No more Daylight Savings Time?

Off-topic
1

It seems that Mr. Junker is going to make a proposal to abolish the daylight savings time in Europe.

The request comes from the nordic countries, who underline the issues for health (?) derived from the time change.
Germany seems to agree quite strongly, while the southern countries (Italy included) seem skeptical.

What do you think about it?

But, first, let me give you some infos and comments…

Now DST is mandatory for every European Union country.
If it will be abolished, since the choice of the time zone is up to every single nation, this could mess up the actual time zone table, as every european country could decide wether adopt, as a time zone, the time they have as winter time or the one they have as daylight savings time.

Now we have 3 winter time zones in Europe: GMT or WET (+0 UTC), CET (+1UTC), EET (+2UTC).
During DST, they become +1, +2 and +3UTC respectively

here’s a table:

As you can see, the vast majority of the countries of the Union has CET as time zone.
If DST will be abolished, CET will no longer exist, since every country could freely decide between UTC+1 and UTC+2.
And what about the old Great Britain? Will it mantain its DST? Not to mention all the countries which lie in the middle of CET but don’t belong to UE, like Swiss, Liechtenstein, San Marino, Monaco, Andorra, Vatican City, Ex-Yugoslavia…
Won’t it be a mess, so much for uniformity?
And what about the energy that would no longer be saved (in Italy its esteem is about 600 GW-h per year!!)?
Are we sure that the discomfort and the “health issues” derived from the time change are worth as the waste of energy and consequent pollution?

Again, what do you think?

2

Isn´t the whole time zone thing messed up already? The US have a daylight saving time that comes two weeks before the european one, making it an additional hour off. Shouldn´t this be universal in an ideal scenario?

3

In the world it is indeed so. Many countries don’t have a time change, and the countries which have it, do it in different moments throughout the year. I was talking specifically about the european situation, since the proposal of Mr. Junker obviously only affects Europe.

EDIT: Right now, the time in Europe is always the same, (CET), with the exception of UK and Portugal (CET-1) and Greece and Baltics (CET+1)

4

Well then the US better drop theirs too, right? Which admittedly isn´t going to be easy with a President who has serious issues grasping the concept of time zones (I´m not even kidding, I could post links!).

5

It could be a good proposal for the sake of uniformity. But what about energy saving?

6

I believe there have been several studies over the past 35 years that have shown again and again that the intended goal of energy saving hasn´t been reached. It frankly did not work out at all and has caused problems for many people during the switching transitions again and again. Also surveys show that the majority of people is in favour of dropping it again.

7

That’s right.
Here comes the interesting part. I agree that DST is almost useless, AS IT IS CONCEIVED NOW.

The studies you cited demonstrate that the energy saving is less than 1% troughout the world.

But… there’s a but.
This DST was invented in the late XIX century. Back then almost 100% of the electrical energy was for light. Now it is different, since the vast majority of electrical energy goes for production machinery and for air conditioning.

Probably THERE IS a way to reduce energy waste through time changes, but it is not so simple. There should be new studies which can calculate the correct number, nature and period of time changes to optimize energy consumption for every country.

Obviously this could lead to an extremely messed up world time zones table, since the needs of every country vary a lot because of climate and latitude.
That’s why it’s easier to keep the discussion focused on Europe.

8

My idea is that the numbering of hours relative to the Sun’s position + the whole “day / night” separation is obsolete. It derives from millennia where the Sun was the only thing providing enough light to work, and communications were usually restricted to places that were near enough to have the same “daytime status”.

Nowadays, I feel like it doesn’t even make sense to have different time zones. Heck, it’s just a convention: who cares if my day starts at 22:00 UTC time. Why do I want it to be 0? Just to say “hey, I wake up at 7 and the Sun is at its peak at 13”? I mean, that’s the same thing about daylight savings time - we just decided “let’s pretend the day starts one hour earlier”.

So why can’t we just use all the same number, everywhere in the world, and just adapt our schedules so the usual waking times are adjusted for the Sun’s presence and the cultural habits?

Someone might say “yes, but those whose number system is aligned with their usual one are advantaged”.

For this reason, I’m a great fan of International Color Time: http://www.phrenopolis.com/colorclock/

Fuck numbers. It’s a quarter past teal, now. And it is like that everywhere in the world. You know that Italians usually begin to work at pear o’clock and stop at denim or blue o’clock. No more problems.

3 Likes
9

What about color blind people? You monster!

10

You’re right.

Then I’ll be switching to the “rock paper scissors” clock.

11

No, adopt the International Official Ema’s Time.

For me, it’s always who-fucking-cares o’clock.

12

Except in summer, when it’s who-fucking-cares+1 o’clock.

3 Likes
13

That’s sadly true. Italians definitely work too much.

14

That´s just good enough for me. For me it´s always Rock Around the Clock! :metal: :clock1:

2 Likes
15

Yeah, and switch to a decimal system while we’re at it!

Personally, I would not care at what “number” I need to get up, take the bus or be at the office at the latest, but I do prefer to come home with still a bit of daylight left. So my hope is we’ll switch to a permanent CEST arrangement.

16

I wouldn’t miss it. Fuck Nazi Time.

17

Wait wait wait… you’re trying to tell me that the northern and the southern European countries disagree over something???

18

Agreed. Also someone should explain the people of eastern germany that that time is actually over.

1 Like
19

I don’t care much about daylight saving time (yes or no).

But I do like precise clocks and daylight saving ensure clocks which have to be manually set will be set at least twice a year.

Just use UTC. It’s everywhere the same and everyone should know their current offset from UTC.

20

Newsflash: I wouldn’t have to turn on my light in the morning if it weren’t for DST.

This has always struck me as an extremely nonsensical argument.