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The Waste of Daylight

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Re: The Waste of Daylight

#11

Post by chrishas35 »

echelon wrote: post #7

For those that want to make a permanent change, let's stop talking about "DST". That's too confusing for a lot of people, and results in many favoring the wrong outcome. We should instead ask people if they want "summertime" or "wintertime" sunrise and sunset. Wintertime proponents use the animosity against the time change to argue against DST, but they seldom mention this means an earlier sunset. This comes down to…

And there is a compromise to be had here... a one-time 30 minute change, and we’re done. There is strong consensus to eliminate the time change, but which time to choose as permanent seems quite divided. Compromise and let’s move on.

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#12

Post by chrishas35 »

shmerl wrote: post #9
deathanatos wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has been talking about making DST permanent , which is very different from cancelling it.

As long as the switch itself is dropped. Which one to drop is probably moot and benefits could depend on the region. It's easier to adjust local schedule than to switch the clock back and forth.

Split the difference and let’s move on.

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#13

Post by gweinberg »

shmerl wrote: post #2

> The country follows the same DST schedule as most of Europe, setting the clocks forward one hour on the last Sunday in March and back again one hour on the last Sunday in October. Didn't EU plan to cancel DST? It's long overdue to cancel this erratic switch everywhere.

How about this: we get rid of the time change, but have schools start an hour earlier march through october than november through february. Change the eraly bird parking hours at bart similarly.

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#14

Post by over_bridge »

echelon wrote: post #7

For those that want to make a permanent change, let's stop talking about "DST". That's too confusing for a lot of people, and results in many favoring the wrong outcome. We should instead ask people if they want "summertime" or "wintertime" sunrise and sunset. Wintertime proponents use the animosity against the time change to argue against DST, but they seldom mention this means an earlier sunset. This comes down to…

I agree that 'daylight saving' time is misleading. DST status quo enjoyers say that of course they love the extra time in summer... when its obvious that you get that extra light in summer vs winter regardless of any clock changes. Long days in summer is what you get for free. The question is what we do with winter.

Do we intervene to increase the chance of an hour of light at the start or the end? I think there's a general agreement that starting and ending your day in the dark is rough. We can shift it either way.

It would be great to see some data about when people are more active (from fitbit and others). I suspect that many more people are active outside in the afternoon, including all kids sports, than would be using the morning light outdoors. A permanent DST would give people more chances to get out and exercise if nothing else and should be the norm.

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#15

Post by quicklime »

ogre_codes wrote: post #3

I try to keep my sleep schedule so I wake up shortly after daybreak for exactly this reason. I love natural light and loath sleeping through it. I've considered writing an app that sets an alarm to sunset and a reminder 9 hours prior to sunset so I can always wake with the sun and have plenty of sleep. Should be pretty simple I just haven't gotten around to it. (Though personally, I'd prefer it were a personal choice…

Same here, and I've also thought about writing the same app.

I've always wondered why our system of time is built around the point of "midnight", when what we really care about is "sunrise". DST is an ugly hack that we use on top of our midnight-based time system to roughly approximate a constant sunrise time.

Imagine if 00:00 was defined as the time that the sun rises. You could set your alarm to 00:00 and start work around 01:30 or 02:00 every day.

There'd be no need to worry about kids going to school in the dark, and the shift between summer and winter time would be continuous instead of an abrupt shift (so no more DST-induced heart attacks or traffic accidents). We now have computers that could do timezone conversions quickly and easily, and places like Iceland that go for months without seeing the sun could use an arbitrary point in time to represent sunrise.

Ancient societies have used systems of time that are based around the time of sunrise, e.g. the ancient Jews: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_hour. For whatever reason, we ended up with our midnight-based time system instead.

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#16

Post by gweinberg »

chrishas35 wrote: post #11
echelon wrote: post #7

For those that want to make a permanent change, let's stop talking about "DST". That's too confusing for a lot of people, and results in many favoring the wrong outcome. We should instead ask people if they want "summertime" or "wintertime" sunrise and sunset. Wintertime proponents use the animosity against the time change to argue against DST, but they seldom mention this means an earlier sunset. This comes down to…

And there is a compromise to be had here... a one-time 30 minute change, and we’re done. There is strong consensus to eliminate the time change, but which time to choose as permanent seems quite divided. Compromise and let’s move on.

There absolutely is not. Most people agree that extra sunlight in the afternoon is more useful than in the morning.

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#18

Post by lisper »

> Critics however claim that if adopted all year round, this would result in darker winter mornings which would be more dangerous for children going to school

This drives me bananas. If you're worried about this, the right answer is not to force everyone to change their clocks, it's to change the school schedule to start an hour later.

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#19

Post by Pxtl »

lisper wrote: post #18

> Critics however claim that if adopted all year round, this would result in darker winter mornings which would be more dangerous for children going to school This drives me bananas. If you're worried about this, the right answer is not to force everyone to change their clocks, it's to change the school schedule to start an hour later.

Besides that, this hypothetical can be tested. Saskatoon is far north, and they do not do DST timechange. Meanwhile, Red Deer Alberta is a similar climate and latitude, but does DST. So if people are concerned, winter morning accident rates in Saskatchewan could be compared.

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#20

Post by tptacek »

lisper wrote: post #18

> Critics however claim that if adopted all year round, this would result in darker winter mornings which would be more dangerous for children going to school This drives me bananas. If you're worried about this, the right answer is not to force everyone to change their clocks, it's to change the school schedule to start an hour later.

The opposing case is stronger: you can't just change the school schedule, because school is part of the fabric of child care; change its schedule, and you change the schedules of parents, which means now you have a coordination problem. That problem ripples, so that by the time you've really addressed it, you've essentially recapitulated daylight savings time.

Accidents aside, there's a lot to be said for not having the first 45 minutes of the school day take place in the dark in places like western Michigan, or for having sunrise occur 3-4 hours before people normally wake up in the summer.

Josh Barro is fond of pointing out that this --- eliminating DST --- was tried in the early 1970s, and the 2-year experiment was so universally reviled in practice that it was repealed almost unanimously in Congress just 9 months later.

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