I heard about this, but totally forgot it was starting this year. I never understood why Canada is moving Daylight savings up just because the Bush administration called for it. There are different times zones all over the continent. What is the reasoning behind this? Is there even any evidence that Daylight savings time saves energy? It's just going to make me SAD.

We don't change time in Saskatchewan, & that's just the way I like it!

I read a study on Daylight Savings TIme about a year or so ago and it had several interesting facts.
1. People spend more money with Daylight Savings Time--There were several reasons given in the report for this effect, the main one being that people are more inclined to shop and to participate in recreational activities, both of which cost money if there is more daylight time after supper.
2. There was a questionable saving in energy.
3. Business (retailers and recreational ones) are the main proponents of Daylight Savings TIme.

I believe there was also an increase in sleep deprivation and other negative health and social effects.

thats soo cool maye that would be awesome!

Just getting used to having glorious sunshine when getting up and going to work. Now it is back into the early morning darkness for a little while. How depressing. I think we should go back to the six month cycle

Jimbo - where did you get your information. I support daylight savings time ONLY if it does in fact save energy. Otherwise is just another contribution to sleep deprivation. I find even in the fall back mode it takes me a week or more to adjust my clock and I actually get less sleep in the end.

JI would be just as happy if it was left at the later time. Who cares if it's light out at 7 in the morning. I'd rather have longer light in the evenings.

I think we should just leave the clocks alone. It screws up my small children, it screws up pets, and I don't feel so hot after messing with my external and internal clocks. LEAVE TIME ALONE!!!

Here's an idea... Let's just dump time constraints, clocks, calenders and anything else like that. Let's start keeping track of time by moons. I'm just over 360 moons old! eee that sounds bad. I've seen thirty some odd summers! That sounds better. It's more poetic and eloquent too.

I hate how when George Bush..:(... decides to move up daylight savings we do too!
George Bush is not and will hopefully never be in charge of us (thank god) so why should we change the same things he does?

the time change doesnt make a difference and it is just a hassle! We should pick a time and stick with it!

Dang, I think I should move to Saskabush, 'nough of this clock flipping nonsense. Sleep deprivation kills people every year for goodness sakes. Why don't we axe the whole silly program. Just have people come in earlier/later to work...

Like any other economic argument, this one lends itself to "on the other hand"...
If you go on to the State of California Energy site, they quote the US Department of Transportation studies showing that the country's electricity usage would drop by 1% each day with daylight saving time. Why? Because the period between sunset and bedtime is reduced, thus people will use less electricity for lighting and appliances late in the day.

"On the other hand"....a paper by Dr. Adrienne Kandal says that there is no clear evidence that electricty will be saved by the switch to an earlier start to DST but the 7 pm peak load would be lowered.

In fact, when parts of Australia shifted to DST in late winter, overall energy consumption did not decrease, but the morning peak load increased.

Other arguments - traffic fatailities decrease, golf courses get more business later in the day (kind of irrelevant here in Alberta where snow is still on the courses), etc.

All I know is that I lose an hour of sleep and Monday is basically a write off. Now if I could get back to Saskatchewan.....

This would probably be one of the few reasons why a Calgarian would move to Saskatchewan...
I am old enough to remember the death of the Drive In Movies - sigh... I get sad every year thinking about it.
I haven't noticed any benefits and DST just upsets my dog feeding times and my grandsons get out of bed cranky and out of step.
ps my computer appears to have adjusted ok... so well, whatever...

The information, I believe, came on a CBC program, though it might have been in a newpaper.

NO!!! - I never agreed with DST from the get go let alone making it start earlier in the year. Makes no sense to me, I do not know where there would be any energy savings from this change.

Now I will have to turn my lights on when I get up in the morning. Cows care less what hour it is just make it happen when it is supposed to. Equipment burns the same fuel whether it is light or dark. All this does is throw challenges at the human body, does not change the number of daylight hours we have nor does it make anything in nature change its schedule.

DST is just senseless.

Just did a quick search. The following website has a current article on effects of DST.
http://jscms.jrn.columbia.edu/cns/2007-02-27/meierdierkslehman-daylights...

It is interesting that golf courses made an extre $200million in the US the first year DST was extended by 3 weeks by Reagan and BBQ equipment sales went up over $100 million that year. The article did not comment on increased shopping or increased use of gasoline for driving to golf courses etc.

Over all, people would be healthier and spend less if there was no DST.

One interesting consequence is the cost to business of the patching and meetings due to the DST software impact. As Europe goes at a different time, the time that we are out of sync with those with large populations in other parts of the world.

DST is not a globally set value, and so, there are countries which do two hour adjustments, others do 1/2 hr, others do none. In us, canada & other parts of the world, there are pockets which do not do any adjustment. (can cause business nightmares)

I think that the whole world should just go to GMT/UTC and not do DST. What difference does it make if you get up at 7AM EDT or 11AM UTC? What difference does it make if you work 9AM to 5PM EDT or 1PM to 9PM UTC?

We will just have to wait and see if it will save energy. I do like that the fact that DST will still be in effect for October 31st. If little kids (2-8Yrs) are going to be out trick or treating it will still be a little lighter out around that time, instead of ccmplete darkness.

aaah, but, I love the darkness of Hallowe'en. that was part ofthe magic, as a child, going out spooky like, after dark, when normally one did not.
gosh, we adults take the fun out of everything.

Extending daylight savings time as a means of saving energy was tried in the 1970's. It had little impact on overall energy use.

The one place it had an enormous impact was in load management. For a transmission infrastructure running close to the limits of its capacity, this is a way of distributing the load over a larger time period. Having more daylight hours in the evening shifts a portion of the overall system load to the mornings, where lower demands generally mean there is more available "head room" on the transmission lines.

If you doubt that the electrical transmission/distribution system is running near the limits of its capacity, just remember the summer blackouts in Toronto caused by a system cascade failure.

I like daylight savings. Will It make a differnce with our energy consumption... doubtful, Did it mess up my kids napping a bedtime ritual... yes, but if i can get more sunlight and be able to stay outside with the family and enjoy our longer days, then I'm happy with that,

I work nights, makes very little difference to me, I get to work before it's dark, get home after it's dark, all the same lol

As for energy consumption... I have my doubts, but I don't know enough about it to make actual assumptions

Carrie said "George Bush is not and will hopefully never be in charge of us".

We have our own George Bush in Canada ... his name is Stephen Harper ...

I don't know about anyone else, but we ate dinner fairly late last night (6:30) and it was light enough that we didn't need to turn the kitchen light on.

Multiply that by the entire country, and I could totally see how we could save energy ... an hour a day could make a big difference.

I believe that we should pick the best timeshift, and stick with it all year long.

If daylight savings is so good, then lets just stay in "savings" mode. Why switch back to non-savings? It's just a royal pain in the posterior.

I don't care what time it says on the clock as long as we keep it consistent.

Switching the time around every few months is the most asinine concept ever to spoil the sanity brought about by the invention of standardized time zones.

It wreaks havoc with scheduling, especially that of automated chronologically ordered tasks.

What do you expect a computer system to do when told to execute certain tasks at 2:30am when on one day per year, 2:30am comes twice, and another day of the year, 2:30am never comes at all?