Daylight Time Wasting
Mar. 12th, 2007 12:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
altivoI think we should line all those stupid politicians who believe playing with the clock saves energy, and tie each one head down to the pendulum of some large chiming clock for a year or something.
There is not, and cannot, be any significant savings. It shifts things around, costing some of us more and others less perhaps, but overall there can be no savings. There is added cost brought about by the switching back and forth and the complexities that are added to everything because of that. Altering the schedule does nothing at all except create more bother and fuss and cost extra to fix the problems. This is a case of politicians not having enough intelligence to do anything actually valuable, so they dream up things to talk about so as to look like they are doing something when they are not.
My farm animals do not use clocks. They do not take well to having their schedules altered by human clocks. The sun hasn't changed, they expect things to happen related to solar time. It takes a good solid month to readjust them, and then in the fall we get to do it all over. Because my day job is tied to the stupid clock, we do have to adjust the animals' schedule.
Much more energy would probably be saved by promoting flexible work shifts and breaking up rush hour traffic. Changing the time of day at which the traffic occurs does nothing to save energy. The amount of electricity poured into light pollution by streetlights and shopping malls stays the same, since those lights are on all night anyway. Electric energy used in the average home doesn't change either. If an hour less of lighting is used in the evening, chances are that more will be used in the morning. Not only that, but lengthening the recreational hours in the evening probably promotes more automobile use.
If we as a society want to promote energy saving, let's really do something to reduce consumption rather than just shifting it around on the clock or from one sector to another.
There is not, and cannot, be any significant savings. It shifts things around, costing some of us more and others less perhaps, but overall there can be no savings. There is added cost brought about by the switching back and forth and the complexities that are added to everything because of that. Altering the schedule does nothing at all except create more bother and fuss and cost extra to fix the problems. This is a case of politicians not having enough intelligence to do anything actually valuable, so they dream up things to talk about so as to look like they are doing something when they are not.
My farm animals do not use clocks. They do not take well to having their schedules altered by human clocks. The sun hasn't changed, they expect things to happen related to solar time. It takes a good solid month to readjust them, and then in the fall we get to do it all over. Because my day job is tied to the stupid clock, we do have to adjust the animals' schedule.
Much more energy would probably be saved by promoting flexible work shifts and breaking up rush hour traffic. Changing the time of day at which the traffic occurs does nothing to save energy. The amount of electricity poured into light pollution by streetlights and shopping malls stays the same, since those lights are on all night anyway. Electric energy used in the average home doesn't change either. If an hour less of lighting is used in the evening, chances are that more will be used in the morning. Not only that, but lengthening the recreational hours in the evening probably promotes more automobile use.
If we as a society want to promote energy saving, let's really do something to reduce consumption rather than just shifting it around on the clock or from one sector to another.
