I would vote for any Presidential Candidate and House Representative regardless of party on the promise of leaving the clocks on DST all year around. That's all they would have to do to get my vote....nothing else.
Which goes against the current scientific/medical consensus on the issue:
> As an international organization of scientists dedicated to studying circadian and other biological rhythms, the Society for Research on Biological Rhythms (SRBR) engaged experts in the field to write a Position Paper on the consequences of choosing to live on DST or Standard Time (ST). The authors take the position that, based on comparisons of large populations living in DST or ST or on western versus eastern edges of time zones, the advantages of permanent ST outweigh switching to DST annually or permanently.
* https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/07487304198541...
American Academy of Sleep Medicine (with 36 footnotes if you want to dig further):
> It is the position of the AASM that the U.S. should eliminate seasonal time changes in favor of a national, fixed, year-round time. Current evidence best supports the adoption of year-round standard time, which aligns best with human circadian biology and provides distinct benefits for public health and safety.
* https://jcsm.aasm.org/doi/10.5664/jcsm.8780
* https://doi.org/10.5664/jcsm.8780
See my comment from a few days ago for more references:
"Less than 200 years ago, humans organized their daily routines by the sun clock ... which was in synchrony with their body clock. Now, most of us ... use electric light at night... these new conditions challenge our health and can cause safety problems, [and] ... become even worse under Daylight Saving Time (DST)".
It seems like most people would agree that living in synchrony to the solar day is better for us, but I would think that DST would help with that when the sun starts to rise around 6AM and many people aren't awake yet.
Why would eliminating DST help?
* https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/07487304198541...
> Although DST has always been a political issue, we need to discuss the biology associated with these decisions because the circadian clock plays a crucial role in how the outcome of these discussions potentially impacts our health and performance. Here, we give the necessary background to understand how the circadian clock, the social clock, the sun clock, time zones, and DST interact.
* https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2019.0094...
Personally I do not have time/desire to crawl down this specific rabbit hole, so I'm just going to go by what the Abstracts and Conclusions say. Feel free to follow the various citations in these links if you want more details.
It seems weird to say this when you've posted dozens of times on this topic with many, many links and quotes to the arguments that support your position. Are you not at all curious about whether the abstracts and conclusions are actually true?
* https://twitter.com/ChronobioCanada/status/13161222923180687...
So the end result may be 'large', but it's only a modest amount of effort that snowballs.
> Are you not at all curious about whether the abstracts and conclusions are actually true?
No more curious than going into the guts of an IPCC report to see if the abstracts and conclusions about climate change are true. In the post-Gutenberg world it's hard to be an expert in everything, so we have to trust others to get the details right in other fields: on this topic I'm willing to delegate.
Are you not yet convinced that the position paper is making stronger claims than the research they cite can support?
Every time DST comes up people say "I like daylight when I leave the office". Which is fine. And I like not having to wear a mask… but I do it anyway because I don't want to spend the energy reading the papers, so I'll just trust the experts.
My province passed some DST legislation last fall—put forward by some random legislator without any consultations AFAICT—and the experts weighed in after the fact:
* https://twitter.com/ChronobioCanada/status/13161222923180687...
On this topic I'm willing to delegate things out to others. I just pass along the my 'research' in case someone may choose to nerd out.
And given that it appears that most sleep and chronobiology societies, in multiple countries, come to the same conclusion/position, seems that there's a strong leaning in one direction in the research.
It’s disingenuous to compare disease research for which there is volumes of direct evidence to daylight research for which is very little research, and the research is indirect - which the SRBR plainly admits, when you read beyond the abstract. This is one way they’re misleading you, by leaving the uncertainty out of the abstracts and conclusions. You’re doing yourself a disservice if care about this at all and you’re really not reading past the abstract. And I know you care about this a little.
How do you arrive at the claim “most” societies agree with SRBR? I’ve seen two of them, SRBR and AASM. Do you have a survey of all the societies that have studied DST? Most scientists agree that the appeal to authority argument is a fallacy.
* https://srbr.org/about-us/other-societies/
It's probably a good place to start.
The very first publication I found in 2 minutes following links randomly, from the starting place you provided says:
“Repeatedly, [Social Jet Lag] has been found to be a risk factor for higher body mass index (BMI) or even obesity, depressive symptoms, and for behaviour that is hazardous to health, such as smoking and poor dietary habits (for a review see [15]). The effects found by Borisenkov et al. (2017) [14] correspond to a statistically small to medium effect size (r = 0.2).
Roenneberg, Winnebeck, et al. [8] however recently claimed that this effect was “biologically large”. While that may be true, such a claim is unjustified so long as we lack information about the practical meaningfulness of differences in SJL on an interval scale” [1] (emphasis mine)
This is exactly what I’ve been saying. The health claims of DST are being exaggerated. I don’t have any problem with their conclusion that perennial Standard Time seems to have “higher” support than perennial Daylight Savings, based on the available and indirect evidence, but SRBR and others calling it conclusive and “strong” is not something that either the science nor most scientists agree with. Your claim that there’s strong consensus isn’t true.
Are there any chronobiology or sleep societies that are advocating either (a) leaving the twice-yearly time jump as it is or (b) switching to year-round DST?
> Scientists around the world support this initiative to adopt Standard Time, and statements have been issued by the U.S.-based Society for Research on Biological Rhythms, the European Biological Rhythms Society, and the European Sleep Research Society. As Canadian biological rhythm researchers supporting evidence-based policy, we strongly recommend a switch to permanent Standard Time.
* https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-turn-back-th...
* https://archive.is/f441n (in case of paywall)
The main regions that do DST are US, Canada, and EU (30-50˚ latitude):
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time_by_countr...
And all of the societies that cover these areas say (AFAICT) go to year-round Standard Time.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/us-tried-year-round-daylight...
Changing the clock back and forth is unhealthy for everyone. We need to standardize on one time for our sanity and health. I use to prefer Standard time but now prefer DST, I don't know it just agrees with me more now that I am older. Lets try it again and see if anyone complains....
Presumably, they want their schedule moved around so they can see what they're doing. There's no reason that the clock itself needs to change for that, though. Just unions forcing employers into a "9-5 in summer, 10-6 in winter" schedule would work fine.
They do construction in the winter here.
And honestly, construction companies in Indiana used to close during the darkest months - I knew many that would get unemployment for that time period.
And pretty powerful ones, too. I remember the time when we had a very light winter and construction work didn't stop for that season. A building some 100 meters from my grandparents was being finished, a lot of roof work was happening. They had a light on that roof - when they turned it on in the middle of the night, my grandfather's room was lit as if it was just an overcast afternoon. I can only imagine that for the workers there, it felt like high noon on a cloudless summer day.
That could be solved by summer/winter schedule being recommended across industries - but then you might end up back with an effective DST anyway - forcing new sleeping patterns in the shift...
I assume your parents were home when you got home at eight - but how about the early shift - were you alone from 1330 until 1700?
And with people flighing across time zones all the time, and it's not stopping them from taking holidays in a different time zone, i feel people are making an issue out of nothing.
When you change the clock, it affects everybody. But people can change their own (business's) schedule without affecting anyone else.
If everyone changes, you can keep all the dependencies the same, otherwise you have to reconsider all dependencies.
This is theoretically true about a lot of things, but we don’t try to actually do it for almost any other case. For example, it would be easier to accommodate wheelchairs if we just outlawed stairs and made it so every grade-separation must only be bridged by a incline. But we don’t do that. We build the incline, but we also continue to build stairs.
We've short days in winter so one less dark hour in the morning is one dark hour more in the evening. Around Christmas it gets dark at 15:30. While sun raises at 10:00.
Since the change between standard time and DST does not come as a surprise, I do that slowly over the course of a month. When the change actually happens, I drop the hour of extra time I gained in the morning and be done with it.
This might not apply to people with kids or living in confined living conditions with others who would be disturbed by someone waking earlier. Beside that, it is just a matter of foresight and preparedness.
I felt like shite while I was still treating the time change like a flight between timezones (that is as happening suddenly). This is also why I take arguments about time changes from people who fly frequently not serious. It's not different from the jetlag that they subject themselves to willfully.
Cross time zone collaboration is made harder.
Mostly, I am aware of the DST shenanigans in my local jurisdiction, but keeping track of other people's DST is an extra hassle.
Just not mucking with the clocks is easier.
> It's not different from the jetlag that they subject themselves to willfully.
Just because you are willing to indulge in some pain to achieve some end, doesn't make the pain go away.
What I've seen in practice, is that when working in Australia we had recurring meetings set in California local time. So those moved around 2h during the year.
When people change their hours, they usually tell you. When they change to DST, they just assume you know.
For every edge case, the better solution seems to be that they adjust their schedule seasonally.
Speaking for myself, having lived through summer time/winter time schedule around the year in the same location, I vastly prefer more light in the evenings. The effect on my well-being is so pronounced, that it overshadows most of the concerns and points against it.
Strong agreement - the clocks going forward in the spring pretty much marks the time here in Scotland where you can start doing things outdoors in the evenings during the week - also helps that the weather usually starts being less miserable about this time as well.
Unfortunately, here in England, there is no flexibility for adjusting our timetables in the winter: the length of the school day is roughly equal to the duration of daylight. There is therefore no point in changing the offset from UTC in the winter.
That's the theory, anyway. But perhaps some kind of magic happens if you change the time to UTC+1 in the winter? Unfortunately, no: they tried it around 1970 and it was a disaster just as rational people said it would be.
In Scotland the duration of winter daylight is shorter than the school day. Perhaps it's still better to have twilight for travelling in both directions rather than light in one direction and total darkness in the other? In any case, the Scots were not happy with the 1968-1971 experiment of having UTC+1 in the winter.
So let's just have UTC all year in England and Scotland, please.
That's not what I meant at all!
I want that extra hour of light in the evenings - which makes a big difference here in April. The fact that this happens to occur at the time when the weather starts improving adds to the desire to actually get outside more in the evenings. Nobody thinks that the change to BST causes the better weather :-|
Edit: And anyway - I actually prefer the system as it currently is.
If your problem is that your working day is too early or too late in the day, maybe thats what should be changed - not everybody's clocks.
Anyway, despite my early schedule, I STILL find that this only buys me barely an hour of daylight in the winter when I get home. Staying on DST year-round would give me an extra hour of time to play outside with the kids, go for a family walk, etc. in the winter months. Selfishly, I'd love it.
And I say selfishly, but I don't think it's entirely selfish. It's not like I'm the only person in this boat. As another commenter pointed out, most social activities tend to happen after work/school in the evenings. I'm imagining the majority of people having more time for outside socializing, exercising, etc. if you just started the school/work day in a couple of hours of darkness and then let them have the sunlight after it was over...
Midday should be the hour when the sun is highest in your timezone, and should stay there all year round.
For people who live on fixed schedules (AKA large swaths of society), changing the clock is how you campaign for schools/work/recreational organizations to start earlier. It is vastly more effective than solving the huge coordination problem of trying to get these independent organizations to each separately change their interlocking schedules.
On the flipside, it (1) seems vaguely annoying to a minority of people who have more flexibility in their schedules and don't need this (but that same flexibility should insulate them from any negative effects) and (2) has some random and irrelevant effect on the location of the sun in the sky at different clock times.
This is irrelevant, as I'd like to have more chance to enjoy the sunset in a park in a company, not just by myself. I also would like my children to have at least an hour of the sun light after school, not before, when it absolutely doesn't matter as they are still groggy and can't really enjoy it. What I was trying to convey in my other comments, this is not strictly a personal issue.
Effect on adults is less pronounced, but it still puts a strain on us to shift our schedule by an hour.
... yet for what? Original reasons why this practice was started barely apply today. Light bulbs are efficient and we waste much more electricity in other ways. Let alone that many offices are lit up all day anyway.
FWIW, my kids (~8yo, ~5yo) didn't even notice the time shift in the Netherlands let alone be affected by it. For adults, (me and my wife), it was a mild surprise. We first suspected that clock had gone bonkers only for me to realise the DST change. We were moving to a DST country from a non-DST one so the net effect for us was amusing, at best. Otherwise I don't remember any disruption to our schedule at all.
Maybe it's a big enough of disruption in the North America?
The problem is teenagers and up.
It's a huge disruption everywhere.
www.businessinsider.com/daylight-saving-time-is-deadly-2018-3
That is some serious overstatement. I have kids.
I now live in a country that doesn't honor DST, and I have to say, it is a convenient thing, and my only annoyance is coordinating with countries that do honor it. The idea of 'more /less' daylight is not the factor people make it out to be and it is adjusted to fast.
(The worst is when you are living in Australia and are trying to coordinate with someone in the norther hemisphere like Europe or the US, then you have to deal with double the DST shenanigans.)
Having experienced a few life changes that have me more consistently waking earlier (most specifically having a puppy who wakes on a schedule of her own, and having developed sleep habit around that), I’m not so sure anymore. It was very very hard to get through the darkest months of this winter where my first couple waking hours felt more like bedtime than bedtime did.
I’m still open to the idea, but I’m a lot more sympathetic to the morning difficulties than I was before.
First, weather. In the cold months, when you have to worry about icy roads and fog, the worst time for those is in the morning. The coldest time of day is usually right around sunrise. A morning commute in darkness, or even shortly after sunrise, is before the ice has melted and the fog has cleared.
The evening commute comes after a day where the sun has been warming things. It is much more likely that the road conditions will be better by then.
Second, volume. People tend to head out to work or school or their first outside of the day during a narrower range of hours than when they come home.
A morning darkness commute then ends up combining the worst road conditions of the day with the most people on the roads. The evening commute usually has better road conditions and is spread out over more hours so traffic isn't as dense.
Industrial workers typically work 07:30-15:30, sunrise is 09:20, sunset 15:15. Starting an hour earlier wouldn't make much difference but at least going home tired after a long day would happen before sunset.
Wouldn't help office workers at all, they typical work 8 to 16 or 8:30 to 16:30.
We tried permanent summertime in the UK. It was great success in the south but the Scots scuppered it complaining that children had to go to school in the dark. Well all my children were brought up in Norway even further north and they all went to school in the dark and came to no harm whatsoever. They start school earlier here anyway.
Edit: Scot -> Scots
That's a really low bar for a political candidate to win your vote.
The cynic in me thinks that perhaps you don't deserve to vote after all.
I'm sure I will get downvoted by some / many HNers, but seriously... Do you honestly think that this is the right approach to use your right to vote, considering that many people in the past gave their life to give it to you?
Actually, I think it's a fairly high bar. At least in my interpretation:
>> That's all they would have to do to get my vote....nothing else.
I interpret this as the candidate in question should not make any other promises.
> I'm sure I will get downvoted by some / many HNers, but seriously... Do you honestly think that this is the right approach to use your right to vote, considering that many people in the past gave their life to give it to you?
Eh, voting is a waste of time, if you goal is to change anything. (It's a good use of your time, if voting makes you feel good, or helps you with your tribe.)