A squeal of distress will go flying across America in the night between Saturday and Sunday, March 9 and 10. It’s all those clocks, being twisted an hour forward, away from the natural time they were born to show.
The annual ordeal will be inflicted on the clocks of Europe three weeks later.
people seem to find it hard to keep the issue clear. This calendar-like graphh should help. (It’s a part of my diagram of the rising and setting times of planets for the year, with the planets removed.)
It could be drawn with midday down the middle, but instead, because the displaced time especially compplicates astronomy, it’s centered on midnight, thus showing the span of night (for latitude 40° north).
Midnight is the white line down the middle – natural midnight, when the Sun is deepest below the horizon, 12 hours away from natural midday, when the Sun is in the south and is highest. Our time is founded on measurement from the Sun.
The gray vertical lines show what our clocks are told to do. In January and February, and again in November and December, they are allowed to keep to the natural time (or approximately so, if we ignore the minutes of difference made by the slight irregularity of Earth’s orbit, and by how far east or west you are within your time zone).
But from March 10 to November 3 (and, slightly less crazily, March 31 to October 27 in Europe) we have to wrench our clocks forward an hour from natural time. When the clock says 5 PM, the time is really 4; when it says 8 AM, it’s really 7. We pretend that 4 is 5 and 7 is 8. “Midnight” is no longer midnight, and at “midday” the Sun has not reached the middle of the sky.
An otherwise intelligent columnist in the Guardian (John Crace) said on March 2: “Not for the first time I wondered why the clocks couldn’t go forward now, rather than in four weeks time. It’s now light well before 7am…” Start getting up earlier, John.
Senator Marco Rubio is introducing a bill to make Daylight Savings Time be used year round in the USA. If we wish to protest this bill, I feel it is beneficial to summarize the arguments against DST:
1) DST complicates expression of time for astronomical events (Guy’s main DST objection)
2) High noon can no longer be an accurate description of 12 o’clock, complicating children’s concept of reality
3) Changing opening and closing times of businesses and outdoor tourist attractions is hard enough when basing times on latitude without the added confusion of DST
4) Falling asleep is more difficult when daylight is abnormally long in the evening.
5) Many people in our population ( the early risers, probably a majority) would rather have more daylight at the beginning of the day, when their energy is highest, rather than at the end of the day, when their energy is subsiding.
Please reply if I missed any objections to DST.
Rick, this is an excellent summary of much-needed points. So I was frustrated that yesterday I was “locked out” of WordPress by some technical attack, till late at night, and so could neither approve your comment nor publish the next post I had ready.
I had also felt dismayed that I had not allowed myself enough time to work up a fuller post about the time-shifting. I have made too many scattered notes about it. I need to make a page with all in order and a better illustrative graph – hope to do that soon, in the faint hope of opposing Rubio’s ridiculous bill.
A point to add to yours: Having a fixed time-shift throughout the year removes any supposed benefit of introducing the seasonal shift in the first place! It simply falsifies time without making adaptation to the earier sunrises of summer.
Thanx Guy. In the words of Mark Twain, “I can last 2 months on a good compliment.”
Here’s a letter I sent to Marco Rubio, with similar letters to my senators, president, and representative. I would urge your fans to likewise petition their representatives and senators. They can copy and paste this letter with appropriate modifications in the salutation and point #6.
IN RE: Sunshine Protection Act
Dear Mr. Rubio:
I agree with your points about the difficulty of switching back and forth between Daylight Savings Time and Standard Time, but I think it would be wiser to use Standard Time (ST) year round instead of Daylight Savings Time (DST) , for the following reasons:
1) A substantial number of people, if not the majority, are early risers. They would rather have more light in the morning, when their energy is highest, rather than at the end of the day when their energy is lowest.
2) Using ST year round would standardize time for all the municipalities located in their respective time zones, making it easier to schedule teleconferences resulting in a more robust Gross National Product. This would apply to states in the Mountain Time Zone where Arizona does not use DST so that construction workers can take advantage of cooler weather in the morning.
3) Falling asleep is more difficult when daylight is abnormally long in the evening; well rested adults are more productive which also increases the GNP. School children would also fall asleep faster – their bedtimes often occur during daylight hours in May and June if using DST.
4) The coldest part of the day is usually just before dawn. In the winter, children waiting for a bus at 7 am would in reality be waiting for the bus at 6 am if using DST year round. This means they would have to wait for the school bus during a colder time of the day. Plus, the children and morning commuters would be involved in more motor vehicle accidents because of the darker mornings.
5) DST makes the understanding of time by children harder to grasp, thereby hindering their learning of reality. During DST, high noon (when the sun is highest) would be at 1 pm rather than noon. Likewise, 12 midnight would not be in the middle of the night.
6) You are correct in saying that there is less crime during daylight hours, but the best way to reduce crime is to have more jobs via lower taxes and a balanced budget, rather than simply legislating time on clocks.
7) Setting opening and closing times of outdoor attractions is more difficult when using DST. For example, in March and September there are about 12 hours of daylight, so a national or state park would be open from 6 am to 6 pm, but with DST the hours would be 7 am to 7 pm which is harder to remember since there would be 5 hours of daylight before noon and 7 hours of daylight after noon. Skin cancer might also decrease with ST; it’s easier to remember to avoid sunlight between 10 am and 2 pm rather than between 11 am and 3 pm.
8) DST complicates the work of astronomers. The Earth is divided into 24 time zones based on 15 degrees of longitude per time zone. Astronomers designate the time of astronomical events using Universal Time, which is the time in Greenwich, England. Astronomers in other parts of the world then adjust this time to the time zone where they live. For example, if there is an eclipse of the moon at 11 pm Universal Time, those in New York would look for the eclipse at 6 pm, With DST, New York astronomers have to remember to subtract only 4 hours from Universal Time, even though New York is 5 time zones behind England. DST also complicates air travel arrival and departure times in the same manner.
Speaking of time, thank you for taking the time to read this. I know your time is valuable.
Sincerely,
Richard Scheithauer, D.C.
Then there is the choice that it is the same time everywhere, all the time. Wouldn’t that be funner!
The only thing crazier than daylight “saving” time is year-round daylight saving time. Unfortunately last November Californians approved an initiative to establish year-round DST. The change would still need to be approved by the state legislature and the US congress before going into effect.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Californians-want-daylight-saving-time-all-year-13671181.php
Like Guy said, people who want to get up an hour earlier could just get up an hour earlier.
I love it, and so will all my houseplants getting that extra hour of sunlight before the alarm goes off.
Jack, you’ve got it exactly backwards. The plants will get an hour less sunlight before the alarm goes off. But they’ll get an hour more sunlight in the evening.
Yes, backwards again, so, as I’ve been told, is how I came into this world. but as the days are lengthening, I’m sure my plants will catch up on their lost hour of morning sun as all my apartment windows face east. Funny how it all works out.
Thanks for continuing to harp on this subject. It’s really an offense against nature; the hubris of daring to MOVE the Sun for our convenience (changing one clock just makes that clock wrong – but changing all the clocks moves the Sun).
Perhaps we should tackle this by forming an oppressed-minority group of “morning persons” – whom are arbitrarily deprived of their share of working daylight by the Civil Authorities.
Truth be told though (shhh, it’s a secret), what I appreciate, as a morning person, is being awake in the undistracting dark whilst others are sleeping – and thus not demanding/dividing my attention.
Beholding the onset of Astronomical Twilight also gives me a grasp of the day that I’ve found no substitute for.
Were I of tyrannical inclination I might then, selfishly, advocate for a permanent daylight-shifted time in order to maximize my own preference; but I’m not tyrannical – and would like to share the world with evening/night persons – just as nature apportions.
My own protests include leaving my timepiece on unshifted time – thus having to mentally adjust (be conscious of the difference) 8 months of the year – on a 24-hour watch, always having written my dates as YYYYMMDD, continuing to use antique low-level programming languages, carrying an RPN pocket calculator (especially the HP-29C), and doggedly remaining an Apple virgin (iDont). Thus lists a few of my pitiful, ineffectual, deliberate maladjustments against the inexorable march of oxymoronic “Progress”es.
Just now I’m fending off a flurry of discussions about Easter being on the “wrong date” this year – I expect I’ll soon be reading your take on that subject; yes?
I know just about everybody in the states, at least, would like to see daylight time ALL the time. Whatever. The start of the workday, the schoolday, after dinner time is all arbitrary, anyway. But few seem to care about what is missed: high noon, midnight… Whatever.
Why can’t I live on a planet where the sun comes up and goes down at the same time every night?
You can – you can live on the equator, where this is roughly true.
Roly, not only *can* you live on such a planet — you do! — if you’re in the right place. Just be glad you’re not Uranian.