Not going to lie - I love daylight savings and would vote for it if it came up again. The biggest draw for me however is to stay within 2 hours of the rest of the nation. If sucks to not be able to raise colleagues in Sydney/Melbourne after lunch. Meanwhile, they’re waiting until after their lunch for me to show up online. I know it’s only an hour difference, but it really feels like half a day professionally.
I also like the sun setting after 8pm, but that’s less of a deal for me. If NSW/Vic/ACT/Tas stopped Daylight Savings Time, I’d stop caring all that much.
You are aware that you literally just said “I would vote for more people to die”, right?
I didn’t say that. You’ve interpreted my words as that. That’s on you.
If you support daylight saving time, that’s what you are supporting. DST kills people. It has no measurable benefits, and it kills people. There’s no defensible way to support it.
Can you recommend any good reading around that?
Sure, here are a bunch of papers on the subject:
- https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(19)31678-1
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7205184/
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29461606/
- http://66.160.145.48/fairclough/pdfs/26/hb0019_attachment_0003.pdf
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6692659/
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2259373/
dude, more people are fucking killed by coconuts per year.
Even with 2 sigma confidence lines there is barely a correlation in a lot of this data. If we looked at the 3 sigma confidence lines there would be nothing here.
I remember one study had such a small sample size that a single man having a heart attack on his way to work was the bulk of evidence used to criticize the time switch. A scientist with an agenda can usually get their position published even if it’s questionable.
The overall evidence weakly suggests there are negative health effects here when we make a time switch. But if it was truly a large statistical shift with high confidence values then we probably would have a much stronger scientific case to address time shifts in our society cycles. We would also have to include a much wider study. Are there papers looking at the possible beneficial effects of these time switches out there? And lastly, is this even worth the research time and potential implementation cost?
As it stands now, it’s basically just a bunch of people’s personal preference of when they want more light relative to the standard work day. Personally I would be happy to use UTC worldwide and just shift the hours appropriately with location, but that won’t fly with most people.
Dude wtf is your problem? Why are you simping so hard for something that the scientific literature is very clear on? Every study done has shown that it’s detrimental to people’s health.
Are there papers looking at the possible beneficial effects of these time switches out there?
There are. One of the most popular claims is that DST might reduce energy usage. And there have been some studies that find that it does:
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301421510002697
- https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2015/05/f22/epact_sec_110_edst_technical_documentation_2008.pdf
But there have also been ones that find it actually increases energy usage:
- https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/80481/
- https://resources.environment.yale.edu/kotchen/pubs/revDSTpaper.pdf
All agree that the effect size is very small.
It’s quite a difference from the health effects, where studies unanimously (or at least nearly unanimously—I’m sure some studies disagreeing exist out there, but I struggled to find them) agree it’s bad.
It’s a shame the author only briefly touches on the strongest reasons not to do daylight saving in a throwaway line in the penultimate paragraph. But yes, daylight saving literally kills people and has no measurable benefits. We don’t need it.
I’m always annoyed at pro-DST people who say they do all these activities “in the extra hours of daylight after work”…
It’s not extra HOURS… Its one extra hour!
Its basically the difference between driving home with your headlights on the whole way, or only half the way. You’re not suddenly having backyard parties and trips to the park with friends.
And it’s one hour that could just as easily be gained by choosing to work earlier if that’s what you really care about. And it’s added in at the time when it’s least needed. Boxing day in Melbourne is light at 10 pm. Without DST that would be 9 pm. It’s absurdly late either way.
Being in Tasmania fuck daylight saving !
Stupid idea. Why not put us on GMT+9.5.and the only state that’s then different is WA.
Fun fact: about 50 people in WA have GMT+8.5. Just for funsies.
Being on +9.5 would be like being on permanent anti-daylight saving time (or at least, half-anti-DST). I’m not sure that would really work.
I am not a morning person. I am definitely not a morning person. I consider 8:30 am to be fucking early and when left to my own devices default to a sleep cycle of 3am - 10am. But I got no problems with DST. It opens up a lot more sunlight hours for office workers and lets people enjoy scraps of life after work outside.
Personally I take this study’s view. The one hour (not “hours”—the difference introduced by DST pales in comparison to the difference introduced by the fact that it’s already fucking summer) in the afternoon that it opens up is better reached by individuals having the option to shift their working hours, if that’s what they want.
If DST should be abandoned, as we suggest as scientists, there are still many people who “like their long evenings.” But there is a solution to this problem: DST is simply a work-time arrangement, nothing more than a decision to go to school/work an hour earlier. As such, it is not a decision that should be made by the world, by unions of countries (e.g., the EU), or by individual countries, neither at the federal nor the state level. Work-time arrangements are decisions that a workforce could decide at the company level. Therefore, anyone who wants to spend more time at home in daylight after work should convince his/her company and co-workers to advance their start time during certain months of the year or even better: introduce flexibility for individual workers where possible to accommodate differences in personal biological and social requirements.
