Will This Be the Last Year for Daylight Saving Time in America?

PJ Media ^ | 03/12/2023 | Rick Moran

[Svartalfiar]

12:00 should be the highest point of the sun. It always was the definition of noon and should continue.

Noon as the highest sun was the definition before clocks came around. If you're gonna tie high-sun to 12:00 exactly, you're gonna start having to change how many seconds you have per hour before and after noon as the year goes on, or your noon won't match day-to-day.

You could start defining everything in solar days instead of sidereal days, but then you'll lose your exact 24hr day.

[the OlLine Rebel]

No you don’t. You pick the day of highest sun above horizon, summer solstice, use that as the baseline.

The point is it doesn’t have to be an entire hour off. At least people have an idea when they have no clock.

[Svartalfiar]

No you don’t. You pick the day of highest sun above horizon, summer solstice, use that as the baseline.

The point is it doesn’t have to be an entire hour off. At least people have an idea when they have no clock.

And if you do that, you're back to exactly where we're at: noon will move throughout the year in relation to the sun. Image search "analemma", and you can see how the sun changes position when photographed at the exact same time every day of the year.

If I remember correctly, solstice is actually the latest solar noons, while the equinoxes are the earliest solar noons. They best line up halfway between them.

Also, don't forget about time zones. Do you think we should get rid of them and let every town have its own noon at high noon time clock? As is, time zones generally should have noon=solar noon at the centerish of the time zone, while the east/west edges are ±1/2 hour. Of course, these vary with geographic/political boundaries, so none of them are exact. Not to mention some places like China have only a single time zone, despite being 4 time zones wide. Their western border gets solar noon around three in the afternoon!

So yea, if you pick a single day to base noon off of, you're going to have major variations in when dark/solar noon is. That's part of what DST is for, is to 'fix' the half the year when the clocks would be the most off in relation to the sun.