As usual, Tangle has posted a really good article on this issue:
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so like i feel that if they make daylight savings permanent now, they stole an hour from my life that I’LL NEVER GET BACK.
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Can anyone see this article? It’s behind a paywall for me.
Not worth the $1 trial for me, FWIW.
Now, imagine how people felt in 1582!
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dodgy
Your Personal Newspaper (fivefilters.org) ← clicky clicky
I really don’t care how people in the 1970’s felt about DST.
I would first ask why DST started in the first place? And then see if that same reason still exists.
I would also question if there is value in having sun-rise be the same clock time. I have noticed that my circadian rhythm is “strengthening” over the last 10 years.
Another article (linked in the above linked article) about suspected impacts of the time change (especially in the Fall)–some not so good; some not so bad.
I think at the end of the day, there isn’t going to be universal agreement on whether to keep or abolish the regular time change.
I know not of what you speak, Catholic scum
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Imagine having two birthdays! Like Washington
Oh, I think a lot of people want to abolish the time change. But they will not agree on which time (DST or Standard) to keep.
Fine, change that to 1752, you daft Brit!
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Thanks! For those not wanting to click the link:
The US already tried having daylight-saving time all year. People hated it.
- Marco Rubio leads a group of senators who want to impose daylight-saving time all year.
- We tried this in the 1970s and quickly went back to the old clock-changing policy.
- It turns out, people hate it when the sun doesn’t rise until 9am.
- This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author.
It’s almost that time again: On Sunday, we will turn the clocks forward one hour due to the arrival of spring. It’s great.
I don’t just mean that having an extra hour of sunlight in the evening will be great — the sun will set in Manhattan at 7:02 pm on Sunday, late enough to enjoy a COVID-safe outdoor dinner in the twilight — but the practice of changing our clocks back and forth each year is itself great.
As I wrote three years ago, our current time policy is great — notwithstanding the whining we see annually on Twitter and even from some lawmakers — because it helps us coordinate society so more people are able to wake up shortly after sunrise for more of the year. This leaves daylight hours available after school and work to the extent that is possible at a time of year based on the earth’s axial tilt.
And it’s great because all the other options are worse.
Marco Rubio wants to make you wake up in the dark
A bipartisan group of senators wants to take the good status-quo time policy away from us and instead install all-year daylight-saving time.
Under this proposal, the sun would rise on December 21 at 8:17 am in Manhattan. In Detroit, the sun would not rise until 8:58 am. In Grand Rapids, 9:11 am. I understand that a lot of people already start their days when it’s dark out, but this policy would force many, many more people to do so, for weeks or even months of the year, depending on what they do and where they are located.
We don’t need to theorize how people would feel about this. Year-round DST is a policy the US already tried once, during the 1970s oil crisis, on the theory that it would save energy. The policy started in January 1974 for what was supposed to be a two-year experiment.
So, how did that go? I’ll give you one clue: the experiment did not end up running for two years.
We tried year-round daylight saving in the 1970s and people haaaaaaated it
Here are excerpts from a New York Times article from February 1974, just a few weeks after the new policy’s adoption, headlined “Benefits of Daylight Saving In Winter Widely Doubted”:
“A Raleigh, NC, signmaker, Ray Bennett, says he is now using more fuel and electricity because he must open his shop in the cold of predawn… In Tacoma, construction men must work the first hour or so in darkness… Hundreds of schools, including those in Tallahassee, now open their doors a half an hour or so later than before.”
I suppose other schools could have followed Tallahassee’s example and started opening later, but that causes its own hassles — what about parents whose work schedules don’t change in the winter, and now need to adjust their childcare arrangements twice a year? That’s harder than adjusting a clock.
Instead, school boards pushed — successfully — to bring back standard time in winter, which effectively is a policy of starting school later in winter than in spring or fall. Changing our clocks means everyone adjusts their schedule all at the same time, so you don’t get a bunch of coordination problems as schools and businesses try to decide when is the right time to move schedules earlier or later.
Less than nine months after the US adopted year-round daylight saving, the House voted 383 to 16 to repeal it. 383 to 16! President Gerald Ford signed the law to bring back standard time in October 1974, just in time to save America from another winter of miserable pre-dawn wake ups.
Standard time all year is bad, too
Okay, so what if instead of leaving our clocks set forward all year, we kept them rolled back? This wouldn’t force more people to wake up before dawn, but it would lead to the extensive waste of daylight hours as the sun would rise hours before people are likely to wake up in the middle of summer.
Yes, yes, I know, nobody’s stopping you from getting up at sunrise, and if the sun rose in Manhattan at 4:25 am on June 21, you’d be free to get up and go for a run (but not in Central Park, which doesn’t open until 6 am).
But most people aren’t masochists who like to get up with the sun to run. Normal people find daylight hours after work more useful than daylight hours before work.
And shifting work and school schedules to start earlier in the summer and later in the winter to achieve that would be a huge pain as different institutions would pick different days to shift. Coordinating a schedule shift to harness the benefit of those July daylight hours would be just as challenging as coordinating one to stop school from starting in darkness in December under permanent daylight saving.
The simplest way we can all change our schedules together by season continues to be changing the clock.
People love whining
Earlier this week, when I tweeted in support of daylight saving (as I do) one Twitter user told me that daylight-saving time changes are “life-ruining” for parents of young children. Really? Isn’t that a little bit dramatic?
I don’t have children, but I used to be a child, so I texted my mother to ask her if she hated daylight-saving time changes when she had young children. She wrote me back, “Not particularly. Adjusted pretty quickly.” Like billions of parents before her, my mother’s life was not ruined by the need to change her clocks and her schedule twice annually.
Of course, nobody really thinks changing the clocks ruins their life. It’s a minor inconvenience. But people love to complain. It’s fun! Daylight-saving time provides a nice, low-stakes opportunity to complain, and people love that.
In addition to not wanting to make you do more of your morning commutes in the dark, I wouldn’t want to take this twice-annual whining opportunity away from you. It wouldn’t be right.
Enjoy your spring forward this Sunday. I know I will.
A lot do, but it’s not universal. Looking at when the sun would rise/set at different times of the year is the best argument for keeping it that I’ve seen.
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This is the main point of why people hate time changes.
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TBH, I would look to the solution that will minimize mental health issues (like SAD).
Most reasons that I’ve seen* for one solution over another (i.e., keep DST year round; keep Standard Time year round; modify current process) all center around a matter of convenience–I don’t want to ____ in the dark; etc.
But I can tell you from direct experience that the time changes (yes, the plural) have a huge impact for those that suffer SAD and Bipolar conditions that often last for more than just the day or two of inconvenience otherwise experienced.
*. In general; not just on this board.
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Meh. We already extended DST by a couple of months under Bush II so looking at the times they are talking about in Manhattan (8:17 on December 21), the sun rises at 7:30 on November 5. What’s 45 minutes? Not to mention Nautical twighlight starts a full hour before “sunrise” so it is already getting light well before sunrise.
Sounds like it would just be easier to shift some of the time zone lines East if the later sunrise in Detroit and Grand Rapids is an issue. I don’t see him mentioning the 4:20 PM sunset in Chicago in the middle of winter.
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i don’t get switching to daylight savings time year-round. if people like things to be later, why wouldn’t you just move everything you do up an hour rather than change the clocks permanently?
Not everyone has the ability to change their work shift hours; not to mention the lack of consensus on how to change school times (regardless of DST status).
if you just change the clock permanently, how is that now a consensus any more than moving the times of things?
Hmm, my personal experience is the opposite. I develop SAD when I need to wake up before dawn. There’s a couple of weeks each fall (approximately the weeks they extended DST so it would include Halloween) when I really struggle to get out of bed, and feel crappy all day. And then we switch to standard time and I recover. And then, in the midst of winter, there are a couple bad days but then the sun comes back.
I’m old and dropped to part time work. I may negotiate different hours for the winter, and just never show up at work before 10 when the sun rises too late.