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Saving Daylight
In 1784, Ben Franklin wrote a satirical paper to a French journal extolling the financial benefit to be obtained by getting the French to arise at dawn and thus save vast quantities of money on candles. He suggested taxing shutters, rationing candles, firing a cannon, and ringing church bells at dawn to awake the public (did he intend something like the muezzin dawn call to prayer in Islamic nations?)
In 1918, to follow the lead of Germany in World War I (Germany originated daylight saving time in 1916, ostensibly to save fuel for the war effort; this kind of thinking may have had something to do with the outcome of the war?), the United States, under President Woodrow Wilson, initiated daylight saving time. This started in April and ended in October. Only in the progressive era could this have begun in the U.S., as, of course, progressives likely thought they were actually saving daylight. Maybe Wilson, scholar that he was, found Franklin’s paper and thought Franklin was serious. If so, it would have been the only idea of the founders that Wilson liked. Otherwise, he thought they were all crocks.
The main question was why progressives chose to save daylight in the summer, when they had plenty of it, rather than in the winter, when it was in short supply. But then, that’s pretty much the way progressives think. To wit, President Joe Biden thinks that spending a trillion dollars costs zero dollars. Of late, Republicans have tried to improve on the progressive idiocy by extending daylight saving all year round. Sen. Marco Rubio has championed this effort (Florida has the least need to save daylight of any state in the contiguous U.S. states — go figure). Rubio has had the chutzpah to title his legislation the Sunshine Protection Act. As if sunshine needed protection. Yes, yes, I know, Florida is the Sunshine State, but still … I thought it was the Earth that needed protection from global warming, er, “climate change.” Now we’re going to fix the sun as well? Again, progressives probably think we can achieve such a thing. Alas, such as Bill Gates is busy figuring out how to protect the earth from sunshine! Which is it that we need? Protection of sunshine, or protection from sunshine? Of course, with less sunshine there will be less photosynthesis, thus less incorporation of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) into plants, fewer crops, and perhaps mass starvation, and since there will be less removal of CO2 from the atmosphere, we would likely have global warming resulting from Gates’ plan to prevent global warming. If Gates’ scheme to prevent global warming actually worked, it would likely lead to global cooling, maybe freezing, if freezing hits a hockey stick moment like warming. Gates would then likely concoct some idea on the use of geothermal energy by tapping the Earth’s core to prevent us all from freezing to death, which would be fruitless if we had already starved to death from crop failures due to lack of sunshine and global freezing from his fantastic scheme.
But Rubio does have a point. This bouncing back and forth of the time is actually killing people. Some medical studies have suggested that the physiologic changes required to get the diurnal cortisol rhythms back in sync with the actual sun time are sufficiently stressful (some people experience the time changes as severe prolonged jet lag) that there is an uptick in fatal myocardial infarctions, strokes, and such. Yes, only the vulnerable would tend to be affected, and we could hasten their demise by admitting them to nursing homes filled with COVID-infected patients to see how long they last. But that seems a little Draconian.
When Wilson first imposed daylight saving time, farmers were adversely affected. They were not amused. They were already up at the crack of dawn with the cock crowing and didn’t need anyone to tell them when to work. They went to work as soon as there was sufficient light to permit them to work. And there were a lot more farmers then than there are now. Congress got off its duff and banned daylight saving time, with enough votes to override Wilson’s veto (Wilson didn’t want to be led around by the nose by a bunch of farmers — they were as deplorable to progressives then as they are now, but he lost on that one).
Of course, the entire rational for daylight saving time would not exist were it not for the progressive ideas that government should dictate the workday, start time, end time, amount of hours worked, etc., etc. Consider that famous U.S. Supreme Court case, Lochner v. New York. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. just about blew his reputation as a progressive over that one. Imagine, letting bakers negotiate their own contracts for working hours. How could Holmes have been so obtuse as to allow that? That meant there would be less impetus for bakers to unionize, cause labor problems, and use their leverage. (People unable to purchase their daily bread because the bakers were on strike?? Things like that started revolutions, such as the French Revolution — just what the progressives envisioned to fundamentally transform America into a workers’ paradise. Indeed, I think I would have been in the vanguard of the mob at the Bastille if I woke up one day and couldn’t get my hands on one of those marvelous French baguettes.)
Some states (New York) continued to use daylight saving time. Others did not. The situation was sufficiently confusing that boats, trains, and planes traveling between states lobbied for some uniformity. Of course, the federal government claimed the prerogative to intervene — interstate commerce, after all — and produced another act in 1966. Something about the Uniform Time Act. Now if a state wants to change and not use daylight saving time, or use more DST, that state has to get clearance from the U.S. Department of Transportation, I am led to believe. And states can opt out of daylight saving time, but they cannot opt out of standard time by making DST permanent. It requires an act of Congress to change daylight. As they say, Congress thinks its crowing causes the sun to rise.
Wikipedia has the remarkable line: “Ancient Civilizations adjusted daily schedules to the sun more flexibly than DST does … “
The mother of all NSS statements.
Nothing says “progressive” like mandating sunrise and sunset. Telling the heavens how to behave, for the benefit of progressive man. Vaccine mandates that won’t stop COVID are a mere triviality in the progressive pantheon of cosmic policy.
Published in General
It matters because the modern world runs on clocks. If we all worked on private farms and only needed to get our food to the local gate when it opened at sunrise, we’d be golden. But in the global age of schedules and meetings across the world where we set everything to hours on clocks, getting up at 3am is a blooming waste of sleeping hours that can’t be made up at 7pm during Little Suzie’s soccer game that started at 6:30 pm. And that’s the best time for that game because her coach had to be in a meeting with someone on the opposite coast at 4:30pm and the earliest he could make it to the field was 6pm.
So if we want to abolish clocks, sure. Let’s go back to the natural rhythms of sleeping through the winter and working through all sunlight in the summer. Let’s do away with commuted work, meetings, and schedules. C’est la vie to phone meetings with clients on the other side of the world. Adios to flights from LA to NYC.
In the age of clocks and diverse commerce in our modern world, dst it is.
No. And if you guys have your way it won’t matter. The birds will be waking me up at 3:00 am anyway.
I have a friend who never changes his clocks, by the way.
So, instead of forcing all of us to not change our clocks, how about you guys do as my friend does, and just never change yours. And we who love the time-shift will continue to change our clocks and enjoy the benefits of post 9:00 pm sunlight in the summer and sunlight commutes in the winter.
Pffft. You guys don’t even have winter. I mean, it’s bad enough that we have winter here, now you want to take the sun away from us, too?
A pox on everyone! (Except me.)
But we’re on Standard Time NOW. How does “daylight saving time” affect morning sun in the winter, when it’s not in effect?
I think you just made the argument for keeping the clocks the same throughout the year.
Of course, I may have used that as a stand-in for “twice a year clock change” which is a mouthful. So it’s the shift back to Standard Time that adds morning hours. But if we never switched ahead to DST each spring, at my latitude, sunrise would be ridiculously early.
Good point!
Sounds good to me.
We’ve got plenty of Winter in Cleveland. No matter how you change the clocks, it isn’t going away.
Is that a Big Pox or a Smallpox?!?
Cow-pox!
So, why not DST all year? Is it really a problem Up North? Or is that what would “take the sun away” in winter?
Yes. If we stuck on DST all year, the sun wouldn’t rise until close to 9:00 am. It really is a huge swing up here between Winter and Summer Solstices. It’s like a 6 hour, 45 minute difference in sunlight. That’s why the clock changes help so much. By keeping it less swingy.
In comparison, in Houston, for example, the difference is only about 3 hours and 45 minutes. Hardly noticeable.
I don’t think I did. I’m typically my most productive early in the morning. I basically ran on morning adrenaline. If I sat down and rested, I’d be done for the day. Getting up at 7 and being out of the house to run errands by 8 frequently proved to be difficult. Child care at the gym didn’t open til 9 and shops and stores didn’t open til 10 (unless it was groceries… but those are last so they aren’t in the car for hours while doing other chores).
This was a pain getting up at SEVEN. Imagine doing that at three. I don’t know if any of you have ever done might shift work, but there is a significant inconvenience and quality of life issue if you are operating on a schedule vastly different from the functioning world around you. DST regulates everyone to having the same “operational hours” at a different time (by the same name). Telling someone to just wake up at sunrise to enjoy the daylight when sunrise is a good 5 – 6 hours before operational hours of the world around you is being dismissive of the challenges it poses. At some point this person must sleep. If the bed time accommodating 3am wake ups falls in working hours, you wouldn’t get proper sleep or would have to change jobs. Which is more inconvenient than DST is to anyone living in the south.
By the end of Biden’s term we’ll pretty much be at a pre civilization state. How good are you at hunting and gathering?
Is that a cow-pox or a cow poke?!
Because then we could just go to straight time once and forever. Noon will always be noon.
It sounds like your problem is with the schedules of the stores and the gym, not with moving clocks back-and-forth.
3:00 AM was a time that I think Drew just threw out there arbitrarily. I don’t think it has much relevance to a meaningful daytime schedule. We’re only talking about adjusting the clocks one hour back and forth, so if you are getting up at 7 AM during the Winter, you now have to get up at 6:00 AM in the Summer to adjust for Daylight Savings.
I am self-employed and don’t have a permanent employer where I have regular hours. So I pretty much keep random hours that often involves staying awake all night and sleeping during the day. It is extremely hard on one’s emotional state when nothing happens at regular times. And that’s when I do it out of choice. I can’t imagine how it feels for those who are forced to work rotating night shifts.
Not very. But I can fish in a pinch.
When my wife comes back from Meijers I ask how her hunting and gathering expedition went. I’m not so good at it myself.
Not exactly arbitrarily. It’s already starting to get light at 4:00 am in June and the birds (Robins in particular) are already singing. It can be pretty loud outside our windows. If we weren’t on DST, then that would be 3:00 am.
But wouldn’t it be earlier yet to the south, and yet those people don’t seem to have a big problem with it.
No. Closer to the equator is more stable. The seasons become less noticeable closer to the equator. Alaska gets no light in winter and no night in summer. Florida’s summer morning light (sunrise being earlier… this is just when I notice) is around 6 am and winter is 7. It’s not very different between the two.
I looked it up. Orlando sunrise at Summer/Winter Solstice is 6:27/7:13. I’m guessing controlling for DST, we would have a 2 hour difference between summer and winter sunrise. With DST, it’s an hour difference.
That just seems counter-intuitive. Even with time zones, how could it be morning that much earlier in Wisconsin, when the sun is never directly overhead any farther north than the Tropic of Cancer which is about 23.5 degrees North latitude which might roughly cover Florida but Wisconsin is north of 40 degrees? If I had a globe I could point a flashlight at it for some examples, but it just doesn’t figure right.
No, it wouldn’t. For example, on July 1 of this year the sun rose in Green Bay, Wisconsin at 5:11 a.m., and in Mobile, Alabama at 5:53 a.m. The two cities are not at the exact same longitude, but close enough for the purpose.
Civil Twilight (Dawn) was at 4:34 a.m. in Green Bay and 5:25 a.m. in Mobile. I’m not sure when the birds start making a racket, but I don’t think it’s later than Civil Dawn.
(I used this website to look it up: https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/green-bay?month=7&year=2021)
At the latitude where my parents live it would be sunrise at 4:58 a.m. and Civil Twilight (Dawn) at 4:18 a.m. (It would be that if they were at the same latitude in the same timezone.)
This is a commonly known feature of our tilted axis. It’s why the equator has perpetual summer with hardly any seasonal change. During the US winter, the North Pole is tilted away from the sun, making their nights very long. The closer to the North Pole you are, the less light you get. In the summer, the pole is tilted towards the sun, making longer days. The further north you go, the longer the day gets.
Because the equator is always the same distance from the sun no matter how the earth is tilted, it doesn’t change at all at the equator. I’m still north of the equator, so I get some variation, just not much.
So Alaska’s solstice’s are 24 hours difference. DST is meaningless to them. Drew sounds like a 6 hour difference (3/9). DST has an impact. Where I am, it’s negligible.
It gets worse! Above the arctic circle the sun doesn’t set for a period around the summer solstice. Shortly after the solstice in 1987, we took our family on a charter twin-engine midnight flight from Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk, on the Arctic Coast in the Northwest Territories and got a tour of the village, all in daylight.
I guess birds don’t pay attention to daylight Savings Time. Lucky bastards!
And the opposite in winter, of course. There was a vampire movie about that.
We get birds singing as early as 2:00 AM in Cleveland. It can be pretty annoying. They are loud!
When my wife lived in Alaska she said they used to have outdoor barbecues near midnight in the summertime.
My sister and her (then) husband ran a construction business in Fairbanks for a time (not quite at the Arctic circle). I asked if any workers ever got mixed up and arrived at work at 7 p.m. instead of 7 a.m. She said it was known to happen. People do get their days and nights mixed up.
You’re right, it seems counter-intuitive, but think of it this way.
In the lower latitudes the Sun makes a fairly overhead arc by starting due East and setting due West, in other words the shortest arc around the globe. In the higher latitudes, in the Summer, the sun starts out not due East but North of due East. It makes a longer arc through the sky across the horizon instead of overhead and ends up setting not due West, but North of due West. It doesn’t go straight down, it goes down at a severe angle. This longer arc takes more time to traverse than the shorter overhead arc, thus making a longer day.
Above the arctic Circle, in the Summer, the Sun just kind of sits right above the horizon as in a Sunset, but it then circles sideways 360 degrees around the Horizon. It only goes up and down a tiny amount, unless you’re standing at the North Pole. It takes a full day for the Sun to circle back (like Jenn Psaki) to it’s original starting position along the Horizon. In Winter the same circling happens out of sight below the Horizon, hence 24-hour night.