Posted on 03/08/2024 2:09:34 PM PST by george76
Standard Time will end at 2AM on March 10, 2024, beginning nearly eight months of Daylight Saving Time. This pushes clocks forward by one hour in most states, providing more light in the evening hours and less light in the early morning hours. This time clock shift is felt most abruptly in the states located in the northern part of the country.
For example, around the vernal equinox on March 19, 2024, the daily change in light in Fairbanks, Alaska, is around 400 seconds. In contrast, in Miami, Fla., that daily change is around 90 seconds. This means that in just nine days, the daylight in Fairbanks increases by one hour, while it takes Miami around 40 days to see such an effect.
Whether the nation should use either Standard Time or Daylight Saving Time has been debated ever since the Uniform Time Act of 1966 became law. Tweaks to this law have gradually added more time to Daylight Saving Time, now nearly eight months, suggesting that politicians prefer it over Standard Time.
Yet the Daylight Saving Time experiment in 1974, making the time change permanent, was considered a failure. The primary criticism was children walking to school or catching their bus in the early morning dark. The planned two-year experiment was abruptly cut short due to its unpopularity.
At present, 19 states have enacted laws that can make Daylight Saving Time permanent if Congress acted, while nine state are considering legislation that would make Standard Time permanent. Clearly, there is no consensus from state to state on the preferred time policy.
Overcoming inertia requires change, and change is hard. The likelihood that any federal law can be passed to either end Daylight Saving Time or make it year-round is wishful thinking. The 118th Congress has been particularly bad in enacting bills into law, further pushing the issue onto the back burners.
Sen. Mario Rubio (Fla.) has been persistent in hoping to make Daylight Saving Time permanent. He put forward the Sunshine Protection Act of 2023, which continues to languish in both the House and the Senate. This ensures that clock changes are certain to continue well beyond 2024. Using political capital to address the issue, when more serious national problems require attention, will guarantee the status quo.
The idea of a permanent 30-minute shift has been proposed. This would eliminate clock changes, while providing a compromise between Daylight Saving Time and Standard Time.
Given the current political environment, it would take a cataclysmic shift in thinking and bold action to eliminate the twice per year clock change. So what may need to happen to effect such a change?
The governors of all the states could come together to agree on either Daylight Saving Time, Standard Time, or a 30-minute compromise time. Through the National Governors Association, these state executives have the unique power to put through such a recommendation. If some agreement can be reached there, it would put ample pressure on Congress to act.
A smaller morsel to digest may be to follow the lead of how Arizona manages its time change, or lack thereof, by allowing states in different regions to work together to decide how they want to set their clocks. For example, the six New England states (Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts) can form a time consortium and decide how they want to address the situation. A balance between region size and ease of consensus must be weighed when forming such consortiums.
The key point is that instead of getting the 48 states in the continental U.S. to agree on a single time policy, having states work together in their immediate geographic region may be more feasible. This would permit both Alaska and Hawaii (they already do not observe Daylight Saving Time) to act as independents.
No matter what solutions are proposed and enacted, they should all include a “sunset clause” that would require congressional action to continue the law. This makes any such law a trial rather than a firm commitment.
Much like how trying to eat an entire turkey in one gulp is unpalatable, the same can be said about resolving the Daylight Saving Time / Standard Time conundrum. Polls suggest that over 60 percent of people would like to end biannual clock changes. Using alternative pathways that make it easier for Congress to act makes sense and would be quite, shall we say, timely.
As we age, we unknowingly become resistant to some change.
My body lives on eastern daylight time and my wife lives on eastern standard time.
That moment of high noon moves inch by inch along the equator. If you and a friend are standing ten feet apart on the equator one of you experiences that single moment of high noon a split second before the other.
We resolve this by establishing the longitude of Greenwich England as the prime meridian. Where that line of longitude crosses the equator is the starting point for all geographic locations on earth.
High noon is natural. The equator is natural. The choice of the prime meridian of Greenwich is a totally artificial choice. Go ahead and establish time zones based on Greenwich but don’t for a moment think that’s not artificial.
I got caught by surprise today. I was surprised I slept so long. I went out to the library and was surprised to find out that they were getting ready to close.
This will maximize the daylight when it matters!
Daylight Savings Time is vital. Without it, we would have shorter days.
No we wouldn’t. There is a set number of hours of daylight on any given day. Doesn’t matter what you dial the clock at
We just got an extra hour of daylight!
The choice of one meridian being designated “the prime meridian” is, yes, a historical artifact, and any other people’s who might have developed worldwide time zones could have designated some other meridian as the “prime” meridian - to them. That would not have changed (1) the time difference relationships between the 24 time zones, nor (2) the approximate time in each. Those are not artificial.
Because it’s spring. You’ll get more in the summer. The day is still only 24 hours long
You missed the entire point
Take a six foot blanket. Cut off twelve inches at one end and sew it on the other end. You didn’t lengthen the blanket. It’s still six feet
“the long evenings are a delight”
bttt
I like getting an entire whole hour of extra sunshine up front when the weather starts getting warmer.
Another way to do this is to add ten minutes of sunlight on the first Saturday of each month from March to August and then start subtracting the daylight back between the months of September and February.
By definition, arbitrarily selecting Greenwich makes any measures based on that arbitrary choice an artifice, hence, artificial.
Those are word definitions. It’s not subject to ones opinion.
By definitio”n, arbitrarily selecting Greenwich makes any measures based on that arbitrary choice an artifice, hence, artificial.”
The “measures” are not “based on” the Geenwhich meridian. The measures would have been the same - 24 equal times zones each fifteen of degrees of longitude apart - if the Chinese had designated a meridian near them as the “starting point”/prime meridian.
The time Zones are nothing more or less than one hour divisions of the 24hour earth sun relationship. THAT is not “artificial”.
The time zones themselves are not artificial other than their names.
You’re being intentionally obtuse. Any measure of a time zone has to have a starting point, there is no naturally occurring starting point along the equator. Make any choice you want but by doing so you are making an arbitrary choice thus making the whole system an artifice, hence artificial.
I’m done arguing the obvious with the oblivious.
“Any measure of a time zone has to have a starting point, there is no naturally occurring starting point along the equator. Make any choice you want but by doing so you are making an arbitrary choice thus making the whole system an artifice, hence artificial.”
You are being plain ignorant. The starting point may be arbitrary, but it makes no difference, ANY starting point would have had the same NATURAL result, 24 equal divisions of the 24 hour day. There is nothing artificial about it.
I recognize English may not be your first or even second language but the very act of arbitrarily choosing any starting point make the entire construct an “artifice”.
Go look it up and understand it is etymologically related to the word “artificial”
The entire system is artificial. There is nothing natural about a second, a minute, an hour or a week. They are all artificial, that is, man made . Days and years are natural. They come from rotation and orbit.
Do your best to learn these new words and what they mean
You really are an idiot.
You say a day is not artificial. Fine, and true. So how long - how much time - is a day?
It could be 5.273 gazzortinblatts each one of which is 175 nilbots
Those are no less nor no more arbitrary than hours minutes and seconds.
Dividing a day into 24 parts and each part into 60 smaller parts is arbitrary
Why not ten hours each of which consists of 100 minutes and each minute is 100 seconds? All we have to do is settle on the duration of a second to make that work perfectly.it’s all arbitrary.
The day, the year and lunar month are naturally imposed upon us. The other measures are man made, artificial and arbitrary.
“Why not ten hours each of which consists of 100 minutes and each minute is 100 seconds.”
If you take the circumfrence of the earth, and mark a point on the surface, and stand on the moon and see how long it takes for that same point to reappear - how wait, you’d need an “artificial” measuring rod to measure that circumfrence. LOL, so there is no measuring a “day”, none at all.
Guess what, you’re wrong.
The circumfrence of the earth is what it is, and that is a natural thing. And the speed of its rotation is what it is and that is a natural cycle, and it is very regular even if pnly minutely variable. And because those two things are real and natural, you can use “gazzortinblatts” or whatever you want, it will be possible to mathematically express your measurment in “gazzortinblatts” into hours. Whether in “gazzortinblatts” or hours, the natural cycle of the earth’s rotation is what it is.
And, when you take those measures - the eatth’s circumfrence and the speed of its rotatation - and you want to define the regularity of the cycle of rotation, and you want to evenly space out that cycle in division that make sense, according to that circumfrence and that speed, (1) you will pick some starting point - like the sun nearly directly overhead at the equator, and (2) “count the number of “gazzortinblatts” till that point is reached again, and guess what, any good mathametician will easily show your X “gazzortinblatts” is equal to 24 hours. Why is that naturally mathematically possible? Because the circumfrence is what it is and the speed of the rotation is what it is, whether in your “gazzortinblatts” or in hours.
if you want to invent your own world and measure it in “gazzortinblatts”, go ahead.
You simply don’t get it. Although I’ve agreed that day year and lunar month are natural you felt compelled to revised the obvious.
What is natural about a second, minute, hour, week or Julian month? Nothing. Those are artificial contrivances. To suggest, as you seem to be stuck on, that there is a natural 24- hour day is simply absurd.
Our clocks measure our contrivance, the time they measure is measured out in artificial units. The day could easily be measure in 10, 16 , or any number of artificial units.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.