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The Waste of Daylight

nms.ac.uk

111–120 of 251 posts

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#111
post #88

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.

I’d love to hear more about why this issue is more important to you than any other reason to vote. Is the time shift causing you serious problems, or do you have a business that is hurt by it, or anything like that?

Not the GP, but I sense a bit of facetiousness from them. They do care about it, but not as much as they propose, I think they simply mean to express their annoyance with DST.

I now live in a country that doesn't honor DST, and I have to say, it is a convenient thing, and my only annoyance is coordinating with countries that do honor it. The idea of 'more /less' daylight is not the factor people make it out to be and it is adjusted to fast.

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#112
post #103
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d love to hear more about why this issue is more important to you than any other reason to vote. Is the time shift causing you serious problems, or do you have a business that is hurt by it, or anything like that?

Turning clocks back is terrible for kids. A week of schooling is next to lost. Source: wife is a teacher. Effect on adults is less pronounced, but it still puts a strain on us to shift our schedule by an hour. ... yet for what? Original reasons why this practice was started barely apply today. Light bulbs are efficient and we waste much more electricity in other ways. Let alone that many offices are lit up all day an…

The "original reasons" barely applied when the practice was started. It was meant to save energy, but study after study has shown that, on average, it makes little or no difference.

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#113

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…

The problem would be that everyone would have a different time depending on where they are on the globe, not only different hour but also minute. That would make things like meetings between people living in slightly different places very difficult. Timezones are needed by the modern organization of society, and I guess that organization is not necessarily very friendly with human needs.

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#114
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turning clocks back is terrible for kids. A week of schooling is next to lost. Source: wife is a teacher. Effect on adults is less pronounced, but it still puts a strain on us to shift our schedule by an hour. ... yet for what? Original reasons why this practice was started barely apply today. Light bulbs are efficient and we waste much more electricity in other ways. Let alone that many offices are lit up all day an…

> Turning clocks back is terrible for kids. A week of schooling is next to lost. FWIW, my kids (~8yo, ~5yo) didn't even notice the time shift in the Netherlands let alone be affected by it. For adults, (me and my wife), it was a mild surprise. We first suspected that clock had gone bonkers only for me to realise the DST change. We were moving to a DST country from a non-DST one so the net effect for us was amusing, a…

Yes, I've noticed my kids start time shifting themselves leading up to daylight savings. Similar ages.

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#115
post #43

City people could just get up an hour earlier in summer.

Are you suggesting we eliminate (go permanent standard time) and have people change their alarms 1 hour earlier in the summer? Does that mean you also go to bed 1 hour earlier in the summer? If you go to bed earlier, you have less evening time to enjoy. Also adjusting your entire schedule (your alarm, your bedtime) twice a year would be very disruptive.

You've just described exactly what DST is.

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#116
post #110
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether you call it 9 am year round, and in winter you only start working at 10, or you change the name of the hour in winter to 9, doesn't really make a difference. People will have to adjust to the fact that in winter light start one hour later. And with people flighing across time zones all the time, and it's not stopping them from taking holidays in a different time zone, i feel people are making an issue out of…

It does make a difference: only some professions are harmed from the lack of light, and only those professions would need to change their schedules to follow the sun. When you change the clock, it affects everybody. But people can change their own (business's) schedule without affecting anyone else.

But it is easier to accomodate to if everyone is affected, everything is connected: you may not be affected, but the school of your kids is, and the opening of daycare, the opening times of the stores, your sports facilities, etc.

If everyone changes, you can keep all the dependencies the same, otherwise you have to reconsider all dependencies.

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#117
post #31

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…

Please write that app. Would buy for $4.99.

Here you go: https://apps.apple.com/mk/app/wake-up-light-sunrise-alarm/id...

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#118
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hawaii and Arizona have done without the time change for over 50 years.

AZ and Hawaii experience ranges of [10-14 hours] and [11-13.5 hours] of daylight across the whole year, respectively. More southern latitudes can get away with not shifting their clocks because the daylight variance is much smaller. In AZ, sunrise varies from 5:15AM to 7:25AM. In Seattle, without DST, it would range from 4:11AM to 7:57AM. If we use "civil twilight" (bright enough for outdoor activities), Seattle woul…

Here is a reference point for Europeans: Seattle is at the same latitude as the southern border of Germany.

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#119
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.

Or get the kids a damn flashlight. Up here near the arctic circle, we don't get stuff like "sunrise" and "sunset" for a good part of the year. It's just dark and less dark. Kids walk/bike to school just fine.

Yep.. it's crazy how muricans seem to think everything has to be scheduled around taking and picking up kids to/from school.

Around where I live, kids take themselves to school or use a bus. School can start any time between 8:00 and 10:00, sometimes even later. School can end any time between 12:00 and 16:00. Parents don't need to schedule their work and life around it.

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#120
post #66
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>schedule shifts anyway in relation to astronomical cycles That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about calling into work saying you need a schedule change to work around your kid's new school schedule. Calling your daycare provider to setup a new schedule. If you take public transport, finding how the timetables will work with your new schedule. If you plan doctor's appointments in the future, you now need t…

All this is a mess due to DST anyway (like system bugs and so on). So it's much better without the switch.

I really don't understand what the fuss is about: twice a year the clocks change, mostly automatically, and sometimes i even forget it happened. You just wake up, and go about your day. Zero impact from DST. Once a year you're lucky and have one hour longer to sleep, once a year you're out of luck and get one hour less to sleep. No big deal.

Much easier than having to rethink, reschedule, and renegotiate all times at some (rondom) moment in the year.

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