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Originally Posted by Slava
I think that permanent standard time is a bad choice though. The sun rises at 4:30am in the summer and sets earlier...I like the long evenings in July and think they're excellent.
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Whereas I'm fine with the sun going down at 8:55 pm instead of 9:55 in the summer, but I loathe the idea of the sun not rising until ~9:40 am in the winter.
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It's funny how we have these "circadian rhythm" concerns with a permanent switch, but it's already in that situation today. Shouldn't we be changing the clocks backward earlier in the fall if that's a big concern? And when we make the change in March we end up waking in darkness again.
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Yes, we should change the clocks back earlier in the fall and later in the spring, and we did before 2007! We used to change clocks on the first Sunday in April and last Sunday in October. The US unilaterally decided to change it to the second Sunday in March and first Sunday in November, adding another 4-5 weeks of daylight time in the calendar. Canada and Mexico followed only to keep in sync with them.
This year we "sprang forward" on March 14, making sunrise jump from 6:51 to 7:51 am, and sunset from 6:40 to 7:40 pm. We will "fall back" on November 7, making sunrise shift from 8:39 to 7:39 am, and sunset from 5:59 to 4:59 pm.
If we kept daylight saving time the same as it was prior to 2007, we would have changed on April 4, making sunrise from 6:04 to 7:04 am and sunset 7:14 to 8:14 pm, and October 31, making sunrise from 8:27 to 7:27 am and sunset from 6:11 to 5:11 pm.