FW: FW: US DST changes?

Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) olsona at dc37a.nci.nih.gov
Sat Jul 23 17:59:07 UTC 2005


 A reminder: mail to tz at elsie.nci.nih.gov is not working (temporarily, I
hope). For now, send time-zone stuff to arthur_david_olson at nih.gov

                --ado

-----Original Message-----
From: John Hawkinson [mailto:jhawk at MIT.EDU] 
Sent: Thursday, July 21, 2005 4:07 PM
To: arthur_david_olson at nih.gov
Subject: Re: FW: US DST changes?

[ Sent to Arthur, since the list is still down. ftp server works great,
though... ]

> An article in ran on page D1 of Tuesday's Wall Street Journal, "U.S. 
> Set to Expand Daylight-Savings Time," discussing the "Energy Policy Act of
2005,"
> which might extend US DST by 1 month in both directions (Mar-Nov 
> instead of Apr-Oct).

Some updates in the past two days, both in the WSJ. There was a Reuters
story on Wednesday, but it seemed very confusing and at-odds with the two SJ
stories.

Wednesday's WSJ, p. D2, "Daylight-Savings Expansion Plan Is Ripped by
Airlines, Churches" by John J. Fialka: "Facing objections from the Bush
administration, church groups and others opposed to extending
daylight-savings time, House and Senate conferees on the energy bill
postponed a decision on the proposal until tomorrow." [i.e. until today,
Thursday.]

It goes on to cite a letter from the Energy Secretary on behalf of the Bush
adminisration requesting the change be dropped because of "serious
international harmonization problems for the transportation industry,"
apparently referring to the coordination of gate slots with Europoean
airports, whose DST is currently roughly synchronized with the US's. The
article also references church groups who oppose the extension "because it
would require children to wait for school buses in the dark."


Then, today's WSJ, D2, "Daylight-Savings Plan Might Be Scaled Back,"
again by Fialka: "The principal sponsor of a proposal to expand
daylight-savings time by two months says talks are under way to scale back
the change." It goes on to say, "Some senators have complained that the
proposed change will be expensive, an issue underscored yesterday as
software vendors and utilities arned that computer software and meters with
electronic chips that record time will have to be changed, a project that
could take years and cost millions of dollars."

[Well, ok, that seems excessive.]

It then paraphrases David Thewlis of Calconnect.Org, a "consortium of
software companies and universities," saying, "the group has no position on
the merits of the proposal, which is intended to save energy, but wants
Congress to postpone an change until March 2008, to give members and
consumers time to make and install the fixes."

[Apparently Calconnect.org includes Oracle and Yahoo, as well as MIT and
Stanford. Who knew?]

--jhawk at mit.edu
  John Hawkinson



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