April 7, 2005
MAN-MADE GLOBAL WARMING PROVED
Congress may extend daylight-saving time (AP, 4/7/05)
If Congress passes an energy bill, Americans may see more daylight-saving time.I have, in the past, been somewhat skeptical of the strong scientific consensus among all competent scientists, no matter their discipline, that the planet was warming precipitously and that man alone was the only cause. It has now become clear even to me that I was woefully mistaken. Global warming is real, and it is man-made. In fact, it is caused by Congress.Lawmakers crafting energy legislation approved an amendment Wednesday to extend daylight-saving time by two months, having it start on the first Sunday in March and end on the last Sunday in November.
Last Sunday morning, at 1:00 a.m., clocks in the United States were set back one hour, resulting in one more hour of daylight. As a result, average temperatures have started to rise at an explosive rate. Looking at the historical temperatures for this area, I find that day-light savings time correlates strongly with a dramatic increase in temperatures. The high, mean and low temperatures for the 30 days preceding day-light savings time were 43.3, 34.13333333 and 24.9 degrees respectively. After day-light savings time began, those numbers jumped to 61.2, 49 and 38.2 degrees. In other words, day-light savings time causes a warming of approximately 15 degrees.
All other sources of global warming have been thought to have added, if anything, only a few fractions of a degree to average temperatures. Obviously, day-light savings time is by far the biggest threat to the global environment yet found. Moreover, if this one act of the legislature can have such a profoundly dangerous effect, then doesn't it stand to reason that other acts of legislation must also have temperature enhancing effects? Indeed, a search of primary sources from history results in numerous references to Congress as a source of hot air. Though it is, of course, possible that future research will refine our understanding of this problem so that it can be dealt with more easily, I submit that waiting is too dangerous. We must shut down Congress now, lest our whole way of life -- indeed, our entire planet -- be destroyed.
Posted by David Cohen at April 7, 2005 4:56 PMCongress should meet as often as the TX legislature--for 30 days every other year.
Posted by: b at April 7, 2005 5:07 PMNo Correlation Without Causality!
(Can we make a bumper sticker out of that?)
Posted by: ghostcat at April 7, 2005 5:11 PMMany moons ago I was doing some research with a friend on the matter of wind damage in all 50 states and the District. We discovered that there was virtually no damage over the last half century attributable to high winds in DC. My explanation was that all the wind in DC is inside the buildings.
Posted by: bart at April 7, 2005 5:21 PMOne of the rationales/excuses for Daylight Savings Time is that those early morning hours are going to waste, and could be put to better use in the evenings. Then again, people who stay up late and sleep 'til noon obviously don't care about daylight to begin with. The solution is for those few people who actually want to use those daylight hours to get up earlier and use them.
Because most people get up by the clock, those early morning hours in the summer can be wonderful. The summer seasons I spent at a well-known location in a National Park, I noticed that the tourons didn't get out and about until 09:00 at the earliest, even if it was light by 05:30. So places that would be over-crowded a few hours later were completely deserted at those early hours, making for a totally different experience. The only drawback was that it was always cold (as in frost on the walkways cold) at dawn, and you had to dress accordingly even though in a few hours it could be in the low 80s.
Posted by: Raoul Ortega at April 7, 2005 6:05 PMDavid - There is a flaw in your reasoning. It could be that warming causes Daylight Savings Time.
Posted by: pj at April 7, 2005 8:02 PMI hate to be the one to tell David that while he may have set his clock back one hour last weekend the rest of us moved them forward. Thus the two hour time difference he is now experiencing may have affected his calculations.
Posted by: MB at April 7, 2005 10:48 PMBoy, until I came to this side of the debate, I had no idea how reckless and annoying you neo-Neros are. Our planet is under threat, and all you can do is quibble about causation and experimental protocols? When will you realize that the only sane alternative is to enact my entire legislative agenda immediately.
It is, I admit, an amazing coincidence that the best possible response to the emergent threat of global warming is my pre-existing legislative agenda in every detail.
Posted by: David Cohen at April 8, 2005 7:37 AMUltimately, the problem is that we work from 9-5 instead of 8-4. That is, of course, precisely the change daylight savings time makes, yielding a work day that's symmetric with respect to solar noon.
Posted by: Annoying Old Guy at April 9, 2005 12:22 AMI think "Daylight Savings Time" should go full-time. Either let's knock the standard work day back by one hour (8-4 instead of 9-4), or do the easier thing and just bump our clocks ahead one hour, leave it that way permanently.
I think there's a real psychological health benefit to leaving the office with sunlight outside. Spending five days a week heading to work in the dark and coming home in the dark, while sitting indoors in between, certainly isn't very uplifting -- and in fact is downright depressing. Yet most of us spend October-February doing just that.
The numbers on a clock are just arbitrary anyway. We wouldn't be breaking any great moral or ethical code by shifting them to better mesh with the rhythm of contemporary society.
Typos suck.
Parenthetical in first graf above should have read "8-4 instead of 9-5" ...
Posted by: Semolina at April 9, 2005 10:29 AM