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How Greenland Solved the Daylight Saving Time Debate (bnnbloomberg.ca) 104

Posted by EditorDavid from the springing-forward dept.
The island nation of Greenland — population 56,000 — has "sprung forward" for the very last time, reports Bloomberg: On March 25, Greenland will move its clocks forward one hour to UTC -2 time zone for the summer, just as it has done in the past. Except starting this year, it will stay in that time zone for good. No more suffering through twice-yearly clock changes; come October, Greenland won't roll back to standard time like they will in the rest of Europe and the US....

For residents in areas of the island that are below the Arctic Circle, it will mean one hour of light later in the day — although as a tourist you're not likely to notice the difference given the seasonal extremes of sunrise and sunset. The capital city, Nuuk, may see up to 20 hours of sunlight in summer, but only gets about four hours of sunlight in the winter, for instance....The main argument in Greenland in favor of the change: It's a chance to be closer to European business hours, which would benefit the economy, explains Tanny Por, head of international relations at Visit Greenland.
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How Greenland Solved the Daylight Saving Time Debate More

How Greenland Solved the Daylight Saving Time Debate

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  • Oh, thank goodness! (Score:3)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Sunday March 26, 2023 @02:40PM (#63400873)

    I was worried we weren't going to have another one of these pointless arguments until next November!

    • Re:Oh, thank goodness! (Score:4, Funny)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Sunday March 26, 2023 @02:53PM (#63400909) Homepage Journal

      Give me my hour of sleep back, you bastards!

    • Re: Oh, thank goodness! (Score:5, Informative)

      by dbialac ( 320955 ) on Sunday March 26, 2023 @08:19PM (#63401851)
      Nancy Pelosi stood in the way of ending this argument last year. Yes, really. The Senate finally passed a bill getting rid of switching clocks and we would have stayed on DST going forward. The House had the votes to pass it. Pelosi refused to hold a vote, claiming she supported the bill but couldn't find the time to introduce it. Seems the lame duck Congress might have been a good time, or that extra hour from switching clicks back back in the fall.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Petrini ( 49261 )

        Yeah, thankfully the House listened to the sociologists and anthropologists who study DST/ST and why it's better not to have dark hours until 11am in the winter. Or maybe the historians who reminded the House that they did away with switches and locked us in DST for a year back in the early 70s. And then promptly reverted back to twice-yearly changes when people hated it.

        The should-be-more-staid-and-contemplative Senate jumped on a bill without giving it any study. Just governing from the gut. What a f

        • The US had permanent DST during WW2, that seemed to go OK. Why did people hate it fifty years ago? There was a lot of hysteria about children getting hit by cars in the wee hours of the morning. Won't someone think of the children?
          • That and most people getting up before dawn most of the year. Our timezones already lag west enough without DST making it worse...it doesn't make the day any longer.
          • Around here it seems to be all helicopter parents most seem to drive them to school themselves. Up until a couple years ago there was a bus stop in front of my house. There were like 2 kids there. I'd like to see DST all year. I was only a few years old last time they tried it and don't remember it.
        • The Senate represents the people not just sociologists and anthropologists.

          Those who predict dire consequences seem not to realize it can always be reinstated if they are correct. My guess is that they are worried about being proven wrong.

          • Re: Oh, thank goodness! (Score:4, Interesting)

            by Petrini ( 49261 ) on Monday March 27, 2023 @10:11AM (#63403332)

            My point wasn't that the senate represents only academics. My point was that I want my Congresscritters to listen to experts in fields before legislating. No one knows everything, unintended consequences abound, and I certainly wouldn't trust me to legislate most things.

            I want my legislature to listen to people who study things before they form policy and use that as one input. Not simply do what academics say, but certainly hear them, ask questions, and then reflect with other considerations. I don't want my senators to vote to change our national time system because they're cranky they woke up an hour early one weekend or got an earful from constituents who did.. I want a deliberative process, not demagoguery. Maybe that wasn't clear.

            Seriously.

      • I'm sure it will pass this year shortly after the Hunter Biden laptop investigation.

    • Re:Oh, thank goodness! (Score:4, Funny)

      by arglebargle_xiv ( 2212710 ) on Sunday March 26, 2023 @09:34PM (#63402025)
      It's easy enough for Greenland, they have daylight April to September and no daylight October to March, so they need to start saving it now for when there isn't any.

  • Some people want to get rid of daylight savings time. Others want to keep doing this "spring forward" thing. I propose a compromise that should work for everyone.

    We keep doing the "skip an hour ahead" thing, but not in the middle of the night on a Sunday. Instead, we switch to a Friday afternoon.

    We jump ahead from 3:00 Friday afternoon to 4:00 PM Friday, making the weekend one hour closer.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dargaud ( 518470 )
      But then you have to go through the logical conclusion: in autumn you do the walk back not during the day at work, but in the evening while you are at the pub !

      • But then you have to go through the logical conclusion: in autumn you do the walk back not during the day at work, but in the evening while you are at the pub !

        In Autumn you can arrive one hour later on Monday morning. :-)

    • Re: A compromise that will make everyone happy (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Malc ( 1751 ) on Sunday March 26, 2023 @03:36PM (#63401025)

      It could be worse: Lebanon's got two competing time zones at the moment!
      https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/wor... [bbc.co.uk]

    • Much easier to adjust people's schedules.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by e3m4n ( 947977 )
      there is one problem with that idea, although it sounds cool. A lot of school districts stagger elementary/middle/high school times so that they can maintain 1/3rd the number of busses if they all had the same schedule. So, where I live, elementary dismisses around 2:30. Then High school lets out at 3:15, followed by Middle School at 4pm. In your Scenario the high school students, also having a higher number of riders due to a much larger district, would get skipped that day in March. It got moved to sunday
  • The justification for DST nowadays is to standardize the wall clock time of sunrise over the course of the year at civilized latitudes.

    • so no real justification at all.

      DST a stupid figment of politicians' imaginations. If you don't like when school starts in a certain season, then change the school opening time. Don't fuck with the time base.

      • DST a stupid figment of politicians' imaginations.

        You think politicians came up with it?

        (facepalm)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by e3m4n ( 947977 )
        its proven to conserve oil consumption, reduce night time driving accidents and fatalities by 1% (more than offsetting the morning increase), and increase economic stimulus because people shop and spend more money with longer evening daylight. 100,000 less barrels of oil consumed per day during daylight time.
    • It's an economic stimulus. People do more consumer stuff when it's light out after work. That is why the duration of DST has been increased. The most recent under GW Bush was at the behest of the candy industry. They pushed the fall back out into November so that it would be light outside another hour after school for Halloween, and people would buy more candy for fear of running out of treats to give.

      Dining, golf courses, shopping and more all benefit from the shifted hour. It's purely economic now, and

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by e3m4n ( 947977 )
        it also saves 100,000 barrels of oil a day. Even in the 70s they learned it saved 10,000 barrels a day and we consume WAY more than that now.

  • The U.S. tried permanent DST before, it was HATED. (Score:5, Informative)

    by beforewisdom ( 729725 ) on Sunday March 26, 2023 @02:59PM (#63400917)
    The U.S. tried permanent DST in 1974. Americans HATED it so much it was repealed https://www.washingtonian.com/... [washingtonian.com]

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Hans Lehmann ( 571625 )
      I was in high school when that happened. We would stand at the school bus stop in the morning in pitch darkness; it didn't even start getting light outside until halfway through our first period class. That lasted about a week until the school district moved the school day's schedule ahead one hour, negating any perceived advantage of year round Daylight Saving Time. Permanent DST was a stupid idea then and it's a stupid idea now.

      • Re: The U.S. tried permanent DST before, it was HA (Score:4, Insightful)

        by simlox ( 6576120 ) on Sunday March 26, 2023 @03:42PM (#63401043)
        Well, that sounds like winter where I live at 56 degrees north.

        • I had that same experience of going to school in the dark and I lived in Los Angeles. DST is a lie. Noon is defined as when the Sun is at its highest point, quantized at the center longitude of roughly 15 degrees to hours (in most time zones). The lie is that you end up with your time skewed to roughly 15 degrees east of where you actually are but the Sun remaining where it is.

      • Re:The U.S. tried permanent DST before, it was HAT (Score:4, Insightful)

        by markdavis ( 642305 ) on Sunday March 26, 2023 @05:24PM (#63401427)

        >"I was in high school when that happened. We would stand at the school bus stop in the morning in pitch darkness;"

        And if you hadn't moved to permanent DST, there would have STILL times you would stand outside in the dark in the winter morning. I know, because it was dark for us standing out for school WITHOUT permanent DST. And you know what? I would gladly have had more such mornings if it meant I had an extra hour of usable daylight in the evening.

        >"Permanent DST was a stupid idea then and it's a stupid idea now.

        Nope, it is a great idea and I would love it. And most people I have asked said it would also be their choice between permanent ST and permanent DST. But everyone agreed the most stupid thing to do would be to continue this twice-a-year time change.

    • Re:The U.S. tried permanent DST before, it was HAT (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jacks smirking reven ( 909048 ) on Sunday March 26, 2023 @03:41PM (#63401031)

      That was also 50 years ago and the issues of school kids being in the dark is solved by letting kids go to school later which is something we should do anyways.

      We tried it for literally not even a full year and gave up after Nixon resigned. I think it's worth trying again. Or just to standard time, just pick one.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by caseih ( 160668 )

        Anecdotally, I think nearly everyone would support sticking with standard time. We had a provincial referendum last year on moving to permanent MDT, which is really the equivalent of moving to CST, and that move was roundly defeated. Had the question been about sticking with MST year round, it would have passed no doubt about it.

      • Arizona has it right. They stay on Standard Time all year. We should all do that rather than pretending it's the same time as 1,000 miles east.

      • Except schools have been systematically opening earlier and earlier all over the US the past few decades. Between 8am and 8:20am in every school I deal with in NYC nowadays. So the issue is not "solved", it will be even worse, and completely wipe out benefits of any attempts thusfar to have school start later.

        People want to set clocks to permanent DST so kids have to effectively wake up in the middle of the night because these adults are too lazy to wake up early themselves and do anything making use of ava

    • Oh, the poor children, going to school in the dark. I was a school kid in 1974, and this was a complete non-event.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Consider this first. (Score:3)

    by beforewisdom ( 729725 ) on Sunday March 26, 2023 @03:00PM (#63400919)
    Permanent DST would mean sunrise wouldn't be until 8:30 AM in the dead of winter. Permanent Standard Time would mean that sunrise would be at 4:30 AM at the peak of summer.

    • Not true for the majority here; your latitude's shitty issues are of no import to most of us.

    • And for some without DST it means the sun is going down before people are even out of work. No solution pleases everyone but if we just pick one we can maybe adjust schedules to fit instead.

    • >"Permanent DST would mean sunrise wouldn't be until 8:30 AM in the dead of winter. Permanent Standard Time would mean that sunrise would be at 4:30 AM at the peak of summer."

      Actually, that statement is only accurate for a particular longitude AND latitude. You can't make such a blanket statement.

      Again, I would gladly have some additional darker mornings in winter to gain some precious evening daylight time. Give me permanent DST. Either way (permanent DST or permanent ST) is still better than this in

    • Permanent DST would mean sunrise wouldn't be until 8:30 AM in the dead of winter.

      Permanent Standard Time would mean that sunrise would be at 4:30 AM at the peak of summer.

      In the UK that is what actually happens. Somehow we seem to be comfortable with that.

      Your hours of daylight and dark depend on latitude as well as longitude. You just adapt to wherever you are.

  • All ~56,653 residents of Greenland -- about 1/8 of my city Virginia Beach.

    Guess you gotta start somewhere ... :-)

    • All ~56,653 residents of Greenland -- about 1/8 of my city Virginia Beach.

      And all living at a latitude where it makes very little difference.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Megane ( 129182 )
      Controversial opinion: maybe they were just in the wrong timezone to begin with.

  • Isn't going to do crap for them when they get only 4 hours in the winter
    going from 1000-1400 to 1100-1500 isn't going to matter much
    Might as well switch to GMT and be done with it
    At the equinoxes it will be 0700-1900 for daylight
    Summer solstice 0300-2300
    If they really wanted to be closer to EU businesses should have gone at least 1 more time zone. That way people could be in the dark midnight to 4am and they would have light all afternoon in the winter

    • Isn't going to do crap for them when they get only 4 hours in the winter

      And that's precisely why they can do it.

      (...and why we can't)

  • I'll make the standard public health comment... (Score:5, Informative)

    by clawsoon ( 748629 ) on Sunday March 26, 2023 @03:44PM (#63401051)

    ...about Standard Time. Pretty much every scientist who has studied this thinks that sticking with Standard Time would be better than going to permanent DST, based on the health effects you see when you go from the eastern side of a time zone to the western side of the adjacent time zone. The earlier that you force people to wake up compared to sunrise, the worse it is for their health.

    Here is one of many articles [wbur.org] that you can find on the subject if you want to learn more.

    • Thank you! Too much emotion in this debate, not enough science.

    • Furthermore, Midnight and Noon should actually be in the middle of the day & night, regardless of the date. Standard Time is truth.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by e3m4n ( 947977 )
      bullshit... UK and the US are looking at permanent DST because studies showed exactly the opposite. Permanent DST would save more oil (DST cosumes 100,000 less barrels per day than standard time). There are significantly fewer accidents in the evening (1%) because of the extended daylight that DST provides. In fact it more than offset the minor increase in car fatalities and accidents due to driving in the dark in the morning. There are more accidents in the evening than morning year round due to fatigue.
    • To be brutally honest, absolutely no one gives a fuck if the planet goes to DST or keep standard time permanently. They just want the switching to stop.

  • "Microscopic population of 56,000 comes to an agreement".

    There are literally more than 300 cities just in the US that are larger than that. If we assume only 28000 were needed to vote this in, there are more than 900 US cities larger than that.

    It's not hard to come to consensus when:
    - you're tiny, and
    - you're economically irrelevant. (sorry Greenland, I'm sure you're full of lovely, wonderful people and it's a pretty country but this is simply true)

    • I don't think the editors marketed it as A Major Country changed the time, just that it's the first that did. I'm not taking here a stand here in favour or against, but this is relevant because Greenland choosing could be a historical turning point. It could motivate EU to do finish up voting to abolish DST. It was approved at the Parliament in 2021 but the Council never cared to put it on its debate agenda.

  • I assume this doesn't count as journalism as it is completely one sided. It reads as if daylights savings is only a bad thing. Personally I like and see people who complain as most drama queens. Sure there valid arguments on both sides, the validity of which often depends on how far from the equator you are. I'm not saying I'm right, scratch that I am right. I'm not going to argue my case, it is an old argument that is well known.

    What annoys me here is how Bloomberg can be seen as credible when writ

  • I would be glad if the turning forward and backward of clocks would stop. I would prefer permanent summer time over that.

    But I have to wonder. We're still animals with animal instincts. Will there be consequences when the sun isn't in its zenith at noon anymore?

    • Will there be consequences when the sun isn't in its zenith at noon anymore?

      It almost never is anyway.

  • "The morning people just fucked over everyone who wants to sleep late."

  • The people of Greenland have realised that, when you live in an artificial environment (which living in the Arctic is, inevitably) then how you set your personal clock is a matter of business convenience, not where the sun is in the sky.

    It's not a new lesson. Working 24x7 cover, reporting to one set of bosses (the geology department) 3 hours behind the timezone the sun dictates for you, and 7 hours ahead of the time zone that the drilling department live in, you just ignore where the sun is. When you need

  • be happy with this decision

  • And yet daylightsavings time is not the original time. A lot of people have trouble with the daylightsavingtime, the hour moving forward. It should not be based on businesshours, but on what's better for the biological clock, and that's the original time, not they summer time.
  • It's time to release some daylight from the strategic daylight reserves. After so many decades of this saving, who knows how much of it we have squirreled away in some warehouse in Kansas. This will of course lower the value of daylight on the open market, but that is a risk we have to accept.

  • I don't much fancy driving to work in the dark in the winter. I like DST, although I think they've gotten a little too aggressive on the dates for it (IMHO, it should start after the spring equinox and end before the fall equinox).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jbengt ( 874751 )

      I don't much fancy driving to work in the dark in the winter.

      I prefer riding the commuter train in the dark in the morning, so I can close my eyes and nap until I get downtown. But I still prefer Standard Time to Daylight Saving Time.
      Also, I am near the Eastern side of the Central Time zone, yet during the winter solar noon is around noon CST. That means the western side of the time zone is basically "daylight saving" during standard time and almost double "daylight saving" during DST. The same is true

  • Noon is the standard approximation to the sun's apogee.

    It should stay at 12pm - not 1pm - for dozens of reasons.

    If 95% of the people want "more light" then start work at 7am, not 8am. It's literally the same thing they're doing but without "make believe".

    Any schools boards who want to control society based on football practice schedules need to be replaced immediately.

    • Noon is the standard approximation to the sun's apogee.

      It should stay at 12pm - not 1pm - for dozens of reasons.

      Also, "pm" means "post meridiem" meaning "after midday". It's a pretty fucked up system if your noon is one hour after noon.

  • The film 30 Days of Night increased the popularity of places like northern Greenland in the Winter as they offered nearly non-stop hunting activities for thrill seeking Nosferatu. The only catch to their fun being having to remember to set an alarm for the hour or two during late December when the Sun was high enough in the sky to be lethal to them.

    "We still have another hour!" could become famous last words for those whose devices timers don't update to Greenland's new policy.

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