Suffice to say I am not a fan of “daylight savings time.” Perhaps it once had a use, but that use (and personally I disbelieve its original necessity) is long over. Now, it exists simply as an “old wives tale” embraced by Leftists and those unable to think with anything but their emotions.
As I referenced here, my post having been written in March of 2013:
A petition seeking to eliminate DST (or make it the year-round standard) has surfaced on the White House’s “We the People” crowdsourcing platform. The document, which needs 100,000 signatures to prompt a response from the West Wing, urges President Obama to eliminate the “archaic practice” of adjusting clocks twice a year.
Daylight Saving Time was standardized in the U.S. by the 1966 Uniform Time Act, according to National Geographic. That act has since been amended several times, most recently by the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which extended DST by one month.
The “We the People” petition claims that, while some industries still support DST, studies have shown the change is a health risk, leads to a loss in productivity and is “really annoying.”
And on that note, a new article published the first day of DST 2014, from the New York CBSLocal.com:
Seen At 11: Daylight Saving Time Can Be A Danger To Your Health
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — This weekend we move the clocks an hour forward, losing sleep but gaining an hour of evening sunlight.
But Daylight Saving Time may have serious health implications for some, making it a difficult, even potentially dangerous change, CBS 2′s Kristine Johnson reported.
But even more pointed:
“Our body has a natural circadian rhythm which is almost an internal clock that regulates our 24-hour cycle. It regulates our sleep-wake cycle and that can be disturbed fairly easily,” said neuro-psychiatrist Dr. Julia Samton.
According to Samton, even moving the clocks just one hour may mean disrupted sleep patterns, and more, for some people.
Count me in “those people.”
Dr. Eric Cohen says there are even more serious health considerations beyond losing sleep.
“There have been studies that have shown there are more workplace accidents, more driving accidents after the switch to Daylight Saving Time. There’s even studies that show there are more heart attacks right afterward. So there does seem to be some very real implications for this,” Cohen said.
I’m with The Gothamist. DST needs to be eliminated.
- We’re talking about a tradition that was started by Benjamin Franklin in 1784 because he was interested in conserving candles.
- And that’s only if you assume he was being serious. He’s credited with coming up with the idea as a joke.
- It was popularized by William Willett, who had a very confusing plan for how to implement it. Really, the only reason the U.S. adopted it was so that President Woodrow Wilson, an avid golf enthusiast, could get more hours on the green.
Kelly Erb at Forbes.com writes:
And where you live makes a difference. A study of energy savings in the U.S. in 2007 indicated that energy savings in cooler climates were offset by increased demand for cooling in warmer climates. Environmental economist Hendrik Wolff, of the University of Washington, the same scientist who studied the morning/evening environment offset, found, “Everywhere there is air conditioning, our evidence suggests that daylight saving is a loser.”
It also appears to cost us money. In 2010, Utah State University economist William F. Shughart II suggested that turning the clocks forward and backwards each year costs Americans $1.7 billion of lost opportunity cost each year. His calculations assumed that each person over the 18 spent about 10 minutes changing clocks instead of doing something else more productive.
So, Leftists: if Global Warming is occurring, you should be the first on your block to demand DST be abolished. And yet, despite this, I hear a veritable field of crickets.
In Fornicalia, we’re all suckers for emotions. Give me the Arizona DST mindset all millennium long.
BZ
