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The Waste of Daylight

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Re: The Waste of Daylight

#121

Post by _ph_ »

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…

Noon is the only easily measurable time point in the day that is always (approximately) 24 hours apart. Also, sunrise and sunset are always symmetrical to noon, even when the day length varies considerably. For setting up a time system, noon consequentially is the correct reference point. But yes, your day rhythm will vary relative to that across the year, but there will differences according to local (like latitude) and personal environments which will make sunrise not a good reference point for a time system.

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#122

Post by toast0 »

stopping wrote: post #48
TylerE wrote: 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…

Having 16 hours of sunlight in the summer means the sun is going to be up too early. Both 3:30 am and 4:30 am are way too early for the sun, but such is life. Either way, the sun is up well into the evening, so it's not as if much changed with an hour moved. Except the sleep disturbance; for some, it's no big deal; for others it takes weeks to recover.

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#124

Post by kshacker »

deathanatos wrote: post #6
kshacker wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU and US: They have both been talking about it in spurts, and they do wake up every ~6 months when the time changes, but no serious action anywhere.

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

The 'difference' is action vs inaction. I do not know what the consensus is, but we see this drama every 6 months. If they just said 'we are not going to do it', it would be one thing, but we have been having this charade for a while now. I know some charade is required to build consensus, but based on my reading of the news, there is just too much chatter, and we all get riled up every time we change clocks.

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#125

Post by Dylan16807 »

tptacek wrote: post #20
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…

> there's a lot to be said for not having the first 45 minutes of the school day take place in the dark

Is there?

There's something to be said for the walk to school, for those that actually walk.

And there's also something to be said for having sunlight while waking up, with the huge caveat that the current DST system does not accomplish this.

But once they're at school? Why does it matter if it's dark outside during first period?

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#126

Post by CannisterFlux »

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.

Yeah, 2021 was planned to be the last time that clocks would be put forwards in March in Europe. Countries would then stay on Summer Time in October if that was their preference, not putting the clocks back. If a country had planned to stay on Winter Time they would put clocks back for the last time in October 2021. From then on no changes would be made in March/October.

Shame it's not happening now. Due to the pandemic the negotiations were not completed, so we'll still be doing the DST shuffle this year and again in 2022 at least. There's a danger this will fall off the political map and for Europe to continue the DST changes forever. There are several members that are against removing the clock changes too, others who cannot decide if summer or winter time is better (so may want to keep the status quo, rather than make a choice that half of the population won't like) so it isn't clear-cut.

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#127

Post by _ph_ »

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.

Yes, the EU parliament passed a resolution to end DST 2021. Unfortunately, they didn't mandate a return to standard time along with it, leaving it open for countries to stay on permanent DST. But of course, a decision about this was never made - looking at the EU timezones, permanent DST basically has no place in the schema. The only non-chaotic alternative to DST would be standard time, but no such resolution has been made. Of course, Corona has made all of this even less of a priority. In this situation, the EU is doing something unexpected practical: ignore that resolution so far :)

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#128

Post by watwut »

mantas wrote: post #103
dahart wrote: 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…

> Turning clocks back is terrible for kids. A week of schooling is next to lost. Source: wife is a teacher.

That is some serious overstatement. I have kids.

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#129

Post by KMag »

ako wrote: post #120
shmerl wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Luckily, here in Hong Kong, we have a constant UTC offset, but my poor colleagues in Sydney interacting with London and New York have 1-hour swings relative to UTC, opposite direction from NYC and London. So, Sydney has a 2-hour relative swing one way, and 2 hours back the other way, with 6 different days a year to take into account.

My brother spent a year and a half in New Zealand, and 6 months in Russia. Our mom spends half the year in Arizona, with no DST. Between family and colleagues, I found it easier to just switch to UTC, but obviously most people don't. Even after interacting with some pretty smart people for years, some of them in London and New York still get Sydney DST wrong, often getting both the dates and directions of the swing wrong.

Ideally, we'd all just do international business in UTC, but that just seems too difficult for most people, so getting rid of DST would at least make things a bit easier. Granted, my dealing with 5+ time zones in 5+ countries every work day is a bit unusual. Poor Kiwis: most people think Wellington and Sydney are in the same time zone.

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#130

Post by ZoomZoomZoom »

dahart wrote: post #88
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.

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?

Sunlight affects the quality of life directly: 1 hour of more/less natural light can be felt immediately. Moreover, our society structured in a way where most of the social life happens after work or school, the transition from light to dark falls on personal time in most cases. This is why people have such strong opinions on the matter.

Speaking for myself, having lived through summer time/winter time schedule around the year in the same location, I vastly prefer more light in the evenings. The effect on my well-being is so pronounced, that it overshadows most of the concerns and points against it.

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