Should we continue to change time twice a year?

[Airbrush]

"Daylight saving time was first introduced in the United States in 1918 under the Standard Time Act as a measure to save on fuel costs during the First World War by adding an extra hour of sunlight to the day....

"In 2005, Congress amended the Uniform Time Act to expand daylight saving time to the period in effect today: Starting on the second Sunday of March and ending on the first Sunday of November, according to the Congressional Research Service. This move was again for energy saving purposes.

"A Department of Energy study following the amendment’s implementation found the extra four weeks of daylight saving time saved around 0.5% in total electricity daily in the U.S., equaling energy savings of 1.3 billion kilowatt-hours annually."

Who invented daylight saving time? Time change purpose and origins (usatoday.com)

I don't care which one, standard or DST, just stay with one. Anyone in favor of continuing to change the time twice every year?

[dimreepr]

21 hours ago, Airbrush said:

"Daylight saving time was first introduced in the United States in 1918 under the Standard Time Act as a measure to save on fuel costs during the First World War by adding an extra hour of sunlight to the day....

"In 2005, Congress amended the Uniform Time Act to expand daylight saving time to the period in effect today: Starting on the second Sunday of March and ending on the first Sunday of November, according to the Congressional Research Service. This move was again for energy saving purposes.

"A Department of Energy study following the amendment’s implementation found the extra four weeks of daylight saving time saved around 0.5% in total electricity daily in the U.S., equaling energy savings of 1.3 billion kilowatt-hours annually."

Who invented daylight saving time? Time change purpose and origins (usatoday.com)

I don't care which one, standard or DST, just stay with one. Anyone in favor of continuing to change the time twice every year?

Employers care, they want more natural light during working hours, all that free vitamin D makes less sad worker's... 

The night shift, on their own... 🤞

Edited March 11 by dimreepr

[TheVat]

Where I live DST actually increases fossil fuel use for the first 3 months, because March-May are still heating months and people tend to turn up their furnaces upon arising in the morning.  Since early morning is when the overnight low temperature happens, this time change moves morning activities one hour closer to that overnight low and so the furnace runs longer to get the dwelling up to room temperature.  And old energy use studies are somewhat dated, given that the percent of our energy that goes to interior lighting has dropped quite a bit, thanks to LED bulbs that use, what, something like 15-20% of an old tungsten filament bulb for the same number of lumens.  So basing a time change on the use of artificial lighting seems flawed to me.  

Student performance also declines after DST starts, due to the critical need for a full night's sleep that children and teens require for normal brain function - and teachers report an increase in groggy and unalert students especially in the first classes of the morning.  

IMO, if it's so important that people can go enjoy outdoor activities after work with plenty of daylight for that, then employers should get on board with more flex hours for those who want to pursue activities requiring daylight. 

 

[swansont]

53 minutes ago, TheVat said:

Where I live DST actually increases fossil fuel use for the first 3 months, because March-May are still heating months and people tend to turn up their furnaces upon arising in the morning.  Since early morning is when the overnight low temperature happens, this time change moves morning activities one hour closer to that overnight low and so the furnace runs longer to get the dwelling up to room temperature. 

The study said that morning use increased but was more than offset by savings in the evening, but that was limited to electricity.

What’s more interesting to me is that it’s focused on the added hours in winter and fall. The widespread use of air conditioning makes the math of DST very different than when it was originally adopted. Typically not as much AC use in March and late October as during the rest of DST.

 

“In 2006 Indiana instituted daylight saving statewide for the first time. (Before then, daylight time confusingly was in effect in just a handful of Indiana’s counties.) 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”

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

 

53 minutes ago, TheVat said:

And old energy use studies are somewhat dated, given that the percent of our energy that goes to interior lighting has dropped quite a bit, thanks to LED bulbs that use, what, something like 15-20% of an old tungsten filament bulb for the same number of lumens.  So basing a time change on the use of artificial lighting seems flawed to me.  

The use of our better lighting options reduces AC use, too (each 100W light bulb replaced with an LED drawing ~15 watts), so maybe we offset some of the added use Indiana saw in 2006.

[dimreepr]

On 3/11/2024 at 5:09 PM, TheVat said:

IMO, if it's so important that people can go enjoy outdoor activities after work with plenty of daylight for that, then employers should get on board with more flex hours for those who want to pursue activities requiring daylight. 

Employer's only really care that their employees aren't sad enough to pull a sickie... 

[zapatos]

On 3/11/2024 at 12:09 PM, TheVat said:

Student performance also declines after DST starts, due to the critical need for a full night's sleep that children and teens require for normal brain function

Why do students sleep less due to DST? Do they change the time they go to bed, or the time they set their alarm to get up for classes?

[CharonY]

4 minutes ago, zapatos said:

Why do students sleep less due to DST? Do they change the time they go to bed, or the time they set their alarm to get up for classes?

I guess it is because of a change in rhythm. Also, I am mildly certain that this is not only for kids, but also adults. 

[TheVat]

15 minutes ago, zapatos said:

Why do students sleep less due to DST? Do they change the time they go to bed, or the time they set their alarm to get up for classes?

As Charon said.  A change in sleep rhythm is difficult because we get used to a certain bedtime and do not instantly find ourselves getting properly sleepy an hour earlier when the time change happens.  Especially in a society already plagued with insomnia-inducing electronic stimulation.  Then the waking time dictated by the alarm clock seems to come prematurely.  

 

[zapatos]

I would imagine a one hour change in sleep rhythm would be resolved rather quickly. I used to travel quite a bit and while I think I noticed a change in myself it wasn't very significant. I've heard many times that DST is bad for students but it is unclear to me why that is other than for a very short time.

[Moontanman]

1 hour ago, zapatos said:

I would imagine a one hour change in sleep rhythm would be resolved rather quickly. I used to travel quite a bit and while I think I noticed a change in myself it wasn't very significant. I've heard many times that DST is bad for students but it is unclear to me why that is other than for a very short time.

DST, in the winter, causes students to have to wait in the dark for the school bus in the mornings. 

[zapatos]

3 minutes ago, Moontanman said:

DST, in the winter, causes students to have to wait in the dark for the school bus in the mornings. 

Can you please explain why waiting in the dark for a school bus results in continued disruptions to the sleep cycle?

[Moontanman]

23 minutes ago, zapatos said:

Can you please explain why waiting in the dark for a school bus results in continued disruptions to the sleep cycle?

The main problem was children waiting in the dark for school busses but the danger of standing on the side of the road in the dark in rural areas was real and why the winter DST was cancelled. There was a lot of discussion about this in my area many years ago, in the winter the sun rises much later than it does in the summer resulting in children getting up well before daylight. I'm not sure if this could result in sleep cycle disruptions but the difference in getting up before sunrise was disruptive, I was part of a group that supported the DST for the winter and I had to change my mind and go with EST in my paper to the school board. To me the children's safety was paramount and long bus rides in rural areas won the day for EST. 

[TheVat]

As I recall, what I was reading in the studies of student performance was more related to students having to get up early than to negotiating transit in the dark.  The problem is that children respond to sunrise and seem to do better cognitively when the light is well advanced and they have had maximum sleep while it was dark or pre-dawn.  (the DST effect was especially bad if they were located at the western edge of a time zone, where the sunrise is last to reach)  

These studies also drew the conclusion that later school hours would be beneficial, even where there was no DST.  

The Circadian rhythmn actually shifts later during adolescence, so the need there is especially acute.  Here's one digest of that research:

https://www.apa.org/topics/children/school-start-times

Edited March 13 by TheVat
pytos

[zapatos]

Perhaps part of the solution (if DST remains) would be to adjust school hours. Starting school an hour later in the day, or adding some school days during the summer when daylight is in abundance and dropping some school days in the winter would seem a reasonable idea.

[swansont]

37 minutes ago, zapatos said:

Perhaps part of the solution (if DST remains) would be to adjust school hours. Starting school an hour later in the day, or adding some school days during the summer when daylight is in abundance and dropping some school days in the winter would seem a reasonable idea.

But now you have the issue of parents possibly not being home at the beginning of the day to see their kids off, unless they, too, adjust their schedules - if their employer affords that kind of flexibility. Younger kids not supervised makes a lot of people nervous - more than when I was young. 

[zapatos]

22 minutes ago, swansont said:

But now you have the issue of parents possibly not being home at the beginning of the day to see their kids off, unless they, too, adjust their schedules - if their employer affords that kind of flexibility. Younger kids not supervised makes a lot of people nervous - more than when I was young. 

Well, they typically have that problem in the afternoon anyway. Maybe it is just a switch from afternoon issue to morning issue. In the US the typical school day ends at 3:00pm.

Someone, somewhere is going to have to adjust if we make the change. If parents are pushing for the change, then perhaps it is not unreasonable to expect them to bear some of the burden.

[Sensei]

On 3/11/2024 at 4:23 PM, dimreepr said:

Employers care, they want more natural light during working hours, all that free vitamin D makes less sad worker's... 

The night shift, on their own... 🤞

I appreciate the sense of humor. But you can get vitamin D from the UV radiation emitted by artificial lights indoors.

 

BTW, imagine how much energy you save with a home office!

 

 

Edited March 13 by Sensei

[swansont]

46 minutes ago, zapatos said:

Someone, somewhere is going to have to adjust if we make the change. If parents are pushing for the change, then perhaps it is not unreasonable to expect them to bear some of the burden.

“Parents” is not some monolithic group. Ones pushing for an adjustment in starting time might be the ones who have the flexibility to change their own schedule 

[Peterkin]

42 minutes ago, zapatos said:

Well, they typically have that problem in the afternoon anyway. Maybe it is just a switch from afternoon issue to morning issue. In the US the typical school day ends at 3:00pm.

But those are quite different routines. It's relatively easy for working parents to arrange short-term supervision after school: there is usually a stay-at-home neighbour with children of their own, where they can go for an hour. Dinner or supper takes place after the parents arrive home. Breakfast can't be deferred and no neighbour is likely to come over to roust someone else's children out of bed, make sure they're clean and dressed on time, and feed them an adequate breakfast.   

48 minutes ago, zapatos said:

Someone, somewhere is going to have to adjust if we make the change.

Logically, it should be employers, having the least at stake - and possibly something to gain from their employees being alert and focused and relaxed.

[Externet]

My vote is to not continue changing the time.  And see no problem by trying a year or two. 

[Sensei]

It is not about the problem. It's about getting a small amount of energy, as @Airbrush pointed out in his OP.

A home office can save a huge amount of energy not wasted on travel.

Free public transportation (instead of a flood of cars on streets) can save a huge amount of energy not wasted on fuel.

If people use free public transportation, they don't have to buy new cars, spend money on maintenance, etc.

All things that the oil, gas, energy and cars sectors (and their shareholders) will be very unhappy about. Employees will demand government intervention to maintain the status quo, etc.

 

 

Edited March 14 by Sensei

[zapatos]

2 hours ago, swansont said:

“Parents” is not some monolithic group. Ones pushing for an adjustment in starting time might be the ones who have the flexibility to change their own schedule 

If we change the rules, things will be different. Someone will have to adjust. If you are looking for a change that will not affect anyone I can't help. 

2 hours ago, Peterkin said:

Logically, it should be employers, having the least at stake

If the employers don't have employees to serve their customers when they want to be served they'll soon be out of business. Parents figured out how to get extra care in the afternoon when both parents work. They can also figure out how to get extra care in the mornings when both parents work.

If the parents are the ones with the issue, logically it should be the parents who make the adjustment. I wish my bank would pay for my overdraft as it wouldn't impact them in the least, but it would impact me a lot. However, it is my issue, not theirs.

 

[swansont]

9 minutes ago, zapatos said:

If we change the rules, things will be different. Someone will have to adjust.

Yes, but that’s not related to the point I was making. 

9 minutes ago, zapatos said:

If you are looking for a change that will not affect anyone I can't help. 

I wasn’t advocating for the change. Another option is not changing the rules.

[zapatos]

12 minutes ago, swansont said:

I wasn’t advocating for the change. Another option is not changing the rules.

I agree. My suggestion was how to help kids if we make no change to DST.

[Peterkin]

1 hour ago, zapatos said:

They can also figure out how to get extra care in the mornings when both parents work.

I sincerely doubt it, for the stated reasons.

 

1 hour ago, zapatos said:

If the parents are the ones with the issue, logically it should be the parents who make the adjustment.

What if parents are not the only people who have a problem with DST. I'm not a parent, and I hate it. Lots of other people are affected. What I'm wondering now is why you are so staunch in its defence?