Is daylight saving time worth the trouble? Research says no

pbs.org - Today the sun is shining during my commute home from work. But this weekend, public service announcements will remind us to “fall back,” ending daylight saving time by setting our clocks an hour earlier on Sunday, Nov. 5. On Nov. 6, many of us will commute home in the dark.

This semiannual ritual shifts our rhythms and temporarily makes us groggy at times when we normally feel alert. Moreover, many Americans are confused about why we spring forward in March and fall back in November, and whether it is worth the trouble.

The practice of resetting clocks is not designed for farmers, whose plows follow the sun regardless of what time clocks say it is. And it does not create extra daylight – it simply shifts when the sun rises and sets relative to society’s regular schedule and routines.

The key question is how people respond to this enforced shift. Most people have to be at work at a certain time – say, 8:30 a.m. – and if that time comes an hour earlier, they simply get up an hour earlier. The effect on society is another question. Here, the research shows that daylight saving time is more burden than boon.

No energy savings

Benjamin Franklin was one of the first thinkers to endorse the idea of making better use of daylight. Although he lived well before the invention of light bulbs, Franklin observed that people who slept past sunrise wasted more candles later in the evening. He also whimsically suggested the first policy fixes to encourage energy conservation: firing cannons at dawn as public alarm clocks, and fining homeowners who put up window shutters.

To this day, our laws equate daylight saving with energy conservation. However, recent research suggests that it actually increases energy use.

This is what I found in a study co-authored with Yale economist Matthew Kotchen. We used a policy change in Indiana to estimate daylight saving time’s effects on electricity consumption. Prior to 2006, most Indiana counties did not observe it. By comparing households’ electricity demand before and after daylight saving time was adopted, month by month, we showed that it had actually increased residential electricity demand in Indiana by 1 to 4 percent annually.

The largest effects occurred in the summer – when shifting clocks forward aligns our lives with the hottest part of the day, so that people tend to use more air conditioning – and late fall, when we wake up in a cold dark house and use more heating, with no reduction in lighting needs.

Other studies corroborate these findings. Research in Australia and in the United States shows that daylight saving time does not decrease total energy use. However, it does smooth out peaks and valleys in energy demand throughout the day, as people at home use more electricity in the morning and less during the afternoon. Though people still use more electricity, shifting the timing reduces average costs to deliver energy because not everyone demands it during typical peak usage periods.

Other outcomes are mixed

Daylight saving time proponents also argue that changing times provides more hours for afternoon recreation and reduces crime rates. The best time for recreation is a matter of preference. However, there is better evidence on crime rates: Fewer muggings and sexual assaults occur during daylight saving time months because fewer potential victims are out after dark.

Overall, net benefits from these three durational effects of crime, recreation and energy use – that is, impacts that last for the duration of the time change – are murky.

Other consequences of daylight saving time are ephemeral. I think of them as bookend effects, since they occur when we change our clocks.

When we “spring forward” in March we lose an hour, which comes disproportionately from resting hours rather than wakeful time. Therefore, many problems associated with springing forward stem from sleep deprivation. With less rest, people make more mistakes, which appear to cause more traffic accidents and workplace injuries, lower workplace productivity due to cyberloafing and poorer stock market trading.

Even when we gain that hour back in the fall, we must readjust our routines over several days because the sun and our alarm clocks feel out of synchronization, much like jet lag. Some impacts are serious: During bookend weeks, children in higher latitudes go to school in the dark, which increases the risk of pedestrian casualties. Dark commutes are so problematic for pedestrians that New York City is repeating the “Dusk and Darkness” safety campaign that it launched in 2016. And heart attacks increase after the spring time shift – it is thought because of lack of sleep – but decrease to a lesser extent after the fall shift. Collectively, these bookend effects represent net costs and strong arguments against retaining daylight saving time.

Pick your own time zone?

Spurred by many of these arguments, at least 16 states have considered changes to daylight saving time this year. Some bills would end daylight saving time, while others would make it permanent. For example, Massachusetts is studying whether to move in coordination with other New England states to Atlantic Time, joining Canada’s Maritime provinces one hour ahead of Eastern Standard Time. If they shift, travelers flying from Los Angeles to Boston would cross five time zones.

Some states have good reason for diverging from the norm. Notably, Hawaii does not practice daylight saving time because it is much closer to the equator than the rest of the nation, so its daylight hours barely change throughout the year. Arizona is the sole contiguous state that abstains from daylight saving time, citing its extreme summer temperatures. Although this disparity causes confusion for western travelers, the state’s residents have not changed clocks’ times for over 40 years.

In my research I have found that everyone has strong opinions about daylight saving time. Many people welcome the shift in March as a signal of spring. Others like the coordinated availability of daylight after work. Dissenters, including farmers, curse their loss of quiet morning hours.

When the evidence about costs and benefits is mixed but we need to make coordinated choices, how should we make decisions? The strongest arguments, with the exception of energy costs, support not only doing away with the switches but keeping the nation on daylight saving time year-round. This provides the benefits of after- work sun without the schedule disruptions. Yet humans adapt. If we abandon the twice-yearly switch, we may eventually slide back into old routines and habits of sleeping in during daylight. Daylight saving time is the coordinated alarm to wake us up a bit earlier in the summer and get us out of work with more sunshine.

50 Signs That The U.S. Health Care System Is A Gigantic Money MAking Scam That Is About To Collapse.

  (economiccollapseblog) - The U.S. health care system is a giant money making scam that is designed to drain as much money as possible out of all of us before we die. In the United States today, the health care industry is completely dominated by government bureaucrats, health insurance companies and pharmaceutical corporations.

Fish Oil Pills Do Nothing For Your Heart?

- If you could get healthy by taking a pill, we would all be prime specimens and live forever. Alas, it’s not that easy as evidenced by a recent study that found that fish oil pills do not lower your risk of heart disease or stroke.

The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, was based on a review of 20 clinical trials involving 68,000 participants. That’s big enough to make the results important.

Fish oil supplements containing omega-3 fatty acids are huge sellers. It’s estimated that Americans spent more than $1 billion on them last year – and sales are increasing.

College Conspiracy - Is College Education Worth It?

Is College Education Worth It Or Just One Big Money Making Scam?

19 Things That All High School Students Should Be Told Before They Go To College.

Don't you wish that someone had told you the truth before you went to college?  Don't you wish that someone had told you that college has become a giant money making scam that is designed to drain as much money out of students and parents as possible?  Yes, college can be a profitable endeavor if you pick your field of study wisely, if you can get someone else to pay for at least some of it and if you can actually get a good job in that field when you graduate.  But most high school students are never told to weigh the pros and the cons before they run off to college.  The typical high school student is simply told to get into the "best school" that he or she can and to take out whatever loans are "necessary" to pay for that education.  Our high school students are assured that those student loans will be paid back easily once they get "good jobs" following graduation.  But the truth is that there are some other things that high school students should be told before they go off to college as well.  They should be told that student loan debt can cripple them financially for decades.  They should be told that the quality of education at most U.S. colleges and universities is a total joke.  They should be told that most college graduates do not get a "good job" once they graduate these days.  They should be told that after they receive their diplomas they are likely to end up flat broke, waiting tables and living with their parents.

If we would just be honest with our high school students ahead of time, it would save many of them a whole lot of pain later.

Higher education is not necessarily a bad thing.  But these days when it comes to higher education the goal should be to get as much for your money as you possibly can.  You don't want to end up spending four years of your life and paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for a degree in "art history" or "political science".
If you are going to get a college degree, choose a field that will actually advance your career and try to spend as little as you can.  Unless you have wealthy parents who can pay for it all, the goal should be to make as big of a profit on your education as possible.
Unfortunately, most young Americans are not told the truth and they end up falling for the scam and many of them end up as debt slaves for decades.

The following are 19 things that all high school students should be told before they go to college....

#1 A college education has become insanely expensive.  Over the past 30 years, the cost of college tuition in the United States has tripled.  One father down in Texas says that he will spend a total of about 1.5 million dollars on college expenses for his five daughters before it is all said and done.

#2 As costs have risen, so has student borrowing.  Sadly, U.S. college students are now borrowing about twice as much money as they did a decade ago after adjusting for inflation.

#3 Unless you have a wealthy parent, there are some schools that should be avoided like the plague.  In the United States today, there are dozens of schools where tuition, room and board total more than $50,000 a year, and only a handful of those schools provide a top notch education.

#4 Our parents and our grandparents paid far less for their college educations than we do today.  Back in 1952, a full year of tuition at Harvard was only $600. Today, it is over $35,000.

#5 The college textbook industry has become a gigantic money making scam.  It is now common for many college textbooks to be priced well above $100, and overall the cost of college textbooks has tripled over the past decade.

#6 At the end of your education, your diploma will likely come with a debt burden which will hang around your neck for many years to come.  In 2010, the average student loan debt burden at graduation was $25,250.

#7 Student loan debt is one of the greatest debt bubbles the U.S. has ever seen.  In fact, student loan debt in America has grown by 511 percent since 1999.

#8 Americans now owe more on their student loans than they do on their credit cards.  In fact, the total amount of student loan debt in the United States recently surpassed the one trillion dollar mark.

#9 People that pursue advanced degrees can pile up absolutely enormous amounts of student loan debt.  According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, approximately 167,000 Americans currently have more than $200,000 of student loan debt.

#10 The student loan default rate in the U.S. is rising to unprecedented heights.  In fact, the student loan default rate has nearly doubled since 2005.

#11 All over America, websites are connecting young college students desperate for college cash with "sugar daddies" that are willing to make a "contribution" to college education in exchange for some "companionship".  The following is from a Huffington Post article about this disturbing trend....

On a Sunday morning in late May, Taylor left her Harlem apartment and boarded a train for Greenwich, Conn. She planned on spending the day with a man she had met online, but not in person.
Taylor, a 22-year-old student at Hunter College, had confided in her roommate about the trip and they agreed to swap text messages during the day to make sure she was safe.
Once in Greenwich, a man who appeared significantly older than his advertised age of 42 greeted Taylor at the train station and then drove her to the largest house she had ever seen. He changed into his swimming trunks, she put on a skimpy bathing suit, and then, by the side of his pool, she rubbed sunscreen into the folds of his sagging back -- bracing herself to endure an afternoon of sex with someone she suspected was actually about 30 years her senior.

#12 Once you start college, there is a very good chance that you will not finish.  Federal statistics reveal that only 36 percent of the full-time students who began college in 2001 received a bachelor's degree within four years.

#13 At most U.S. colleges and universities, the quality of the education that you will receive is rather poor.  Just check out some numbers about the quality of college education in the United States from an article that appeared in USA Today....
-"After two years in college, 45% of students showed no significant gains in learning; after four years, 36% showed little change."
-"Students also spent 50% less time studying compared with students a few decades ago"
-"35% of students report spending five or fewer hours per week studying alone."
-"50% said they never took a class in a typical semester where they wrote more than 20 pages"
-"32% never took a course in a typical semester where they read more than 40 pages per week."

#14 The good news is that you will have more free time in college than you have ever had before.  One survey found that U.S. college students spend 24% of their time sleeping, 51% of their time socializing and 7% of their time studying.

#15 You are probably not going to be able to find a good job when you graduate.  Last year, a staggering 53 percent of all U.S. college graduates under the age of 25 were either unemployed or underemployed.

#16 After you leave college, you are much more likely to get a crappy job than you are to get a good paying professional job.  The following is an excerpt from a recent CNBC article....

In the last year, they were more likely to be employed as waiters, waitresses, bartenders and food-service helpers than as engineers, physicists, chemists and mathematicians combined (100,000 versus 90,000). There were more working in office-related jobs such as receptionist or payroll clerk than in all computer professional jobs (163,000 versus 100,000). More also were employed as cashiers, retail clerks and customer representatives than engineers (125,000 versus 80,000).

#17 If you think that you will be able to "beat the odds" and land the job of your dreams once you graduate from college, perhaps you should consider these numbers....
-In the United States today, approximately 365,000 cashiers have college degrees.
-In the United States today, 317,000 waiters and waitresses have college degrees.
-In the United States today, there are more than 100,000 janitors that have college degrees.

#18 College does a very poor job of preparing people for the "real world".  In fact, one poll found that 70% of all college graduates wish that they had spent more time preparing for the "real world" while they were still in school.

#19 Once you graduate from college, there is a really good chance that you will be moving back home with Mom and Dad.  One recent poll discovered that 29 percent of all Americans in the 25 to 34 year old age bracket are still living with their parents.

So what do you think about the state of college education in America?

- Source Article

L.A. Teachers Explain How To Push Marxism In The Classroom.

Los Angeles Teachers Union Explains How To Push Marxism In The Classroom. Your Tax Dollars At Work!

The Reason For Daylight Saving Time.

Did Beyonce Fake Her Prgnancy For Publicity?

Here's The Video With The Shocking Evidence -

10 Famous People Who Didn't Go To College.

Most high school counselors want you to believe you have to go to college if you want to be successful in life. But that myth has been disproven time and again.

Some of the richest and most successful people in the U.S, and even the world, made their success without graduating college. Some of them went for a few semesters at most, and some never went to college at all. Here’s a list of 10 famous people that didn’t graduate college.

10 Famous People Without Degrees:

Bill Gates - A college dropout, has been named the richest person in the world by Forbes magazine 27 times. Bill Gates, who was 10 points away from a perfect score on the SAT, enrolled at Harvard College in 1973 only to take a leave of absence two years later to form a partnership with classmate Paul Allen. The partnership became known as Microsoft. In 2007, Bill Gates received an honorary doctorate degree from Harvard University. In 2009, Forbes reports Gates’ net worth at $40 billion. 

Steven Spielberg – Is a movie director and producer. Spielberg was denied acceptance to film school and dropped out of California State University in Long Beach. He co-founded DreamWorks, a major film studio that’s produced several of the highest grossing movie hits and Academy award winning films. Spielberg ranked #205 on Forbes 2009 list of world billionaires with a net worth of $3 billion. He was later granted an honorary degree by USC in 1994.

Michael Dell - Founder and CEO of Dell, Inc., dropped out of college at 19. He first started his computer company in his college dorm room, later using company’s earnings and family loans to expand. In 2008, Forbes ranked Michael Dell #11 in its 400 Richest Americans. As of 2009, he has an estimated net worth of $12.3 billion.

Mary Kay Ash - Attended college but dropped out after she got married. She started Mary Kay Cosmetics after being passed over for a promotion that was given to a man who she’d trained. The company started as a book Mark Kay intended to help women and turned into a business plan. With the help of her son and $5,000, Mary Kay Cosmetics was created. Mary Kay Inc. was named one of Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work for in America and one of the 10 best companies for women.

Andrew Jackson – The most-known for being the 6th president of the United States, but was also a military governor, Army commander, an attorney, and a congressman – all without ever going to college.

Halle Berry - An Oscar-winning actress who never went to college. Instead, she moved to Chicago immediately after high school to become a model and actress. She ranked #66 on Forbes’ Celebrity 100 in 2006 and reportedly made $16 million that year. Berry is also a spokeswoman for Revlon cosmetics and was able to command a higher advertising fee after winning an Academy Award.

Rachel Ray - Hasn’t had any formal culinary training, including college, but has several cooking shows on the Food Network, a talk show on NBC, several New York Times bestselling cookbooks, and her own magazine. She got her start teaching cooking classes to customers at Cowan & Lobel, a gourmet market in Albany, New York. The classes showed customers how to cook meals in 30 minutes or less. In 2008, Forbes.com ranked Rachel Ray #76 in Celebrity 100, reporting her earnings at $18 million a year.

Mark Zuckerberg – Co-Founder of the social networking site Facebook #785 in the World’s Billionaires ranks #321 on Forbes’ list of 400 richest Americans. Born in 1984, Mark had an estimated net worth of $1.5 billion in 2008 and is the youngest person ever to appear on one of Forbes’ billionaire lists. He developed Facebook one year on summer vacation after borrowing money from Paypal’s co-founder Peter Theil. In 2008, Microsoft paid $240 million for 1.6% share of Facebook, leading us to believe the site is worth $15 billion.

John D. Rockefeller Sr. - A high school dropout, became the first American billionaire and is said to be the richest man in history. He founded Standard Oil, the first multinational corporation, in 1870. The Supreme Court broke up the company in 1911 stating the company had violated anti-trust law creating a monopoly.

Henry Ford - Never graduated high school, but went on to start one of the largest automobile manufacturing companies in the world, Ford Motor Company. He’s also credited as being the first auto manufacturer to use an assembly line, completely revolutionizing the way cars were produced. The assembly line allowed Ford sell cars at a lower price but the company kept making higher profit because sales volumes continually increased. Time called Ford one of the most influential people of the 20th century.

BONUS: 10 Celebrates Who Don't Have A High School Diploma (And Somehow Are Famous Anyway) - Mark Wahlberg, Christina Aguilera, Simon Cowell, Gisele Bundchen, Jim Carrey, Catherine Zeta-Jones Douglas, Charlie Sheen, Drew Barrymore, Quentin Tarantino, Hilary Swank, Johnny Depp, Micha Barton, Tracy Morgan, Jessica Simpson & Al Picino.

 

Well There You Have It, Proof That You Do Not Need College To Be Successful. Don't Let Anyone Tell You Otherwise.

You May Also Like: Famous, Rich, and Successful People Who Were High School or College Dropouts

- Source Article

Daylight Saving Time Explained.

Ah Daylight Saving Time, It Be Just Another Hoax.

Russia Abolishes Daylight Saving Time Practice - http://rt.com/news/daylight-saving-time-abolished/

I Believe It's Time To End Daylight Saving Time. Please Sign The Petition - http://www.standardtime.com/petition.html   Or Contact Your Local State/National Representative. U.S. Federal Law Allows Any State To Opt Out Of Daylight Saving Time.

Cruel Hoax: Gnosticism.

. . .And To The One Who Does Not Work But Believes In Him Who Justifies The Ungodly, His Faith Is Counted As Righteous – Romans 4:5.

Further Reading - G-d Forbids Religion.  

Cruel Hoax: Psychiatry.

Psychiatry - No Cures, No Science. Just On Big Money Making Scam.

 

 Further Reading:

Psychiatry Harms Children -

http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Family/Parents%20Corner/psychiatry_harms_children.htm

What's Wrong With Psychology -

http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/False%20Religions/Humanism/psychology.htm?