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70 Countries Set Their Clocks Back an Hour Tonight. But Why? (upi.com) 252

Posted by EditorDavid from the falling-and-falling-backwards dept.
Tonight 70 countries around the world set their clocks back an hour — including most of the United States, Canada, the EU and the UK.

Yet "The practice has drawn complaints about its disruptive effects on sleep and schedules," reports UPI, adding that "The American Academy of Medicine has called for an end to Daylight Saving Time, citing growing research that shows its deleterious effects on health and safety." [U.S.] Lawmakers are also increasingly wondering whether Daylight Saving Time is a good idea. At least 350 bills and resolutions have been introduced in every state taking aim at Daylight Saving Time since 2015, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Over the last four years, 19 states have passed similar legislation providing year-round daylight saving time if Congress allowed such changes.

Members of Congress have introduced legislation making changes to Daylight Saving Time, to no avail.

U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, (Democrat — Rhode Island), said in a video posted to Twitter on Friday that the upcoming switchover was one of his least favorite times of the year since it means darker afternoons. He touted his Sunshine Protection Act that would make Daylight Saving Time permanent.

"We can do a lot better for daylight for everyone who is up in the afternoon," he said.
Also supporting that change is Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio. "We're about to once again do this annual craziness of changing the clock, falling back, springing forward," Newsweek quotes him as saying. "Let's go to permanent daylight saving time. The overwhelming majority of members of Congress approve and support it. Let's get it done. Let's get it passed so that we never have to do this stupid change again."

But currently in America it's the Department of Transportation which is in charge of the practice, reports USA Today, and the Department believes that the practice saves energy, prevents traffic accidents and curbs crime.

So, as the Washington Post reports, "It's that time of the year again. We change the clocks back and we whine about it."
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70 Countries Set Their Clocks Back an Hour Tonight. But Why? More

70 Countries Set Their Clocks Back an Hour Tonight. But Why?

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  • Tradition. Someone at some point in time thought it's a good idea and we've been doing it ever since.

    • Re:Same reason we do a lot of stupid shit (Score:5, Informative)

      by MrL0G1C ( 867445 ) on Sunday November 07, 2021 @03:09AM (#61964983) Journal

      They're all behind the times... We set our clocks back a week ago in the UK.

      • Yep, same in Europe. So twice a year, I have to remember the hour's difference for a week in the time difference between here & there when I make transatlantic calls.
      • If you want to see daylight to happen when you'd expect morning to be, I'd rather it be light around 07:30 than not. I personally would rather abolish time zones across all countries entirely and just have everything run off UTC with people clearly being able to see when opening/business hours are for everything internationally. As a bonus, maybe all this ante/post meridiem 12 hour crap could disappear too!

    • Re:Same reason we do a lot of stupid shit (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Sunday November 07, 2021 @09:18AM (#61965549)

      Tradition. Someone at some point in time thought it's a good idea and we've been doing it ever since.

      I believe a lot of the controversy depends on where you live.

      The closer you live to the equator, the less sense DST makes. dark and light don't change that much.

      As you go higher in latitude, it helps to dampen the swings in daylight/dark, until at the highest, the daylight dark swings are too wild to make any compensation for. not much you can do about midnight sun or the days of darkness.

      Here in PA, in December and January, I'd get up and drive to work in the dark, leave work in darkness, and work in a windowless office. Weekends were weird with all that light outside.

      • Re:Same reason we do a lot of stupid shit (Score:5, Interesting)

        by fafalone ( 633739 ) on Sunday November 07, 2021 @12:22PM (#61965917)
        But DST is just making the situation worse. Yesterday it got dark 5:45pm here. Today it will now suddenly get dark at 4:45pm. That's a big sudden decrease that only accelerated the shortening of the day since the 8:45pm darkness summers. Afternoon is the time that matters. Not mornings. We shouldn't be trying to adjust daylight for super early when all everyone is doing is either sleeping or getting ready and traveling to work/school. Afternoon, when people are actually doing things, is when we should worry about daylight. And knocking out a whole hour of afternoon daylight after we've already lost a bunch is pants on head retarded.
    • I live near the border of Canada, in the far northern United States (Fargo, ND). Sunrise in my city will happen at 4:30 AM in mid-June if we keep âoeStandard timeâ all year (instead of 5:30 AM, as it currently is with the time change). Sunrise in mid-December will be after 9:00 AM if we keep Daylight Savings Time all year (instead of 8:00 AM). All these whiners who want to drop the time change must not have jobs where they wake up before 7 AM and not have kids in school waiting for bus pickup in t

    • Re:Same reason we do a lot of stupid shit (Score:4)

      by jwhyche ( 6192 ) on Sunday November 07, 2021 @09:53AM (#61965619) Homepage

      All my important clocks set themselves. I haven't noticed the change in time in years. If this abomination was to die in righteous fire and shame, I doubt I would even notice it, then ether.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        Pretty much everybody who gives a shit about what time it is either has clocks that set themselves, or clocks that need to be periodically set anyway. We could institute continuous time adjustment (+ 20s a day in the fall, - 20s a day in the spring) and nobody would even notice. Except we'd miss the semi-annual complaining about the time change from the must-sleep-until-the-last-possible-second set.

  • Not necessarily tonight (Score:5, Informative)

    by Cochonou ( 576531 ) on Sunday November 07, 2021 @02:47AM (#61964955) Homepage
    Tonight 70 countries around the world set their clocks back an hour — including most of the United States, Canada, the EU and the UK.

    Let me check Wikipedia: "In all locations in Europe where summer time is observed (the EU, EFTA and associated countries), European Summer Time begins at 01:00 UTC/WET (02:00 CET, 03:00 EET) on the last Sunday in March and ends at 01:00 UTC (02:00 WEST, 03:00 CEST, 04:00 EEST) on the last Sunday in October each year; i.e. the change is made at the same absolute time across all time zones."

    So that was not tonight, but previous on week-end. It does not bode well for an article when its first sentence is factually wrong...
    • It does not bode well for a website's "EditorDavid" that it remains wrong hours later ( in all timezones ). Editors, do your JOBS - EDIT !!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by thsths ( 31372 )

      Hey, this is slashdot. Never let facts get into the way of a passionate argument.

      In fact, you could say that slashdot invented the whole "post-truth" social media concept. :-)

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      And this is why dealing with DST is such a pain. The rules for when the clocks change are themselves changing over time, and vary between countries. Customers want embedded systems to show the correct time and adjust automatically. Even if you implement various algorithms in code, eventually the rules will change and it will stop working.

      It's even worse for code that has to deal with historical timestamps. It has to know about all the previous rules and when they were in force. Timezones have the same probl

      • And this is why dealing with DST is such a pain. The rules for when the clocks change are themselves changing over time, and vary between countries. Customers want embedded systems to show the correct time and adjust automatically. Even if you implement various algorithms in code, eventually the rules will change and it will stop working.

        It's even worse for code that has to deal with historical timestamps. It has to know about all the previous rules and when they were in force. Timezones have the same problem, countries decide to switch zone now and then.

        I've used UTC for years. It avoids all of the DST stuff, which seems to bother people.

        No time zones, nothing but this is the time.

        I will note that it comes with it's own issues when dealing with life on a rotating globe.

        People in general prefer their activity hours to be during daylight hours There are outliers like shift work, but the general business hours are preferred to be in the middle of the daylight part.

        There are some real advantages in having time zones though. I have widgets on the comp

    • Indeed, in fact, I think it is only North America that did it last night. Plus, like the US it is only "most" of Canada too since Saskatchewan does not change.

      The reason for summertime is simple. Up north, in Canada, UK etc, daylight varies from ~8-hours/day in December to ~16-hours/day in June. In the winter this means it is light from ~8am to ~4pm which is exactly what you want since it is not entirely dark when you go into work and (at least for most of the winter) when you come home.

      However, in su

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by epine ( 68316 )

        In the winter this means it is light from ~8 am to ~4 pm which is exactly what you want since it is not entirely dark when you go into work and (at least for most of the winter) when you come home.

        Anyone with a more significant commute or an office which runs to the early side, it is in fact entirely dark for your morning routine for most of the standard time interval.

        The super ridiculous thing about this semi-annual bitch fetch is that the convenience of having huge geographical regions locked to the same

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      We all used to do it around the same time, then the Americans decided they needed to be different, and those of us in close proximity had to comply.

  • Honestly, the only problem I have with daylight savings time is people publishing nonsense articles like this one. The only previous difficulty was changing the clocks, but that's not a big deal anymore.

    As to the research, such as it is: it says that there are both pros and cons to daylight savings time. Given that, if we get rid of it, there's just going to be articles complaining and suggesting we bring it back.

    So how about, instead of getting rid of it, we just stop the pointless bi-annual whining?

    • "So how about, getting rid of it then we just stop the pointless bi-annual whining" fixed

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by fj3k ( 993224 )
        You can't change the system to stop people whining. All you'd do is change who is whining.
        • But would you rather hear a very small number of people whining or a very large number of people whining? Very few will be incessantly whining for the return of this stupid thing, especially after the first year. They won't be publishing articles like this calling for it's return.

    • daylight savings time [...] the pointless bi-annual whining

      But surely you don't want to stop the b-annual pedantry where it is pointed out that the term is daylight saving time, not daylight savings time?

    • Nobody would EVER want to change back (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SinGunner ( 911891 ) on Sunday November 07, 2021 @07:19AM (#61965349)
      As someone who lives in a country without DST, I can tell you every single person here thinks you all are crazy. If you want to change your sleep schedule, that's fine, but there's ZERO rationale behind distorting a scientific measure to do so.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        There's very little scientific about the time you're using, even if you don't observe DST. It's basically made up by consensus to roughly track the rotation of the planet. If you actually want to use scientific time... uh, you're late.

        https://www.timeanddate.com/ti... [timeanddate.com]

    • Honestly, the only problem I have with daylight savings time is people publishing nonsense articles like this one. The only previous difficulty was changing the clocks, but that's not a big deal anymore.

      As to the research, such as it is: it says that there are both pros and cons to daylight savings time. Given that, if we get rid of it, there's just going to be articles complaining and suggesting we bring it back.

      So how about, instead of getting rid of it, we just stop the pointless bi-annual whining?

      Sorry m'lud, if we restive peasants have annoyed you with our prattle about "voting" and change and so forth.

  • saves energy, prevents traffic accidents and curbs (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bookwormT3 ( 8067412 ) on Sunday November 07, 2021 @03:08AM (#61964979)

    I find it interesting that nobody ever mentions that it seems to maximize play-time in the summer evenings, yet also seems to maximize the odds that school children aren't going to school in the dark in the morning during the winter. Also the USA delaying the move off summer time until after Halloween. Not sure if there's any kids that bother to go out before it gets dark, but changing in November made it get dark an hour later on Oct 31.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

      I find it interesting that nobody ever mentions that it seems to maximize play-time in the summer evenings, yet also seems to maximize the odds that school children aren't going to school in the dark in the morning during the winter. Also the USA delaying the move off summer time until after Halloween. Not sure if there's any kids that bother to go out before it gets dark, but changing in November made it get dark an hour later on Oct 31.

      Seems completely back to front to me, putting it nicely.

      In the summer

      • Re:saves energy, prevents traffic accidents and cu (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Sique ( 173459 ) on Sunday November 07, 2021 @04:09AM (#61965063) Homepage
        The natural sleep cycles are about 40 mins shorter in the Summer than they are in the Winter (yes, YMMV yada yada). A clock that runs the same during summertime as in the Winter is also unnatural.

        When I grew up, we didn't have Daylight saving time. In Germany, it was first introduced during World War I, then abandoned after the war again, reintroduced in 1940 during World War II., but abandoned again in 1950. And then it was reintroduced in 1980, and has existed ever since.

        My bet is: As soon as we abandon Daylight saving time, we will regret it, and after a few years, there will be a majority of people wanting DST back. A regular clock during the whole year is unnatural in general, as our bodies adapt to the changing day-night-cycle, and there will always be attempts to somehow fix the discrepancy between what the clock says and how we feel, by changing time between Summer and Winter.

        • In Germany, it was first introduced during World War I, then abandoned after the war again, reintroduced in 1940 during World War II.

          The Germans did not just introduce it in their own country, they also enforced it in the countries they invaded.

          They also annexed the occupied countries to the German time zone until this day, e.g. in Belgium (which is closer to the Greenwich Meridian, and was on GMT before the German invasions) they changed the time by 2 hours.

          (Did we invoke Godwin's law?)

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Much of the world gets by just fine without DST. Japan doesn't have it, China doesn't have it, Russia abandoned it a few years back.

        • You might want to explain how moving time about affects the duration of your sleep. Nobody keeps you from going to bed early in Summer, because that's essentially what moving the clock forward an hour would essentially entail.

      • Bring back the good old sundials. They donâ(TM)t need adjusting.

      • Why does it need to be bright when kids are going to school?

        I agree, sleeping through those school hours would have been a lot easier if it didn't have to be so bright. It was already hard enough as it is to sleep sitting with some moron droning on.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

          I agree, sleeping through those school hours would have been a lot easier if it didn't have to be so bright. It was already hard enough as it is to sleep sitting with some moron droning on.

          Are you trying to tell me that schools don't have access to the modern invention known as light bulbs?

    • yet also seems to maximize the odds that school children aren't going to school in the dark in the morning during the winter.

      You sound like you're speaking as someone who lives in a very narrow range of latitudes and longitudes for whom that holds true. Where I live kids are going to school in the dark and then sitting in in class in the dark an hour later too.

      If you have concerns with kids travelling in the dark then maybe that's something to take up with the local council, fix the street lighting, or provide safer transit options?

    • Shifting time by an hour does the opposite of what you think in regards to children going to school or coming home from school in the dark. For a large part of the country, the DST time shift guarantees that children will either be going to school in the dark or coming home from school in the dark at some point during the school year. Take the extreme example of Portland Maine which had a shortest winter day of 8:55 hr on Dec 21st from 8:12 AM to 5:07 PM. Without DST, and by simply consulting an almanac

  • But why? (Score:2, Troll)

    by thegarbz ( 1787294 )

    I don't know. Maybe we could find a site that posts this question twice a year every year since its inception. Found it: www.slashdot.org

    Also thanks to George DoubleJa Bush no there's not 70 countries that change clocks tonight. There's the USA, Canada, and a few small Islands, because much like the imperial units of measurements they need to be different. Most of the countries mentioned including Asian, and European changed their clocks last week.

  • Wrong (Score:4, Informative)

    by Malc ( 1751 ) on Sunday November 07, 2021 @03:10AM (#61964987)

    70 countries did not change their clocks this weekend. Most of us did it last weekend. In fact the US and Canada are the main exceptions since George Bush changed the dates a few years ago. And itâ(TM)s not exactly disruptive because you get an extra in the r morning.

  • 70 Countries Set Their Clocks Back an Hour Tonight. But Why?

    To make their lives more complicated than they have to be, that and .... 'tradition'.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Snard ( 61584 )
      For some strange reason, when I read the last word in your post, I could hear this big bearded Jewish guy singing at the top of his lungs.

  • I got all my tzdata files updated so at least I'll be able to guess what time it is wherever I check.

  • The UK clocks changed last week, not this week

  • I remember that back when I was a child, twice a year my father had to go round the house manually adjusting all of the mechanical clocks by twiddling little knobs on the back of them.

    Today, we have far more clocks in our house than my parents did when you include things like the cooker, burglar alarm and various mobile phones yet almost none of them need to be adjusted as they do this automatically. I have to adjust far fewer clocks than my father did so the change is almost no hassle at all.

    I am su

    • When was the last time you actually paid any attention to the sunlight getting up or going to bed? Frankly, I can't care less about whether or not the sun is rising at all.

      50 years ago, more people were dependent on sunlight, with everyone's pastimes pretty much depending on whether or not there were natural light available. Today, be honest, how many of your favorite pastimes actually can't be done, or are already done mostly, on artificial light?

      • When was the last time you actually paid any attention to the sunlight getting up or going to bed? Frankly, I can't care less about whether or not the sun is rising at all.

        You sure do have a lot of posts in this thread for someone who doesn't give a shit.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 )

      Because people are turning into more and more whiney bitches. And I'm not trying to be funny here. It's incredibly disappointing to see the lengths people go to to bitch about things which very likely they themselves rank very very low in the categorised list of things to give a **** about.

      In this post we see people using the words "disruptive" and "forced jet-lag". Wowes me you little princess fairy ****s. These aren't even first world problems. They are whiney bitch problems. Me, I'm far more upset about

    • I remember that back when I was a child, twice a year my father had to go round the house manually adjusting all of the mechanical clocks by twiddling little knobs on the back of them. Today, we have far more clocks in our house than my parents did when you include things like the cooker, burglar alarm and various mobile phones yet almost none of them need to be adjusted as they do this automatically. I have to adjust far fewer clocks than my father did so the change is almost no hassle at all. I am sure that back 50 years ago there were people complaining about the switch to DST, but I am fairly sure that there were far fewer of them. So, if the physical process of switching has got easier then why has the process got less popular? What else has changed since I was a child that makes DST so much worse of an idea now than it was back then?

      Who can say why the winds of democracy blow this way or that?

      It was a bad idea then, and it's still a bad one. Maybe people feel more emboldened by (relatively) recent demonstrations of how they can vote against what the "powers that be" want.

  • Why not just change the schedule? (Score:3)

    by SlithyMagister ( 822218 ) on Sunday November 07, 2021 @04:40AM (#61965131)
    If people think that school should open an hour later for part of the year -- do that
    If people would like more time in the evening for golf in the summer -- adjust the work day an hour earlier

    Seems like it should be simple enough

    • \If people would like more time in the evening for golf in the summer -- adjust the work day an hour earlier

      Yes, because most people have control over their work schedule.

      • If people being at work during the daytime hours is something that's important for your business, adjust your business accordingly. Why should everyone bend over just because for your business sunlight matters?

    • I pretty much did that. I arrive an hour late at work during Summertime and go an hour late. Or so it seems to everyone else, for me it's just I don't participate in the nonsense.

  • Wrong question (Score:3)

    by nagora ( 177841 ) on Sunday November 07, 2021 @05:12AM (#61965189)

    Why are we going to bother putting them forward again next year?

  • I'm on the underside of the globe and we did the opposite a month or so ago.
    I don't see why we have to change the clocks though - it causes so many issues, just change opening hours for stuff for half the year if you want to have the same effect. 9-5 half the year and 8-4 the other half (or 10-6, whichever way around you want to do it). Same effect, and you don't have to muck about with missing or duplicated hours, and everyone having to change their clocks.
    Heck, you don't even really need local timezones

    • "just change opening hours for stuff "

      Sure.
      It would also be helpful if this was coordinated with other business.
      And let's put labels on the sets of business moving together, so we know when and how they've changed their hours.

      Congratulations, you just invented a less convenient form of daylight saving time.

      • Standard opening hours for many industries, as well as government services, are already set by statute and/or regulation (or by negotiated agreements governed by law) in many jurisdictions, and I'm not sure how simply changing hours is less convenient than changing time itself. Changing the time is an incredibly drastic way to do things, that causes a bunch of technical and logical issues. Changing hours of operation is just... Changing when businesses open.

      • The local hardware store already has winter and summer hours. In the summer they open earlier and stay open later.

        It's quite doable.

        Personally I prefer Standard time, but I live where noon by the sun is a nearly perfect match for noon by the clock in Standard time. And at 7 AM the sun is just now coming up. It will set at 4:30 this afternoon. And we have another hour of daylight to lose by the solstice.

  • The change happened in the UK and Europe last week.
  • Iâ(TM)d like to see which is more popular. DST has been shown to have as many problems with health as benefits to âoeproductivity.â I and a lot others would rather switch today, and never âoespring forwardâ again. Darkness at 10pm during summer is crap.

  • 70 Countries Set Their Clocks Back an Hour Tonight. But Why?

    Because 50 years ago, some scientists suggested it as a way to save energy during a non-crisis that was drummed loudly (see The Phantom Menace) under not pollution issues, but ignorance claiming impending shortages, when no such thing was happening.

    As long as government keeps its rationing fingers out of it, free people will respond and bring prices back down [juliansimon.com], and will do so faster than it becomes the "hockey stick" problem of shortage.

    This happen

  • I ask myself the same question, would should I do it this weekend, the EU already did it LAST weekend.

  • It's the semiannual "why are we doing this?" article.
  • Too dark in the morning/evening at some times of the year? Then change the working/school hours They're all arbitrary, after all, and not a law of nature.
  • Do a quick Google search you will find plenty of studies that show that changing the time increases traffic accidents due to loss of sleep and that is bad for us to change our sleep cycle. We have plenty of artificial light and it only takes about an hour of sunlight to keep people healthy.

    The reason we keep daylight savings time is that an increases the amount of daylight time in the afternoon and studies have shown people shop more when there's more daylight. So the retail establishments lobby to kee

  • Uh, the earth is tilted. (Score:3)

    by groobly ( 6155920 ) on Sunday November 07, 2021 @09:04AM (#61965525)

    Here's the thing. The variation in hours of daylight is proportional to some trigonometric function of distance from the equator. This means that the farther north you are (in northern hemisphere), the more you are going to like adjusting the clocks to deal with changes in when daylight occurs.

    Meanwhile, does anyone in the southern hemisphere bother with DST?

  • Asked and answered twice a year for at least the past thirty years on this site.

  • Just because you want something doesn't mean everyone else has to want it.

    Just because someone doesn't agree with you doesn't make them evil, or stupid. They may simply have a different opinion.

    People are entitled to have different opinions. The rules we settle on have to be the result of compromises.
    Compromises mean that everyone is at least a little bit disappointed, and that includes you.

    Being disappointed is not the end of your world.

  • Are doomed to repeat it - twice a year. I don't care which one is chosen, just pick a direction and let us stick to it. I just finished the routine of going around the house and updating about half the clocks.

    I like analog clocks, a swinging pendulum gives some ambiance to a quiet room. Stop making me change them and adding wear to them.

  • Didn't have to work an extra hour because of it.

    But I did.

    But I have been opposed to the time change for a lot longer than I have had this (NOC shift) job.

    And its worse for the other time change, in March, which is the only time of the year that the times of sunrise and sunset are significant.

  • Keep just DST

    Dark mornings of winter are wonderful too.
    A nice enshrouding blanket of darkness.

  • Yay, it's time for the semi-annual bitch fest where we learn how many people get cranky when the rut they're in takes a small jog one hour to the left. Or right.

    Vote for continuous time adjustment, so everyone can get a little taste of the life of the self-employed.

    I woke up this morning, a (self-employed) friend texted me "do you know what time it is?" and I replied "don't care."

  • Combine the Pacific with Mountain (at GMT-7) and the Central with Eastern (at GMT-6). To a certain extent we had this when TV schedules on limited channels drove many business hours before the 90's. Almost half of the area of the Pacific TZ and more than half of the area of the Eastern TZ are over oceans anyway. Solar noon on the East coast on the spring equinox is in the Atlantic until you get as far north as Maryland. Orlando is only 10 minutes east from Central time in the current system.

    Having j

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