[time-nuts] DST and leap hours

Tom Van Baak tvb at leapsecond.com
Wed Jul 27 04:36:31 EDT 2005


Here's an interesting one... Did I get the math
right?

Those of us here in the USA are faced again
with a proposed change in DST rules. Is this
local to the US or is there a similar daylight
saving time inflation trend in other countries?

Previously we had about 7 months of saving
time; the new proposal has us now saving 9
months of time. We're getting too closer to
saving 12 months; where everyone effectively
Springs forward and doesn't Fall back; where
everyone turns their watch forward one hour,
shifting one zone to the east, permanently.

The interesting thing about this trend is that
a leap hour, should it become future practice,
would do just the opposite. For example.

If you have an accurate non-radio-controlled
wristwatch, chronometer, or pendulum clock
you have to manually set it back one second
after a positive leap second is added to UTC.

So in the year 2900 +/- 300 if a leap hour were
to occur you will have to set your wristwatch,
chronometer, or pendulum clock back one
hour after a leap hour is added to UTC.

In other words, the leap hour will be just the
antidote we need to offset the political trend
of 12 months of daylight saving time, yes?

/tvb
http://www.leaphour.com/

// begin quote

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7599782/
WASHINGTON - When people go through the ritual of moving their clocks
forward each spring ushering in Daylight Savings Time, they're also saving
energy by using more sunlight instead of electricity in the evenings - the
equivalent of thousands of barrels of oil, in fact.

The House, in approving a massive energy bill that covers more than 1,000
pages, would extend daylight saving to the first Sunday in March and to the
last Sunday in November. It now starts in early April and ends in late
October.

The Senate must agree - and it is likely to do so.

"We all just feel sunnier after we set the clocks ahead," said Rep. Ed
Markey, D-Mass., who along with Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., got the measure
into the energy bill.

Upton said extending daylight time "makes sense especially with skyrocketing
energy costs" even though farmers for years have not been all that happy
about daylight time as it now exists. They complain the later daylight in
the morning makes it harder for them to do their work.

Citing Transportation Department figures, he said the additional two months
could save the equivalent of 100,000 barrels of oil each day, or 1 percent
of the nation's total energy consumption.

Markey said both sport fans and kilowatt counters ought to be happy.

// end quote

Wow, I thought we time-nuts were bad; imagine
being a kilowatt-counter. Watts the fun in that?

/tvb






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