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Daylight Savings Time - for Real?

 
steward
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Recently the Senate passed a bill that would make Daylight Savings Time (or DST) permanent by unanimous consent.





Source

What do you feel?

Are you glad that Daylight Savings Time is permanent?
 
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I would like to go back to: When the sun is highest, it's noon.
 
Anne Miller
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Today it is really confusing around here.

The phone and my desktop computer have the right time.

All clocks are set with yesterday's time.

The Tiny Kitty did fine with the training I had prepared her with.

The dog wanted to eat lunch at 10 am.

Me, too as I was starving.  Just had no idea what to have for lunch though me and the dog waiting it out until 11 am.
 
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A friend did some research and it suggested that permanent standard time was healthier for people. The wider one's time zone, the more that was true.

Personally, I don't care if it's permanent DST or Standard time, so long as it doesn't change. There's *more* than enough evidence that particularly the spring change, caused an increase in accidents and other problems. It also didn't significantly help the fuel usage it was supposed to help reduce.

I'm with Anne that my stomach takes several days to "adjust" to the change. BC approved the change several years ago, but it was dependent on the states south of us, including California - nice if the Senate Bill is all it will take to make sure we abolish this changing business!

My chickens and ducks informed me in no uncertain terms that they agree with Jordon, although it was more along the lines of, "when the sun comes up, it's time to let us out to forage and when the sun is getting low, it's time to put us in a safe place to sleep". They make an exception to that rule if that cold, white stuff is covering their grass...
 
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I forgot that was today and woke up at 3:50 am, then went in to work.  I think it is time (pun intended) to relook at the idea of daylight saving time.
 
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I'm dreading the change to permanent daylight savings time. The sun won't come over the mountain until almost 10:30 in the morning for the worst of the winter.  It'll be so depressing. The dark of winter is hard enough for me already. If we have to stick to one, I wish it'd be standard time. In the summer, I'm in bed before it's fully dark anyway, so I'd happily lose an hour on that end.
 
Jan White
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The idea that our time needs to align with that of our neighbours seems ridiculous to me in the internet age. Saskatchewan has done just fine for decades without changing its clocks, as far as I can tell.
 
Jay Angler
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Jan White wrote: Saskatchewan has done just fine for decades without changing its clocks, as far as I can tell.

That's because traditionally, they were mostly farmers - guess what, their animals don't read clocks any better than mine do!
 
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I would like to go back to: When the sun is highest, it's noon.



This system was tried in a parallel universe, but it turned out to be too complicated for interacting with anyone located more than a few miles east or west of me, and often impossible for those located far to the north or south.

A parallel friend told parallel-me that he'd call at noon his time. I had to look up the longitude of his house and the longitude of my house to calculate that noon his time was... umm, lessee... 10:43:02 my time. I then tried to link my parallel friend in Barrow Alaska to the noon call, but she just laughed and said that she had no way of telling when it was noon, as it was late November and she wouldn't be seeing the sun until late February.
 
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I live in a place that a few years ago did away with daylight savings time. I'll admit, our version was terrible: there was no set date, the government would announce "next Sunday, clocks back", not sure how they chose the date, and there was the inevitable bumbling scramble that day as everyone screwed up their clocks, alarms, and appointments.

But I'll tell you: without daylight savings time, as a person who loves summer and the outdoors, it's terrible. In the winter the sun still goes down at 5. But we don't have those amazing summer nights when it's 8:15 and still a bit of light in the sky. The days are short, I feel like we're shortchanged, in the garden and in leisure.

(Funny enough, for years I lived in Japan, which also has no daylight savings time, and never noticed, probably because I worked very long hours and it was always dark when I left work: I never noticed when the sun went down. I didn't get much outdoor time, so now I think I'm really noticing.)

 
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I'm in Jay's camp. I don't care what arbitrary numbers are attached to parts of the real day, I just want them to stay put. If I don't like where the sun is, I can change my habits and practices to do stuff earlier or later.
 
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From what I've seen most of science shows that our biological clocks are more in tune with standard time. The research indicates also that there are several adverse health effects associated with changing from one standard of time to the other.
This makes me wonder why we're not looking at a national change to standard time me rather than daylight savings.
To minimize the adverse effects of this unnatural situation imposed upon us willing or not, my wife and I, who do not have to punch clocks for employment merely leave our bedroom clock alone. This way we get up in the morning and go to bed at the exact same "time" all year long. During the rest of the day we use the time that we're supposed to!  Then we  adjust animal feeding schedules etc to the new time, since none of our critters have a clue about time changes.
 
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I'd like to see the chart of sunrise/sunset for if the zones were all cut in half.

Personally, I'd prefer to live in a way that doesn't look at the clock. I mostly do, and that makes me happy. I never know what time it is (or what day of the week it is) and I'm good with that.
 
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Obviously, humanity just needs to find a way to collapse the moon into a second sun.
 
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If I had my 'druthers, I'd choose standard time, permanently. But, 80 - 90% of the time, I wake when my body says to wake, eat when I'm hungry, and sleep when I'm sleepy. My critters aren't allowed a clock, and get their daily care when I'm ready to give it. But, neither of us has a job to go to. (Retirement has its perks!) But, I've missed Mass, been late for work (in the past), been late for or missed social events, and more, because of the evil time changes. It needs to stop. It serves no purpose that makes any sense, to me.
 
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I recently heard the argument that DST was so that children wouldn`t have to walk to school in the dark. I don`t see a problem with setting our clocks however we like, as long as we remember we have to deal with others who may set theirs differently. Maybe have 2 clock settings, a 'home time' and an 'away time' for days when planned/timed interaction is necessary.  
 
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That sounds like a good idea - home time and away time. That way I won't have to upset my body (or the pets) twice a year when we change from Greenwich mean time to British summer time. Back in the 60s there was an experiment where for 3 years (I think) the clocks remained on BST. As a child, I remember thinking it was strange that we needed fluorescent clothing to go to school on a morning when we hadn't needed it to come home in the twilight when on GMT. Years later I read that more accidents happen in dim morning light than dim evening light. The experiment ended because people in the north of Scotland complained about how late it got light in winter.
 
Anne Miller
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Even though I tried to train every dog, cat, and hubby about the new permanent DST and even me we are still struggling to get it right.

I am hoping those Senators don't change their minds and vote again for something else.
 
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I always thought it was a good idea to implement summer work hours instead of daylight savings time.

Companies/local governments/etc just tell their employees that work starts and ends an hour later during summer time.

That way you don't have to mess with changing clocks, businesses already have different operating hours anyway.

Whatever though, I'm pretty happy with permanent standard time in Japan. Took a while to see it as nice, but I do now.
 
Anne Miller
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Anne Miller wrote:I am hoping those Senators don't change their minds and vote again for something else.



I now found out that is only half of the story as this is still in the House.
 
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Daylight savings time saves a huge amount of electricity. That was the reason it was started. Just look it up. It saves electricity because in summer without daylight savings time, people sleep through hours of daylight in the morning and stay awake longer after dark, using more lighting.

For farmers, of course you can ignore DST, just changing the "name" of the time that you do things with or for your animals and keeping them on the same time system all year. The animals don't care if it's called 6:00 or 7:00 so you can feed them at "6:00" for half the year and at "7:00" for half the year.
 
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The system doesn't seem to be letting me give you a thumbs up but replies are nicer, anyway.

I like your idea to avoid the upset changing the clocks can cause. I'm in the UK and ours change as well. British Summer Time strikes we as wholly unnecessary as we already have 19-20 hours of daylight at midsummer and who needs it till way past bedtime 🤷‍♀️.
 
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Rebecca Norman wrote:Daylight savings time saves a huge amount of electricity. That was the reason it was started. Just look it up. It saves electricity because in summer without daylight savings time, people sleep through hours of daylight in the morning and stay awake longer after dark, using more lighting.


Daylight savings time saves energy on lighting, but the effects on total electricity usage are less clear.

Examining electricity usage and billing since the statewide change, Kotchen and his colleague Laura Grant unexpectedly found that daylight time led to a 1 percent overall rise in residential electricity use, costing the state an extra $9 million. Although daylight time reduces demand for household lighting, the researchers suggest that it increased demand for cooling on summer evenings and heating in early spring and late fall mornings.


https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-daylight-saving-times-save-energy/
 
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