DST (2018)

[kalvado]

People can adapt--that isn't the question.  The question is whether or not people should be forced to adapt unnecessarily.

For example, they shouldn't be forced to adapt to twice a year schedule shakeup.

That's an argument for 100 years ago, or parts of Indiana a few years ago. Unless you lived somewhere without DST, you are not adapting to a twice a year schedule shakeup as you've always had it.

Sure, getting rid of a twice a year schedule shakeup is a reasonable reason to ditch the clock changes, but does it outweigh the problems that the status quo tries to deal with? It getting dark too early and wanting later light to do outdoor activities (hence DST), but not having enough to take it from the morning in winter without causing health problems (hence DST is only in summer).

(don't take it personally, this is just the style of an old teacher from my childhood). So imagine someone is punching you in a belly twice a day. You should adapt to that by now, shouldn't you? So there is no reason to change anything  or call it abuse, right?

[tradephoric]

There is such a wide discrepancy of when people wake up in the morning that you can't say one way or another what method would be more beneficial.  For someone who routinely wakes up at 5AM, they might not like permanent DST during the winter since they would be waking up in pitch darkness.  Of course, even under standard time if you wake up at 5AM during the winter solstice you are almost certainly waking up in pitch darkness.  So there's really no difference.  At the end of the day if you wake up at 5AM during the winter you are going to be miserable... it's  probably going to be dark and cold out... suck it up buttercup. 

Now for someone who routinely wake up later in the morning, then there's a lot of benefit to permanent DST during the winter.  For people waking up at 8AM in the nation's top 20 largest metro regions, only residents of Atlanta, Detroit, Seattle, and Minneapolis would be waking up in pitch dark (and at worse it would only be pitch dark for 26 minutes if you are a resident of Detroit).  Not only would most 8AM risers wake up when it's already light out, they get to enjoy an extra hour of sunlight in the evenings.  Who here has never slept in till 8AM during the weekends?  Even if your work week sucks, at least your weekends can suck a little bit less if the nation went to permanent Daylight Saving Time.     

How would increasing the waking hours of daylight Americans receive increase mental health issues?

Because, to do that, you are stealing the sleeping hours of daylight at that are needed for circadian rhythms, exacerbating the problems of social jetlag and late dawns that have causal relationships with increased mental health issues...

Nobody needs sleeping hours of daylight before they wake up.  Plenty of people wake up at 5AM during the winter when it's already pitch dark out.  Should we adjust the clocks so it's light out by 4AM for those earlier risers to ensure they get a full hour of daylight before they wake up to help with their circadian rhythms?  Maybe you should push for negative DST during the winter.  But good luck with that proposal... the sun would be setting in Boston by lunch time during the winter.

[vdeane]

Ultimately, if you wake up at 5AM and go to bed at 9PM (ie. the early bird in the chart below), you are going to wake up and go to bed in darkness.

Not everyone waking up early is an early bird.  I wake up at 6 on weekdays.  I'm an extreme night owl, but I wake up at 6 because of when I have to be at work.

If you routinely wake up at 8AM

...you don't have a regular office job.  Sure, some computer programmers and service workers work odd hours, but the rest of us have to be in at the time our employer dictates, regardless of circadian rhythm.

Many people work in windowless rooms these days, so sunshine during work hours is of little use to them.

This, I suspect, is the reason for current pushes for permanent DST.  Honestly, though, windowless workplaces should be banned.

People can adapt--that isn't the question.  The question is whether or not people should be forced to adapt unnecessarily.

For example, they shouldn't be forced to adapt to twice a year schedule shakeup.

I actually find it easier to adapt to the time changes than to waking up in darkness.  The former happens and then I'm adjusted, but I need to continually adjust to the latter every single day.

Nobody needs sleeping hours of daylight before they wake up.  Plenty of people wake up at 5AM during the winter when it's already pitch dark out.  Should we adjust the clocks so it's light out by 4AM for those earlier risers to ensure they get a full hour of daylight before they wake up to help with their circadian rhythms?  Maybe you should push for negative DST during the winter.  But good luck with that proposal... the sun would be setting in Boston by lunch time during the winter.

If nobody needed sleeping hours of daylight, Starbucks wouldn't be in business.  The reason they are is because our current way of living is not natural, and is largely a product of the industrial revolution (but also the agricultural revolution to some extent).  Waking up before dawn isn't how things are meant to be, it's what has been forced on us by employers.  People try to compensate for waking up too early by drinking lots of caffeine, but really, that's not good for one's health either.

[kalvado]

Many people work in windowless rooms these days, so sunshine during work hours is of little use to them.

This, I suspect, is the reason for current pushes for permanent DST.  Honestly, though, windowless workplaces should be banned.

Pretty much impossible in many cases. Large production floor or warehouse. Production may actually be affected by sporadic sunlight..  Not to mention that it is easier to build large building so that a lot of areas are well inside.

People can adapt--that isn't the question.  The question is whether or not people should be forced to adapt unnecessarily.

For example, they shouldn't be forced to adapt to twice a year schedule shakeup.

I actually find it easier to adapt to the time changes than to waking up in darkness.  The former happens and then I'm adjusted, but I need to continually adjust to the latter every single day.

Well, we can say that most people wake up within 5-8AM window. Your complains are sort of specific for yor timing, those who wake up an hour earlier still have darkness when it is comfortable for you, those who wake up later - the other way around. It is really difficult to please everyone if you have only that much resources (daylight)
Yes, different time zone in winter would cater better to a different subset of population; but abolition of change would help everyone...

[english si]

So imagine someone is punching you in a belly twice a day. You should adapt to that by now, shouldn't you? So there is no reason to change anything  or call it abuse, right?

I said not wanting the twice a year timeshift is a valid reason to seek a change the status quo. I'm merely saying it's not a change we're making you adapt to - it's the status quo that others, long dead, made others (also long dead) adapt to.

I'm not even demanding you put up with it (and I don't think any of the other anti-year-round-DST people are). I don't like people being punched in the belly twice a day, but the solution being promoted by most of those against twice-daily belly punches is kicking people in the nuts every few minutes for a couple of hours each and every day instead - clearly not an improvement in the general good!

The standard response in this thread to those of us not wanting to be daily kicked in the nuts repeatedly is a constant refrain (mostly from Trad, but others chip in on occasion) of "deal with it" and "adapt", which is not going to endear us to the proposal, but make us decrease our sympathy towards people being belly punched twice a day.

[kalvado]

So imagine someone is punching you in a belly twice a day. You should adapt to that by now, shouldn't you? So there is no reason to change anything  or call it abuse, right?

I said not wanting the twice a year timeshift is a valid reason to seek a change the status quo. I'm merely saying it's not a change we're making you adapt to - it's the status quo that others, long dead, made others (also long dead) adapt to.

I'm not even demanding you put up with it (and I don't think any of the other anti-year-round-DST people are). I don't like people being punched in the belly twice a day, but the solution being promoted by most of those against twice-daily belly punches is kicking people in the nuts every few minutes for a couple of hours each and every day instead - clearly not an improvement in the general good!

The standard response in this thread to those of us not wanting to be daily kicked in the nuts repeatedly is a constant refrain (mostly from Trad, but others chip in on occasion) of "deal with it" and "adapt", which is not going to endear us to the proposal, but make us decrease our sympathy towards people being belly punched twice a day.

An interesting dilemma - how can we talk about status quo, if that status quo changes twice a year? 
And actually I am not pro/against year round DST. I am just for fixed time, DST or not. If anything, I think a shift of time zones (aka eastern parts of time zones going to DST while western parts keeping non-DST) may be a good idea. Since time zone boundaries are already have little resemblance to meridians they supposed to be drawn at, the idea is not as crazy as it sounds.

[kphoger]

You can also argue that it is mostly about sunlight during morning routine. Many people work in windowless rooms these days, so sunshine during work hours is of little use to them.
you really cannot please everyone, though.

This.

I work in a windowless room, and I have for most of my working life–either in a warehouse or an interior office.  If I'm going to be getting off work in the dark regardless of when sunset is, then I sure as heck am not going to want my hour of sunlight stolen from me in the morning!

[english si]

An interesting dilemma - how can we talk about status quo, if that status quo changes twice a year? 

The status quo is that the clocks change twice a year - that's very simple.

I think you can easily convince people that that is wrong, but you'll struggle to convince people on a specific time to lock into all year - hence why the status quo continues.

And actually I am not pro/against year round DST. I am just for fixed time, DST or not.

That's fine, just that the issue that you reacted to a reaction to wasn't getting rid of clock changes, but having DST in winter.

[kalvado]

An interesting dilemma - how can we talk about status quo, if that status quo changes twice a year? 

The status quo is that the clocks change twice a year - that's very simple.

Pardon me being pedantic, but status quo for me is a EDT time (US eastern time, DST enabled) aka GMT-04. I don't know how you can call "status quo" and explicit change via switching to EST, aka GMT-5 due in a few weeks.

[/quote]

And actually I am not pro/against year round DST. I am just for fixed time, DST or not.

That's fine, just that the issue that you reacted to a reaction to wasn't getting rid of clock changes, but having DST in winter.

Oh, but that reaction was a reaction to an original reaction to suggestion of abolishing practice of adjusting clocks... Or maybe there was one or two reactions in between, but I really just wanted to clearly state my position on the subject once again. I hope you can now tell where I am coming from. 

[webny99]

The new question is not, will this thread will continue until DST ends for the year (just three more weeks!), but rather, will we will reach 2018 replies before the year is out. 

[TheHighwayMan3561]

pardon me for not rereading 45 pages of this, but is your life really that dramatically affected by this or is it just a minor inconvenience being blown all the way to hell?

Seems the problem is that in the winter, we can't both wake up and get off work in daylight so the debate is which one are we more willing to live without. Maybe you guys need a "winter"  home in Sydney or Rio.

[Eth]

There is such a wide discrepancy of when people wake up in the morning that you can't say one way or another what method would be more beneficial.  For someone who routinely wakes up at 5AM, they might not like permanent DST during the winter since they would be waking up in pitch darkness.  Of course, even under standard time if you wake up at 5AM during the winter solstice you are almost certainly waking up in pitch darkness.  So there's really no difference.  At the end of the day if you wake up at 5AM during the winter you are going to be miserable... it's  probably going to be dark and cold out... suck it up buttercup. 

Now for someone who routinely wake up later in the morning, then there's a lot of benefit to permanent DST during the winter.  For people waking up at 8AM in the nation's top 20 largest metro regions, only residents of Atlanta, Detroit, Seattle, and Minneapolis would be waking up in pitch dark (and at worse it would only be pitch dark for 26 minutes if you are a resident of Detroit).  Not only would most 8AM risers wake up when it's already light out, they get to enjoy an extra hour of sunlight in the evenings.  Who here has never slept in till 8AM during the weekends?  Even if your work week sucks, at least your weekends can suck a little bit less if the nation went to permanent Daylight Saving Time.

And indeed, as an Atlanta resident who doesn't wake up especially early (7 AM) but is nevertheless already attempting, with varying success, to wake up in pitch darkness in mid-October, I will continue to be adamantly against this ridiculous proposal.

[Scott5114]

The new question is not, will this thread will continue until DST ends for the year (just three more weeks!), but rather, will we will reach 2018 replies before the year is out. 

And people said the Alanland thread got old

[Takumi]

The new question is not, will this thread will continue until DST ends for the year (just three more weeks!), but rather, will we will reach 2018 replies before the year is out. 

And people said the Alanland thread got old

At least that one was enjoyable.

[michravera]

pardon me for not rereading 45 pages of this, but is your life really that dramatically affected by this or is it just a minor inconvenience being blown all the way to hell?

Seems the problem is that in the winter, we can’t both wake up and get off work in daylight so the debate is which one are we more willing to live without. Maybe you guys need a “winter” home in Sydney or Rio.

This has long been my position. It is one thing to try to shift something desirable for more convenient utilization. Like EXTRA daylight in the summertime. From about the end of September to the First of April, there isn't a whole lot of EXTRA daylight to save. Extension of DST into November is a Commie Plot (probably the KGB). You can't switch a useful commodity and magically make more of it. When you only have 10 hours of full daylight, You can't get up, do a 45 minute commute, work an 8-hour day, take a 1-hour lunch, and do the 45-minute commute again in the 10 hours (much less have anything left over for whatever you find desirable). It takes 10.5 hours to do all of that. There is no magic to be had.. Give me 14 hours and jacking around the 3.5 surplus hours (with even some longer twilight) can be accomplished through other means.

The stats show that DST's original intent, saving of energy, works less than 1% under modern circumstances. Extension beyond the End of March to the Beginning of October doesn't even accomplish *ANY* savings and is actually detrimental to the cause. In addition, the worst day for traffic accidents is the Monday Morning after the switch ONTO DST. Extension into daylight deprived months is a lose-lose. An energy cost AND a lives cost.

I would prefer to remain on standard time all year, as they do in Japan and Korea. If we are to have DST, I would like it confined to about 4 months in mid-summer as they do (or did) in Brazil. If we are to have half the year in DST, I would prefer that it be roughly equinox-to-equinox (in the US Late March to Late September) as they do in EU.

You can't save that which you don't have!

[kphoger]

pardon me for not rereading 45 pages of this, but is your life really that dramatically affected by this or is it just a minor inconvenience being blown all the way to hell?

already attempting, with varying success, to wake up in pitch darkness in mid-October

Yeah, come over to my house and tell my kids, whose alarm clock goes off in the dark at 7:06 AM, who stumble out of bed like zombies and crash in a fetal position on the couch–that they just need to suck it up, it's just a minor inconvenience every damned day for a month or two every year.

[tradephoric]

The stats show that DST's original intent, saving of energy, works less than 1% under modern circumstances. Extension beyond the End of March to the Beginning of October doesn't even accomplish *ANY* savings and is actually detrimental to the cause....

But there does appear to be energy savings when DST is extended into daylight deprived months.  After Bush extended DST in 2005, the Department of Energy studied the impacts of extended Daylight Saving Time on national energy consumption.  The Energy Policy Act of 2005 extended the duration of Daylight Saving Time in the spring by changing its start date from the first Sunday in April to the second Sunday in March, and in the fall by changing its end date from the last Sunday in October to the first Sunday in November.  A report was released to Congress in October 2008 that concluded "the total electricity savings of Extended Daylight Saving Time were about 1.3 Tera Watt-hour (TWh). This corresponds to 0.5 per cent per each day of Extended Daylight Saving Time."  

https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/05/f22/epact_sec_110_edst_report_to_congress_2008.pdf

Even if DST doesn't reduce energy consumption during the hot summer months, not many people are begging to get rid of it because people enjoy more sunshine during their summer evenings.  Just try to convince the 20.3 people living in the NYC MSA that the sun setting at 7:31PM during the longest day of the year is preferable to the sun setting at 8:31PM.  And for the benefit of having a 7:31PM sunset, the residents of NYC would get to enjoy dawn beginning at 3:51AM running standard time (when the vast majority of NYC residents are up apparently?).  This is mainly conceptual, but this is a rough idea of the potential energy savings Daylight Saving Time provide by month (ie. negative energy savings during the hot summer months but positive savings during the cold winter months compared to standard time).

[kphoger]

people enjoy more sunshine during their summer evenings. 

Not people who are trying to get a baby or toddler to bed on time, they don't.  Try sleep-training a child when bedtime is fully light outside.

[tradephoric]

^I'm just suggesting we poll the 20.3 million people living in the largest metropolitan area in this country and see if they would prefer a summer sunset of 7:31PM or 8:31PM.  There are plenty of young couples with babies living in NYC too.  But you really think the 7:31PM sunset would win out in that poll?  Not a chance in hell... especially considering how early the sun would rise running standard time during the summer. 

[kphoger]

^I'm just suggesting we poll the 20.3 million people living in the largest metropolitan area in this country and see if they would prefer a summer sunset of 7:31PM or 8:31PM.  There are plenty of young couples with babies living in NYC too.  But you really think the 7:31PM sunset would win out in that poll?  Not a chance in hell... especially considering how early the sun would rise running standard time during the summer. 

I never said it would win out in a poll in any given city.  Obviously, parents with babies would be a minority in the poll.  And even within that subset, there are plenty of parents who don't care if their babies get a full night's sleep or not (meaning they're putting their babies to bed at 10 PM anyway).

[kalvado]

https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/05/f22/epact_sec_110_edst_report_to_congress_2008.pdf

Frankly speaking, I have hard time believing their numbers.
If you look at Fig. 2-1 on page 3 - basically the key graph for conclusions - they discuss a period of 5-9 PM and 6-7 AM as regions with most effect. They do not consider relative growth of consumption in 9 PM-2AM window, which should approximately negate any PM savings. Not sure what is the reason for that, maybe it is systematic effect of year-to-year change. But the way numbers are manipulated doesn't make me comfortable with conclusions.
Frankly speaking, there is only that much statistics and extracting effect below noise pattern is quite difficult...

[jp the roadgeek]

^I'm just suggesting we poll the 20.3 million people living in the largest metropolitan area in this country and see if they would prefer a summer sunset of 7:31PM or 8:31PM.  There are plenty of young couples with babies living in NYC too.  But you really think the 7:31PM sunset would win out in that poll?  Not a chance in hell... especially considering how early the sun would rise running standard time during the summer. 

I never said it would win out in a poll in any given city.  Obviously, parents with babies would be a minority in the poll.  And even within that subset, there are plenty of parents who don't care if their babies get a full night's sleep or not (meaning they're putting their babies to bed at 10 PM anyway).

Not to mention that you'd have a summer sunrise at 4:15 AM.  Bars in NYC would be closing just before sunrise.  To most, 4:15 is the middle of the night.

[kphoger]

Fifteen minutes after the Chicago bars close the sun would be rising. 

Bars in NYC would be closing just before sunrise.

Red herring is back on the menu.

[english si]

I would prefer that it be roughly equinox-to-equinox (in the US Late March to Late September) as they do in EU.

If only we did - we don't change back until Sunday - a whole month too late.

It's little coincidence that the number of people stating they are a little tired or a bit under-the-weather when I ask them how they are in October is always about a third of the year's total. I know anecdote is not the singular of data, but next week people will be a little less gloomy.

---

Re: bars closing just before the sun rises - whatever happened to the idea of partying the night away?

I gather that, even with the relatively strict licencing laws that were in place at the time, you could go into a club in Aberdeen after the pubs had kicked out and it be before sunset, then leave when the club when it closed and it be after sunrise.

As I've said several times already, I have both really early and really late sunrises here. Neither is great, but the early ones aren't anywhere near as annoying as the late ones. Though the same with sunsets - early sunsets and late sunsets are both annoying, but late sunsets are less annoying.

[02 Park Ave]

Sunrise was after 7:15 this morning.  If DST had not been imposed it would have happened just after 6:15 and I wouldn't have unnecessarily have gotten up in the dark and left in pre-dawn minimal brightness.