How Greenland Solved the Daylight Saving Time Debate - Slashdot

Posted by EditorDavid

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  I was worried we weren't going to have another one of these pointless arguments until next November!

  • Re:

    Give me my hour of sleep back, you bastards!

  • Nancy Pelosi stood in the way of ending this argument last year. Yes, really. The Senate finally passed a bill getting rid of switching clocks and we would have stayed on DST going forward. The House had the votes to pass it. Pelosi refused to hold a vote, claiming she supported the bill but couldn't find the time to introduce it. Seems the lame duck Congress might have been a good time, or that extra hour from switching clicks back back in the fall.

    • Re:

      Yeah, thankfully the House listened to the sociologists and anthropologists who study DST/ST and why it's better not to have dark hours until 11am in the winter. Or maybe the historians who reminded the House that they did away with switches and locked us in DST for a year back in the early 70s. And then promptly reverted back to twice-yearly changes when people hated it.

      The should-be-more-staid-and-contemplative Senate jumped on a bill without giving it any study. Just governing from the gut. What a f

  • It's easy enough for Greenland, they have daylight April to September and no daylight October to March, so they need to start saving it now for when there isn't any.

• Some people want to get rid of daylight savings time. Others want to keep doing this "spring forward" thing. I propose a compromise that should work for everyone.

  We keep doing the "skip an hour ahead" thing, but not in the middle of the night on a Sunday. Instead, we switch to a Friday afternoon.

  We jump ahead from 3:00 Friday afternoon to 4:00 PM Friday, making the weekend one hour closer.

  • 1 hidden comment

  • Re:

    But then you have to go through the logical conclusion: in autumn you do the walk back not during the day at work, but in the evening while you are at the pub !

    • Re:

      In Autumn you can arrive one hour later on Monday morning.:-)

  • • Re:

      That's nothing, the USA has five!.

      • Re:

        Russia said "Yo! Hold my beer! [timeanddate.com]!"

      • Re: A compromise that will make everyone happy

        Not in one place it doesn't. I think you missed the point. You could say Arizona has two time zones, but again that's still in separate geographic areas. The nearest equivalent I can think of is China's Xinjiang province.

• No more suffering through twice-yearly clock changes

  Talk about prima donnas. To claim a one-hour change twice a year is "suffering" is the height of first world problems. People need to grow up and be an adult if they consider this "suffering".

  • Studies show there are more car accidents and more heart attacks and things like that following the spring forward.

    Suffering doesn't necessarily mean something is painful or difficult, but the sudden shift in peoples' lives caused by daylight saving springing forward leads to a lot more deaths because people have to work on adjusting to waking up an hour earlier.

    It might be worthwhile to stop all the clock shifting just to avoid unnecessary deaths.

    https://www.sciencedaily.com/r... [sciencedaily.com]

    • Re:

      Suffering doesn't necessarily mean something is painful or difficult,

      Yes, it does. In fact, that is the literal definition of suffering [cambridge.org].

      Perhaps instead of hyperbole, the word distress [cambridge.org] could have been used, although even there it refers back to suffering.

      The truly correct word should probably be annoyance. Changing clocks one hour forward or back twice a year is an annoyance at best.

      Note: for those who are going to chime in and regale us with your "suffering" of an hour change twice a year, I have made no c

      • Re:

        Ah, correct word choice. I can get down with that.

        Just as a point of contention, I'll state that what some people "suffer" is death, with DST being a contributing factor.

        But I get your point.

        Words. They have meanings.

        • Re:

          It's amusing that the two of you went from "car accidents and heart attacks" to, "no, we should only use that word for things that cause pain."

          • Re:

            Agreed, that's funny.

            I get the idea, though. People experience distress, so only sometimes does that lead to actual suffering.

            Still, it happens often enough that maybe dropping DST would be worth it.

            Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

            • Re:

              FWIW, I would choose to stick with Standard Time, rather than making DST permanent.

      • Re:

        I'll regale you: My daughter usually has more seizures around the time change because of the disruption to her sleep. I try to minimize that by stretching out our time change over the course of three or four weeks, but I never entirely succeed.

        • Change bed/wakeup time so there is no bio change

          Don't change the child's bed time or wake up time at all relative to daytime, then the body/mind has nothing to adjust to? On the day of "fall back" set the alarm ahead one hour, on the day of "spring forward" set the alarm back one hour. Similarly adjust bedtime. Adjust the alarm to the body/mind, not body/mind to the clock.

          • Re:

            I attempt to do this, but it never fully works out. She needs a lot of sleep, and eats very slowly, so school and work schedules end up pushing our sleep schedule around despite our best efforts. The best I've been able to do is limit the change to about half an hour.

        • Re:

          She should turn her clocks forward Saturday afternoon and get her full nights rest. I've started doing that and it makes a big difference.

          • Re:

            Unfortunately, one day isn't enough for her. What seems to work best is spending three or four weeks in advance moving the morning alarm up a few minutes each day.

        • Re:

          If she can't handle a change of a few minutes per day then I suspect the problem is confirmation bias, not more seizures.

          • Re:

            I don't know what you mean by that...?

      • Re:

        Definition from Oxford Languages

        suffering - noun - the state of undergoing pain, distress, or hardship.

        I am assuming you understand what 'or' means....

    • Re:

      >"It might be worthwhile to stop all the clock shifting just to avoid unnecessary deaths"

      And annoyances of being early/late to work/school. And resetting clocks. And messing with sleep patterns that can take days, weeks, or sometimes even months to adjust.

      • Re:

        Weeks and months? Seriously? If one hour's time change messes up your internal clock for that long, how do you possibly deal with travel between time zones?

        The body's internal clock is just fine shifting about one hour a day for the vast majority of people. A time zone shift of 7 hours will be almost entirely resolved after a week. I've done it closing in on 200 times in my life. No big deal.

        • Re:

          >"Weeks and months? Seriously?"

          It depends on the individual. Some people with sleep issues really react very badly to what for some people would be a minor change. Unfortunately, I happen to be one of those people who can take weeks or months.

          But regardless of how long it takes for any individual to adjust, if we weren't messing with time, the adjustment period would be zero for everyone.

    • Re:

      More accidents because people are idiots who don't know how to drive in the dark, not because of biology.

      Imagine if we moved to a system where it was darker for more time of the year instead of less, ie. by abolishing DST...

  • Re:

    It's time to stop complaining about daylight saving time
    
    (1) It's trivial. Most modern devices, including my phone, computer and the radio in my car, update their time automatically. For everything else, it's only twice a year, only 2 days out of 365. Maybe the problem is you, not DST.
    
    (2) No, DST does not cause health problems. Your body doesn't know what time it is. No one should be bothered by a one hour time change. Maybe you need to see a doctor, or just go to bed an hour earlier that one day in M

    • Re:

      Dude, you say that it doesn't cause health problems, then say you need to see a doctor if it does? Aren't you admitting that it does cause problems?

      That said, there are plenty of scientific studies showing that, like others have mentioned, that car accidents and heart attacks spike that day. Another poster here mentioned that his daughter(presumably with disabilities) suffers more seizures that day.

      As for permanent DST, going to school in the dark, I have to point out that that's a mix of being a special

• The justification for DST nowadays is to standardize the wall clock time of sunrise over the course of the year at civilized latitudes.

  • Re:

    so no real justification at all.

    DST a stupid figment of politicians' imaginations. If you don't like when school starts in a certain season, then change the school opening time. Don't fuck with the time base.

    • Re:

      You think politicians came up with it?

      (facepalm)

• • Re:

    I was in high school when that happened. We would stand at the school bus stop in the morning in pitch darkness; it didn't even start getting light outside until halfway through our first period class. That lasted about a week until the school district moved the school day's schedule ahead one hour, negating any perceived advantage of year round Daylight Saving Time. Permanent DST was a stupid idea then and it's a stupid idea now.

    • • Re:

        I had that same experience of going to school in the dark and I lived in Los Angeles. DST is a lie. Noon is defined as when the Sun is at its highest point, quantized at the center longitude of roughly 15 degrees to hours (in most time zones). The lie is that you end up with your time skewed to roughly 15 degrees east of where you actually are but the Sun remaining where it is.

    • Re:

      >"I was in high school when that happened. We would stand at the school bus stop in the morning in pitch darkness;"

      And if you hadn't moved to permanent DST, there would have STILL times you would stand outside in the dark in the winter morning. I know, because it was dark for us standing out for school WITHOUT permanent DST. And you know what? I would gladly have had more such mornings if it meant I had an extra hour of usable daylight in the evening.

      >"Permanent DST was a stupid idea then and it's

  • That was also 50 years ago and the issues of school kids being in the dark is solved by letting kids go to school later which is something we should do anyways.

    We tried it for literally not even a full year and gave up after Nixon resigned. I think it's worth trying again. Or just to standard time, just pick one.

    • 1 hidden comment

    • Re:

      Anecdotally, I think nearly everyone would support sticking with standard time. We had a provincial referendum last year on moving to permanent MDT, which is really the equivalent of moving to CST, and that move was roundly defeated. Had the question been about sticking with MST year round, it would have passed no doubt about it.

    • Re:

      Arizona has it right. They stay on Standard Time all year. We should all do that rather than pretending it's the same time as 1,000 miles east.

• Permanent DST would mean sunrise wouldn't be until 8:30 AM in the dead of winter.

  Permanent Standard Time would mean that sunrise would be at 4:30 AM at the peak of summer.

  • 1 hidden comment

  • Re:

    Not true for the majority here; your latitude's shitty issues are of no import to most of us.

  • Re:

    And for some without DST it means the sun is going down before people are even out of work. No solution pleases everyone but if we just pick one we can maybe adjust schedules to fit instead.

  • Re:

    >"Permanent DST would mean sunrise wouldn't be until 8:30 AM in the dead of winter. Permanent Standard Time would mean that sunrise would be at 4:30 AM at the peak of summer."

    Actually, that statement is only accurate for a particular longitude AND latitude. You can't make such a blanket statement.

    Again, I would gladly have some additional darker mornings in winter to gain some precious evening daylight time. Give me permanent DST. Either way (permanent DST or permanent ST) is still better than this in

• All ~56,653 residents of Greenland -- about 1/8 of my city Virginia Beach.

  Guess you gotta start somewhere...:-)

  • Re:

    And all living at a latitude where it makes very little difference.

• Isn't going to do crap for them when they get only 4 hours in the winter
  going from 1000-1400 to 1100-1500 isn't going to matter much
  Might as well switch to GMT and be done with it
  At the equinoxes it will be 0700-1900 for daylight
  Summer solstice 0300-2300
  If they really wanted to be closer to EU businesses should have gone at least 1 more time zone. That way people could be in the dark midnight to 4am and they would have light all afternoon in the winter

  • Re:

    And that's precisely why they can do it.

    (...and why we can't)

• ...about Standard Time. Pretty much every scientist who has studied this thinks that sticking with Standard Time would be better than going to permanent DST, based on the health effects you see when you go from the eastern side of a time zone to the western side of the adjacent time zone. The earlier that you force people to wake up compared to sunrise, the worse it is for their health.

  Here is one of many articles [wbur.org] that you can find on the subject if you want to learn more.

• "Microscopic population of 56,000 comes to an agreement".

  There are literally more than 300 cities just in the US that are larger than that. If we assume only 28000 were needed to vote this in, there are more than 900 US cities larger than that.

  It's not hard to come to consensus when:
  - you're tiny, and
  - you're economically irrelevant. (sorry Greenland, I'm sure you're full of lovely, wonderful people and it's a pretty country but this is simply true)

  • Re:

    I don't think the editors marketed it as A Major Country changed the time, just that it's the first that did. I'm not taking here a stand here in favour or against, but this is relevant because Greenland choosing could be a historical turning point. It could motivate EU to do finish up voting to abolish DST. It was approved at the Parliament in 2021 but the Council never cared to put it on its debate agenda.

• I assume this doesn't count as journalism as it is completely one sided. It reads as if daylights savings is only a bad thing. Personally I like and see people who complain as most drama queens. Sure there valid arguments on both sides, the validity of which often depends on how far from the equator you are. I'm not saying I'm right, scratch that I am right. I'm not going to argue my case, it is an old argument that is well known.
  
  What annoys me here is how Bloomberg can be seen as credible when writ

• I would be glad if the turning forward and backward of clocks would stop. I would prefer permanent summer time over that.

  But I have to wonder. We're still animals with animal instincts. Will there be consequences when the sun isn't in its zenith at noon anymore?

  • Re:

    It almost never is anyway.

• "The morning people just fucked over everyone who wants to sleep late."

• The people of Greenland have realised that, when you live in an artificial environment (which living in the Arctic is, inevitably) then how you set your personal clock is a matter of business convenience, not where the sun is in the sky.

  It's not a new lesson. Working 24x7 cover, reporting to one set of bosses (the geology department) 3 hours behind the timezone the sun dictates for you, and 7 hours ahead of the time zone that the drilling department live in, you just ignore where the sun is. When you need