings-wiping out the evening gains.

  National Geographic

Well, exactly. I just can’t understand what people were thinking when they missed that point.

And there’s this from a study in Indiana:

While use of artificial lights dropped, increased air-conditioning use more than offset any energy gains, according to the daylight saving time research Kotchen led for the National Bureau of Economic Research in 2008.

That's because the extra hour that daylight saving time adds in the evening is a hotter hour. "So if people get home an hour earlier in a warmer house, they turn on their air conditioning," the University of Washington's Wolff said.

[...]

In an October 2008 daylight saving time report to Congress, mandated by the same 2005 energy act that extended daylight saving time, the U.S. Department of Energy asserted that springing forward does save energy.

And it would, wouldn’t it? 

[D]aylight savings' energy gains in the U.S. largely depend on your location in relation to the Mason-Dixon Line, Wolff said.".

[...]

The North might be a slight winner, because the North doesn't have as much air conditioning," he said. "But the South is a definite loser in terms of energy consumption. The South has more energy consumption under daylight saving."

And can least afford it.

A 2008 study in the New England Journal of Medicine concluded that, at least in Sweden, heart attack risks go up in the days just after the spring time change. "The most likely explanation to our findings are disturbed sleep and disruption of biological rhythms.”

[...]

Till Roenneberg, a chronobiologist at Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, Germany, said his studies show that our circadian body clocks-set by light and darkness-never adjust to gaining an "extra" hour of sunlight to the end of the day during daylight saving time. "The consequence of that is that the majority of the population has drastically decreased productivity, decreased quality of life, increasing susceptibility to illness, and is just plain tired," Roenneberg said.

I would think that the problem would come at the beginning of the day when we get up in the dark, because really, who goes to bed in the evening when it's light outside, no matter whether you've been working or not?  (Other than me.  And very old retired people.) 

Now we have something to blame our chronic fatigue on. And I’m all for stopping the ridiculous practice.  If we must do it, can we please stop the utterly absurd practice of resetting the clocks? Why don’t we just agree that we’re going to work an hour earlier and leave the damned clocks alone?

"I think the first day of daylight saving time is really like the first day of spring for a lot of people," Prerau said. "It's the first time that they have some time after work to make use of the springtime weather. "I think if you ask most people if they enjoy having an extra hour of daylight in the evening eight months a year, the response would be pretty positive."

Then let’s ask that question, shall we? I have a feeling we might come up with the opposite conclusion. Not that anyone making the rules gives two shits what “most people” think. If it really doesn’t save energy, the people making the rules are going to rule in favor of the energy company lobbyists.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.