As I see it, in the summer there's plenty of daylight so it doesn't matter very much how you set your clock, but in the winter it does matter: children would be cycling to school in the dark if you moved the clocks forward (and they'd be cycling back from school in the dark if you moved the clocks back). Therefore, if you want to abolish the clock changes, which seems like an excellent idea to me, the safe and conservative way to do that is to use today's winter time all year round.
The Waste of Daylight
151–160 of 251 posts
Re: The Waste of Daylight
#152I 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…
I was gifted some Philips Hue lights a few years ago. I set one up on my nightstand to turn on at sunrise (actually earlier in the winter, sunrise is the latest I want it set to). It's a much more pleasant way to wake up (with it fading in over 10 minutes or so) than an actual alarm clock. Of course, it can't travel with you but it's not a bad option for the home.
Scandinavian here, i'll pass :)
Most of June the sun rises from 4:30 to 4:50, and it's not until late august it rises around 6am again. Sunset is between 9pm and 10pm, civil twilight lasts until 3:42am, and the sun never goes below 12 degrees.
From November to February it doesn't rise until 8am. (and sets around 4pm, astronomical twilight around 6pm)
We have a large roof window that allows morning sunlight to enter our bedroom, and while my brain/body would probably benefit from following the natural daylight cycle, it has the shutters closed for most of the summer.
Re: The Waste of Daylight
#153> 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.
> It's just dark and less dark.
With summers being bright and less bright :)
Re: The Waste of Daylight
#154Earlier 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?
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 aroun…
This might not be an option for you, but have you considered changing your working hours? The sun doesn't care how your clock is set. There is the same amount of sunlight in any given day.
If your problem is that your working day is too early or too late in the day, maybe thats what should be changed - not everybody's clocks.
Re: The Waste of Daylight
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 aroun…
"I vastly prefer more light in the evenings" Strong agreement - the clocks going forward in the spring pretty much marks the time here in Scotland where you can start doing things outdoors in the evenings during the week - also helps that the weather usually starts being less miserable about this time as well.
This comment perhaps illustrates the most likely explanation of why people keep on suggesting we should have permanent "summer time" rather than permanent "winter time": they genuinely believe or subsconsciously imagine that the government can legislate for better weather.
Unfortunately, here in England, there is no flexibility for adjusting our timetables in the winter: the length of the school day is roughly equal to the duration of daylight. There is therefore no point in changing the offset from UTC in the winter.
That's the theory, anyway. But perhaps some kind of magic happens if you change the time to UTC+1 in the winter? Unfortunately, no: they tried it around 1970 and it was a disaster just as rational people said it would be.
In Scotland the duration of winter daylight is shorter than the school day. Perhaps it's still better to have twilight for travelling in both directions rather than light in one direction and total darkness in the other? In any case, the Scots were not happy with the 1968-1971 experiment of having UTC+1 in the winter.
So let's just have UTC all year in England and Scotland, please.
Re: The Waste of Daylight
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 be…
> Unfortunately, they didn't mandate a return to standard time along with it It's arbitary anyway -- Spain and North Macedonia are on the same time zone, but in A Coruña in winter the sun rises at 9am, while in Bitola it comes up at 7am, despite being on about the same latitude. What makes "standard time" standard? Sun at the highest between 1130 and 1230? Timezones have a rough connection to solar mean, but on stand…
Spain is well lined up on the 0 meridian, but is on continental time. It should surprise no one that odd times result.
China is on a single time zone, IIRC. Imagine if SF shifted clocks forward 3 hours just because that's what Washington does.
Re: The Waste of Daylight
#157I 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.
> […] the promise of leaving the clocks on DST all year around.
Which goes against the current scientific/medical consensus on the issue:
> 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...
American Academy of Sleep Medicine (with 36 footnotes if you want to dig further):
> It is the position of the AASM that the U.S. should eliminate seasonal time changes in favor of a national, fixed, year-round time. Current evidence best supports the adoption of year-round standard time, which aligns best with human circadian biology and provides distinct benefits for public health and safety.
* https://jcsm.aasm.org/doi/10.5664/jcsm.8780
* https://doi.org/10.5664/jcsm.8780
See my comment from a few days ago for more references:
Re: The Waste of Daylight
#158As I see it, in the summer there's plenty of daylight so it doesn't matter very much how you set your clock, but in the winter it does matter: children would be cycling to school in the dark if you moved the clocks forward (and they'd be cycling back from school in the dark if you moved the clocks back). Therefore, if you want to abolish the clock changes, which seems like an excellent idea to me, the safe and conser…
A change to GMT all year round would be most welcome here in the U.K.
Re: The Waste of Daylight
#159As I see it, in the summer there's plenty of daylight so it doesn't matter very much how you set your clock, but in the winter it does matter: children would be cycling to school in the dark if you moved the clocks forward (and they'd be cycling back from school in the dark if you moved the clocks back). Therefore, if you want to abolish the clock changes, which seems like an excellent idea to me, the safe and conser…
> the safe and conservative way to do that is to use today's winter time all year round
What are the points that lead you to this conclusion? Personally I'd prefer if DST was abolished by staying on Summer Time permanently, as I dislike the lack of light in the evening, and couldn't care less about the dark mornings, but mine is a purely selfish reasoning.
Re: The Waste of Daylight
#160I 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.
Really?
That's a really low bar for a political candidate to win your vote.
The cynic in me thinks that perhaps you don't deserve to vote after all.
I'm sure I will get downvoted by some / many HNers, but seriously... Do you honestly think that this is the right approach to use your right to vote, considering that many people in the past gave their life to give it to you?