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I'm in BC. The astro-nerd in me would have preferred to see permanent Standard Time instead of a permanent +1 offset. Instinctively, I think morning light is important to our biology for a daily reset and the solar cue of "high noon" is also a real thing. I'm sure I've read that sleep health experts have historically supported a change to permanent Standard Time, not DST.

I respect there are economic arguments for permanent DST. But I question the road safety stat I hear with announcements like this. Kids walking, biking, and being driven to school in mornings in darkness ... that's also what permanent DST gives us.

Oh well, I am in the minority it seems. So R.I.P. "high noon" ... I'll never see you again here. And, yes, I understand that depending on where one is within a time zone, a true "high noon" is only in theory. But it's a nice ideal. :-)

39 comments

> Instinctively, I think morning light is important to our biology for a daily reset

I'd bet people would happily trade away the inkling of light they get during their winter commute before locking themselves into their office for some extra daylight when they leave that office.

Daylight is most enjoyable if you can actually make use of it.

That's what everyone says. But it turns out people hate spending their morning in darkness for more light at night. Which makes perfect sense:

https://washingtonian.com/2022/03/15/the-us-tried-permanent-...

> the inkling of light they get during their winter commute

It's not an inkling. Unless you roll out of bed and instantly onto your commute, you're getting natural sunlight through all your windows for hours every morning. That's exactly when you need it.

Well, I'm not one of those people. I like waking up with the sun and driving to work in the daylight. The idea that DST solves anything absolutely blows my mind. If you want the ability to start your work day earlier and end it earlier, that seems like a worker protection bill that needs to be passed. DST is the kludgiest kludge that ever kludged.

Yeah I don't agree with this at all. I want the light when I'm getting up in the morning. When I'm coming home from work it's the end of the day: I'm tired, I'm hustling home to do errands or chores or make dinner, I'm probably going to spend that time inside anyway because that's where the things that I need to get done are, and if it it's going to be cold and windy, it's going to be cold and windy in the evening. I much much prefer daylight in the morning and I like when noon is actually noon (+/- depending on longitude). I'm not looking forward to the time change and I'm not looking forward to the sun setting at 9 PM.

If it wasn't for that damn 9 AM Monday meeting (ugh) I would just keep my clocks sent to standard time and start work an hour late in the summer.

I'll politely disagree with this.

We have moved to permanent DST some years ago, and in December and January I wake up and leave home at darkness. Also, since days are so short, I leave office at dark, too.

My body is strongly solar powered. I can't wake up, I can't get up to speed mentally, my brain and body can't work until it sees sunlight.

Body's circadian rhythm needs that light, and artificial replacements doesn't cut it, because it's not only light for my body, apparently.

This behavior is not dependent on my vitamin levels, either. My body is an avid consumer of B, and I take the whole family and then some as supplements. My energy levels visibly increase when I start to wake up with daylight, regardless of what I take.

While many people disagree with me, I'm in this body for more than 40 years now, and I believe I know at least a couple of things about how it works and behaves.

So yes, we should start respecting nature more. Optimizing for numbers doesn't cut it.

The problem of offices is not when we spend time in them but rather that we spend time in them at all. What a banal hell it is we have consented to endure compared to the comforts of our homes or of any space actually designed for the wellness of human beings or even focused work.

Except for people like me who struggle to wake up before dawn. And whether people prefer light after work doesn't change the available scientific evidence which suggests there are significant negative health effects of waking up too early relative to sunrise, but no significant health benefits from having sunlight hours after work. People's preferences in this case are generally only mildly held and typically are not well informed by the science. I suspect if more people were aware of the deleterious health effects, their stated preferences would change.

100% agree. I used to watch the sun rise over the river from the train during my commute. It was worth having to wake up when it was still dark.

When I commuted that inkling of light was the only thing that kept me going some days.

Also don't forget losing daylight in summer evenings.

I've seen arguments about kids going to school in the darkness being thrown around a lot, but I've never understood why that (against fresh drivers) is always taken to be worse than kids coming home in the darkness (against exhausted drivers).

Everytime people extoll the virtues of high noon, I ask the same question: why does it matter if the sun reaches it highest point near 12 o' clock? You're awake for 4-6 hours before 12, and you remain awake for 10-12 hours after it. Noon isn't the middle of the day for nearly anyone in the western world.

I understand the argument for having an early sunset, clearly having sunlight when you're awake has an effect. But who cares about having an early high noon, when there's still two thirds of the day left at best?

I'm a relatively early riser, but: if you steal an hour of my summer evening time, I think that would call for civil unrest.

> I'm in BC. The astro-nerd in me would have preferred to see permanent Standard Time instead of a permanent +1 offset.

So would the folks who study circadian rhythms:

> Over much of the highly-populated areas of Canada, the sun would not rise until about 9 am in winter under DST, and the daylight will linger an hour later in summer evenings than under Standard Time. As a Northern country, Canada includes higher latitudes where the effects of late winter dawns and late summer dusks under DST would be felt more profoundly. What long-term effects on health can we expect from year-round DST? As predicted from our understanding of the human biological clock, our brain clock will try to synchronize to dawn and push us to go to bed later. However, our social clock will force us to wake an hour earlier in the morning. Will this have any health effects?

> We have good evidence for the negative impact of being an hour off of biological time, and this comes from studies on the health of populations living on the edges of time zones. We have arbitrarily divided the earth into one-hour time zones, so that people on the east side of a time zone see the sun rise an hour earlier (according to their social clocks) than people on the west side of the same time zone. Researchers have analyzed the health records and economic status of those two populations, and have found poorer health outcomes on the west side: increased rates of obesity and diabetes, heart disease, and cancer (Gu et al., 2017). Moreover, people on the west sides of time zones earned 3% less in per capita income (Giuntella and Mazzonna, 2019). What could account for this? As predicted, people on the west sides of time zones go to bed later than people on the east sides, but then have to get up at the same time in the morning because of fixed work and school schedules. Therefore they lose sleep: about 20 minutes per weeknight, which adds up to a significant sleep debt over the week. We know from other research that sleep deprivation negatively impacts health and workplace performance. We can already see the negative impacts of a one-hour difference across a time zone, and year-round DST would put our social clocks another hour out of alignment with our biological clocks.

* https://www.chronobiocanada.com/official-statements

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronobiology

About 50% of people want permanent standard time, 50% want permanent DST, 50% want to keep time changes. Doesn't add up? That's the point.

Everyone finds arguments that suits them. Some will quote "sleep experts", others will mention economic reasons, others will talk about road safety, each one with studies proving their point, peer-reviewed for the most sophisticated.

My take is that we are all different, and whatever you choose, some people will be better off, others will be worse off. There is a high chance that that variety is an evolutionary advantage, at least it was for our ancestors, as a group where everyone is sleeping at the same time is more vulnerable. Not great for office hours though.

In the winter I can see arguments both ways (though I'm personally in the evening light is better camp). But in the summer, it already gets light earlier than almost anyone would want to be awake. An extra hour of sunlight at 4am is little benefit to anyone, and likely just makes it harder to sleep. Light evenings in the summer are wonderful though. I think part of the health argument against DST is that those light evenings make it harder to get to sleep at night, which is fair, but I still wouldn't want to give them up!

100% with you.

And every argument I hear from the pro DST group is really just an argument for ending adult work at 15.30 rather than 17.00 and maintaining a 9.00 start time.

It blows my mind that we are all meant to wrap our lives around bullshit jobs.

I live in the Yukon so will now be in sync with BC time again after this change. The concerns about commuting to school in the dark seem almost comical, given the experiences of everybody here with the winter darkness.

For other reasons, I also wish we were closer to solar noon though. High noon is actually closer to 2pm here and seems to push the whole day back in the summer. The best (warmest) parts of the day get pushed too late into the afternoon.

> Oh well, I am in the minority it seems.

Given it one winter season across the solstice and I'd bet a lot of your fellow residents will come around to your viewpoint.

> I'm sure I've read that sleep health experts have historically supported a change to permanent Standard Time, not DST.

Yes, science is very clear: Permanent standard time is best for health.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/07487304198541...

https://srbr.org/advocacy/daylight-saving-time-presskit/

https://esrs.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/To_the_EU_Commiss...

https://www.ama-assn.org/press-center/press-releases/ama-cal...

https://jcsm.aasm.org/doi/10.5664/jcsm.10898

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jsr.14352

https://www.chronobiocanada.com/official-statements

But I think the scientists have made a mistake in their communication: They focused too much arguing against the clock-shifts, and didn't put enough effort to communicate why also permanent DST is a bad choice.

Speaking of, I've recently started using a daylight therapy lamp 10k lumens @ 10-30cm for at least 20 minutes within 1 hour of waking up: the first few days, the effect is dramatic. Later, when the body is readjusted you don't feel it as vividly, but if I don't do it for a few days I can feel my mood and energy drop. I recommend everyone who doesn't get much light (bright enough to make you squint) in the morning try it.

Seems dumb that we change the time to an offset rather than changing from 9 to 5 to 8 to 4.

Also in BC and I agree completel;y. The one hour offset seems strange. The trouble with any time change is that I still wake up a couple hours before the sun in the morning in the Winter in Vernon and in the Summer I couldn't get up early enough for a sunrise. I try to get out as much as often during the day in the Winter as I am sure I am starved for the Sun in the Winter. Was much tougher in Calgary

I live a bit north of Whistler. BC is rather larger than the UK but it is very roughly the same in north/south extent. Yeovil (Somerset) is about the same lat as Calgary, next door to you.

Unfortunately we live on an oblate spheroid what spins around the sun and its a bit tricky when the sun comes on and is switched off. It doesn't help that the basted planet is tilted to the ecliptic too so we end up with daylight/nighttime procession and all that equinox/solstice bollocks. I live quite close to both Glastonbury and Stonehenge. People have some pretty odd ideas about reality, let alone time in these parts 8)

The "perfect" solution is of course moving the clock continuously and keeping 12:00 fixed to peak daylight. Sadly that wont work too well when the time changes every 50 miles or so!

No one will ever be happy when it comes to fiddling with clocks - that is the way of life. There is no right answer for everyone and never will be. I might accept an arguement based on road fatality statistics but not much else and then you'll get some sort of economic based falacy in response.

Don't get discouraged by being in the minority in one particular forum, specially when specific angles dominate.

People put different weights to different arguments.

For the Spain argument below. I actually think it's quite uncomfortable to be +1 and +2 in daily life because people leaving office at 5pm are actually leaving at 3pm under scorching sun. The difference of having light until 23 instead of 22 is negligible in a country that is still up at night in winter.

I can't cite anything at the moment but from what I can recall, economic benefits of switching during the year have not been as tauted and the cost of changing every year has been harmful in many ways (operational being one), but I think here the discussion is where should countries land.

I hope that a country like UK doesn't decide to switch to +1 and the same for Europe, further separating themselves from the American continent countries with the focus on summer sunlight where summer already has a huge window of sun and people often tend to want to escape that heat.

As a fellow astro-nerd you are much calmer about this than me! DST is just a way to uniformly enforce "summer" and "winter" hours of operation on everyone.

If all the evidence supports starting our activities later in the day during winter why don't we just... change the start time of our activities rather than all our clocks? Why stop at one hour ahead? Let's add three hours to standard time...

I'm still livid :D

Same, also in BC.

I agree with everything you write, and in principle I'd prefer just to stay on standard time forever.

However for my selfish individual interests: I work with a lot of people in Europe, and this change to permanent DST will make the time difference once hour less for 4 months a year… until the rest of the world goes this way too, at least.

It's purely personal, but my body really seems to prefer daylight savings. I always have very rough and fluctuating sleep schedules during the winter. They seem to go away after the spring ahead (it could just be the longer daylight hours that become more apparent during spring). Greetings from Mission!

I don't get why we just don't cut it down the middle. Go +0.5 offset and get a little bit of both. Love the idea of no one being able to do the math when talking to people outside the province. I can't tell you what time it is in mountain time, NFLD, or Saskatchewan. Nothing bad comes of it.

> ”Kids walking, biking, and being driven to school in mornings in darkness ... that's also what permanent DST gives us.”

Can’t schools just open 60 (or 30) minutes later if this is a problem? ie: school has winter hours where class starts at 9AM instead of 8:30AM?

> Instinctively, I think morning light is important to our biology for a daily reset and the solar cue of "high noon" is also a real thing.

You know, you can just set your watch to whatever you feel like?

> I'm sure I've read that sleep health experts have historically supported a change to permanent Standard Time, not DST.

What difference does it make? If people want to get up later or especially earlier, they can, no matter what the 'official' time is.

For an example: Spaniards and Poles are officially in the same timezone, but the Spaniards do everything 'late'. At least when you only look at the clocks; not so much when you look at the sun.

Can't you just get up at a different time if you prefer different sunlight?

I personally love the DST option because I'd have some useful daylight after work in winter.

The mornings are just wasted daylight anyway because I'm just on the way to work.

Times are just numbers, just shift your work hours accordingly. The only real problem is that the people seeing you leave at 4pm and grumble are the same sort of people who don't acknowledge you starting work at 7am. As long as you don't have those sorts of people around you're fine.

I'm in favour of PDT from a forward-thinking perspective.

With climate change causing extreme heat events to be more frequent, having the sun rise later in the day will defend the work hours of those who find themselves labouring outside without having to adjust the hours that they work.

I don't know what time the sun rises in BC, but during the summer the sun rises here at 5 o'clock in DST. That would be 04:00 without. That means people (not everyone can darken their room sufficiently) waking up really early, and that can't be healthy.

> Kids walking, biking, and being driven to school in mornings in darkness.

It's not 1900s anymore. Cars have fancy headlights and sensor suites for AEB. And generally street lighting is available around schools.

This has to be done in two steps

1) Do ANYTHING you can to stop the clocks being fucked with twice a year.

2) After that is done and stabilised, everything has been updated to non-wobbly time. Now's the time you can start arguing what the exact time zone should be.

Never try to argue both at the same time. This is what prevents the EU from stopping the DST madness.

I agree and would have preferred that as well. But what I really thought they would do was split the two and just meet in the middle.

Hell noooo. 4:30pm sunsets are ultra depressing in the winter. Less light in the morning is not at all a problem in comparison.

+0 vs +1 boils down to dropping kids off vs shopping.

Thankfully, this is a situation we don't need to speculate about without evidence. Spain is on de facto permanent DST, serving as a natural experiment. I bet the results support you.

The obvious stupid answer is half way between.

There is no significance to the number 12 on the analog clock outside it being painted on top of the clock face. And even that is completely absent in the digital clock, where hour 11:00 is the same as 12:00 or 13:00 in significance.

So there is zero astronomic reason to fixate noon to a particular number if doesn't suit us, humans.

I'm just saying that astronomic argument is kinda meaningless for the DST discussion, the only thing that matters is manual allocation of light time for the most people as possible, so that a majority of population would receive highly beneficial natural light as much as possible. When the solar high point would happen in that scheme should be entirely irrelevant.

>Kids walking, biking, and being driven to school in mornings in darkness ... that's also what permanent DST gives us.

I think this is the worst thing about it frankly, the kids. And you can't just push the school time back cause it interferes with the parents getting to work.

just move it by .5 permanently

Great, wake up at 5 in the morning.

If you have a problem with school start times, you could also just change school start times.