World, Writing, Wealth discussion
Wealth & Economics
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Summer/winter time
The sad thing is, the more efficient you try to make your home, the more the electric company jacks up the rates to compensate. It's amazing the less energy I use, the higher my electric bill climbs.
Daylight Savings Time starts this weekend, is that the same thing? We turn the clocks back an hour.
Anita wrote: "Daylight Savings Time starts this weekend, is that the same thing? We turn the clocks back an hour."Yep, except only DST is 'summer time', while turning back one hour should be returning to normal -:)
Nik wrote: "Anita wrote: "Daylight Savings Time starts this weekend, is that the same thing? We turn the clocks back an hour."Yep, except only DST is 'summer time', while turning back one hour should be retu..."
I stand corrected, that is summer time. Now we're just going into "Cold Dark Winter Time". LOL
Yeah, as the clock hands move backwards bears conk out for hibernation -:)
Do you feel the adaption to time change twice a year is worth a supposed 'saving'?
Nope. If your blanket is to short, should you cut a foot off and sew it onto the other end? I think Savings Time is a waist. Sure, everyone likes to sleep in for an hour in the fall, but no one I've ever met likes getting up earlier in the spring. My family and I did an experiment a couple of years ago and didn't change our time at all that year. It all took a bit of getting used to, but after the first month you got used to it. It was kind of like living in a separate time zone. If I was living by myself in would do it again in a heartbeat. It was so nice not having the confusing "Change your clocks and be all stressed out for basically all spring" then having to do it again in the fall.
Nik wrote: "We and Europe just switched back to winter time and I think US should follow suit soonest. Russia toyed with it and I think currently has only winter time, with only some regions changing.The wint..."
The argument here, is that there is more time for after work/school activities in summer in daylight hours.
In winter, it really doesn't make much difference.
I do always detest the first week of daylight saving in October as my body adjusts, but the reverse in April is rather nice.
Most people complain about setting clocks ahead in the springtime. I can fix this: instead of setting them ahead early Sunday morning, let's set them ahead at noon on Friday. No one will complain about losing an hour of Friday afternoon.....
Holly, they may not be so keen on an extra hour later in the year. The transition times here are a bit annoying because getting up towards the end of summer time, and the beginning, involves a sudden lurch into morning darkness (and out of on the other side of the transition), and I know dairy farmers don't like that.Personally, I find the longer summer evenings quite pleasant.
I don't see any practical reason for DST. Why mess with our internal clocks this way? Just one more thing to deal with twice a year.
Ian wrote: "Holly, they may not be so keen on an extra hour later in the year. The transition times here are a bit annoying because getting up towards the end of summer time, and the beginning, involves a sudd..."Ian, in the US we add our hour on to the end of a Saturday night and no one complains about that. They either get an extra hour of sleep or they get an extra hour of partying before the bars close down.
I live so far north that there are only three months of the year when the dairy farmers aren't doing morning chores in the dark. DST doesn't make much difference to them. The local crop farmers will harvest at night; their equipment has lights.
Personally it makes no difference to me...the horses get fed at the same time each day, regardless of time change.
There are always plenty of other things to worry about, but I don't think that's a good reason to stop discussing a topic.There's a bill on the governor's desk in Florida to keep the state on permanent DST.
Called daylight saving time elsewhere, today I'm gonna leap one hour forward and distance myself timewise from friends in the States and get closer to those eastward - in Australia & NZ. Is the seasonal time adjustment still a good idea? What do you think?
You'll get closer to me than you think. I shall shortly slumber backwards an hour. The extra daylight in summer is great, but right now not much use to me as it is becoming progressively shorter.
I don't like this arbitrary change twice a year for no good reason. Or is there a good reason? If so, I'd like to hear it.
The days are longer in summer so you can make more use of the sun in the summer evening? In winter it hardly matters because you are outside as little as possible anyway?
Scout wrote: "I don't like this arbitrary change twice a year for no good reason. Or is there a good reason? If so, I'd like to hear it."It's a vestige of the early industrial revolution.
Originally, all time was local time. People woke, worked, and slept with the sun. High noon was literally when the Sun was at its highest point where you were. This meant that going more than a few miles east or west changed the time of day.
The coming of the railroad changed that. Running a railroad, without an unacceptable death toll, requires careful scheduling and precise timing. That is impossible when every station is on its own local time. So the railroads created time zones. Now we have standardized time.
Daylight savings time came into existence because of the cost of oil and gas light. Standardized time changed our schedule. Our working day is now defined by a clock instead of the Sun. That means we need artificial light sources. Before electricity, that meant oil lamps, candles, and gas light which are all costly. So to save money, businesses and governments came up with a sliding hour to maximize the amount of daylight in the working day.
In our current era of cheap electric light Daylight Savings Time is obsolete.
It is not obsolete for those who want to do something outside after they come home from work. It is probably irrelevant for those who do not have their own private piece of land.
Ian wrote: "It is not obsolete for those who want to do something outside after they come home from work. It is probably irrelevant for those who do not have their own private piece of land."Then leave the clocks set an hour earlier and be done with it.
That is what they do with summer time. The key is, where you earn your crust does it too. No point in you doing it alone unless you don't go to work. In winter, here at least there is no gain because it gets dark somewhere around 1700 hrs real time. Pretending it is 1800 hrs is not really a gain if you don't get home until about 1800 hrs real time.
We're already "pretending" that the time on our clocks is the "real" time because we use standard time instead of local time. The whole thing is arbitrary.
Others would argue it is not arbitrary - merely convenient. After all there is no absolute time; only differences in time are relevant.
If, as J. has explained, " In our current era of cheap electric light Daylight Savings Time is obsolete," why submit ourselves to this folly? It seems to me nonsensical and arbitrary.
Scout wrote: "If, as J. has explained, " In our current era of cheap electric light Daylight Savings Time is obsolete," why submit ourselves to this folly? It seems to me nonsensical and arbitrary."Actually, if we are going to do something about the so-called greenhouse effect, we need to reduce electricity consumption so the concept is not obsolete, but maybe timely.
That sounds good. How is DST reducing electricity consumption?
Scout, it was originally put in to save electricity usage. In winter it many not do much, but in summer here I don't even put on electric lights around the summer solstice before going to bed. (Or maybe a short amount if I want to sit up a bit longer.)
I don't see a real benefit to DST. We use lights in the house and in businesses whether it's dark outside or not.
Hmm, if you are not going to use daylight, saving it is a bit of a waste of time.
I prefer the natural lighting as much as possible
Scout wrote: "I don't see a real benefit to DST. We use lights in the house and in businesses whether it's dark outside or not."When I was in grade school, we were taught the purpose was to benefit the farmters and other agricultural fields - literally, the fields. The extra hour of daylight somehow makes it easier to milk the cow or plow the field.
I admit, it is one of the great things about living in AZ - never change the clock. Of course, I have to ask Alexa, Google, or Bing what time it is wherever my daughter and sisters are located. I do hate it when it's dark at 5 pm in Decenber,
Interesting, because in NZ the biggest objections came from the dairy farmers - at each end they are milking in the dark in the morning. (Yes, they have electric light, but you still have to bring the cow in from the paddocks).
So, no savings on electricity either way.
For the country as a whole, there is. Ther is more to life than milking cows :-)
Scout wrote: "So, no savings on electricity either way."I find changing the clocks useless as well. Besides Arizona - Hawaii doesn't observe it either with the time change.
I think all of the U.S. should go that route. In the Fall/Winter - six months of being dark early at night makes for a longer night. I do like the Spring/Summer time change with it staying light longer. I think they ought to let us just stay in the Spring/Summer time zone, but I wonder if they will ever let us have what we want....probably not. :)
And I'd say again, I don't see a real benefit to DST. We use lights in the house and in businesses whether it's dark outside or not. Don't we?
Scout wrote: "And I'd say again, I don't see a real benefit to DST. We use lights in the house and in businesses whether it's dark outside or not. Don't we?"I remember over the years people talking about wanting to get rid of DST and the premise being that modernization and urbanization now prevail over farming and agriculture in our society. Somehow it never seemed to get anywhere although I don't know why. I assume someone is making good money off the current situation and wants to maintain it.
Summer time is enacted today in Europe and elsewhere. Who's for it and who's against?
When America's experiment of year-round Daylight Savings Time turned deadly https://www.burlingtoncountytimes.com...
Just pick one time and stop changing it. No change please. There's enough to deal with without springing forward or falling back. Stop jerking us around for no reason.
The time Change are annoying and should be fixed to one. It is bad for health and its saves no Energy.
We move to winter time today, and while I like summer time, this change is leading to a grumpy cat, with feeding delayed 1 hr. One of the tourist places in the South Island is maintaining "summer time", which will be a bit chaotic for people coming in and out. I tend to agree with selecting some time and keep it constant and everyone will adjust.
Ian wrote: "We move to winter time today, and while I like summer time, this change is leading to a grumpy cat, with feeding delayed 1 hr. One of the tourist places in the South Island is maintaining "summer t..."Ian - you have places that don't change their clocks that tourists frequent? That is the State of Arizona. I have not noticed that it causes any problems other than I have to pay attention to whether it's 1 or 2 hour time difference with my daughter or if I am on the same time as my sister in California. The Navajo nation that extends into 3 states, including AZ, does follow DST. Indidana used to have some cities that followed DST and other parts fo the state didn't, but they went all in on DST in 2006.
J posted an article about why DST is not permanent. I was 13 in 1973, but don't remember any particular year where my morning start was darker longer. I do vaguely remember the subject of kids being hit in the dark on the news and such.
Nik - I am all in favor of any time arrangement that does not result in darkness at 5 pm, which we do have in AZ during part of the winter. I do like when it's 9 pm and there is still light outside, and that is something I like. The more hours of daylight, especially combined with warmer temp, the happier I become.
Lizzie, some places you can't avoid darkness at 5 pm. Up in Canada, from memory, it got dark more or less at 4 pm, and my betting is that up in the Yukon it hardly gets light :-) But you can adjust your lifestyle to these conditions.
Ian wrote: "Lizzie, some places you can't avoid darkness at 5 pm. Up in Canada, from memory, it got dark more or less at 4 pm, and my betting is that up in the Yukon it hardly gets light :-) But you can adjust..."I don't want to adjust, which is probably why after 6 years in WI, I returned to AZ. I am ok with dark in the morning, because I am sleeping or used to be working. I don't like early evening darkness. As for kids, when mine were younger, I think they care less about sunlight in early morning to go to school than they do about after school to have that sunlight to play outside.
Lizzie wrote: "...I do like when it's 9 pm and there is still light outside, and that is something I like. The more hours of daylight, especially combined with warmer temp, the happier I become...."You would enjoy "white nights" - a few days in northern parts around summer solstice when the sun doesn't really set at all..
As with many things these days, the majority of people agree, but who's going to go to the trouble of protesting and forcing change? Easier to sit by and live with it, as we're too busy trying to make ends meet.
The winter is here all of a sudden with darkness arriving around 5 pm -:)
Each such switch requires adaptation afterwards.
At the time, one of the main arguments for playing with summer time was energy-saving, but given much more cost efficient lighting nowadays, do you think the trouble is still worthwhile?