What would Ben Franklin say today?

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In the cold dark morning, the Journal Star editorial board hates daylight-saving time. But we love it in the sunny late afternoon.

That’s our official position, and we’re sticking to it.

For the past week, we have been groggily trying to wake an hour earlier because of the switch to daylight-saving time.

It didn’t make it any easier to know that the whole thing seems to have been a mistake.

Daylight-saving time long has been justified by the assertion that it saves money and energy.

New evidence says daylight-saving time actually wastes energy, as reported in a story in Sunday’s Journal Star.

Researchers at the University of California-Santa Barbara used a unique situation in Indiana to compare energy consumption with and without daylight-saving time. Most of Indiana previously ignored the switch to daylight-saving time. Two years ago, the entire state made the switch.

The researchers found the switch cost an additional $8.6 million in electricity, primarily because homeowners started their air conditioners an hour earlier in the heat of the afternoon.

Air conditioners, obviously, weren’t even around when Benjamin Franklin started talking about the concept after noticing during a stay in London that “there was not one shop open tho it had been day-light & the sun up above three hours. The inhabitants of London chusing much to live by candle light, and sleep by sunshine, and yet complain often a little absurdly of the duty on candles and the price of tallow.”

The history of daylight-saving time is chock-full of myth and misunderstandings.

It’s a shock to find in the historical record testimony from residents of New York City who thought the scheme was being foisted on them by farmers.

Anyone from these parts knows that farmers generally ridiculed the idea.

One seldom-remarked aspect of daylight-saving time is that its effect is markedly different depending where one is located in a time zone. In North Platte, sunrise came today at 7:55 a.m. In Chicago, at the eastern edge of the Central time zone, sunrise came at 7:02 a.m. No wonder there’s disagreement about what it means to reset the clocks.

Over the past century, the country has experimented with various dates for daylight-savingtime in different parts of the country.

Only recently has there been relative unity across the country, based on the rationale that daylight-saving time saves energy.

Now we know that is a myth.

The debate renews.

No matter what Benjamin Franklin might have said in “Poor Richard’s Almanack,” it seems like this early-to-rise edict under daylight-saving time really isn’t making us any more wealthy. If he were alive today, we’re sure he would find the whole situation quite droll.