Do we really need daylight saving time?

[Seedersandleechers]

More daylight at night just means less daylight in the morning. I wish we could do away with it.

http://www.standardtime.com/

[we can do it]

1. It Is Imperitive To Have Sunshine AT 4:30 am

I think we should stay sprung and lower the SAD depression

[QC]

24. For some reason, it is considered good to have darkness at 4:00 P.M.

I'm not sure why, of course, but there must be some reason for this.

[we can do it]

53. I Know-Every Little Bit Counts As Fa A I Am Concerned

[MineralMan]

2. It's an issue that doesn't matter, really, IMO.

Whether we have it or don't have it is pretty irrelevant for most people. We change the clocks, then go on about our business with a minimum of impact from the time change.

The reasons for it are sort of silly these days, except, perhaps, for the few rural areas where children are still doing farm chores, but it's a tradition, of sorts.

Leave it or change it. It won't matter to me. All but one of the clocks in my house change themselves automatically, since they're set by querying WWV. The one that doesn't change doesn't get changed, I'm perfectly capable of adding or subtracting an hour whenever it's needful.

[TransitJohn]

3. Really, after the extension of it Bush* signed, I've thought

that we should just stay on it all year 'round, since we're on it more often that not now, anyways.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

4. Only for families making less than $250,000/year

[Warpy]

5. I'm not a morning person

so I wish we could keep it year round. I always go into a depression when it ends in November.

[RC]

17. You are not a morning person but you are happy to get up an hour earlier

for 8 months of the year? Your SAD has to do with the time of the year, not the fact politicians screwed with clocks.

[Warpy]

29. It coincides with the beginning of standard time.

It lifts with DST. The holidays don't help, nor do full spectrum lights.

[Motown_Johnny]

6. It makes sense to me.

On weekends I sleep until after sun up so I don't turn on lights and use electricity.


If the majority of the country does the same thing then we must be saving some energy doing this.


Changing the clocks twice a year is such a small thing, are we really so spoiled that this minor inconvenience is a reason to waste energy?

[Seedersandleechers]

7. I don't think it has been proven

that it does waste energy.

[RC]

18. Actually yes it has.

Part of Indiana was in DST and part stayed on Central Standard time. Someone did a study of electrical power use and determined it was higher during DST because of air conditioner use.

[hunter]

8. No, we should get rid of it AND reduce working hours.

Economic productivity as it is currently defined is bad for the earth and bad for the human spirit.

Daylight savings time disconnects people from natural cycles. It is rotten.

[tularetom]

9. Doesn't matter to me

I've been waking up at 4 AM practically my entire life. My internal alarm apparently makes no allowances for ambient light.

[CTyankee]

10. I wear a sleep mask at night and it really works.

It shuts out all the ambient light coming from outside street lamps to LED screens to the nightlight in the bathroom down the hall.

[tularetom]

28. I'm not complaining, I get up that early by choice

I make coffee, feed the dogs, feed the cats, feed the horses, feed the chickens and I still have two hours of uninterrupted web surfing before grandma wakes up and I fix breakfast for us.

Noise is actually more of a deterrent than light for me getting to sleep but once I drop off I can sleep through a hurricane until 4.

[CTyankee]

32. I absolutely hate getting up in the dark. Dawn is different. I really like going out

at dawn on Sunday mornings for some out of town papers I don't get delivered (we read 5 different Sunday newspapers!). In the dark, I really like my cozy bed...

[laughingliberal]

11. I like DST, nm

[NNN0LHI]

12. No unless you like to golf

[lame54]

13. Do we really need this conversation every year?

[NNN0LHI]

15. We get new posters here every day so its understandable

Doesn't hurt anything.

I don't want to have people be gun shy about posting their thoughts and ideas here because it may have been posted before.

Don

[lame54]

16. I'm not talking about just DU...

this is brought up twice a year for as long as I can remember

[JVS]

45. +1 DU should have Grovelbot post 3 threads a year

One on August 6th saying "Yeah, we nuked em" and one for each clock changed called "Don' forget to change the clock and STFU"

[fishwax]

14. I think we should keep the "Fall Back" each year but skip the "Spring Forward"

I hate the spring forward. I like the fall back.

[CTyankee]

34. why do you hate spring forward? just curious...

[fishwax]

36. I just don't like adjusting to the change--missing out on an hour of sleep and then

starting the next few days feeling like I'm already behind schedule.

The extra hour in the fall, on the other hand, feels like a gift from the universe :)

[CTyankee]

37. funny, I think of the extra hour in the fall as some sort of "consolation prize"

given us to make up for the loss of the light...a "gift" like you said...

[RC]

19. We need to do away with in in its entirety.

It saves nothing. The further north you are the worse it becomes. Close to the Equator, it does nothing.

The party animal Benjamin Franklin came up with DST to save candles. We don't need to anymore.

[etherealtruth]

20. Amen

[Kalyke]

21. I wish we'd keep daylight savings time and do away with standard.

I hate not having any daylight hours after work during the workweek. Who cares if it's dark at 6 a.m.?

Why don't we just keep it DST and stop flipping back and forth?

[area51]

22. Yes, I can't stand the flipping back and forth part.

Also it seems to me that in the Spring when you lose an hour, there are more likely to be even more sleep-deprived people and more accidents.

[tigereye]

43. I was reading that there are more accidents initially when it becomes darker in

the late afternoon and early evening..

[tigereye]

42. I do cuz my kid has to walk to the bus at 7 and it's still dark out

I hate that it's dark in the morning.

[Chipper Chat]

23. Dont Ask Dont Tell the clocks

[Bill McBlueState]

25. i agree

Let's stay on standard time all year, and people who want to get up and go to bed an hour earlier all summer can do that if they want.

[jberryhill]

26. We should go to metric time

100 hours a day - each one about 15 minutes long, divided into 10 metric minutes about 1.5 minutes long, and 100 metric seconds each

Also, everybody everywhere has the same time. Period.
.

[ThoughtCriminal]

27. Don't have it in Arizona

This state may be backwards in many ways, but it is one thing we figured out. Every now and then the proposal comes up to adopt DST in Arizona, but it quickly falls apart when people start asking why. The only arguments in support turns out to be: "The rest of the country does" or "I can't convince my coffee maker that I live in Arizona".

The Earth will continue to rotate on its axis about the same rate with or without it.

[Jamastiene]

30. If we were actually measuring time the right way,

there would be no need to do it at all. I still say we are measuring time the wrong way.

[unblock]

31. personally, i think we should be ON daylight saving time year-round

daylight saving time was better aligns darkness with sleep hours, and therefore lights out time. hence, it saves energy.

this is true year-round, though apparently the energy savings are less in the short winter days, when the extra darkness means greater energy consumption regardless.

but if being ON daylight saving time saves energy year-round, why go OFF it at all? not only is changing clock (and computer programs and so on) a hassle and nuisance and creates confusion, but going OFF it actually wastes energy?



of course, we COULD just stay on standard time year-round and replace 9-to-5 jobs with 8-to-4 jobs, but that's far less likely to happen.

[pokerfan]

48. I've never had a 9-to-5 job

and being on Daylight Saving Time wastes energy: http://www.physorg.com/news187946326.html

So I say leave the clocks alone.

[jp11]

33. I say yes cause I like being able to go outside and do stuff without having to turn on a flood light

or carry a flashlight/etc.

[Odin2005]

35. I think DST is fricking stupid.

[tigereye]

38. well, it isn't fun sending your kid off to the school bus when the stars are still

out. I would rather have more AM daylight and deal with it getting dark earlier, actually. But then, I like it staying light later in the summertime. :shrug: Not sure what the answer is.

[Ishoutandscream2]

40. +1

Driving to work Saturday morning at 715am, and it's pitch dark outside. It shouldn't be pitch dark at that time of the morning.

[tigereye]

47. Orion is lovely at that hour, but you would think that at least at 7 am it

would be light out!

[moondust]

39. Japan doesn't do it.

Fareed Zakaria did a bit on DST on his show Sunday. He said Japan is the only country that does not do DST and that the extra daylight of DST would add billions in economic activity to their economy.

[Book Lover]

46. Just a quick fact check - he's wrong about that

Many equatorial and tropical nations do not employ DST, like Vietnam, Argentina, and Iraq. There are many more.

[moondust]

49. Yeah, I was skeptical.

It's possible he qualified it as "the Western world" or something like that but I wasn't listening too closely.

Thanks for the correction.

[trackfan]

41. DST is pure folly.

People on the Left and Right will complain endlessly about how much they hate big government. Yet virtually 100% of the population will willingly acquiesce to having the government tell them it is noon when it is really an hour before noon. If you live anywhere in the vicinity of a rooster (that's a cock for you Brits - we're too babyish for that word in America), you know what folly DST is.

[JVS]

44. I do.

I live a few miles west of a time zone border. I want the sunlight in the afernoon when I'm actually awake to us it instead of 6 in the morning.

[LWolf]

50. I wish we could do away with standard time.

I HATE having to stay at work an hour later in the evening and get home in the dark every night through the winter. I leave early enough that it's going to be dark regardless. All winter, the only time I see my place in daylight is on the weekends.

Even more, though, I don't like the twice yearly disruption to my body's clock. I wish we could just pick one and stick with it.

[City Lights]

51. No, we don't, and I'm in favor of dumping it. nt

[Blue_In_AK]

52. It doesn't make a whole lot of difference here.

It's dark all winter and light all summer. I think on balance I'd rather see the sun come up at 10:30 a.m. rather than 11:30 a.m. in the dead of winter, so maybe we should just stick with standard time.

[RC]

55. Alaska has DST?

Why? How does that work or supposed to work?

[Blue_In_AK]

56. Yes, we have Daylight Savings,

plus we are all on one time zone from Ketchikan all the way out to the west coast, except for the Aleutians, which are an hour earlier. We spring forward and fall back just like everyone else, but it's really kind of a joke.

I seem to remember when I first moved up here, there were at least three time zones in Alaska, maybe four, but it was too difficult to conduct business with Juneau, which was on west coast time, from Anchorage and Fairbanks which were on Alaska time, so they put us all in one zone.

[Terra Alta]

54. I just wish we'd pick one time and stick with it.

Twice a year, my body goes out of whack for a few days.. I wish we'd just leave it one way or the other, preferably DST, but this switching back and forth serves no useful purpose.