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British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

cbc.ca

251–260 of 583 posts

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#251

I'm in BC. The astro-nerd in me would have preferred to see permanent Standard Time instead of a permanent +1 offset. Instinctively, I think morning light is important to our biology for a daily reset and the solar cue of "high noon" is also a real thing. I'm sure I've read that sleep health experts have historically supported a change to permanent Standard Time, not DST. I respect there are economic arguments for pe…

just move it by .5 permanently

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#252
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah the 4:15 PM sunset actually means it's getting dark at 3:30 PM. Pretty ridiculous. For everyone like "the kids have to walk to school in the dark!" it seems like they aren't considering that kids generally don't care at all what the morning is like because their day is about to be consumed by an obligation they never agreed to (school). When they're finally free for the day, it's effectively dark outside. The pe…

But we care about the kids. It's not about whether or not the kids are having a good time, but whether or not groggy people on their way to work can see them.

Would the better thing to do be to vary school hours by season? Add an hour in summer and remove an hour in winter?.

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#253
post #243
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what everyone says. But it turns out people hate spending their morning in darkness for more light at night. Which makes perfect sense: https://washingtonian.com/2022/03/15/the-us-tried-permanent-... > the inkling of light they get during their winter commute It's not an inkling. Unless you roll out of bed and instantly onto your commute, you're getting natural sunlight through all your windows for hours every…

That has to be latitude dependent. > you're getting natural sunlight through all your windows for hours every morning Hah "hours". Not in Northern Europe you're not. My commute is dark on both sides. If I had to choose which side I'd prefer to be brighter I'd prefer the end of the day rather than feeling like my daylight has been wasted in the office. I shift my schedule in winter to make up for this as best I can.

I guess. I'm at 46 degrees and civil twilight at Christmas starts at 7am. I get up at 6:30, so yeah, dead of winter, I spend 30 minutes in darkness. But that's better than 1:30.

I guess it kinda hinges on this idea of "wasting" daylight. I don't feel like that. I want the sun to wake me up, and have no problem doing whatever I like when it's dark in the evening. Do people generally go on hikes after work? I go out for drinks. haha

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#254
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition to the reason already given (kids get home before the evening traffic picks up), another reason is that generally driving conditions are worse in the morning than they are in the evening so if there isn't enough light for both the morning and evening drives to be in light it is safer to give the light to the morning drive.

> another reason is that generally driving conditions are worse in the morning than they are in the evening Wait, why? Where? I've never heard this. Which driving conditions are you talking about? Rain? Snow?

Generally the coldest part of the day is just after sunrise. The warmest part of the day is typically in the early afternoon, around 1-4 pm.

This makes a few driving hazards more likely or more intense in mornings, including fog, sleet, and ice. Also tires have less traction when they are colder. In the morning it is less likely for snowplows or earlier traffic to have cleared paths on secondary roads.

Driver assist systems tend to have more trouble with sensor fogging, frosting, or icing in the morning.

That's not to say evening is a piece of cake. Evening tends to have denser traffic which increases the risk of accidents. Places that are in shadow for much of the day might maintain ice while most of the morning ice melts, or might start developing new evening ice earlier than places the heated up more in the day which could be particularly bad--if most of the road is ice free in the evening people might let down their guard.

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#255
post #252
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But we care about the kids. It's not about whether or not the kids are having a good time, but whether or not groggy people on their way to work can see them.

Would the better thing to do be to vary school hours by season? Add an hour in summer and remove an hour in winter?.

No school in summer.

When we start getting more sun, it’s fine in the morning even with the spring forward.

We go back to standard time in winter because otherwise it stays dark too long.

And all of this ignores the core fact that time zones are way more politically determined than geographically. And that’s a whole other problem

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's "standard" for a reason. Humanity settled on these numbers long ago because they work best. It boggles my mind why anyone would choose otherwise since what we do at any given hour is arbitrary.

A lot of people hate standard time in winter because the sun sets at 4 or 5, and they want the sun to instead set at 8 or 9 like it does in summer. DST in winter doesn't actually give you the 8 or 9 sunset, it gives you a 5 or 6 sunset (which doesn't get you all that much) combined with moving your sunrise to 8 or 9, which causes its own set of issues most people don't think about. The last time we went to year-round…

The main driver of people wanting year round DST is so they can have sunlight after work in the winter. Those late sunsets in the summer are awesome too though.

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#257

I'm in BC. The astro-nerd in me would have preferred to see permanent Standard Time instead of a permanent +1 offset. Instinctively, I think morning light is important to our biology for a daily reset and the solar cue of "high noon" is also a real thing. I'm sure I've read that sleep health experts have historically supported a change to permanent Standard Time, not DST. I respect there are economic arguments for pe…

I live a bit north of Whistler. BC is rather larger than the UK but it is very roughly the same in north/south extent. Yeovil (Somerset) is about the same lat as Calgary, next door to you.

Unfortunately we live on an oblate spheroid what spins around the sun and its a bit tricky when the sun comes on and is switched off. It doesn't help that the basted planet is tilted to the ecliptic too so we end up with daylight/nighttime procession and all that equinox/solstice bollocks. I live quite close to both Glastonbury and Stonehenge. People have some pretty odd ideas about reality, let alone time in these parts 8)

The "perfect" solution is of course moving the clock continuously and keeping 12:00 fixed to peak daylight. Sadly that wont work too well when the time changes every 50 miles or so!

No one will ever be happy when it comes to fiddling with clocks - that is the way of life. There is no right answer for everyone and never will be. I might accept an arguement based on road fatality statistics but not much else and then you'll get some sort of economic based falacy in response.

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#258

I'm in BC. The astro-nerd in me would have preferred to see permanent Standard Time instead of a permanent +1 offset. Instinctively, I think morning light is important to our biology for a daily reset and the solar cue of "high noon" is also a real thing. I'm sure I've read that sleep health experts have historically supported a change to permanent Standard Time, not DST. I respect there are economic arguments for pe…

> I'm in BC. The astro-nerd in me would have preferred to see permanent Standard Time instead of a permanent +1 offset. So would the folks who study circadian rhythms: > Over much of the highly-populated areas of Canada, the sun would not rise until about 9 am in winter under DST, and the daylight will linger an hour later in summer evenings than under Standard Time. As a Northern country, Canada includes higher lati…

I guess northern Europe must be an unpopulated wasteland where everybody's health just instantly declines.

I find these explanations to these studies so bizarre. We know that there are large populations living significantly further north, who don't get sunlight in the morning in winter, no matter whether there's DST or not. We also know that they get almost perpetual light during summer. If these explanations were true then you would expect a country like Sweden to have an impact on life expectancy and illness from this. But it's not. It's about as rich as Canada and has about the same life expectancy.

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#259
post #253
post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That has to be latitude dependent. > you're getting natural sunlight through all your windows for hours every morning Hah "hours". Not in Northern Europe you're not. My commute is dark on both sides. If I had to choose which side I'd prefer to be brighter I'd prefer the end of the day rather than feeling like my daylight has been wasted in the office. I shift my schedule in winter to make up for this as best I can.

I guess. I'm at 46 degrees and civil twilight at Christmas starts at 7am. I get up at 6:30, so yeah, dead of winter, I spend 30 minutes in darkness. But that's better than 1:30. I guess it kinda hinges on this idea of "wasting" daylight. I don't feel like that. I want the sun to wake me up, and have no problem doing whatever I like when it's dark in the evening. Do people generally go on hikes after work? I go out fo…

56 degrees here (Denmark, and grew up in Ireland @ 53 degrees).

> I guess it kinda hinges on this idea of "wasting" daylight. I don't feel like that. I want the sun to wake me up

The problem is that during the darkest parts of winter, even if I postpone my wake up as long as possible, I'm still getting up in the dark if I want to be able to commute into work on time. There's no sunlight waking me up.

> Do people generally go on hikes after work? I go out for drinks. haha

No, but I still have to do things like walk the dog, do the shopping on the way home. I find it a lot more pleasant starting out that part of day with a bit of sunlight.

Also, yes, drinks. This is Northern Europe after all.

EDIT to add: Civil twilight in December where I am starts ~07:40, and I also get up around 06:30 (when not dealing with insomnia like tonight).

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're saying the federal government granted blanket authorization to switch to the one? So the only reason states wait on authorization is merely obtusely insisting on the wrong choice? (In addition to being impotent.) The more I learn about this issue the more things I find to be angry about.

Permanent DST being the "wrong" choice is your opinion, and a minority one. Certainly doesn't make those who disagree "morons".

> Permanent DST being the "wrong" choice is your opinion, and a minority one.

It is the majority opinion of people that study chronobiology (circadian rhythms) and sleep researchers, as issued via their professional societies:

* https://srbr.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/SRBR-Statement-o...

* http://www.chronobiocanada.com/official-statements

* https://sleepresearchsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/...

* https://jcsm.aasm.org/doi/10.5664/jcsm.8780

* https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2019.0094...

* https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35382618/

* https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/07487304198541...

* https://www.ama-assn.org/public-health/prevention-wellness/s...

* https://esrs.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/To_the_EU_Commiss...

From a public health perspective, all-year DST is not good, and all-year Standard Time is what should be done.

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