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Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#91

Post by throw0101a »

mrfusion wrote: post #50

I think permanent DST makes more sense. The best hours of the day are in the evening. Folks are off from work, kids are home, the heat of the day is gone. It’s a great time to get out to a park or a stroll.

> I think permanent DST makes more sense.

The chronobiologists disagree:

> As an international organization of scientists dedicated to studying circadian and other biological rhythms, the Society for Research on Biological Rhythms (SRBR) engaged experts in the field to write a Position Paper on the consequences of choosing to live on DST or Standard Time (ST). The authors take the position that, based on comparisons of large populations living in DST or ST or on western versus eastern edges of time zones, the advantages of permanent ST outweigh switching to DST annually or permanently.

* https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/07487304198541...

Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#92

Post by interestica »

mannykannot wrote: post #62
mrfusion wrote: post #50

I think permanent DST makes more sense. The best hours of the day are in the evening. Folks are off from work, kids are home, the heat of the day is gone. It’s a great time to get out to a park or a stroll.

I too hate the idea of losing an hour off summer evenings. Of course, the rational solution is for society to adjust its schedule, but that will never happen.

I mean if there was ever a time for it to happen, a worldwide pandemic might be it.

Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#93

Post by Aaargh20318 »

mrfusion wrote: post #50

I think permanent DST makes more sense. The best hours of the day are in the evening. Folks are off from work, kids are home, the heat of the day is gone. It’s a great time to get out to a park or a stroll.

That's why we should either use standard time year-round, or even better: introduce MST (Moonlight Saving Time). where we move the clock an hour backward (instead of forward) during summer so we have more evening to enjoy.

Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#94

Post by swebs »

vaccinator wrote: post #78
voisin wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn’t a negotiation over how much to change. It is a debate as to whether it should change at all. And no one seems to be arguing that it should still change. This is just lack of political will to push the legislation.

in that case, lets just go to universal time and let businesses tell you what time to come in

I'm in favor of a full global switch to TAI. UTC is another good option, but I don't really see the benefit of keeping up with leap seconds considering the complexity they add.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Atomic_Time

Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#95

Post by throw0101a »

thdrdt wrote: post #75
andromeduck wrote: post #4

Can we get rid of timse zone and leap seconds too?

You already can get rid of time zones by only using UTC. But is is not very practical. The time zone communicates the part of the day in any place around the world.

> You already can get rid of time zones by only using UTC.

UTC has leap seconds. You are thinking of TAI:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Atomic_Time

Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#97

Post by user5994461 »

mchusma wrote: post #25
user5994461 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was done to save electricity. More direct sun, less light and heating. Historically in France the saving was equivalent to the whole consumption of the city of Paris over the day (maybe 10-20% of the whole country). It seems people don't care about energy anymore ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This was a theory not really backed by evidence. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time (Maybe a tiny electricity decrease and heating usage increase on average, depending on latitude - which would lead to more CO2 emissions overall, depending on the power source). I think the idea of "change time to save power" was a fine experiment, but it clearly failed to produce meaningful results so we can stop th…

It is backed by numbers. Currently in France 17% of electricity consumption goes to lightning, including 12% for public lightning. It's moving down with newer lamps using less energy and other sectors using more.

You have to think that daylight saving time was introduced almost a hundred years ago (heavily variable per region) when a significant amount of the electricity was going to (public) lightning, using lights available at the time that were very energy hungry and very inefficient.

There was a reason it was done. Seriously, it was not a failed experiment carried out by idiots, like some commenters seem to think. Usage evolved and might have made DST worthless or counterproductive, if anything removing DST might show the importance of adjusting time to match energy consumption.

Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#98

Post by SOLAR_FIELDS »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #45
BossingAround wrote: post #30

The next problem emerges when 2/6 of the countries with DST decide to observe what we call summer time, 2/6 decide to change to winter time, 1/6 decide to continue observing DST following the US model and 1/6 decide to continue observing DST following the European model. https://xkcd.com/927/

There was no standard to begin with - switching to happens on different dates in different countries.

Exactly. Sweden, for example, switches several weeks before the US in the fall and spring leading to a bizarre situation where the two countries are only X-1 hours apart instead of X hours. It has the strange (but sensical) effect of also moving meetings by one hour on Swedish calendars. But only meetings that were created by Americans! If the meeting was created by a Swede it moves one hour on the American calendar. This inevitably leads to some confusion. So we already have this problem, whether or not there is DST or not won’t really make it worse.

Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#99

Post by hunter2_ »

projektfu wrote: post #65
reidacdc wrote: post #15

The article is mostly suitably modest about mechanisms, focusing on the epidemiology of the observed effects, and it's more or less obvious to me that the transitions are disruptive to everyone, and especially so to sensitive individuals. But there's also a bit in the answer to the fourth question (about long-term vs short-term impacts) that mentions effects of "chronic circadian misalignment". I've seen this a few t…

I’ve discovered that here on the western edge we simply arise later and work later. It’s not uncommon for people in New England to be awake at 5:30 am and starting their day.

By that logic, we could all just use UTC and set our own schedules with infinite granularity based on sunrise/sunset. I'm good with that.

Re: Governments Worldwide Consider Ditching Daylight Saving Time

#100

Post by globular-toast »

throw0101a wrote: post #84

It should be noted that the folks who study this: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronobiology Seem to have come to a consensus that if we're going to get rid of DST, then health-wise it is best to have Standard Time year-round: > As an international organization of scientists dedicated to studying circadian and other biological rhythms, the Society for Research on Biological Rhythms (SRBR) engaged experts in the fi…

Is this based on the fact that the vast majority of people start work at arbitrary wall clock times, usually on the hour some time between 06:00 and 09:00, depending on profession? I'm all for keeping standard time just it makes slightly more sense for 12:00 to be the time when the Sun is highest in the sky, but surely any choice is completely arbitrary and the only thing that matters is the phase difference between circadian rhythm and solar rhythm.
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