When can we stop turning the clocks back and forth?

Question

Enough of this daylight savings time. It was put in in WWll to give people enough daylight to work in their victory gardens after their regular work. Few people grow gardens any more.

Answer 1

I don't think it's necessary. It's just one big P.I.T.A.

Let's make it so when it's evening in the fall, there's the engergy saving hour. Then stop with the nonsense. Hawaii and Arizona aren't included.

Answer 2

Depends on how far north you live.

There are arguments for it, notably for the reduction of accidents.

The arguments against it are that those in the north will experience much darker days, as sunrise will not occur till later.

Answer 3

when the earth follows a completely circular path around the sun so that it doesn't speed up it's rotation when it's closer to the sun and slow down when it's away.

Answer 4

It's still an energy saver. People use a lot more power in the evening than in the morning.

Besides, who cares if it's light at 6 am? An hour of daylight in the evening is much better.

I'm for daylight savings, maybe even 2 hours, all year round.

Answer 5

I don't mean to be a smarty... but when the Earth rotates on a perfect axis.

Many people intensely dislike Daylight Saving Time. Frequent complaints are the inconvenience of changing many clocks and adjusting to a new sleep schedule. For most people, this is a mere nuisance, but some people with sleep disorders find this transition very difficult. Indeed, there is evidence that the severity of auto accidents increases and work productivity decreases as people adjust to the time change.

Some argue that the energy savings touted by DST is offset by the energy used  by those living in warm climates to cool their homes during summer afternoons and evenings. Similarly, the argument can be made that more evening hours of light encourage people to run errands and visit friends, thus consuming more gasoline.

Protests are also put forth by people who wake at dawn, or whose schedules are otherwise tied to sunrise, such as farmers. Canadian poultry producer Marty Notenbomer notes, "The chickens do not adapt to the changed clock until several weeks have gone by, so the first week of April and the last week of October are very frustrating for us."

In Israel, ultra-Orthodox Sephardic Jews have campaigned against Daylight Saving Time because they recite Slikhot penitential prayers in the early morning hours during the Jewish month of Elul.

A writer in 1947 noted, "I don't really care how time is reckoned so long as there is some agreement about it, but I object to being told that I am saving daylight when my reason tells me that I am doing nothing of the kind. I even object to the implication that I am wasting something valuable if I stay in bed after the sun has risen. As an admirer of moonlight I resent the bossy insistence of those who want to reduce my time for enjoying it. At the back of the Daylight Saving scheme I detect the bony, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism, eager to push people into bed earlier, and get them up earlier, to make them healthy, wealthy and wise in spite of themselves." (Robertson Davies, The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks, 1947, XIX, Sunday.)

Sometimes people recommend a "compromise," wherein clocks would be set one-half hour forward year round. While this may initially sound appealing, it is not a good solution. In the winter months, when daylight saving is not occurring, our clock is divided such that noon should be the middle of the day (although since time zones are so wide, this does not always happen). In the summer, when there are more daylight hours, we want to shift a full hour to the evening.

Some countries set their clocks to fractional time zones. For example, Kathmandu, Nepal is 5:45 hours ahead of Universal Time, and Calcutta (Kolkatta), India is 5:30 ahead. This is not an attempt to compromise and have half Daylight Saving Time year-round, but rather an adjustment made because the countries straddle international time zones.

The idea of daylight saving was first conceived by Benjamin Franklin (portrait at right) during his sojourn as an American delegate in Paris in 1784, in an essay, "An Economical Project." Read more about Franklin's essay.

Some of Franklin's friends, inventors of a new kind of oil lamp, were so taken by the scheme that they continued corresponding with Franklin even after he returned to America.

The idea was first advocated seriously by London builder William Willett (1857-1915) in the pamphlet, "Waste of Daylight" (1907), that proposed advancing clocks 20 minutes on each of four Sundays in April, and retarding them by the same amount on four Sundays in September. As he was taking an early morning a ride through Petts Wood, near Croydon, Willett was struck by the fact that the blinds of nearby houses were closed, even though the sun was fully risen. When questioned as to why he didn't simply get up an hour earlier, Willett replied with typical British humor, "What?" In his pamphlet "The Waste of Daylight" he wrote:

    "Everyone appreciates the long, light evenings. Everyone laments their shortage as Autumn approaches; and everyone has given utterance to regret that the clear, bright light of an early morning during Spring and Summer months is so seldom seen or used."