DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Everything Else... No clock changes next year! Sounds great now, but wait for winter

Thoughts??? Personally, I'm not a fan. I'd rather spring forward and fall back.

No clock changes next year! Sounds great now, but wait for winter

Mark Lane
The Daytona Beach News-Journal
1918 poster celebrating passage of the daylight saving time bill.
The U.S. Senate, a body known in recent years for decisive inaction and kneejerk partisan division, somehow managed a unanimous vote this week on a measure making daylight saving time year-round.

The Sunshine Protection Act, if enacted into law, would mean that the semiannual chore of changing clock hour hands would be called off in 2023.

Legislation doing away with the clock-changes has been a regular feature in the Florida Legislature going back some 14 years. Always popular at session time when the days are growing longer. And it's been something of a seasonal hobbyhorse for U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio who sponsored the bill.

Wait, we've been here before:Didn't Florida agree to do away with the whole clock-changing thing?

Daylight saving time: A century of clock changing could soon run out.

And why not? April's clock change can be painful. It was especially hard on me back when my kids were teenagers and Seabreeze High School's late bell rang at 7:20 a.m., a time that we used to call "6:20" only the week before the time change.

I organize my life around being a slow riser. This is not a moral failing; I was born that way. I don't attend breakfast meetings or post sunrises on Instagram. I'll pay quite a bit extra for later flights out of town. I eat at places that stick with their breakfast menu well after noontime while withholding judgment on customers. I am not to be trusted operating heavy machinery or motor vehicles on busy streets in single-digit morning hours, so working from home has lately suited me fine.

So I, of all people, should be applauding this action, right? No harsh transitioning with the time shift. More after-dinner walks on the beach. And yet, sad to say, sometimes excellent springtime ideas don't always feel the same come wintertime.

The last time Congress voted to put the nation on year-round daylight saving time came in 1973, the start of the '70s energy crisis. Ancient history from the days of the Old Ones. The idea was that this would save energy. If the regular daylight saving time season saved energy, it seemed to follow that permanent daylight saving time would save even more.

But the result was long, dark morning hours come wintertime. "Daylight saving time all year would be intolerable" was the headline in a Daytona Beach Evening News editorial as the measure breezed through Congress.

But after eight Florida schoolchildren died in predawn car crashes, Gov. Reubin Askew called a short-notice special session in January 1974 to take peninsular Florida off daylight saving time altogether. (The Panhandle is in the Central time zone, which complicated things.) The Legislature refused with a quick vote, and members turned around and went home, no doubt grumbling all the way.

Still, there was a lot of public unhappiness, which was what Askew was reacting to. Year-round daylight saving time was popular when it took effect, but the public turned on it within a year. Dark mornings at the bus stop soured a lot of parents on year-round daylight saving time. Predawn commutes were no fun either.

Gas savings? Negligible, according to a Department of Transportation study at the time. Longer daylight in the afternoons encouraged more people to be on the road in the early evening. Energy savings? When President Woodrow Wilson called for imposing daylight saving time during World War I, it saved energy on lighting. But air conditioning wasn't in use yet and late afternoons in Florida before the sun goes down now is prime time for compressors to be hardest at work compressing.

Bottom line: Marginal at best energy savings. But still, more springtime outdoor time. For Floridians, beach time after work! Yes, depressing winter mornings but safer driving on the way home from work.

So even if the measure is a heartening demonstration that the U.S. Senate is on occasion capable of doing something, anything, the broader effects seem to be kind of a wash.

Talk to me about it after Halloween 2023.

Mark Lane is a News-Journal columnist. His email is mark.lane@news-jrnl.com.

https://www.news-journalonline.com/...-great-but-wait-until-winter/7033441001/

I hate the clock changes so I'm all good with this.

Being that during winter it's dark when I leave for work, dark when I get home, the fall back means nothing, I'd rather have just a hair of daylight when I get home from work to handle the mundane things that have to be done that are easier with a bit of daylight.

I'm sure it's different farther north where darkness comes earlier than here.

Why not just split the difference and fall back 30 minutes in the fall this year and then never change it again?

I read where some said that keeping it like this affects the sleep mode. It stays light longer so people don't sleep as well.

When it gets dark at 5:00 pm normal time.. I'm sleeping by 6:30 and up at 2:30 in the morning twiddling my thumbs waiting 3 hours to go into work.

Living in a duplex I don't think my good neighbors would appreciate me working out at 2:30 am LOL !

I honestly don't like day time savings, I wake up early go to bed at a normal time, 8:30 pm lol

And living in Ohio during the winter, why do I need it to be lighter later ?

Even in the summer why ?

Sleep is good !

I'd rather it be standard time. I don't like it staying light out until 9PM

I love this! I have been asking for this to happen for decades.

I truly despise the clock changes.

How we have to hope the ineffectual House can get their heads out of their partisan rear ends long enough to also pass this and send it to the President. So he can have someone tell him whether ot not he supports this bill.

I like it especially on Thursdays which is sailing after work.

you sail ? ofc you do lol ! that is so cool !!

Aye, I have a 35 foot Bristol and a friend has a 26 foot Ariel. On Thursdays we pick a boat and enjoy the afternoon/evening sailing.

I'd rather it stay light and the sun set at 630. Seasonal Affective Disorder is no fun. So getting extra daylight is nice.

It normally works with people's normal schedule as well. Get more daylight in the winter when people are active. Totally worth it.

Set Ohio for Eastern Standard Time, and walk away.
DST was a stupid idea when it was adopted. Why do we attempt to add another hour of daylight during the time of year that already boasts the longest daylight hours?
Permanent DST is stupid and harmful. During the Winter, it forces broad swaths of citizens to commute to/from work, school, etc. in total darkness. Not healthy in the slightest.

So here's why I find it so damaging: Every time we switch our clocks, we move them one hour forward or back... but we experience a two-hour circadian shift, as it pertains to daily light exposure.

We should experience sunlight as is, year round. Allow our collective circadian rhythms to set, and never deal with this contrived BS ever again.

Right initiative/wrong time choice.
Permanent EST for Ohio is the way to go.
I hope this current initiative stalls in the house, and we take more time to think this entire thing through.


More (serious) study should be required before law is set.

But who is to say which is the true "day", some guy some millennium ago decided an arbitrary time on the clock coincided with the sunrise. Why not make it so sunrise on the summer solstice is 12am, the start of a new day?

Yes and no in the winter. It will still get dark around 6PM v 5PM. The problem is it won't get light until 8-8:30 AM.

Remember, what we are now on, daylight savings, is the fake time that was created.

OK...to play off a old Chicago song, "does anybody really know what time it is"?

I think this idea makes totally too much sense to ever become law.

fingers crossed it passes.

agreed.

The timeset that should be frozen id EST.

And you made a good point about circadian rhythms. Even if we stick to one time and don't make the shift each fall and spring, circadian rhythms are still a factor. The sun rules our sense of time. For most people sundown means it is nearing the time to sleep. Sun-up means it is the time to rise.

Most people don't sleep at sundown but do in 3-4 hour later. Staying light later reduces a person natural sleep pattern yet most people still have to get up at 6am to get the day started. You still have to go in to work or school by 7-8 in the morning.

It was also a very valid point that the light we gain is mostly during the time of year when it stays light out until 8PM anyway. Even when young I wasn't out playing golf or something at 8-9PM because I had to get up and go to work.

I go to bed at 3 and wake up at 730 and has nothing to do with the sun.

now that we have indoor lighting, I think everyone stays up way past dark.

I think you are wrong...I think you are a psycho...just kidding.

Me, I am pretty much the opposite. I go to bed at 7PM and get up around 4AM.

I don't sleep at 7PM...I watch some TV, or read or listen to some Cleveland sports radio for maybe an hour or so.

For years I got up around 4am because I liked to be in the office by 5:30 to get a little quiet time when I could get some writing or scheduling done before the 8:30 bustle started.

Now, I just get up, put on some jazz, drink coffee, do my computer things, then go for a early morning walk.

I usually wake up around 5:30 and lay there until the alarm goes off at 6 for the wife, so I can get up and take my shower.
Off to work by 6:30-6:40 work until 4:30 or 5 then home.
Do any outside tasks that I can while I have light. (clean pool filter, fertilize plants, spray for bugs, pick up palm fronds/seeds, etc)
Then inside where I typically get on the PC and read news until 8pm, go watch a show with the wife. She's off to bed at 9, I stay up and mess around on the PC, or watch a show she has no interest in, or mess around in the garage)
Off to bed sometime between 11-12 and repeat.

Always awake before the alarm during the week, and even earlier on the weekends.

I should that hitting the gym again with that early morning time.

lol yeah, I've always been like this. a lot of my family is for whatever reason.

woah. I couldn't go to bed so early and get up that early. I wake up at 730 literally no matter what. (except for a few weeks after the time change)

I get up early no matter what. I go to bed early because I like to get my beauty sleep.

It hasn't done me much good to date, but I am patiently waiting for it to kick in with crossed fingers!

That already happens for a lot of people anyways given the commute they have to work.



I agree. There's a desire to get rid of time change, so congress is "doing something" regardless if it's the right answer or not. I have a feeling if this goes through, there will be a lot of surprised people when they see the impact of this. There's people that don't realize that Dec 21 will be the shortest amount of daylight regardless if we change the clocks or not.