All About Time

[Typhon]

Here in North America, we have 4 time zones.  Therefore, the time on the east coast is 4 hours ahead of my fellow North Americans on the west coast.  Today, in the U.S. and Canada, the clocks were moved back 1 hour.  It got me curious about a few things.

To the Community members outside of North America:  How many time zones in your country?  Do you also adjust the clocks twice each year?

To my fellow North Americans:  I have always felt that this changing of the clocks is no longer necessary.  Over a century ago, farming was the main way of living, and of course farmers begin their work in the very early morning hours.  But times are different now and this early daylight need seems to have diminished.  Even those who do the farming today now use heavy machinery to get things done in much less time.  What do you think?

Thanks in advance for everyone's information and input.

[KiloDeltaCharlie]

Here in the UK we have the single time zone which is 5 hours ahead of the US E.T. We had our clocks go back last weekend, they change the last Sunday in March and the last Sunday in October.

Until the railways came in during the mid-19th century, times were all over the place in the UK. Each major city took noon literally as when the sun was directly overhead, so Bristol was about 30 minutes behind London. But when it became necessary to have accurate train schedules everywhere had to have the same time.

[BOGBLAST]

The time changes are no longer necessary seeing that the reason for them no longer exists. Two States in the US  don't honor daylight saving time and they seem to be OK, Arizona and Hawaii.

[Charger]

The EU is in the process of removing the daylight savings time which is AWESOME! The problem however is that every country can then decide themselves will they choose daylight savings time or normal time as their final timezone... So it is sadly possible the the idiots running Finland might go against all reason and actually choose the so called summer time instead of the normal time.

There was an internet poll on the subject but the results are not in yet. The vast majority wanted to end the daylight savings time thing which was good but the other part of the question was which time do we want to use as the permanent time. The results have not come in yet on that...also the parlament will decide that anways BUT they vowed to take people's opinion into consideration...

Our time zone here in Finland is GMT +2.... Daylight savings time ended on October 28th.

[Jack the Stripper]

All but Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory observe daylight saving in Australia which we are currently in. NSW, Victoria and Tasmania are AEST. South Australia, Northern Territory and the town of Broken Hill in NSW are ACST - 30 minutes behind AEST. Western Austrlia is AWST - 2 hours behind AEST but currently 3 hrs with Daylight Saving.

[Typhon]

All but Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory observe daylight saving in Australia which we are currently in. NSW, Victoria and Tasmania are AEST. South Australia, Northern Territory and the town of Broken Hill in NSW are ACST - 30 minutes behind AEST. Western Austrlia is AWST - 2 hours behind AEST but currently 3 hrs with Daylight Saving.

   Wow!  If I ever take a journey through Australia, I won't know what the heck the time it is.

[Zzzptm]

India went along with daylight savings for a while and then decided it wasn't worth the hassle and canned it.

Good call, India, I say.

DST came out of WW1 as a scheme that was supposed to save coal consumption - allowing it to go for the war effort. It didn't make much difference one way or the other. Some studies shows it saves 1% more energy, others that it uses 1% more energy, all those findings well within the margin of error. That means it's ineffective, at best.

With other studies showing an actual impact on health and driver safety around time change events, and these effects are outside the margins of error, DST can be shown to be a positive hazard to living. Junk it.