Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

cbc.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

471–480 of 583 posts

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#471

Post by sampo »

emptybits wrote: post #15

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 sure I've read that sleep health experts have historically supported a change to permanent Standard Time, not DST.

Yes, science is very clear: Permanent standard time is best for health.

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

https://srbr.org/advocacy/daylight-saving-time-presskit/

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

https://www.ama-assn.org/press-center/press-releases/ama-cal...

https://jcsm.aasm.org/doi/10.5664/jcsm.10898

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jsr.14352

https://www.chronobiocanada.com/official-statements

But I think the scientists have made a mistake in their communication: They focused too much arguing against the clock-shifts, and didn't put enough effort to communicate why also permanent DST is a bad choice.

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#472

Post by dubcanada »

wink wrote: post #458
eigenspace wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Canada is a VERY wide country. We have 4.5 time zones across the country, and BC itself is as wide as Germany. Perhaps even more surprising for you maybe is that even within a Canadian province, its not just one time zone. There are several regions along the border between BC and Alberta that already eliminated daylight savings time years and years ago, so they were on a different time zone for half the year. E…

I know it's big (I've just not seen it myself), but also it's only 5m people in BC if I can believe Wikipedia. That's like a big city. Maybe that actually makes it less of a problem though, we simply don't know :)

About 90% of BC is nothing but wildlife and trees. You can't really compare it to Germany in any capacity, it doesn't work. Canada has land with literally 0 people on it bigger then the entirely of Germany. The vastness of Canada cannot be understated. Canada is almost 10mil km2, Germany is 350k km2.

Germany population is about 2x that of Canada.

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#473

Post by eigenspace »

wink wrote: post #458
eigenspace wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Canada is a VERY wide country. We have 4.5 time zones across the country, and BC itself is as wide as Germany. Perhaps even more surprising for you maybe is that even within a Canadian province, its not just one time zone. There are several regions along the border between BC and Alberta that already eliminated daylight savings time years and years ago, so they were on a different time zone for half the year. E…

I know it's big (I've just not seen it myself), but also it's only 5m people in BC if I can believe Wikipedia. That's like a big city. Maybe that actually makes it less of a problem though, we simply don't know :)

I think if Canada was just two or maybe even three BCs wide, we probably would have settled on just one timezone for the whole country, but the country is so wide that the sun today will set 4 hours and 6 minutes later in Halifax than it will in Vancouver, we just fundamentally do need timezones inside the country, otherwise it'd be a total mess.

Once you start putting timezones inside a country, the provincial borders start to become pretty natural places to put timezones.

And yes, you are correct that the small population makes it easier. Or rather, it's less about the small population, and more about the spikiness of the population. Practically Nobody lives anywhere near the border between BC and Alberta, it's a gigantic mountainous national park the size of a medium-sized European country. Almost everyone in BC lives in Vancouver, and almost everyone in Alberta lives in Calgary or Edmonton. When I lived in Edmonton, it'd usually take me about 12 hours to drive to visit my parents near Vancouver, and if I was in Calgary it'd take around 10 or 11 hours. So putting a timezone change at the halfway mark is pretty much irrelevant.

The strong interconnections and vibrant border regions of European countries are the main reason so much of the EU is in one timezone. If it weren't for that, it'd probably make sense to put a timezone border between Germany and Benelux / France, but that'd be too annoying for everyone, so people just put up with a wide timezone. e.g. this map gives a good idea of where the 'natural' timezone boundaries are, and lets you compare against what people decided on based on political / economic realities.

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#474

Post by dubcanada »

wink wrote: post #460
9rx wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canadian provinces are structurally more like countries within the EU than states within Germany. The EU operates with more than one timezone.

Yes, but my experience tells me that you'll interact (on a level where timezones matter) much more with people in your country than in others - and this has nothing to do with small states vs big provinces, I don't know enough about Canada if every big company has offices in Vancouver an Toronto (or Ottawa, Montreal) that work closely together.

Sadly that is not really true in Canada. Most companies in Canada only really work with a small group of close provinces.

BC/Alberta

Sackatchewan/Manitoba

Ontario/Quebec

Quebec/New Brunswick

Nova Scotia/PEI/NFLD/New Brunswick

etc

The big companies have offices in each, but they'll usually break them down even further into eastern, central, western regions. And they'll largely never talk to eachother.

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#475

Post by sampo »

indecisive_user wrote: post #324
throw0101c wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The European Biological Rhythms Society (EBRS), European Sleep Research Society (ESRS), and Society for Research on Biological Rhythms (SRBR) put out a joint statement that recommends all-year Standard Time in the EU: * https://esrs.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/To_the_EU_Commiss... I would hazard to guess some of those folks have looked at data for northern Europe and took it into account when forming their conclusi…

I think you're missing the parent's point. Cities in northern Europe, like Stockholm and Oslo, already have sunrise times as late or later than Vancouver will have under permanent DST. If the effects of shifting the clock an hour are as extreme as purported, then we should already see those negative health effects in populations that live their entire lives under those conditions, but we don't.

Here is a circadian rhythm and sleep scientist in Finland, arguing for permanent standard time.

https://blogi.thl.fi/kellojen-siirtaminen-pysyvasti-talviaik...

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#476

Post by sampo »

tempestn wrote: post #218
fc417fc802 wrote: post #108

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".

> Certainly doesn't make those who disagree "morons".

But it makes them anti-science.

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#477

Post by eigenspace »

ndr42 wrote: post #22

In germany the terms are Sommerzeit (summer time) and Winterzeit (winter time). Of course everybody would chose the former as summer sound better than winter but the latter is "better" as it corresponds more to "wake up when there is light" which is favorable to health, performance etc.

This is total bullshit.

I live in Köln, and the reason people want to move to Sommerzeit year round is that during Winterzeit near the solstice, the sun rises at 8:30 and sets at 16:30, which means that most people are not getting any daytime sun if they work inside.

They get a tiny bit of sunlight right as they arrive at work, and then when they work all day, step outside and the sun is already gone, which is really depressing. Many many people look at this situation and decide that if they have to choose between light before work or after work, they'd take the light after work.

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#478

Post by sampo »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #6

I would have preferred permanent standard time to permanent daylight time. But I accept I'm in the minority, and even permanent daylight time is far superior to changing clocks twice a year.

> and even permanent daylight time is far superior to changing clocks twice a year

This paper implies that for health, permanent standard time would be best, and permanent DST would be the worst. And even keeping the current clock-shifting would be better than permanent DST.

"The combination of DST and winter would therefore make the differences between body clocks and the social clock even worse and would negatively affect our health even more."

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

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#479

Post by Pirate-of-SV »

bloak wrote: post #470

These discussions are always very annoying. People tend to state their preferences without mentioning their latitude, their longitude, or their current time zone. Anyway, here are my preferences: GB should switch to UTC+0 all year. UTC+1 all year was tried (1968-1971) and was very unpopular in Scotland. School hours are roughly 09:00 till 15:00 and they only get about 6 hours of sunlight in winter up north so local n…

What is your latitude, longitude, current time zone?

Re: British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time

#480

Post by teunispeters »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #40
zetanor wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen arguments about kids going to school in the darkness being thrown around a lot, but I've never understood why that (against fresh drivers) is always taken to be worse than kids coming home in the darkness (against exhausted drivers).

Average school start/end times in BC are 8:30 AM and 3 PM. Standard time in Vancouver puts sunrise/sunset at 8AM/415PM at winter solstice for standard time. That's 30 minutes of daylight before school and 75 minutes after school. IOW, kids are more likely to be walking in the dark in the morning, even with standard time. Switching to daylight time will switch sunrise/sunset to 9AM/515PM, guaranteeing kids will be wal…

Speaking as growing up in Fort St John, BC, sunrise was after school began, and sunset was before school was out - more or less - in the middle of winter. But then, that city (in BC, and nowhere near as far north as that province gets) - is rather more arctic in every sense of the word. But then, that corner also opted out of time changes, so ... the rest of the province is catching up :)
Post reply on HN