Daylight Savings time: BOOOO!

Almost everyone is familiar with daylight savings time (DST). Some, because twice a year it messes with your schedule causing you to either be early or late to work the following Monday; others that don't change know about it because it messes with the t.v. schedule. For the lucky unaware ones here is a brief explanation.

Early in the spring the participating regions start DST by moving their clocks forward 1 hour at 2:00 in the morning. They lose that hour until the fall when again in the middle of the night they change the time. This time they gain the hour. This gives us the sayings "Spring ahead" and "Fall back".

So why bother?

Well those regions that do it claim the following:
1) It shifts the light from the morning before most people get up to the evening when sport activities are happening. This allows outdoor evening activities to continue later.
2) It saves in electricity.
3) It increases retail sales in the evening.
4) It decreases car fatalities.

When I examined these points I found that some of these reasons are true and others are kind of more mythical.
1) This first one is true, to a point. In Victoria it makes a lot of sense for the switch in mid March because it is actually nice enough out do have outdoor sporting events. This is not the case for the rest of Canada though. For Saskatchewan the average maximum temp in May is 18.8 and the minimum is 4.6 Celsius. This is about the soonest that you would want late evening sports and the sunset (without DST) on May 1st is 8:20 and by the end of the month 9:00pm.

Conclusion for reason #1:
The claims are true provided that the climate you live in is temperate or that you live in a lower latitude where the change in day length from winter to summer is less. Otherwise the argument is a lot weaker because by the time it is warm enough out the sunset is later anyway.

2) The second reason is highly contentious. The U.S. in 2005 moved DST earlier by 2 weeks because they claimed that there would be a large electricity cost saving since people would have more daylight in the evening and need less light and heat. The problem is that most people turn on the lights in their house in the evening anyway because it gives more consistent lighting. So it would seem that there is no gain. BUT it actually turns out that since DST goes all summer it shifts the hotter part of the day towards the evening. This is the time that people are coming home and they want their houses cooler so they turn up the air conditioners. A study done on Indiana last year showed that when they started to use DST the energy usage went up 4% and they estimate that this would be larger for locations with more extreme weather patterns then Indiana.

Conclusion for reason #2:
It would seem that this is pure myth and that the truth is actually the opposite, it usually increases energy costs.

3) All the evidence for this one is that you do indeed spend more money and you are more likely to stay out late shopping when it is lighter out. Also you are more likely to buy sports equipment sooner in the season. So this is good for the stores but not necessarily for your bank balance. There is a flip side though. It seems that the complexity of the change over to DST causes businesses that have holdings in multiple time zones with different observances to hold off on their market activities on the day of the switch to avoid confusion. This is estimated to cost the American economy millions.

Conclusion for reason #3:
It is true that you will spend more money. You can decide if this is good. Also it might cause business trying to avoid confusion money on the stock market.

4) It was reasoned that the daylight in the evening would help keep people safer on the roads. It seems that this is negated though by there being less sunlight in the morning on the way to work and school. The net affect seems minimal in either direction.

Conclusion for reason #4:
Mythical and not a valid reason.

Overall conclusion:
Daylight saving time only makes sense for those locations that have the nice weather earlier in the spring to take advantage of a longer evening. For everyone else it just gives them a long cold evening that cannot be used anyway. Also it may cost you as much at 3.19 a month.

Recommendation:
If we all stop it together this would end the confusion between provinces and states that do not do it anyway AND we can all save some money. The only downfall is that yeah we may have to wait a month to have little league outside in the evening.