Updated Mar 7, 2008 - 11:09 pm
Spring Ahead Sunday
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710 KIRO Reporter
Listen to this reportIt's time to "spring ahead," so don't forget to turn your clocks forward an hour before you go to bed Saturday night.
Ever want to know where this whole idea came from? Or if it even matters? There are a lot of myths that go hand-in-hand with daylight saving time.
This whole thing started as the Standard Time Act, which went into law in 1918. There have been a bunch of changes through the years and one commonality is that it saves energy and allows us to make better use of sunlight. But some researchers now say, that's just a myth.
Ryan Kellogg, with the University of California, Berkeley, did research in Australia, which temporarily extended daylight saving for the 2000 Olympics. Kellogg says they looked at electricity consumption in the parts of Australia that extended daylight saving time and found there was no overall effect.
Kellogg says there was a drop in electricity use at night, but it was offset by more use in the morning. Some say because climates are different, a study in Australia can't be applicable here.
Kellogg says to some extent these results can actually be generalized. For instance, in Australia, the big thing that drove results there for their extension, was the early morning effect: when sunrise was all of sudden occurring after 7am. He says when we extend daylight saving time here, there are large areas of the country that have a similar sunrise timing. He says the study's idea that we're losing morning light does apply.
Kellogg says daylight saving time doesn't expand the number of hours we get, it just shifts it. Through years of research he says people get pretty passionate about the matter. Even some parents are getting involved in the debate, saying daylight saving messes up their children's sleeping patterns.
CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Sanjay Gupta says some are giving their teens melatonin. Gupta says teenagers need more sleep than their 9 or 10-year-old siblings and if they don't get it, they have significant problems with test scores and possibly with depression and A.D.H.D. in the long term. He says they even see an up-tick in traffic accidents. The day after people spring forward, they're a little more groggy.
For most of us, gaining or losing an hour is not a huge issue.
Fire officials remind people that when they change their clocks for Daylight Savings on Sunday, it's a good time to change batteries in smoke detectors, too.
(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
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