4 ms·

UK sleep experts say it's time to kill daylight saving for good

28 points by DamonHD 2y ago

DamonHD 2y ago
Today (fairly near Greenwich) we are back on sensible time, with solar noon at clock noon near enough.
- Ekaros 2y ago
  As it should be. If people want more light in certain time of day, let's do it by moving schedules. It is not actually that big of an deal.
  - andrepd 2y ago
    Isn't this, in effect, what daylight saving time is? Moving all schedules 1h forward/backward 2x per year?
    - DamonHD 2y ago
      Except that sunset/sunrise shift by four hours in the UK, so the 1h messing around makes virtually no difference anyway, for the trouble that it causes,
  - rightbyte 2y ago
    You are describing daylight saving time. I think it is nice to put an extra hour of sun in the evening. Most people don't get up at like 5am to get the first hour of sunlight. As the day gets shorter you'd be better off putting it in the middle of the day to keep the morning lit up.
  - bartread 2y ago
    Honestly, I have never particularly enjoyed that it gets light here at 4AM in the summer, with the false damn beginning nearly ann hour earlier, even with DST: we certainly don’t need it getting light any earlier. During the summer it has already been light for hours before I actually need to rise even with DST. To me this decades of scientific investigation seems to have come up with a conclusion that may well only make sense within a narrower range of latitudes rather than being some sort of universal truth. Also, it’s in the winter that it’s dark when I rise and leave the house, which apparently is a problem I should worry about in summer according to this piece. It reads pretty nonsensically to me.
chiefalchemist 2y ago
Not joking: I'm surprised this isn't a campaign issue (in the USA). It would be an easy way to get attention, support, etc. And it wouldn't be a fluff issue. There are real tangible benefits to getting rid of daylight savings. That said we're talking about an organization that can't balance its own budget; that there's a dedt ceiling crisis every few months. Why address something that's easy to fix and the people want?
- stillwaitingpls 2y ago
  I think our lame ass congress wants to get rid of it by eliminating standard time. Completely useless group of humans.
  - morpheuskafka 2y ago
    That still counts. It would technically be eliminating DST shifting, and then redefining the standard time zones as minus one hour. It would just be the new standard and no more switching.
  - lupusreal 2y ago
    We should eliminate (user-facing) standard time. Now that virtually everybody has time-telling computers instead of just mechanical clocks, we have a real opportunity to go back to True Solar Time. Noon can be set to precisely when the sun is highest in the sky at your precise location. This is enabled by smartphones knowing the astronomical date and your precise position on the geoid. Your noon and the noon of people a few miles away would be slightly different, but computers can automatically handle all the calculations required to coordinate with these time differences. As a species, we didn't stop using solar time until sometime around the industrial revolution, when getting workers into factories at a precise predictable time became important to the people with money. (Some, such as people in monasteries, lived their lives according to clocks before this for superstitious reasons, but that wasn't the norm for the general population.) We now have the technology to free ourselves from this clock tyranny and restore balance between our lives and daylight, if only we are willing to once again break from tradition.
downvotetruth 2y ago
[flagged]
Sharlin 2y ago
This was almost happening in the EU, with real momentum, but then came COVID and Russian invasion and it was buried under more pressing matters :/
- ginko 2y ago
  They wanted to go with permanent DST though, which would have sucked.
  - rcarmo 2y ago
    At least it was a decision.
  - fanf2 2y ago
    The EU said it would be up to each country to decide how to set their clocks, and it got to the point where the council of ministers (ie, the governments of each country) had to make a decision when it all stalled.
jessekv 2y ago
As a child, time changes were my first "peak behind the curtain" where I began to clue in to the artificiality of clocks, and later many other social constructs. To me, the absurdity of time changes is a reminder of how much of our life is governed by strange conventions and practices from a bygone era. I would like it if we stopped doing time changes, but until then, at some level I still enjoy observing this strange tradition.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
mrtksn 2y ago
In Turkey, they killed the daylight savings and people are hating it because it means waking up in the dark in the winter. However It's an active political topic, creates 1 hour difference with the European neighbors and the secular Turks believe that the government is doing it to separate them from Europe and bring them closer with the Arab neighbors(Which is somewhat plausible, the country's population and economic activities are concentrated in the western part), which might be influencing the opinions on the matter.
- apothegm 2y ago
  Did they go with summer time year round? Standard (winter) time makes it brighter in the morning at the same nominal hour. Summer (adjusted) time makes it darker. One of the reasons I hate that the US extended summer time a couple decades ago. I’d kill to have year round standard time!
  - mrtksn 2y ago
    They went with the summer time
    - apothegm 2y ago
      Gross.
mytailorisrich 2y ago
In Europe daylight saving started, depending on country I suppose, during WWI and then again after the 1973 oil crisis. This was to save energy and it has been saving a lot of energy although apparently changes in technology and habits mean that savings are decreasing. It's that time year so plenty of articles on the topic. For example, read one saying that official stats in France show that daylight saving saved 440GWh in 2009. So certainly not absurd. With the climate crisis, net zero, EVs, etc it seems like a bad time to abolish it if it indeed does save significant amounts of energy.
rcarmo 2y ago
This repeatedly comes up every year and yet politicians do absolutely nothing about it. The EU had a resolution it never enacted, and as a result I spend half the year off-kilter (waking up, having lunch and going to bed an hour off what feels “natural”). Worse, some local governments (like Portugal) opposed the resolution on the grounds that it would impact tourism, which just goes to show you how much they value their people’s health…
cameldrv 2y ago
Daylight savings is awesome. It massively helps people wake up at a time more in sync with the sun.
nuc1e0n 2y ago
Sticking with GMT specifically throughout the year would have economic benefits as well by making it identical to UTC, which is in use well outside of the little European corner of the world.
realaleris149 2y ago
This was the last year we had to change the clock... And was the last one for about 5 years.

28 points by DamonHD 2y ago

DamonHD 2y ago

Today (fairly near Greenwich) we are back on sensible time, with solar noon at clock noon near enough.

Ekaros 2y ago
As it should be. If people want more light in certain time of day, let's do it by moving schedules. It is not actually that big of an deal.
- andrepd 2y ago
  Isn't this, in effect, what daylight saving time is? Moving all schedules 1h forward/backward 2x per year?
  - DamonHD 2y ago
    Except that sunset/sunrise shift by four hours in the UK, so the 1h messing around makes virtually no difference anyway, for the trouble that it causes,
- rightbyte 2y ago
  You are describing daylight saving time. I think it is nice to put an extra hour of sun in the evening. Most people don't get up at like 5am to get the first hour of sunlight. As the day gets shorter you'd be better off putting it in the middle of the day to keep the morning lit up.
- bartread 2y ago
  Honestly, I have never particularly enjoyed that it gets light here at 4AM in the summer, with the false damn beginning nearly ann hour earlier, even with DST: we certainly don’t need it getting light any earlier. During the summer it has already been light for hours before I actually need to rise even with DST. To me this decades of scientific investigation seems to have come up with a conclusion that may well only make sense within a narrower range of latitudes rather than being some sort of universal truth. Also, it’s in the winter that it’s dark when I rise and leave the house, which apparently is a problem I should worry about in summer according to this piece. It reads pretty nonsensically to me.

chiefalchemist 2y ago

Not joking: I'm surprised this isn't a campaign issue (in the USA). It would be an easy way to get attention, support, etc. And it wouldn't be a fluff issue. There are real tangible benefits to getting rid of daylight savings. That said we're talking about an organization that can't balance its own budget; that there's a dedt ceiling crisis every few months. Why address something that's easy to fix and the people want?

stillwaitingpls 2y ago
I think our lame ass congress wants to get rid of it by eliminating standard time. Completely useless group of humans.
- morpheuskafka 2y ago
  That still counts. It would technically be eliminating DST shifting, and then redefining the standard time zones as minus one hour. It would just be the new standard and no more switching.
- lupusreal 2y ago
  We should eliminate (user-facing) standard time. Now that virtually everybody has time-telling computers instead of just mechanical clocks, we have a real opportunity to go back to True Solar Time. Noon can be set to precisely when the sun is highest in the sky at your precise location. This is enabled by smartphones knowing the astronomical date and your precise position on the geoid. Your noon and the noon of people a few miles away would be slightly different, but computers can automatically handle all the calculations required to coordinate with these time differences. As a species, we didn't stop using solar time until sometime around the industrial revolution, when getting workers into factories at a precise predictable time became important to the people with money. (Some, such as people in monasteries, lived their lives according to clocks before this for superstitious reasons, but that wasn't the norm for the general population.) We now have the technology to free ourselves from this clock tyranny and restore balance between our lives and daylight, if only we are willing to once again break from tradition.

downvotetruth 2y ago

[flagged]

Sharlin 2y ago

This was almost happening in the EU, with real momentum, but then came COVID and Russian invasion and it was buried under more pressing matters :/

ginko 2y ago
They wanted to go with permanent DST though, which would have sucked.
- rcarmo 2y ago
  At least it was a decision.
- fanf2 2y ago
  The EU said it would be up to each country to decide how to set their clocks, and it got to the point where the council of ministers (ie, the governments of each country) had to make a decision when it all stalled.

jessekv 2y ago

As a child, time changes were my first "peak behind the curtain" where I began to clue in to the artificiality of clocks, and later many other social constructs. To me, the absurdity of time changes is a reminder of how much of our life is governed by strange conventions and practices from a bygone era. I would like it if we stopped doing time changes, but until then, at some level I still enjoy observing this strange tradition.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

mrtksn 2y ago

In Turkey, they killed the daylight savings and people are hating it because it means waking up in the dark in the winter. However It's an active political topic, creates 1 hour difference with the European neighbors and the secular Turks believe that the government is doing it to separate them from Europe and bring them closer with the Arab neighbors(Which is somewhat plausible, the country's population and economic activities are concentrated in the western part), which might be influencing the opinions on the matter.

apothegm 2y ago
Did they go with summer time year round? Standard (winter) time makes it brighter in the morning at the same nominal hour. Summer (adjusted) time makes it darker. One of the reasons I hate that the US extended summer time a couple decades ago. I’d kill to have year round standard time!
- mrtksn 2y ago
  They went with the summer time
  - apothegm 2y ago
    Gross.

mytailorisrich 2y ago

In Europe daylight saving started, depending on country I suppose, during WWI and then again after the 1973 oil crisis. This was to save energy and it has been saving a lot of energy although apparently changes in technology and habits mean that savings are decreasing. It's that time year so plenty of articles on the topic. For example, read one saying that official stats in France show that daylight saving saved 440GWh in 2009. So certainly not absurd. With the climate crisis, net zero, EVs, etc it seems like a bad time to abolish it if it indeed does save significant amounts of energy.

rcarmo 2y ago

This repeatedly comes up every year and yet politicians do absolutely nothing about it. The EU had a resolution it never enacted, and as a result I spend half the year off-kilter (waking up, having lunch and going to bed an hour off what feels “natural”). Worse, some local governments (like Portugal) opposed the resolution on the grounds that it would impact tourism, which just goes to show you how much they value their people’s health…

cameldrv 2y ago

Daylight savings is awesome. It massively helps people wake up at a time more in sync with the sun.

nuc1e0n 2y ago

Sticking with GMT specifically throughout the year would have economic benefits as well by making it identical to UTC, which is in use well outside of the little European corner of the world.

realaleris149 2y ago

This was the last year we had to change the clock... And was the last one for about 5 years.