Daylight Savings Time (2022): Once And For All!!!

[NWI_Irish96]

Nice that you can sleep so late--just don't insist that the clocks change to put the sunlight on the schedule of the minority. The majority are up and about before 8am and appreciate the morning light.

Would you prefer permanent standard time or do you just want to keep the status quo and keep dealing with the bi-annual time changes?  By your previous comments i don't think you are in favor of permanent Daylight Saving Time but who knows.

I prefer permanent standard time, with some spots where that would be really bad, like Maine, shifting one time zone to the east to compensate.

But if more people want year round DST than any other option, how is your point about "majority over minority" relevant?

Year round DST advocates have been very good at selling "light later in the evening" to people and I don't think most people have really considered how it will impact mornings.

[Rothman]

Apparently, the Senate seems to have passed this change on accident:

When we wrote up the newly passed Senate bill that would theoretically establish year-round Daylight Savings Time, we observed that there was no indication this was coming down the pike, and also that nobody seemed to know why the senators had all of a sudden gotten on board with the idea, en masse.

It turns out that we weren't the only ones who were surprised and a bit confused. In fact, most of the senators were, as well. The bill was passed by unanimous consent, which is really the only way for there to be a unanimous vote in the Senate. What was not publicly known on Tuesday was that Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) asked for unanimous consent, and expected Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) to object. The Floridian didn't actually expect to secure passage, he just wanted to be able to send out an "I'm trying" tweet and press release in an election year. And because Rubio (and everyone else) expected an objection, there wasn't much communication among members of the Senate (or among their staffs), and most members weren't even on the floor of the chamber when the matter came up. That meant that when Wicker, in a rather big surprise, decided he didn't care enough to object, the Senate inadvertently approved the bill unanimously. A sizable number of senators only found out about it when they were asked by reporters, or when they read about it online.

It's hard to believe this is for real, and is not, say, a Marx Brothers short ("Oops! Sens. Groucho and Harpo accidentally declared war on Canada!"). In any case, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has put the legislation on the back burner for now. If she wants to kill it, or if Joe Biden does, there's now plenty of justification for them to do so.

*citation needed*

[kphoger]

Apparently, the Senate seems to have passed this change on accident:

When we wrote up the newly passed Senate bill that would theoretically establish year-round Daylight Savings Time, we observed that there was no indication this was coming down the pike, and also that nobody seemed to know why the senators had all of a sudden gotten on board with the idea, en masse.

It turns out that we weren't the only ones who were surprised and a bit confused. In fact, most of the senators were, as well. The bill was passed by unanimous consent, which is really the only way for there to be a unanimous vote in the Senate. What was not publicly known on Tuesday was that Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) asked for unanimous consent, and expected Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) to object. The Floridian didn't actually expect to secure passage, he just wanted to be able to send out an "I'm trying" tweet and press release in an election year. And because Rubio (and everyone else) expected an objection, there wasn't much communication among members of the Senate (or among their staffs), and most members weren't even on the floor of the chamber when the matter came up. That meant that when Wicker, in a rather big surprise, decided he didn't care enough to object, the Senate inadvertently approved the bill unanimously. A sizable number of senators only found out about it when they were asked by reporters, or when they read about it online.

It's hard to believe this is for real, and is not, say, a Marx Brothers short ("Oops! Sens. Groucho and Harpo accidentally declared war on Canada!"). In any case, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has put the legislation on the back burner for now. If she wants to kill it, or if Joe Biden does, there's now plenty of justification for them to do so.

*citation needed*

https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2022/Senate/Maps/Mar18.html#item-2

https://www.mediaite.com/politics/that-daylight-saving-time-bill-passed-because-a-bunch-of-senators-just-werent-paying-attention/

[Rothman]

Apparently, the Senate seems to have passed this change on accident:

When we wrote up the newly passed Senate bill that would theoretically establish year-round Daylight Savings Time, we observed that there was no indication this was coming down the pike, and also that nobody seemed to know why the senators had all of a sudden gotten on board with the idea, en masse.

It turns out that we weren't the only ones who were surprised and a bit confused. In fact, most of the senators were, as well. The bill was passed by unanimous consent, which is really the only way for there to be a unanimous vote in the Senate. What was not publicly known on Tuesday was that Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) asked for unanimous consent, and expected Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) to object. The Floridian didn't actually expect to secure passage, he just wanted to be able to send out an "I'm trying" tweet and press release in an election year. And because Rubio (and everyone else) expected an objection, there wasn't much communication among members of the Senate (or among their staffs), and most members weren't even on the floor of the chamber when the matter came up. That meant that when Wicker, in a rather big surprise, decided he didn't care enough to object, the Senate inadvertently approved the bill unanimously. A sizable number of senators only found out about it when they were asked by reporters, or when they read about it online.

It's hard to believe this is for real, and is not, say, a Marx Brothers short ("Oops! Sens. Groucho and Harpo accidentally declared war on Canada!"). In any case, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has put the legislation on the back burner for now. If she wants to kill it, or if Joe Biden does, there's now plenty of justification for them to do so.

*citation needed*

https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2022/Senate/Maps/Mar18.html#item-2

https://www.mediaite.com/politics/that-daylight-saving-time-bill-passed-because-a-bunch-of-senators-just-werent-paying-attention/

First cite is crap.  Second cite was okay, but still gets a shrug. 

[tradephoric]

Year round DST advocates have been very good at selling "light later in the evening" to people and I don't think most people have really considered how it will impact mornings.

During certain days the sun would rise in Spokane, Washington by 3:49AM without DST (with dawn starting at 3:10AM).  I do consider the morning impacts and am in favor of permanent DST as it would prevent pre-4AM sunrises anywhere within the lower 48.  On the flip side the most extreme late sunset examples within the lower 48 occur in the UP of Michigan where the sun sets at 9:57PM during the summer solstice.  But nearly everybody is still up enjoying Michigan's beautiful summer evenings at that time.  While lots of people are still up at 9:57PM, but how many people are awake at 3:49AM?

[wxfree]

Apparently, the Senate seems to have passed this change on accident:

When we wrote up the newly passed Senate bill that would theoretically establish year-round Daylight Savings Time, we observed that there was no indication this was coming down the pike, and also that nobody seemed to know why the senators had all of a sudden gotten on board with the idea, en masse.

It turns out that we weren't the only ones who were surprised and a bit confused. In fact, most of the senators were, as well. The bill was passed by unanimous consent, which is really the only way for there to be a unanimous vote in the Senate. What was not publicly known on Tuesday was that Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) asked for unanimous consent, and expected Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) to object. The Floridian didn't actually expect to secure passage, he just wanted to be able to send out an "I'm trying" tweet and press release in an election year. And because Rubio (and everyone else) expected an objection, there wasn't much communication among members of the Senate (or among their staffs), and most members weren't even on the floor of the chamber when the matter came up. That meant that when Wicker, in a rather big surprise, decided he didn't care enough to object, the Senate inadvertently approved the bill unanimously. A sizable number of senators only found out about it when they were asked by reporters, or when they read about it online.

It's hard to believe this is for real, and is not, say, a Marx Brothers short ("Oops! Sens. Groucho and Harpo accidentally declared war on Canada!"). In any case, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has put the legislation on the back burner for now. If she wants to kill it, or if Joe Biden does, there's now plenty of justification for them to do so.

*citation needed*

I have a different concern.  Can the Senate pass a bill by unanimous consent without a quorum?  The text says that most of the members were not on the floor.  Is that an exaggeration?  Can a quorum be made up of people who are in the building, having the option to be on the floor even if they choose not to be?  How did a bill pass with "most" of the members not on the floor?

[kenarmy]

omg why do we always have to be different. leave time tf alone!

[wxfree]

omg we do we always have to be different. leave time tf alone!

We need to make time metric.  A minute is made of 100 seconds.  An hour is made of 100 minutes.  A day is made of 10 hours.  A month is made of 100 days, and a year is made of 10 months.  Also, a year is the time it takes light in a vacuum to travel from here to the nearest star.  Also, the speed of light is adjusted so that the energy contained in the mass of a carbon atom is divisible by 10.  And every clock in the world is changed to show the same time, so people who don't live at the "Standard Point," which is some city randomly selected a thousand years ago, have to adjust their lives to fit the clock, regardless of when the sun is up at that location.

[Big John]

^^ There was the French revolution clock that used the day as you described.

[english si]

But with the country on permanent DST, those Bostonians who do wake up at 8:15AM each morning now maximize their waking hours of heat generating daylight during the winter.

Does the house not heat up with the sun when you are asleep?

Those waking up as the sun rises over the horizon are not using the natural heating effect of the sun, getting up before it has a chance to heat the house and so requiring artificial heating. Those waking up afterwards are using it because they get out of their warm bed into a room partially heated by the sun. With permanent DST, those Bostonians waking up at 8.15AM have reduced their use of heat generating daylight by an hour - minimised, not maximised!

And many people need the sun to help them wake up naturally (well everyone does, but some need more of it than others) - this is why those sleep experts said that ideally we'd be on standard time year-round because DST is very bad for sleep (both the late dawns in winter, and the late dusks in summer), and because changes are not great for sleep so you want to keep on one time all year round rather than playing around with the clocks given that we work to them not the sun (which is the heart of this problem).

Now if you live in the Great Plains, the position of the sun can play a key factor to your sleep schedule.  There are only so many hours of daylight each day, and if you are a farmer and got to get so much done before the sun goes down, you get up when the sun tells you.  The difference between East Coast/Great Plain bedtimes is shown pretty clearly on this map. 

And note how all of these are a considerable time after sunset (even mid-summer on DST sunset, ignoring Alaska), whereas we get up roughly around dawn (or a considerable time after it in mid-summer, even with DST). Also note how there is an element of the sun there with places further west in the timezone going to bed later. There are other factors though (starkly seen with Clark County, NV being much later than surrounding counties).

Our days are not symmetrical around solar noon, and never have been, but DST is a shift towards trying to do that, by moving the middle of our day closer to solar noon.

^^ There was the French revolution clock that used the day as you described.

And even that ideology-obsessed totalitarian government called "The Terror" delayed its implementation and while the following, nearly-as-bad, lot did make it the official time of France, they abandoned it's mandatory nature in the law that made the metric system mandatory (decimal time isn't metric, and never has been. The metric unit of time was added after a few years of the system existing - the second) just 6 months later.

It's something even less successful when meeting the real-world as year-round DST - which gets undone quickly everywhere that it was implemented!

[In_Correct]

Ted Turner tried to change the time by five minutes. The attempt failed miserably.

I for one think the Bloodhound Gang got it right when they said "you are inclined to make me rise an hour early just like Daylight Savings Time".  To that end, I'm not looking forward to being forced to become even more of a morning lark against my will (my natural inclination is to be a night owl, but unlike many owls apparently, I work a normal "9-5" office job).  Or to having to wait 10 minutes for the car to warm up and defrost the ice in winter.  Or to no longer being able to see the Christmas lights in my neighborhood (as sunset will now be at least half an hour after I get home every single day of the year).

In any case, we tried this already in the 1970s.  It was quickly abandoned.  Is there any reason to believe things are different now?

In any case, we tried this already in the 1970s.  It was quickly abandoned.  Is there any reason to believe things are different now?

Things are very different now.

News Feed And Weed.

[kalvado]

And many people need the sun to help them wake up naturally (well everyone does, but some need more of it than others) - this is why those sleep experts said that ideally we'd be on standard time year-round because DST is very bad for sleep (both the late dawns in winter, and the late dusks in summer), and because changes are not great for sleep so you want to keep on one time all year round rather than playing around with the clocks given that we work to them not the sun (which is the heart of this problem).
...
Our days are not symmetrical around solar noon, and never have been, but DST is a shift towards trying to do that, by moving the middle of our day closer to solar noon.

if you will, more natural way of doing things may be "wake up with the sun, stay up in the evening regardless". DST is an attempt to reduce variation in sunrize times. We (42 deg north) have about 2 hours variation of sunrise time over the year, reduced to about 1 hr by DST. 

It's something even less successful when meeting the real-world as year-round DST - which gets undone quickly everywhere that it was implemented!

Again, not quite true. A simple quote:

A great map created by Stefano Maggiolo looking at how out of sync the time zones are from solar time.  Shaded green areas are too early, shaded red areas are too late. Throughout the entire world it's somewhat common place for time zones to creep west (ie. more shaded red areas).

Timezone creeping west is, effectively, adding 1 hour to the geographic clock, and effectively implementing year-round DST (in many cases on top of mandated DST).
Overall, year-round clock shift is locally meaningless. People would adopt schedule which works better for them, if no external pressure is applied. There is nothing forcing banks to open at X o'clock, as long as everyone is on the same page.
However, there is external  pressure, and amount of that grows with globalizing things.

I'm always fairly amused at how many east coast people have the luxury of waking up past 7 AM or even later.  Out west the work week tends to bend towards the whims of what the largely east coast driven economy is doing, meaning a lot of people are on the road for a 6 AM or 7 AM start time to their day.

Another example of schedule shifted towards earlier part of the day (=clocks shifted forward).

[jeffandnicole]

And many people need the sun to help them wake up naturally (well everyone does, but some need more of it than others) - this is why those sleep experts said that ideally we'd be on standard time year-round because DST is very bad for sleep (both the late dawns in winter, and the late dusks in summer), and because changes are not great for sleep so you want to keep on one time all year round rather than playing around with the clocks given that we work to them not the sun (which is the heart of this problem).

"Experts" tends to be an overused media term in that it makes whatever they say sound like it's authoritative, when in reality the media either randomly approached someone or had someone call in for self-promotion. All too often the media doesn't even name who the supposed experts are.

Thus argument would be better shown as a need for earlier darkness to enourage people to go to bed earlier.

If the sun rises at 4am or 5am, it doesn't matter for those that are waking up at 6am.

To compensate in the winter for this issue, we'd need to move the clocks two hours *back*, which has never been proposed. 

Actually, there's a bit of conflicting conclusions with what the "so called" experts say, as they don't want the clocks to change, yet they want sunrises to coincide with people waking up. They can't get one over the entire year without the other occurring.

Ted Turner tried to change the time by five minutes. The attempt failed miserably.

If I recall, a lot of this is based on the theory that if a show ends at :03 past the hour, you'll more likely just stay on the channel for the next show since other shows started on other channels and you missed the beginning.  But, this also means that if you're watching another channel and you're flipping around at the top of the hour, you'll see the *ending* of a show you missed, so why bother hanging around another 5 minutes to see the beginning of the next show?

This timing also probably didn't work out too well with VCR recording, which was done manually and most people set at the :00 and :30 minute marks. 

If you're too young to understand recording a show with a VCR, you missed out.

[tradephoric]

Those waking up as the sun rises over the horizon are not using the natural heating effect of the sun, getting up before it has a chance to heat the house and so requiring artificial heating. Those waking up afterwards are using it because they get out of their warm bed into a room partially heated by the sun. With permanent DST, those Bostonians waking up at 8.15AM have reduced their use of heat generating daylight by an hour - minimised, not maximised!

Yeah, but you are ignoring how the heat generating daylight would be maximized at night.  It's clear that the average Bostonian will see their waking hours of daylight increase during the winter if DST was made permanent.  If you don't believe that just take a cursory glance at the average bedtime by US county map.  This shouldn't be rocket science, but i guess equations become unsolvable when you only consider one side of them (ie. only considering the heat generating effects of the sun in the morning).  During Bostonian's waking hours they are looking for ways to keep warm in the winter, and the sun happens to be a pretty effective heating source.

[kalvado]

Those waking up as the sun rises over the horizon are not using the natural heating effect of the sun, getting up before it has a chance to heat the house and so requiring artificial heating. Those waking up afterwards are using it because they get out of their warm bed into a room partially heated by the sun. With permanent DST, those Bostonians waking up at 8.15AM have reduced their use of heat generating daylight by an hour - minimised, not maximised!

Yeah, but you are ignoring how the heat generating daylight would be maximized at night.  It's clear that the average Bostonian will see their waking hours of daylight increase during the winter if DST was made permanent.  If you don't believe that just take a cursory glance at the average bedtime by US county map.  This shouldn't be rocket science, but i guess equations become unsolvable when you only consider one side of them (ie. only considering the heat generating effects of the sun in the morning).  During Bostonian's waking hours they are looking for ways to keep warm in the winter, and the sun happens to be a pretty effective heating source.

Are you trying to evade the law of energy conservation here?

[GaryV]

Do people not heat their homes at night? It's not like we're living in log cabins and have to stoke up the fire when we get up in the morning.

[english si]

During Bostonian's waking hours they are looking for ways to keep warm in the winter, and the sun happens to be a pretty effective heating source.

But under DST-in-winter they would need artificial heating to heat up the house from the house at its coldest without the help of the sun which doesn't kick in until their already up under your ideal scenario whereby people do not stay in bed after dawn because that's 'wasteful'.

I ignore the keeping-the-house-warm for an extra hour in the evening, because maintaining heat is less of an issue energy-wise than warming. And that hour would be right after sunset, when the house has been warmed all day by the sun.

Do people not heat their homes at night? It's not like we're living in log cabins and have to stoke up the fire when we get up in the morning.

Obviously, but assuming tradephoric's dumb argument about heating up the house with the sun is valid, then its better that the sun comes up earlier in the morning so that the house is warm when you get up, rather than getting up before the sun heats your house and having to use artificial heat.

My heating has 5 periods in the year:
1) April to late-September: off unless a cold snap hits
2) late-September to mid-October: on for a bit in the morning to take the chill off for when I wake up because the sun hasn't had time to warm the house (the evenings are fine because the house, after a day being warmed by the sun, takes time to cool)
3) mid-October to late-October: on for the morning, plus a bit in the late evening too because the daytime temperature isn't enough to keep the house warm all the way through to bedtime
4) November to February: always on because its too cold otherwise
5) early- and mid-March: same as 3, but the other side of winter

there is no 6 to mirror 2 because 2 occurs in the month between equinox and falling back, whereas the spring forward is about the equinox and so there's enough daylight to warm the house up enough before I wake up.

[jeffandnicole]

Obviously, but assuming tradephoric's dumb argument about heating up the house with the sun is valid, then its better that the sun comes up earlier in the morning so that the house is warm when you get up, rather than getting up before the sun heats your house and having to use artificial heat.

The sun's angle is so low in the winter that very little warm will occur naturally from that sun in the morning. 

For those that get snow, this is very acutely seen in snow melt.  In the morning, areas that are in full sun in the morning and shady in the afternoon will see snow stick around much longer than areas where it's shady in the morning and full sun in the afternoon.

[tradephoric]

Do people not heat their homes at night? It's not like we're living in log cabins and have to stoke up the fire when we get up in the morning.

Obviously, but assuming tradephoric's dumb argument about heating up the house with the sun is valid, then its better that the sun comes up earlier in the morning so that the house is warm when you get up, rather than getting up before the sun heats your house and having to use artificial heat.

Greenhouses are so dumb.

I ignore the keeping-the-house-warm for an extra hour in the evening, because maintaining heat is less of an issue energy-wise than warming. And that hour would be right after sunset, when the house has been warmed all day by the sun.

Average bedtime in Boston is about 11:45PM.  Sun currently sets at 4:15PM during the winter solstice.  That's 7 1/2 hours after the sun sets in Boston where the heat keeps kicking on to heat people's homes.   If you want to ignore the first hour after sunset, that's still 6 1/2 hours where people have to keep heating their homes before they go to bed.  Regardless of your logic, there are costs associated with heating people's homes after the sun goes down.  That just can't be ignored. 

EDIT:  This whole argument is predicated on the fact that people turn down their thermostats when they go to bed at night.  If you lock your thermostat to 72 degrees 24/7 than you my friend are a freak!

[english si]

if you will, more natural way of doing things may be "wake up with the sun, stay up in the evening regardless". DST is an attempt to reduce variation in sunrize times. We (42 deg north) have about 2 hours variation of sunrise time over the year, reduced to about 1 hr by DST.

Not quite true - more useful unintended consequence (though meaningless here at 51N, as sunrise has a 0442-0806 range. That's over 3 hours despite that range being shrunk by an hour)...

DST has always been about more light in the evenings (when we are more happy to be awake in the dark, compared to the mornings) in the summer.

Thus argument would be better shown as a need for earlier darkness to enourage people to go to bed earlier.

I think you took my italicised bit as the most important. It isn't, but it is important for why DST in the middle of summer is also not great for sleep and 'lighter later' isn't always a good thing. I think the experts are too idealistic, but they are right that.

As for turning the clocks back in winter - it is that what we do currently and why DST was always meant to be seasonal. The dawns in winter are still a bit late for the ideal, but just as there isn't enough daylight to borrow some from the morning to give to the evening, the opposite is likewise true - the issue is latitude, rather than what the time shift between social and solar noons is. That, and getting up too early generally.

----

Of course, Ben Franklin's solution - which was the solution for all humanity before we became obsessed with numbers on a clock - of shifting our days, not the clock - is the superior one. Due an accident of fascism, and failure to undo that, France and Spain are on Central European Time. However, while they have the same timezone as Germany, they work different hours - effectively they are operating in different timezones, but have the same numbers on the clock. For example, the Germans start school at about 8, the French at about 8.30, the Spanish at about 9 - it's not because the Germans are efficient and driven that they start half an hour before the French, and the Spanish don't start half an hour later the French because they are feckless and lazy, but it's because the sun rises an hour later in Spain than in Germany, with France in the middle!

[english si]

Greenhouses are so dumb.

I'm not calling dumb the idea that the sun heats. I'm calling dumb the idea that the sun heats up rooms instantly and so having an hour of sun's heating effect before you get up is somehow wasting that.

Go to a greenhouse just after sunrise - it's not much warmer than outside (and what warmth there is is residual from the previous day). Go to a greenhouse an hour after dawn, and the heating effect of the sun has kicked in a little...

Let's say Bostonian wakes up at 8.15 and go to work at 9. Under standard time, in winter, the house would have had about an hour of daylight to help warm it up - perhaps you wouldn't need to turn up the thermostat (as long as you aren't getting cold air to try and cool it down) because the sun has given you a couple of degrees to make it tolerable. But under DST, the sun has barely any time to warm your house up before you get up - and by the time it has had a meaningful effect, you are out of the door.

Average bedtime in Boston is about 11:45PM.  Sun currently sets at 4:15PM during the winter solstice.  That's 7 1/2 hours after the sun sets in Boston where the heat keeps kicking on to heat people's homes.   If you want to ignore the first hour after sunset, that's still 6 1/2 hours where people have to keep heating their homes before they go to bed.  Regardless of your logic, there are costs associated with heating people's homes after the sun goes down.

I'm not denying there aren't costs to heat your home in the evening, but saying that there are costs involved to heat your home in the morning that you are ignoring, assuming that a just-up sun would do all the work instantly.

An extra hour of stopping the temperature dropping too much in the evening before bed or an extra hour of heating it up from nighttime temperatures to something tolerable without the sun's help? Clearly the latter is more energy intensive.

And your house being too cold due to lack of solar effect is also more easily dealt with at 10pm when unwinding than 8am when getting ready - you just grab a blanket and put it over you.

The sun's angle is so low in the winter that very little warm will occur naturally from that sun in the morning.

Sure, I'm giving the effect a higher value, because somehow it's important to tradephoric that people don't 'waste' the sun's early morning heat giving properties in winter by being in bed while it is happening (of course, they are actually putting that morning sun energy to more use by getting up after the house has had a chance to warm up from it, rather than leaving it before that happens).

And the same low-energy sun is the case in the evening - sun is low, warming effect not very much in that last hour (the afternoon-sunned snow has a double wammy of both the sun's rays, and the higher temperatures because the sun's been warming it all day. The solar energy the snow gets is the same, but the afternoon-sunned snow gets it in a shorter time period).

[kalvado]

if you will, more natural way of doing things may be "wake up with the sun, stay up in the evening regardless". DST is an attempt to reduce variation in sunrize times. We (42 deg north) have about 2 hours variation of sunrise time over the year, reduced to about 1 hr by DST.

Not quite true - more useful unintended consequence (though meaningless here at 51N, as sunrise has a 0442-0806 range. That's over 3 hours despite that range being shrunk by an hour)...

Still we're talking more or less same thing.
Under "work in the morning, play later" arrangement it makes sense to staple extra sunshine to the end of the day, not waste it before work. Keeping "wake up at sunrise" schedule is ideal, but impossible. We're (42N) getting close to maintaining that with DST, you're getting too much sunshine hours in summer to  complain about loosing some. Actually I grew up even further north than 51N, so I know that part of the deal as well.  I assume that, for example Florida (28N) should be close to "why bother?" as their changes are even smaller. 

[kalvado]

Do people not heat their homes at night? It's not like we're living in log cabins and have to stoke up the fire when we get up in the morning.

Obviously, but assuming tradephoric's dumb argument about heating up the house with the sun is valid, then its better that the sun comes up earlier in the morning so that the house is warm when you get up, rather than getting up before the sun heats your house and having to use artificial heat.

Greenhouses are so dumb.

I ignore the keeping-the-house-warm for an extra hour in the evening, because maintaining heat is less of an issue energy-wise than warming. And that hour would be right after sunset, when the house has been warmed all day by the sun.

Average bedtime in Boston is about 11:45PM.  Sun currently sets at 4:15PM during the winter solstice.  That's 7 1/2 hours after the sun sets in Boston where the heat keeps kicking on to heat people's homes.   If you want to ignore the first hour after sunset, that's still 6 1/2 hours where people have to keep heating their homes before they go to bed.  Regardless of your logic, there are costs associated with heating people's homes after the sun goes down.  That just can't be ignored. 

EDIT:  This whole argument is predicated on the fact that people turn down their thermostats when they go to bed at night.  If you lock your thermostat to 72 degrees 24/7 than you my friend are a freak!

Heat transfer would be more or less proportional to temperature difference between indoors and outdoors. If you want to keep more or less similar indoor temperature profile, then there will be no difference in total heat loss if you shift the schedule - not until you have to run both heat and AC on same day.
Or please clearly state what are the hours of colder indoors temperature on resident's DST/non-DST schedule - hours not offset by warmer hours during different time of the day. That would be the only real way to reduce heat loss.

[hbelkins]

I've never liked the earlier sunsets that occur when the time changes from daylight to standard, and if I lived on the eastern edge of Central Time instead of the western edge of Eastern Time, I'd like them even less. They're downright depressing (seasonal affective disorder is real). My mornings consist of the grooming ritual and driving to work, and I don't need sunlight to do that.

I guess the point was really driven home for me several years ago when I attended the road meet in Springfield, Mass., which occurred in November after the time change. The early sunset was a shocker and a downer.

[Road Hog]

The Nashville area, on the eastern edge of Central, has the sun peaking over the horizon at 5:30 a.m. near the summer solstice on DST. The sunset is just a little past 8 p.m. That is an area that might benefit from being on ET with a clock change.