Does anyone actually understand where DST comes from? I don't mean that as in its saving energy in the 70's root, but where does it come from right now
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Part of the story that is often ignored, he added, is the energy required to get people from place to place-gasoline. In fact the petroleum and automobile industries have always been huge supporters of DST, Downing said.
"When you give Americans more light at the end of the day, they really do want to get out of the house. And they go to ballparks, or to the mall and other places, but they don't walk there. Daylight saving reliably increases the amount of driving that Americans do, and gasoline consumption tracks up with daylight saving."
I remember when Bush Jr. changed the date (1 week earlier in spring, 3 weeks later in fall, or maybe the other way around) it was supposed to save like 2-3% of energy. Though I'm not sure they ever proved that it actually did that. And I'm not sure that the confusion doesn't offset that benefit anyway. :)
On that change, I'm pretty sure that the initial IT costs (I remember the urgent rush to update every calendaring system on earth) and the ongoing management overhead (our standing meeting is at 1000ET, which is 1600CET for our European team, except for those ~4 weeks where it isn't) ate up all that benefit and then some.
It had been around as a concept for a while, but was first adopted during the First World War by Germany and Austria, and after that by the Allies. From the Wikipedia article on Daylight saving time, History:
"Starting on 30 April 1916, Germany and its World War I allies (Austria-Hungary) were the first to use DST (German: Sommerzeit) as a way to conserve coal during wartime. Britain, most of its allies, and many European neutrals soon followed suit. Russia and a few other countries waited until the next year and the United States adopted it in 1918."
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http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7779869
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Part of the story that is often ignored, he added, is the energy required to get people from place to place-gasoline. In fact the petroleum and automobile industries have always been huge supporters of DST, Downing said.
"When you give Americans more light at the end of the day, they really do want to get out of the house. And they go to ballparks, or to the mall and other places, but they don't walk there. Daylight saving reliably increases the amount of driving that Americans do, and gasoline consumption tracks up with daylight saving."
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This weekend is the END of DST, not the beginning.
One suggestion is to just stay on DST all year. Another is to split the US into two time zones instead of three.
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I remember when Bush Jr. changed the date (1 week earlier in spring, 3 weeks later in fall, or maybe the other way around) it was supposed to save like 2-3% of energy. Though I'm not sure they ever proved that it actually did that. And I'm not sure that the confusion doesn't offset that benefit anyway. :)
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It had been around as a concept for a while, but was first adopted during the First World War by Germany and Austria, and after that by the Allies. From the Wikipedia article on Daylight saving time, History:
"Starting on 30 April 1916, Germany and its World War I allies (Austria-Hungary) were the first to use DST (German: Sommerzeit) as a way to conserve coal during wartime. Britain, most of its allies, and many European neutrals soon followed suit. Russia and a few other countries waited until the next year and the United States adopted it in 1918."
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