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The Waste of Daylight

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Re: The Waste of Daylight

#51

Post by Thorrez »

didibus wrote: post #46
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…

> but they seldom mention this means an earlier sunset I thought normal time meant a later sunset and later sunrise in the winter. That's why DST was enacted no? So that in the winter the sun rises earlier and sets earlier? Anyways my preference would be for later sunrise and sunset, so that more of the day can be enjoyed around work. Which I think means staying on standard time the whole year.

>I thought normal time meant a later sunset and later sunrise in the winter.

It depends on what you're comparing against. Stuff is usually compared against normal time. So from that reference, normal time isn't a later or earlier sunset or sunrise at any time of the year. It's the standard. Normal=normal.

>That's why DST was enacted no? So that in the winter the sun rises earlier and sets earlier?

DST didn't change the winter, it only changed the summer. If you want to compare the current status vs a hypothetical permanent DST, then yes, the current status means the sun rises earlier and sets earlier in the winter compared to permanent DST.

>Anyways my preference would be for later sunrise and sunset, so that more of the day can be enjoyed around work. Which I think means staying on standard time the whole year.

No, that's staying on daylight time the whole year. Daylight time means the summer has a later sunrise and sunset. If we switch to permanent daylight time, then winter will also have a later sunrise and sunset. This was tried in the 70s, and was repealed 383 to 16 because people didn't like it:

https://www.businessinsider.com/us-tried-year-round-daylight...

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#52

Post by strbean »

Philadelphia wrote: post #21
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.

Article on the many medical downsides of permanent Daylight Savings Time https://washingtonmonthly.com/2020/10/30/marco-rubios-time-m...

That articles take the mountains of evidence that changing schedules is terrible for our health, and misrepresents it as evidence that switching to permanent DST would be bad for our health.

There are tons of terrible norms in our schedules that are harmful for people's health, but switching the clock around twice a year simply confounds and complicates any attempts to fix them. For example:

> To counter chronic sleep deprivation in students, many schools have delayed their morning start times—in effect, moving the school clock back. But DST negates this move for five months of the school year. Year-round DST would negate it all year.

If we switched to permanent DST, high-schools could just push start times back one more hour, and students could consistently get the benefit year-round.

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#53

Post by strbean »

riffic wrote: post #10
deathanatos wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

the clock is effectively a human construct. It would make little difference one way or another if there was no twice-a-year time change. You can not change the number of hours a point on the earth receives daylight over a 24 hour period, and you can not change the fact that axial tilt means the amount of time you do receive daylight changes over the course of the year.

Can we short-circuit all this BS and just eliminate timezones completely? It'll take a week to get used to thinking in UTC, and then we can forget the nightmare of timezones forever.

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#54

Post by strbean »

Thorrez wrote: post #45
chrishas35 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Split the difference and let’s move on.

I would prefer to not live in a timezone with a half hour offset from UTC (which do exist, in fact 15 minute offsets exist).

My favorite timezone absurdity is timezones with an offset > 12 hours.

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#55

Post by quicklime »

xmprt wrote: post #34
quicklime wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wor…

That would mean variable length days right? Sounds a bit like a nightmare.

We already have variable length days ;)

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#56

Post by strbean »

didibus wrote: post #46
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…

> but they seldom mention this means an earlier sunset I thought normal time meant a later sunset and later sunrise in the winter. That's why DST was enacted no? So that in the winter the sun rises earlier and sets earlier? Anyways my preference would be for later sunrise and sunset, so that more of the day can be enjoyed around work. Which I think means staying on standard time the whole year.

Sounds like it makes sense, but nope.

Currently winter is "normal time", and wasn't changed when DST was created.

DST just pushes the day later in summer. If you woke up at sunrise on the winter equinox, that means you woke up awhile after sunrise on the summer equinox, so I guess we are "saving that wasted sunlight" by waking up an hour early in the summer.

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#57

Post by shmerl »

Thorrez wrote: post #47
gweinberg wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Adjusting your entire schedule (commute, job, child care, school, bedtime, alarm time, meal times) twice a year is much much more disruptive than changing your clocks twice a year.

I'd say the opposite. Adjusting the clock is more disruptive, because your schedule shifts anyway in relation to astronomical cycles. But besides that you also mess up the clock. So it's better to leave the clock alone and to adjust your schedule if you need to.

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#58

Post by hourislate »

User23 wrote: post #28
hourislate wrote: post #23

I would vote for any Presidential Candidate and House Representative regardless of party on the promise of leaving the clocks on DST all year around. That's all they would have to do to get my vote....nothing else.

This actually happened in the ‘70s and it sucked so hard it got repealed in less than a year[1]. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/us-tried-year-round-daylight...

That article was funny. Business owners complaining they have to open up in the predawn? How does SBUX do it? The one down the street opens at 5 am. Construction men working in the dark for an hour? What do they want bankers hours? And schools having to open 30 minutes later, Imagine we give the kids 30 more minutes of sleep in the am. These days they are like factory workers waking up at 6 am to ride the bus and get to school for 8 am. Crazy.....

Changing the clock back and forth is unhealthy for everyone. We need to standardize on one time for our sanity and health. I use to prefer Standard time but now prefer DST, I don't know it just agrees with me more now that I am older. Lets try it again and see if anyone complains....

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#59

Post by Zacru »

chrishas35 wrote: post #12
shmerl wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I often need to covert timestamps to and from UTC. I sure hope I don't end up in a -6:30 timezone.

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#60

Post by h0l0gr4ph1c »

quicklime wrote: post #15
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 wor…

IIRC our system of time is more so aligned with midday rather than midnight. As that is when the sun is at its highest point in the sky, which allowed us to create a common point between timezones.
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